Civic Issues in Today's Society

Since I focused my last blog post on the role of bipartisanship in the political system, this blog post will focus on the role of third parties in politics. The attention on third parties has increased in recent years since there have been discussions about amending the political party system to allow more than two major parties. In the most recent election, the candidate from the Green Party, Jill Stein, was often seen in the media for some of the statements that she had made including her calls for recounts in three of the states after the election.

There are currently twenty-eight political parties that are qualified to be placed on ballots in the United States. However, the third parties that are recognized in the most states are the Green Party, the Libertarian Party, and the Constitution Party. In the most recent presidential election, the Libertarian Party was included on ballots in all of the fifty states, the Green Party was included on ballots in forty-four states, and the Constitution Party was included on ballots in twenty-four states.

The Green Party is considered a grassroots national political party. The party is focused on combating climate change, replacing corporate power with economic justice, and preventing “endless” war. The Green Party also supports sustainable living wages, universal health care, tuition-free college, forgiveness for student loan debt, human rights for immigrants, and racial justice. The party is also found in 100 countries including the United States.

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Jill Stein was the candidate for the Green Party in the 2016 presidential election. Stein’s platform during the election process was based on the beliefs of the Green Party. One of her main goals as president was to combat climate change by transitioning to 100% renewable energy by 2030 and investing in public transportation, sustainable agriculture, and conservation. Stein also aimed to employ all eligible Americans, end poverty, guarantee health care and education as a right, create a just economy, help preserve the Earth, and establish justice for all races.

The Libertarian Party strongly opposes the involvement of the government in a citizen’s decisions regarding their personal life, family, or business. The main belief of the party is that a citizens should have the freedom to make their own decisions without government influence as long as the individual is not doing harm onto another individual. As the name of the party suggests the goal of the party’s platform is liberty.

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Gary Johnson was the 2016 presidential candidate for the Libertarian Party and was formerly the governor of New Mexico. He also was the 2000 and 2012 presidential candidate for the Libertarian Party. His platform aligned with the beliefs listed above and focused on the rights of citizens to make their own decisions. Some of his platforms included eliminating subsidized health care and allowing abortion to be a choice for all women.

The main goal of the Constitution Party is to uphold the principles of the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights by limiting the federal government to its delegated, enumerated, Constitutional functions. The party also has what it calls the “Three Pillars”. Pillar One is integrity which is accomplished by establishing honesty, integrity, and accountability to the government. Pillar Two is Liberty which is accomplished by reducing the government’s influence in the lives of American citizens. The final pillar is prosperity which is accomplished by creating one of the best economies in the world in the United States.

These three third party organizations are extremely important in today’s political society. This influence is not based on political numbers, there are only two members of Congress that are independent, but on the message that is being sent to the American people.

In fact, the influence of a third party was partially responsible for the popularity of the Women’s Suffrage movement that helped pass the Nineteenth Amendment. The third parties also helped pass the child labor laws that stopped the dangerous exploitation of children in the labor force.

However, there is often a negative association with voting for third party candidates. Throughout election seasons, the common belief is that a vote for a third party candidate is a waste since there is an extremely small change that the candidate will get elected. Once again, the purpose of third party candidates at this time is to spread a message. A vote for a third party candidate is not a waste of time since that vote is spreading the message of that candidate. A wasted vote is a vote for a candidate that you do believe in.

The presence of third parties in the political system has brought up many questions regarding the future of the political system. Will there be more than three main political parties? Will third parties become more popular in the future? Will there ever be a president that is from a third party? These questions may not be able to be answered right now, but they are questions that will shape how the political system moves forward.

Bipartisanship in politics means that the opposing parties are cooperative with each other even when they disagree about the other’s beliefs. There are time periods in which bipartisanship is a significant part of politics and there are time periods in which bipartisanship is figment of imagination.

One of these time periods where bipartisanship was a significant part of politics was during the time period where the Civil Rights Act was proposed to Congress. The civil rights bill was proposed by Democrats in the Congress and the bill had barely passed the vote in the House of Representatives. The Senate began debating the bill in early 1964.

This meant that in order to get the necessary amount of votes needed for the bill to pass the Senate, enough Republicans had to support the bill. The Democratic majority leader even asked the Republican minority leader to step in and persuade his party to vote for the Civil Rights Act. The minority not only appealed to other Republicans to vote for the bill, but he appealed to the entire Congress in a speech about the Civil Rights Act. With this appeal, twenty-seven Republican senators joined forces with the forty-four Democrat senators to end the filibuster and pass the Civil Rights Act.

The picture below is President Lyndon B. Johnson signing the Civil Rights Act into law.

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Another time period of bipartisan was during 1969 when the United States was anxiously battling the Soviet Union to get the first man on the moon. When Sputnik 1 was first launched into space, the United States space program was just beginning. After the launch of Sputnik 1, Congress urged President Dwight D. Eisenhower to support enacting a larger space program so that the United States could remain competitive in the space race.

With the bipartisan efforts of Congress, many accomplishments were made. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration or NASA was established in 1958. This led to Neil Armstrong becoming the first man to walk on the moon only eleven years later in 1969.

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A more recent time period where bipartisan occurred was in 2001 when No Child Left Behind was passed.No Child Left Behind started out as a blueprint that President George W. Bush presented to Congress after his election. Using this blueprint, two Republican senators and one Democrat senator became coauthors of the joint legislation. However, when one of the more prominent Democrat senators, Senator Edward Kennedy became a coauthor of the bill the Democratic party became supportive of the bill and No Child Left Behind was passed.

However, one of the more famous acts of bipartisanship occurred in 2001 as well. This time period occurred directly after the attack on September 11th, when the nation was at a time of extreme patriotism. American citizens united during this time to show that the United States could not be broken. In Congress, objections to policies and to the other political party were forgotten and members of both parties gathered on the East Steps of the Capitol to sing “God Bless America.” Walmart even struggled to keep up with the high demand for American flags after the attacks.

These examples were all time periods where bipartisanship was at an all time high and compromise was attainable. In today’s political society, one of the biggest debates is whether bipartisanship is attainable anymore. Bipartisan efforts have been declining in recent years, and this has only been accelerated by the events of the recent election.

The main reason that bipartisanship is declining is polarization  according to The Washington Post. An article published before President Trump’s inauguration debated whether bipartisanship is possible in the polarized Congress that is present today. The article focused on what may happen with the arrival of a president whom many Republicans and Democrats disagree with.

The Washington Post conducted research with the Legislative Effectiveness Project. This project has developed a scoring system for the effectiveness of representatives in the United States. The goal of the project was to determine whether bipartisanship improved the effectiveness of a member of the House of Representatives.

The results were surprising and found that the most effective senators engage in bipartisan events. In fact, a lawmaker that is exhibiting above-average bipartisanship was found to be eleven percent more effective than a colleague that exhibits an below-average bipartisanship. What this means is that a lawmaker that engages in bipartisanship will be able to pass legislation further along in the lawmaking process.

With the Legislative Effectiveness Project, The Washington Post was able to conclude that bipartisanship is possible in today’s Congress although it is not common during this time period. Although the project has shown that bipartisanship is most commonly found in minority lawmakers and women lawmakers since these individuals often have a difficult time getting legislature passed in Congress.

Personally, I think the bipartisanship can happen again if both parties can put their differences aside and unite for a greater good.

Since my deliberation was based off of my first post about social media and civic discourse, this blog post will focus on the effect of media in general and politics. Media has always had an impact on politics and other social issues, but with the impact of media on the recent election, its influence is now being seen in a new way. In fact, many people argue that the media was the reason that the President is currently Donald Trump and not Hillary Clinton.

Most of the issues with the media in today’s political society is the constant competition to be the news corporation with the best ratings. As the years have passed, media corporations are seeing an increase in both viewers and profits. There is both positive and negative aspects to this phenomenon. It means that more viewers are becoming engaged with current events, but it also means that the media that Americans are being exposed to is not trustworthy.

Today, CNN has a net worth of 10 billion dollars while the Fox News net worth is 11 billion dollars. Aside from this, both CNN and Fox News had a profit of over one billion dollars during the past election. Most of this profit stemmed from the sensationalism that the recent election brought to American and its media outlets.

This picture is a cover of the newspaper Daily News during the election. This cover is just one of the many from various magazines and newspapers that drew attention to President Trump in sensational ways. Instead of focusing on Trump’s political viewpoints, the newspaper instead regards him as a “fifth-grader” and implies that the average American is smarter than Trump.

Many of these headlines have resulted in American’s distrust in the media. In an article published in September, two months before the election, Kenneth Walsh cited the statistical proof that citizens are becoming increasingly weary of media. According to a poll referenced in the article, only thirty-two percent of Americans had a “great deal” or “fair amount” of trust in the media. This number was the lowest recorded in the history of the poll.

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According to the Pew Research Center, The Economist, BBC, ABC News, USA Today, Google News, and The Wall Street Journal are the most trusted media outlets since most Americans feel that they are not liberally or conservatively biased. In fact, both liberals and conservatives found these media sources to be trustworthy when polled. NPR, PBS, CBS News, NBC News, CNN, The New York Times, MSNBC, and The Washington Post are trusted by liberal viewers but not by conservative viewers because they are seen by conservatives as only reporting sensational headlines that benefit liberal standards and viewpoints. Fox News, Breitbart, The Sean Hannity Show, and the Green Beck Program are trusted by conservative viewers since liberals believe that these programs have a bias towards conservative viewpoints.

Media has also affected the political realm of debates especially in the recent election. There is no longer challenging questions that have perplexed presidential candidates and have shown Americans what traits the candidates exhibit. Now, debates involve easier questions that focus more on the candidates themselves rather than the issues in the country.

The recent debates during the 2016 presidential election showed how the media industry has turned presidential debates into a power struggles between various organizations. As an individual who enjoys politics, I have watched every presidential debate since the 2012 election. As a result, I was shocked when the second presidential debate allowed Ken Bones a chance to ask a question to both candidates and the media focused on the outfit that Bones wore and his personality rather than the question asked.

The main reason for this change in debate style is the constant competition between media outlets. Out of all of the television networks, only a select few are chosen to host either the Republican presidential debates, the Democrat presidential debates, or the debates between both nominees. This has resulted in the media companies adjusting their debate style and questions to what their target audience is looking for rather than focusing on what is politically appropriate.

The best example of this was the Republican debates. At the start of the campaign season, there was sixteen candidates hoping to become the nominee for the Republican party. The news outlets that hosted the debates when there was sixteen candidates decided to split the Republican debates into two separate debates. The first debate would be earlier in the evening with the candidates that the hosting news network deemed “underdogs”. The second debate was the typical prime-time debate with the most popular candidates.

There are many questions that need to be asked about the media’s presence in politics. Is the competition a good thing? Are elections turning into reality shows? Are debates worth having anymore? These questions may not have a clear answer as long as the media keeps adapting to what the viewers want.

During the time period between the November 8, 2016 election and the inauguration of President Trump a new form of civic discourse has been taking form, the protest. Protests have occurred on both sides of the political spectrum, however many political analysts predict that the political gap is widening as a result of the recent protests. This opens up a debate on whether protesting is an efficient and appropriate form of civic discourse.

The most recent political protest occurred on the University of California Berkeley. Milo Yiannopoulos was scheduled to speak at the university on February 1, 2017.  However, a protest was staged to protest the conservative writer’s talk. However, the protest was not peaceful and involved students starting fires and and vandalizing buildings by throwing objects in the windows. After the protests started, the university cancelled the talk even though Yiannopoulos had already arrived on the campus. However, the protest also resulted with the campus placed on lockdown for several hours and university police advising students to stay clear of the “violent disruption.” Around five hours after the protest started, the campus was finally placed off of its lockdown status.

The Women’s March  on January 21, 2017 was also a recent protest. Hundred of thousands of women appeared in Washington D.C. alone to protest the inauguration of President Trump. Across the country, however, speakers and celebrities joined protesters for the cause of women’s rights. The march itself was the result of a Facebook post created after the election which aimed to protest the polarization of the country during the election. However, different issues were highlighted by the various speakers. In Washington D.C., singer Janelle Monae chose to highlight recent police violence and even brought to the protest the mothers of individuals killed by the police. Ashley Judd highlighted 2005 comments from President Trump. Gloria Steinem highlighted the importance of women uniting and getting to know one another instead of fighting against each other. Michael Moore urged protestors to run for office, even if it was a local government position. Scarlett Johansson spoke about the importance of Planned Parenthood.

However, the Women’s March started a protest of its own by “silent conservatives”. These women who were being targeted by the march itself vowed to stay home on the day of the Women’s March to protest the hate they were being subjected to. The founders of Empowered Women and the Independent Women’s Forum were apart of the “silent conservatives”. These women were following the protest of the many conservative women who were denounced for their viewpoints by the women supporting the Women’s March.

These were only a few of protests that have occurred recently. There have been pro-life protests, pro-choice protests, black lives matter protests, and even protests on inauguration day. Most of these protests were against the recent polarization of the country and were looking for the start of civic discourse about the relevant issues in today’s society. However, civic discourse is not resulting from these protests.

All of the recent protests have been separating the country even farther apart. The recent protest at the University of California Berkeley was targeted against a strictly Conservative writer because the protesters felt that he was polarizing the country against itself. However, the protesters, themselves, were polarizing the university and Americans. By protesting a strictly conservative writer, protesters showed that they were angry at conservatives and felt that they did not have the write to express their opinions.

The same thing occurred with the Women’s March protests that occurred nationwide and internationally. The protests claimed to be representing all women in the quest for women’s rights. There were multiple issues with this claim, however. First, pro-life women’s organizations were discouraged from attending the protest since the organizer’s felt that they did not represent the values of the protest. Another issue was that women were targeted at the marches for being pro-life or being conservative. Women who supported President Trump were also targeted during the protest.

Both of these protests did not resemble proper civic discourse. First, both protests excluded political parties or people with values that they did not agree with. This is an issue since for a proper and efficient conversation to be held both sides need to be represented and heard. Second, the protest at the University of California Berkeley turned violent. Violence has no place in civic discourse and therefore should not be apart of a protest that is supposed to be representing civic discourse.

However, there are ways that protests can be conducted that allow proper civic discourse. The most important aspect is that the protests have to allow respect for the other side. This means that the protest cannot get violent, the protest cannot spread hate towards opposite viewpoints, and the protest has to allow the other side to offer their opinions if they show up at the protest itself. It is possible for this country to have these types of protests, but the country has to work as a whole to achieve this.

Now more than ever, civic discourse is taking place in the United States. While politics has always been a commonly discussed topic, the recent election has brought political discussions to everywhere. However, just because civic discourse is becoming increasingly popular doesn’t mean that it is a good thing.

There are several improvements that must be made before civic discourse can be at its peak in today’s society. The main issue is explained in Robb Willer’s TED talk that he gave earlier this month about how to have better political conversations. In the TED talk, he describes his findings on the different values of the two political parties while also revealing the two things that he has found to impact the quality of political conversations. The two things he details are empathy and respect.

In recent events, empathy and respect are necessary to build the political conversations that the country is currently undergoing. Instead of both parties criticizing each other, respect for the other party’s values will create a much calmer atmosphere. Empathy for the other side of the political spectrum will also lead to calm conversations since both sides feel that they can speak their opinion without judgement.

However, the biggest improvement needed in civic discourse deals with the influence of the internet and social media. In Wall Ghonim’s TED talk, he details how his use of Facebook in the Arab Spring in Egypt turned what stood for hope into something uncontrollable. In the same TED talk, he talks about how social media can be a good thing in politics, if it invokes real change.

So how is Ghonim’s talk relevant to civic discourse in today’s society. Social media was one of the major media influences during the 2016 election especially through the platforms Twitter and Facebook. However, Facebook was the social media platform that carried the most controversy during the election. 

Facebook was accused to providing false news to voters during the election period by allowing articles to be published that provided fictional quotes or made up facts. The Guardian posted an article two days after Election Day detailing the allegation. The result of the allegation was discussions from both parties on how Facebook could fix the issue and how discourse in the country could be improved.

You may wonder why fake news being spread across Facebook is detrimental to civic discourse. In some ways, it has polarized the country against each other and has made proper discourse difficult. From the technical standpoint, Facebook was accused of being biased towards presidential candidate Hillary Clinton in it’s top news portion of the website. These allegations claimed that Facebook filtered results so that only positive articles associated with Senator Clinton appeared while only negative articles associated with now President Donald Trump appeared. Many argued that this encouraged people to attack the Republican candidate and his supporters.

The main reason that fake news affects civic discourse, however, is much simpler. A majority of Americans have a Facebook account, so when fake news is shared on Facebook millions of Americans see it rather than just a couple of your friends. If millions of people are seeing facts or quotes that are either inaccurate or fictitious, then fighting between the parties is more likely to occur.

Fake news isn’t the only issue with social media, however. The prominence of the technology has allowed people to fight over the computer instead of in person. An individual is more likely to be aggressive over a computer screen during an altercation compared to if the altercation was in public. Many times over the course of the campaigns and eventual election, I have seen many arguments occur over Facebook instead of the same two people having a civil discussion in public or in private.

Twitter is another culprit of the social media debacle. Now that Twitter is reporting news, users receive notifications about the important events that occurred within the last hour. Most of these notifications are politically based. However, the news that Twitter is reporting is a short piece of a news article accompanied by tweets about the event. These tweets are often biased towards one viewpoint, particularly the side that is most popular on the site. This often leads to animosity between the two sides of the political spectrum. The concept of hashtags does not help the issue either. One side of an issue will tweet with a hashtag attacking the other side and the other side will often respond with a hashtag retaliating against the attack. While Twitter is supposed to encourage free speech, it is making fierce political arguments more common and is decreasing the amount of proper discussions.

In conclusion, while civic discourse is commonly occurring after the recent election it is not being conducted in a respectful and efficient manner. Most of the issues surrounding today’s civic discourse can be alleviated with the reduction of social media’s influence on political issues.