Posers, Pretenders and Politicians

Posers, Pretenders and Politicians

If you are a famous billionaire, with the exception of Elon Musk, you can run for elected office and may likely win. In recent years, the American political arena has become increasingly polarized. The situation is getting worse. Americans are vexed by political candidates, painfully aware of the shortcomings, but trying to find the least despicable among a basket of deplorables. How many times have you heard, "I voted for the lesser of two evils."

Polling shows that most Americans hold moderate views. Then why are the two major political parties moving further extreme left and right? Vicky Chuqiao Yang, a complexity postdoctoral fellow from the Santa Fe Institute, and a team of researchers from Northwestern University and UCLA dug deep into the issue.

A dynamic model that was able to predict the polarization of the parties was tested against 150 years-worth of data, the results detailed in the SIAM Review. It shows that the polarization is not, as one might think, because Americans are taking more extreme views, but because the parties are using political strategy to gain votes.

They took all of those factors into account, along with 150 years-worth of U.S. Congressional voting data from the American Nation Election Study. They then compiled all of this information using complex mathematical formulas and came out with something that explains why politicians are becoming more polarized.

Political theater. As a party softens their position they become open to attack from the opposition. The result is that the other side looks tough and resolute in their beliefs and the softening side looks weak and appears to be pandering to get votes. The result is the creation of an “us or them” feeling to American politics. This explains the appearance of tribal warfare. A handful of issues are vetted, dramatized, exaggerated, and even misrepresented and lied about. Abortion. Economy. The politicization process has infected all three federal branches of government, along with most government institutions, even those with 'independent' charters such as the Federal Reserve.

On both the Left and the Right, the main conceptual frameworks have largely shifted in focus from unifying values to group identities. As Amy Chua puts it in Political Tribes (2018): “The Left believes that right-wing tribalism—bigotry, racism—is tearing the country apart. The Right believes that left-wing tribalism—identity politics, political correctness—is tearing the country apart. They are both right.” 

Religious confusion. An increasing number of young people choose "none" when polled about the religion they identify with. Other groups are outraged by what they see as trends that their religion consider sinful, evil and destructive (e.g. gay marriage). Finally, the diversity of religions in America means the nation has hundreds, perhaps thousands of disparate religious ideologies that underpin behavior and how people view the world and how we should live in our world. Politics and religion are the most combustible when it comes to the potential to blow up into violence and mayhem.

Money is power and super-donors and lobbyists exercise that power with their wealth. Rather than a truly ideological divide, polarization occurs as Republicans and Democrats move further and further away from each other. Today a liberal is going to be a Democrat, almost always, and a conservative is going to be a Republican. This differs from the people and their views of - for example - John F Kennedy, Bill Clinton and Ronald Reagan. Though each candidate hailed from a specific party, many people from the other party supported, voted for, and even well-liked one or more of the three.

Journalistic responsibility and quality have gone downhill since the days of Walter Cronkite. Media is big business, and as such, each media company caters to their specific market. You can watch Fox News or MSNBC for maybe five minutes and declare the direction media is leaning and clearly biased.

Wealth gap. We are closing in on one thousand billionaires while more than half of Americans live paycheck-to-paycheck and would be unable to meet an emergency with enough savings. The culture has lionized these wealthy individuals with mega-mansions, yachts and jets. Today most Americans are impressed, and believe they too could someday become a billionaire, if they could just find the right formula. At this writing we don't have the seeds for a bourgeoisie/proletariat divide that could foment revolution, but as the wealth gap grows, we are seeing some signs of discontent. We are witnessing some calling for a 'soak the rich' tax, but again, nothing substantive is forming just yet.

Education. Public schools no longer provide an education that would prepare students for colleges and universities they could not afford anyway. So education is coming from elsewhere. Online and oftentimes free, from YouTube, to Google Scholar are tapped to prepare young people for their chosen career. The crushing structure of corporate cubicles are eschewed and instead gigs and side hustles and the flexibility and independence of making the money to live in accordance with modest materialism motivations has led to simplifying lifestyles and rejecting long hours and the sacrifices needed to move up the corporate ladder. 

Young people online find groups and social media chatrooms as replacements for real, personal social interaction. Hero worship such a Cathie Wood and Elon Musk influences voting choices. Famous Hollywood actors, billionaires, rock stars and other so-called influencers can make or break a political campaign. If Elon Musk, with 110+ million Twitter followers, throws his support to conservative candidates, this is enough to tip any election.

One week from today we will suffer through mid-term elections, and be grateful the ads will then finally cease. The cast of candidates consist of those who have Donald Trump's seal of approval, those who decry the anti-abortion SCOTUS ruling, and groups that are angry about high prices. We will get a disparate admixture of extremists who will spend much of their time insulting each other. We will get some short-term bandages for serious national problems that have been stewing for decades. But we won't fix the worst of the worst problems we face, the divide is simply too great, the dysfunction too deeply entrenched to solve anything serious.

Meanwhile, President Xi will continue to lead China in their pursuit of long-term goals and objectives, including the impending and inevitable superpower status, and ultimately a military that will rival our own.