What are the roots of the current divisiveness of American politics/discourse?

[pbrower2a]

Listing and analyzing each:

Lingering effects of Great Recession/Economic Inequality         -34 (11.4%)

Economic inequality began to intensify about 40 years ago. The division began well before the Great Recession.

America is an empire in a post-imperial world - our large and diverse country naturally lends itself to increased division         -20 (6.7%)

We may not need "empire"  for our safety, but we are culturally 'wired' to need it. That means identity.
 
The government has become complacent as neither party has faced a true existential threat in decades         -15 (5%)

Communism was strictly an external threat. There has been no clearly-focused enemy around which Americans could unite since 9/11. The reptilian mind of the subconscious needs an enemy and usually finds one.  
 
The media is incentivized to promote conflict and sensationalism         -50 (16.7%)

Ratings and the advertising revenue that they generate drive the content of ruthless figures in the media. News has gone from a public service ion broadcasting to just another profit center.  I see this as a big factor.
 
People feel less agency over the decisions made by government due to increased influence of pan-national organizations like the UN and WTO         -12 (4%)

Little effect on most people.

White men threatened by the rise of women and minorities         -40 (13.4%)

Big effect. Men are more aggressive than women, and they get angrier than do hurt women. Men are more prone to extremism, and Trump exploited this.
 
Lack of a common existential threat - USSR, Nazis, Al-Qaeda         -21 (7%)

See the existential threat to the Parties.
 
A general moral decay, due to increasing irreligiosity and secularism         -15 (5%)

The moral decay is real, but it is not strictly a result of secularism and rejection of religion.

Foreign powers have nurtured divisions between Americans to weaken the nation on the international stage         -11 (3.7%)

Possible result of choices by Vladimir Putin, who thought that Donald trump might be useful.

Social media has strengthened the "bubbles" we live in, by showing us hundreds of people who agree with us and little else         -53 (17.7%)

As local communities polarize by ethnicity, sect, intellectual level, and class, social media allow people to get into virtual communication (but not face-to-face) with people who share common values and tastes. Chance meetings person-to-person are less likely to satisfy people, and civic life deteriorates.

Other (explain)         -13 (4.3%)

See below in a new post.

Americans are divided, but that's a good thing and reflects a strong democracy         -6 (2%)

I see plenty of foreboding. Democracy allows us to communicate our differences, but it does not force us to solve problems related to differences.
 
America is not any more divided now than it has been in the recent past, it just feels that way

The division is real and ominous.

Contrast the Great Recession (autumn 2007-spring 2009) to the start of the Great Depression (autumn 1932). Both were similarly severe over a year and a half and had much the same cause (speculative bubbles imploding in financial panics). The meltdown leading to the Great Depression lasted fully three years and eliminated a valuation of about eight of nine units of valuation of wealth and led to about 25% unemployment. In such a scenario everyone is put into the same leaky boat and recognizes the need for competent, principled, organized struggle to get out of a dangerous reality. 'Every man for himself' failed during the Great Depression. At the end of the Great Recession America had lost about half its financial valuation. America got to recover from a more advantageous position. But more on that.

[pbrower2a]

I don't see America (by which I mean Americans, if not their leadership, a different story) becoming more immoral. Less religious, perhaps -- but also less superstitious. Much of American religion was tied to superstition, and where superstition and religion were intertwined inseparably they had to disappear together or survive together.

The success of gays and lesbians in entering the social mainstream reflects a positive change in morals. People have begun to recognize that homosexuality is not a lust by older men for boys; indeed, mainstream homosexuals have done everything possible to reject the child-abusing perverts that used to pretend that they were the face of homosexuality.  America has unified along the shared attitude that children are not legitimate objects of sexual indulgence. The convictions of clergy for abuse of boys reflects a crackdown on abusive behavior.

We were able to elect, horror of horrors to most prior times, a black man as President. He proves moral, decent, rational, and focused. He became a big so-what. Gutter racism, an immoral tendency, has weakened greatly in America.   So are we worse? Maybe not -- if one is the common man.

But what of the supermen of our economic order? They got a chance to operate at the basest levels of morality with extreme narcissism and even sociopathy. In the recovery from the Great Recession they were quickly able to exploit the slowness of the recovery with promises of an even faster recovery if they got their first. They would bring back the harshness of the Gilded Age, if necessary.

But the privileged classes of America are much more cohesive in economic objectives, much more ruthless, and much better organized than were the innovative and competitive entrepreneurs of the Gilded Age. Most of these elites want Big Government, not so much for creating something that works for all, but something that enforces the will of the elites. Big, bad government that exists largely to enrich and indulge the economic elites and impose their will on the common man has typically had the generic name of fascism, the most amoral and immoral economic system to have ever existed. Commies may have been more destructive of the human spirit, but even they give lip service to the idea of social equity and to peace.

The economic elites of contemporary America want an America that exists entirely for themselves. That means New York City costs of living and Third World pay, with the elites exempt from taxation. No human suffering, whether from direct exploitation or from wars for profit, can be in excess to these elites, so long as others endure the destructive effects.    

Add to this the difficulties of the transition from an order of industrialism with scarcity to an economic reality in which scarcity is unnecessary except as a means of controlling people. There are few obvious ways to use one's power as a worker to meet human needs beyond the replacement level of productivity. We can't become happier simply by making more stuff.

Elites can make more income by adding levels of cost for dubious services -- financing, corrupt government, and questionable insurance intended to protect the elites of ownership and management. The television sold today at a box store may be better, more reliable, and less expensive in real terms than the one that one got from a TV dealer-repairman  who had to visit regularly to fix the TV. You can get a reader device for less than the cost of two cartons of cancerettes that has more computing power than a mainframe of the 1940s. But we have less economic security if we must depend upon our labor. We are often deeply in debt to lenders whose ethical values are those of loan sharks.

The Great Depression brought out the best in America at the time -- at least among white people among themselves (racism still flourished, and the 1930s were a peak time for judicial executions, heavily in the South, and disproportionately of black people).  The economic elites typically got cut down significantly in economic power and the ability to buy elections. After the Great Recession, the economic elites who still had overwhelming power in economics were able to buy the electoral process and by 2017 transform the USA into the purest plutocracy since Pinochet's Chile. By 2016 we had government by lobbyists. In 2017 we had a President who believes that the highest objective of any life is the enrichment of those who get the easy money in our system.

We may be witnessing the death of liberal democracy in America as the ethics of American life go from a puritan ethic to one created by Ayn Rand -- celebration of economic gain at its most vulgar and unprincipled. It's 'every man for himself', an inevitable course toward social decay at its swiftest and most destructive.

[pbrower2a]

Near autistic Partisan hacks who cant handle accepting any blame for anything.  Id say the responses in this thread are a pretty good indicator of how prevalent that cancer is.

I have Asperger's syndrome.  Or to put it more precisely, Asperger's syndrome has me. It has caused me much grief, and I stumbled through life until age 60 faulting my character or society in general for something that gave me great difficulty in getting and holding jobs. I got horrible advice from well-meaning people who led me in some of the worst career directions and life decisions possible for someone with Asperger's. Instead of trying office work I should have gone into some creative activity in which I had a chance so long as I showed adequate diligence and dedication. Where there are incentives and other encouragement, people turn their talents to productive activities and do well. Between the writing, art, music, and drama that I love -- and these are all expressions of humanity at its fullest -- I would have found something to my satisfaction. I simply could never get office politics.

The really-bad advice was to avoid the mental health system. There is no cure for Asperger's, but one can make adjustments to live a reasonably-normal life. One can be a good parent, but one had better be an adoptive parent -- especially if one ends up with a spouse who has Asperger's syndrome. Like attracts like.  One can dissolve the anxiety with an occasional drink; one drink does it. One beer or one glass of wine does the trick. One.

I am capable of moral judgment, indeed often harsh judgment of gross wrong-doing. I recognize the danger of anger, greed, and cruelty. I was old enough to see the contrast between the side of civil rights for Southern  blacks in contrast to white racism... yes, any side that must kill opponents to stifle a cause has a dubious cause. Male chauvinism? Once I was too old for Boy Scouts, all-male environments have lost all appeal to me.

...Last week at a filling station I saw a seven-year-old boy run away from his parents' (or custodial adults') vehicle. He showed a fear that seven-year-old boys never show. This was not "I don't want to see the dentist" fear. Seven-year-old boys don't show fear except of something that they have already experienced, like perhaps a beating by parents. What passed as his mother ordered him, with profanity, to get back into the car. His alleged father asked him if he was willing to put his job at risk, suggesting that he had the wrong set of priorities. I did not like what I saw. I told the store clerk what I saw and she called the police. I went out to gas up my car and watched the couple and their child. Maybe that couple figured out what I was up to, and figured that it was a bad idea to give their son a brutal spanking while I was around. They left, but not before I got their plate number.  

May that couple have a close encounter of the Blue kind. I am not referring to politics here -- I refer to the usual color of police uniforms. I may have thwarted some child endangerment. Who knows? They may have to take a junior-college course on child development that I found very useful in substitute school teaching.  

    

[pbrower2a]

The Democrat party is unable to man up and deal with losing an election....and has a kill list of the people who won the election.

Maybe go back to the old standard of trying to make Donald Trump a 1 term President?

Link

Were it simply a matter of Donald Trump and the GOP bamboozling the American people to vote for him, that would be one thing. Elections have consequences, and people deserve the consequences of their folly when they vote for demagogues and corporate shills. That includes injustice and economic calamities.

If the election were shaped significantly by a foreign intelligence agency, then we did not have a free and fair election. If it is Russia that does the hack this time, then it could be China the next time -- maybe choosing that we elect a Democratic President and Democratic majorities in both Houses of Congress.

People connected to President Trump have inordinate numbers of ties to Russia -- not China, not India, not Japan, not any country in western Europe. Such causes the 2016 election to fail the 'stink test'.   

[pbrower2a]

George W Bush is a war criminal bro

then so are Bill Clinton, and Barack Obama by that same definition .


In reality none of them are war criminals, and actually I would support heavily sanctioning, undermining their political stability , and in many cases go to war with countries who would arrest Clinton, Bush , or Obama just cause they disagree with their foreign policies.

I must have missed when Barack Obama and Bill Clinton illegally invaded another nation or engaged in torture.

I think this is one of the things Republicans have learned: be as extreme as possible and then when called out on it, criticize the other side for using 'over the top rhetoric' and expect the lazy 'both sides do it/both sides are equally bad' crowd to jump in in defense and attack the 'over the top rhetoric.

What the Bush Administration did in foreign policy was materially significantly different from even the worst excesses of President Clinton or President Obama.

First of all the Iraq war wasn't illegal (by the US law it was legal ) . Obama did exactly what Bush did in Iraq , to Libya(regime change without being attacked by that country or being allied with a country who is our enemy ) .

The first Gulf war was perfectly legal as the liberation of Kuwait from a fraudulent annexation made as the result of an annexation. Obama inherited a war suspect in wisdom and could not avoid some of the consequences of the bungling of '43'.   
 

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I recall a map showing the potential range of missiles that Iraq had just before the invasion of Kuwait. That range included a significant chunk of the Soviet Union. Gorbachev also wanted the war machine of Iraq eviscerated -- especially the missiles and the poison gas programs. He is as culpable as the first Bush by your reasoning.

Saddam Hussein was once useful as a good customer of military equipment for his criminal war against the Islamic Republic of Iran which then had few friends. Once he invaded Kuwait he was no longer trustworthy. 




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