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Editor's Note: John Avlon is a senior political analyst and presenter for CNN. The opinions expressed in this comment are those of the author.
(CNN Spanish) - Polarization is killing our country: weakening our political and social ties, separating our economic fortunes and causing bitter cultural divisions.
Hyperpartism is poisoning our politics and making our democracy more and more dysfunctional. That fixation on our differences is fracturing us into hardened tribes, threatening to turn our country into a series of aggrieved groups who believe that the opposite group is responsible for the fall of our nation. That is not the American model. It is the opposite of the secret of our success, summed up by our national motto 'e pluribus unum' (of many, one). Healing our division is the challenge of our times ... since the same success of the American experiment is at stake.
If you think the polarization keeps getting worse, you are not alone. The polls of the 2018 elections show that 76% of the electorate thinks that our country is increasingly divided. According to a Pew Center survey, more than 60% of the country thinks that both parties have gone to extremes. And 87% say that political polarization threatens our lifestyle.
When the political becomes personal, 25% of conservatives and liberals say they would not like a family member to marry someone from the opposite party, according to Pew's poll. This interpersonal intolerance is becoming somewhat more bleak: a 2019 study revealed that a little more than 42% of both parties not only consider the opposition to be wrong, but "evil."
It is not surprising then the feeling of despair that is observed: the great majority of Americans think that the country is going to divide even more.
The polarization in the Trump era
During the administration of President Donald Trump, polarization has accelerated due to his cruel indifference to democratic norms, interpersonal decency and even the truth itself. By instinct, he divides instead of uniting; It is a demagogue who demonizes anyone who wants to hold him accountable. But he is nothing but a symptom of our polarization, not the cause.
His peculiar political position is the perfect example. Trump is the only president in the history of Gallup polls that has never had a 50% approval level. Current CNN polls show that 50% of Americans are now in favor of a political trial. But as Trump remains popular in the increasingly polarized Republican party, he has the power to intimidate and silence his conservative critics, because they fear that the base of the party will vote against him in closed partisan elections. Therefore, the strategy of re-election of his campaign is not to unite the country and win with the greatest possible margin, but to have a victory in the electoral college, demonizing the opposition as radical socialists who hate the US.
It is important to understand that this is the opposite of the way most US presidents. They have tried to govern and win elections. But this harmful partisanship threatens to become normal.
How do we get to this point?
The founding fathers of the country warned us of the dangers of polarization. George Washington dedicated most of his farewell speech to what we would call "hyper-partisanship," warning us that "This agitates the community with ill-founded jealousy and false alarms; It fuels hostilities on one side against the other, and can foster unrest and insurrection. Open the doors to foreign influence and corruption. ”
John Adams was even more blunt, saying that "there has not yet been a democracy that has not died of suicide." A generation later, Abraham Lincoln repeated it by saying that "as a nation of free people, we must live through all times or commit suicide."
Self-government can never be taken for granted. But we can find comfort in the fact that the US He has had much more difficult tests: the Civil War and the Great Depression ... and we managed to get out of them stronger and wiser.
In the mid-twentieth century, the postwar generation offered us a political balance born of common experiences: the Great Depression and the Second World War. The fact that there was ideological diversity within the same parties - progressive republicans, and conservative Democrats - assured that, even in times of divided government, the United States. He could do great things through bipartisan coalitions, such as the Marshall Plan, the interstate highway system, historic civil rights laws, or win the cold war against communism.
But in the last 25 years, the two parties have polarized along regional, racial and ideological lines. From the republican revolution of 1994, a deep division emerged between the two parties reflected in voting patterns in Congress, with fewer and fewer legislators supporting bipartisan laws. This destructive dynamic was reinforced by a manipulated system of drawing electoral districts, which dramatically reduced the number of competitive elections for Congress ... and that brought power to its extremes.
Total obstructionism has become the norm, when the national debate dominates the ideologues and militants. The decline in confidence in democracy is compounded by the fact that our representatives disagree on anything, even in the face of a crisis such as climate change. They cannot compromise on clear issues such as infrastructure projects or immigration reform; although the majority of the population supports solutions such as expanding background research, in the face of growing violence with firearms.
In addition, the emergence of partisan media has made polarization its business model, allowing people to self-segregate politically. Social media has divided us even further, amplifying the most strident voices and manipulating public opinion with "bots" and "trolls," expelling many reasonable people from public debate. Not surprisingly, a new Pew poll shows that 73% of Americans think that the two parties cannot agree on anything: a recipe for disaster, as democracies depend on the ability to reason together.
Our adversaries know well that polarization is the Achilles heel of the United States. That is why Russia made the country's deep divisions the target of its social media campaign in 2016. They pointed out the black and white nationalists in excessively, raising the fear of Muslims, firearms and illegal immigration, while supporting the two most populist and divisive candidates of both parties: Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump.
As expressed in the recent report of the Senate Intelligence Commission, which is bipartisan: “Several agents have constantly used hot and divisive issues in the US. like cannon fodder, publishing them on social media, to fuel anger, indignation and protest, and further divide Americans, fostering distrust in government institutions. ”
Some militants of the extreme right and left fell into the trap of Russian efforts. In an infamous case, Russian Facebook pages prompted protests from both sides on the same street, at the gates of a mosque in Houston. In a sense, it is the perfect metaphor for the danger of polarization: a feedback loop between militants who can easily be manipulated and create an even more polarized view in the US. of the one that exists today.
Global risks
These dynamics are even more dangerous, as they are happening all over the world. Polarization has also caused division and paralysis in two of our closest allies: Britain and Israel. Although liberal democracy seemed to be growing 30 years ago with the fall of the Berlin Wall, ethnic-nationalist autocracies have increased this decade, with Russia and China leading the reaction against globalization, which offers tribal pride at the expense of pluralism and promises wealth without freedom. It is a vision opposed to liberal democracy that the US He has represented in his best moments on the world stage.
But the stress test the US is going through is taking effect - Freedom House believes that the country is losing freedom, and warns that “We cannot assume that the bulwarks against the abuse of power will maintain their authority, or that our democracy will be perpetual. The need to defend its rules and regulations has rarely been more urgent. ”
It is time to defend our democracy. If our enemies see that polarization, it is obvious that we have to overcome these divisions and reaffirm this basic American truth: that despite our differences, we have more things that unite us than things that divide us.
There is still time to redeem us from this period of poisonous polarization, as an increasing number of Americans realize that we have taken our democracy for granted. There is a growing demand for something different: turn our backs on polarization and rejoin as a nation.
According to Gallup, independent voters have increased over the past 30 years with the increasing polarization of the two parties. Now there are more voters who identify themselves as independent, than Republicans or Democrats. And there are more moderates than progressive or conservative. While our policy is dominated by special interests, most Americans want the two parties to work together for the national good. But due to the absence of adult behavior, more than 60% of Americans say that both political parties have lost contact with the country; while 57% say they need a third important game. According to the non-profit organization “More in Common,” 93% of the country says it is fed up with how divided we are.
Furthermore, we know that intransigent partisan perceptions are totally wrong. According to a study by "More in Common," Democrats think that only half of Republicans recognize that racism still exists in the US, while Republicans think that half of Democrats are proud to be American. Actually, 80% of Republicans know that racism is still a problem in the country, and 80% of Democrats are proud to be Americans.
Our challenges will not be solved in a single electoral cycle. But if committed individuals begin to establish a broader citizen movement dedicated to defending our democracy, fighting the forces that divide us as a nation, we can resolve them.
Some of the political changes necessary to combat polarization are clear: reform of the layout of districts, open primaries and a well-chosen aligned vote - which can modify the incentive structures of the extremes. More ambitious solutions may require establishing a strong coalition between right and left moderates, or the creation of a third party.
But the problem of polarization is greater than politics, and to solve its causes we have to bridge our economic and cultural gaps.
The American dream requires the right to progress based on equal opportunities and hard work. We have to repair that social contract. The middle class has been squeezed for decades with stagnant salaries and less social ascent. Small businesses have problems, while large companies receive large exemptions. The way in which the industrial cities of the center of the country are being emptied has fueled a new populism, both from the left and from the right. We must look for policies that counteract the forces that divide us. When 7 out of 10 people say that our country is in danger of losing its national identity, we have to reaffirm a common sense of our shared history - the good and the bad - reinvesting in civic education, teaching the importance of a vigorous compatible civil debate with the first amendment, without expecting "safe places" nonexistent in the real world. All students leaving high school should be able to pass the same citizenship test that immigrants have to take. As legislator John Lewis said, "Maybe our precursors came to this great country in different ships, but now we are in the same boat."
It may also be time to reexamine a return to national service - from military service, to teaching (such as AmeriCorps), the Peace Corps, the National Park Service; or work in local government in exchange for a new law that makes university or vocational studies more affordable, without burdening students with a disabling debt.
The good news is that we are not as divided as our hyper-partisan policy suggests. The culture of our country did not change on the day of the 2016 elections. The narrative of red states versus blue states is too simplistic. The real divisions are found between the urban and the rural part of the country. Hillary Clinton won in almost every big city in the south. According to a recent survey, the most popular governors are Republicans in "blue states": Charlie Baker of Massachusetts and Larry Hogan of Maryland. To find our common purpose, we have to define what we have in common and work on that. To solve a problem we have to recognize that we have it. If we define the problem that afflicts our nation - polarization - we can begin to take concrete measures to overcome it.
We can do it knowing that we are defending the fundamental values of our country, because “e pluribus unum” is the exact opposite of “us against them” - the eternal call of the demagogue. There are no "them" in the US. There are only "we": imperfect people who work to form a more perfect union and gradually progress with each generation.
Our independence as a nation is inseparable from our independence as people; and now, more than ever, to survive we have to transcend our tribalism. ##
(Translation by Jenny Rizo-Patron)
Polarization
