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Division is not the problem. I think people misunderstand the fundamental nature of the American political system. It is designed to divide and separate elements, to prevent a tyrannical unity from ever taking hold within the system.
The problem, as I see it, is we are enduring a period where there is not a majority that is governing but by large minority coalitions that are oscillating. None of them have the power to dominate the others, but all of them are too large to fundamentally ignore.
But they are also too ossified to dissolve. And that seems to be the fundamental rub here. The system presumes a certain amount of fluidity when it comes to social and political coalitions; they rise and they fall. When they don& #39;t, it shows a break down in democracy.
By this I mean it results in creating half useful institutions that endure after their use has ended. This makes governing more difficult because these interests become entrenched - and every entrenched interest gains a political coalition. It stunts the political landscape.
But it also gives these entrenched interests the rhetorical motivation to claim no change has occurred on their particular project. This is almost universally not true in America with a few exceptions. But it is true rhetorically because these groups need it to be true.
Violence is down across the board. Poor people live with more comforts now than Johnson could have imagined in 1965. Women make up an ever increasing majority of college graduates. Affirmative action has helped create a black middle class. Businesses are more profitable then ever
And yet, if you ask anyone advocating on those positions, the existence of the problem (whatever the problem is) justifies radical restructuring, be it universal gun ownership, holistic deregulation of markets or abortion, abolishing all social or cultural metric gaps.
We have coalitions of entrenched interests because they are all supported by tax money. Some of these things should be, certainly, but each era should get to decide for itself if if wants to continue funding those things. If a social contract means anything, it must mean that.
But we& #39;ve become convinced that politics is really just the plaything of entrenched interests, things that endure because public revenue pays for them to endure. This is a very foolish way of understanding politics but its a ruinous way of running it under our Constitution.
