how has america become so ideologically polarized?

[theDoctorisIn]

How about the 2 parties allow a few other parties in ? How can we not be polarized ?

Why would the existing parties want to do that?

More political parties = less money for the 2 existing parties.

Oh the two parties collude to make sure no one interrupts their corrupt power sharing.

Of course they do.

 

[ogibillm]

packaging entertainment as news. started with cnn and the 24 hour news cycle, was brought to the masses through a.m. radio shows like rush limbaugh, and was perfected by fox news.

and then, like Asclepias said, it becomes another sport - only this one we get to participate in

 

[shart_attack]

How about the 2 parties allow a few other parties in? How can we not be polarized?

Sad as it may sound, most political science professors and historians are in agreement that a federalist republic works best when it is run by people of two distinct political parties.

If you have three or more, then you have no resolute theoretical aisle to cross, no way to have theoretical "middle ground" because it's much more difficult to define what the term middle ground even entails.

Look at what's been happening in contemporary European states like Greece, for example.

Look at what happened to Yugoslavia after the Berlin Wall fell.

Look at what happened to Germany after WWI.

Those are three good examples of what multiple parties can do to a republic, no matter how strong its federalism may be, and no matter what other issues—like economic inflation and multiculturalism—complicate the big picture.

In the U.S., the two-party system works best. What sucks IMHO is that we have way too many third parties influencing those who represent them.

The question is why we are so polarized. Not what would work the best.

So why the heck did you start this chain right here by talking about what remedy would in your view help to eliminate the polarization, then?

 

[katsteve2012]

Though I grew up in a quaint, idyllic 80s American town, I was not the least bit uninformed about new social dilemmas like the introduction of crack cocaine and the AIDS epidemic into the American metropoli.

Political correctness was slowly being introduced in the once-hallowed halls of academia, but—likely thanks in large part to the threat of the Cold War Doomsday Clock—it wasn't the nemesis which many proclaim it to be now.

In the 11th-hour-of-the-first-Cold-War America in which I was raised, the boisterously salient opinions of the ideological extremes of today did not exist.

It seemed that, despite our differences, we always found ways to work together back then.

The Internet has made the world a "smaller" place. Information on practically anything imaginable is available to anyone with access to a computer.

What has changed?

Were our leaders simply better at reaching compromises, or was the picture somehow more complicated even then, just as it is today?

Please rank the poll options from what are in your view the most destructive to the least in terms of contributing to the marginalization of the average American of today.

What is causing America to implode?

The Internet has made the world a "smaller" place. Information on practically anything imaginable is available to anyone with access to a computer.