Assignment 16: Theodore

Given the recent political climate in America, it seems almost as if the country 
has a split personality.
“Split personality? This is the GOP’s fault. They can’t accept Obamacare; they can’t accept 
climate change; they can’t accept equality. Trump is leading us toward ruin.” 

“Hold on. It may have taken the Democrats this long to realize how out of touch they are,

 but that doesn’t give them the right to interfere with our government. The people have spoken; 

elections have consequences. Americans want small government and traditional values.”

As I was saying, it seems as if Americans have become divided into two political camps,

 with no in-between. But is it really true that political polarization has taken over our country?

 I’ll look at the evidence for that point of view, but then I’ll explain how polarization is often 

exaggerated. In fact, we will see that you, as students, can have a significant effect upon reducing 

political polarization.

But it’s impossible to deny that polarization appears to control our government. Just look 

at the Senate’s confirmations of Supreme Court justices. Only 20 years, the Senate measured

 justices based on their level of experience, not political qualifications. Votes were almost 

unanimous. But today, we have political litmus tests, and the partisan climate has become 

so divided that when we do confirm Supreme Court justices, it’s by a strict party-line vote,

 Republicans versus Democrats — as in the case of Justice Gorsuch (Flegenheimer). Now,

 one possible reason for this, as explained by journalist Bill Bishop, is that Americans have 

geographically sorted themselves by political party. Democrats usually choose more urban 

areas, while Republicans generally live in more rural areas. Think of Bishop’s hypothesis

 this way. Suppose that each American is a paperclip, and political beliefs are magnets. Put 

the paperclips and the magnets in a jar and shake it. Eventually, the paperclips clump around 

different magnets. We can see this recent rise in political polarization with the advent of the 

Tea Party. The PBS documentary, Divided States of America, talks about how President

 Obama came into office with a message of hope, change, and unity. Soon, politicians found 

that it was easier to gather votes by appealing to highly divisive partisan issues that the base

 prefers, not pursuing issues that the moderate middle would support. As a result, the Tea Party

 and the Republicans won the House of Representatives in 2010.

So we see that polarization is significant, but the causes are not as clear-cut as Bishop put it.

 He decided that Americans have polarized ourselves because the number of landslide

 counties — counties where one party wins 60% or more of the vote — has increased

 dramatically over the past few decades (which it has). If we take a closer look at these counties, 

which Dr. Strickler, a political scientist, did, we find that the truth is a little more complicated. It turns 

out that 80% of the people in a landslide county on the far right have the exact same political

 values as 80% of those living in a far left county. The magnets do pull paper clips into different

 clumps, but if we look at the paper clips, they are identical. So why do we see polarization

 on the electoral map, even though it doesn’t exist at the individual level? One possible answer

 is gerrymandering: when politicians redraw districts to create safe seats that increase their 

party’s representation — in effect, politicians choosing their voters. For the 2010 elections,

 David Daley, the editor of Salon magazine, reported that the GOP used sophisticated algorithms

 to gain an advantage in the House races, partly leading to their control of the House. Now,

 I don’t blame the GOP for all gerrymandering. But in the past few years (since the 2010 census)

 the GOP has tended to succeed more at gerrymandering than the Democrats.

So political polarization doesn’t come from the people — it’s more of a manufactured trend — 

but how can we, as students, resist it? After all, we cannot vote yet. However, we can take a 

stance in the political battle taking place on social media. Social media isn’t just a place to

 share ideas with friends. Actually, foreign powers are trying to influence our views. In 2016, 

Russia, as the New York Times reported, paid agents to pose as extremists on social media. 

By pretending to be extreme versions of Black Lives Matter and extreme social conservatives,

 they wanted to divide America, as well as undermining our trust in our political system 

(Confessore and Wakabayashi). Americans are paper clips linked together, and Russia is

 using electromagnets to try to pull us apart. We must resist that. Besides, even if students

 can't vote now, some of us will be able to in a year; the rest of us, two years. Now you see

 that it matters that we vote to reduce political polarization.

In conclusion, we have seen that polarization results in significant problems in that it causes 

gridlock — lack of compromise in the government. But our divided politics aren’t the fault

 of the people directly — unless you choose to ignore the problems. It’s more a product of our political

 institutions and misinterpretations of the data. If you, as a consumer of social media, take 

steps to examine your sources and make sure that they are not trying to pull you toward an

 ideology, then you are reducing political polarization. So even if America really has a split 

personality, it is our job as citizens to act as psychiatrists and heal the patient.