The entire political climate that we live in currently is dramatically different from the way it was in the past. We currently live in a time where many people feel as if their politicians that they elected are not perfect embodiments of their wishes as the politicians become more polarized in a country composed of many moderates. While we currently may be facing this issue it was not always like that as within the past 30 years. Our country went under a paradigm shift in the polarization of politics over these past recent year. This has had a wide impact on our society, and while there has been constant changes in the political system since the founding of our country, the political changes I want to be focusing on is the more modern changes in our political system. There were many things that were leading up to this political change, yet the main paradigm shift came within the twenty-first century. While there was a unification by parties during the beginning of the twenty-first century after 9/11 and the declaration of war, this soon changed with the election of Obama and the republican response.
Overall this shift in the political polarization is very important in our current society. These politicians are the people who are influencing our current lives by creating policy that is very influential, take for example Obamacare and the healthcare industry. If people become sick and have to pay for their treatment, the price they pay and the quality of care they receive is widely dependent on the health care policy of the United States. The implementation of these bills that affect our health care policy are very important, and with an increase in political polarization, there also is an increase in gridlock as the rival sides are less working to work with each other to pass bipartisan policies. While the health care is just an example, this is working in almost every sector of politics as they fail to pass legislation, and only work to remove their predecessors accomplishments. With less legislation being able to be passed, as a country we are no longer to adapt to our issues and thus are failing to adapt to our ever changing world. This increase in polarization is hurting our future as a country and thus it is very important to learn how it came about it and what changes can be made to fix it.
I feel like this is a HUGE (get it?) problem in America today. Politics have turned into a reality show of late, as it is the only thing on the news, but never for reasons one would expect. There’s been so much drama in the white house it feels like an episode of “Keeping up with the Kardashians”. I’m interested to see how this will transition and how you think we should fix this. Because this problem definitely needs a solution.
In terms of the ‘shift’ in politics, the agenda of the Republicans and Democrats have drastically changed to be polar opposites of each other over time. It is was the Democrats who supported slavery within the south states but nowadays, they are the party who are pro immigration and have its voters coming from the north. The reason for these changing agendas is because of not what these political parties believed in or any values they wanted to uphold but rather achieving more votes from the public. This populist approach has distorted their purpose in politics and have strongly disconnected the public needs and interests from the politicians.