POLARIZATION IN AMERICA

Political division has been on the rise for years in the U.S. The gap between the two parties has grown sharply in Congress, while the share of Americans who interact with people from the other party has plummeted. Furthermore, many Americans only read news or get information from sources that align with their political beliefs, which exacerbates fundamental disagreements about the basic facts of many political problems. In other words, hatred specifically, hatred of the other party increasingly defines U.S. politics.

It’s hard to overstate how dire the situation is because it’s been this way for a while. It’s something, too, that everyday Americans are feeling and are worried about. American citizens are growing more extreme and isolated in their political views. No one can respect each other’s opinions and try to work together in a peaceful way. Individuals and the media hard-sell their own views with no understanding or attempted understanding of other viewpoints.

Political extremism or polarization is one of the most important issues facing the country. Over the past decade, Gallup has seen a larger share of people that cite dissatisfaction with the government or poor leadership as the nation’s top issue, reaching record highs in recent years.

How Americans define “polarization” varies. Some speak of the inability of the two major parties to compromise, while others blame political leaders or the other party. But overall, regardless of how they identify politically, most Americans blame elites for America’s divides. They feel political polarization is mostly driven by political and social elites Both political parties have moved way to the outside, and there's no center pole for people to meet at. Congress is not making the rules. They're just fighting one another.

Groups that are seen as driving polarization are politicians, wealthy donors, social media companies and mainstream media outlets.  

It’s evident that polarization is weighing heavily on many Americans. Polarization of the US is continuing to intensify and there is no sign of unity to heal the divided America.

A divided America is making the world increasingly concerned. America is not going to have another civil war, as some feverish pundits speculate, but it has already endured political violence, and that could get worse, and American dysfunction poses a risk to the world.

A polarizing America will make the decision-making in Washington more short-sighted and driven by domestic politics rather than looking at the bigger picture and considering the common interests shared by the international community, so US decision-making will be more selfish and unpredictable. Whether it comes from Democrats or Republicans, it will both bring uncertainties to world peace and stability.

Note

Donald Trump and President Joe Biden continue to trade barbs, with Biden saying his predecessor and his supporters are "a threat to the country" and Trump calling Biden an "enemy of the state", underscoring the deepened political rift in US politics.

The war of words shows a deepened political polarization in Washington.The Republicans and the Democrats in recent years have been further divided on many issues including the abortion ban that has forced many to take to the streets. The widening political rift will continue to divide US citizens and turn them against one another, even as the nation is gripped by crises. The United States is facing a big political dilemma and no one can  see any way out. Trump has insisted the election was rife with fraud and was stolen from him, even though numerous federal and local election officials of both parties, a long list of courts, top former campaign staffers and his own attorney general have said there is no evidence of the fraud he alleges.

Donald Trump has crossed a lot of red lines of the unforgivable in politics.In the right-wing populist tradition, Trump established his anti-elite bona fides by breaking norms and insulting what frequently was described as “the establishment.” Donald Trump and his brand of insult politics fit into the long tradition of U.S. right-wing populism.

Criticism, attacks, and negative campaigning is nothing new in U.S. politics. Indeed, it is a fundamental part of U.S. political history. Attack politics, however, is a broad category. Political science literature on attack politics often defines negative campaigning as any discussion of the opponent, his or her policies, or the opposing party in general. 

Insult politics captures a certain campaign rhetoric that is centered not on criticism per se, but on ad hominem attacks of a disparaging nature aimed at an individual or group. A characteristic of insult politics is its polemic and controversial nature. Political attacks have a bad reputation, and the electorate tends to conflate what they dislike in politics with negative campaigning, which is why candidates traditionally cede the controversial ground of insult politics to surrogates such as the vice-presidential candidate, noteworthy supporters, and allies in the media. Within the tradition of right-wing populism, however, insult politics has been a key ingredient of political rhetoric.

Despite the long tradition of both insult politics and right-wing populism in the United States, the mocking rhetoric used by Donald Trump is perceived and described as norm-breaking and extreme. The method of using incendiary rhetoric to portray political opponents is neither limited to populism nor new, but in the 1990s, Congressional Republicans led by Newt Gingrich adopted language painting Democrats as evil. Gingrich recommended describing Democrats as “sick, traitors, [and] corrupt.” He admitted, privately to allies, that his strategy was to depict Democrats as “the enemy of normal Americans,” calling the Clintons “left-wing elitists.” In the 1990s, among conservative Republicans “any action or rhetoric was justified and any compromise was a betrayal,” historian Robert Self explains. This new polarization was fueled by a new conservative media establishment, especially on talk radio and, by the late-1990s, also on Fox News and online news sites, which were willing and able to push right-wing populism. Trump, who became a political figure on the air of Fox News and a variety of conservative talk radio shows, has erased the difference between the rhetoric of the echo chamber and national politics.

In the long tradition of right-wing populism, Donald Trump has broken political norms utilizing conservative media to cultivate a politics of the little guy, anger, and insults. Mockingly lashing out not only at his political rivals but at institutions, celebrities, and individual citizens, Trump found a political environment eager to condemn his insults and a media industry keen to report on the norm-breaking behavior.