Whatever your party, it's important to understand that what is happening in government right now is not business as usual. Politics is naturally, inherently volatile but it isn't this toxic. It doesn't have to poison the entire government and set fires across the country. We need to talk about what has happened to our government, how and why. 

The Missing Middle

The two-party system in America has long been a source of division and unrest, but the lack of an independent moderate political party is just one part of the problem. It's also important to remember that while the divisions between the parties have become deeper, so too the middle class has steadily declined in size, and the income gap between the lower, middle and upper-income brackets has become wider. This is directly reflected in politics.

Money in Politics

In 2010, the landmark Citizen United case reversed a century of campaign finance laws and declared that money was a form of speech, and any limit on that constituted a limit on free speech. However, the practical effect of that ruling has been that those with more money can speak more and louder than anyone else, and corporations can speak loudest of all. Remember that income gap mentioned earlier? The original thought of Citizens United may have been to protect free speech but the result has been to reinforce inequality and put politicians up for sale. 

Gerrymandering

You probably learned about gerrymandering in a civics class at some point, but you may be surprised to learn that it is still used today because it is completely legal, despite being deeply amoral. The upshot of legal gerrymandering has been a kind of voter suppression, where areas known to vote for one party or another are either lumped together or carefully divided into different districts, ensuring that the deck is stacked in one party's favor. 

The 24 Hour News Cycle

Any one of these problems would be concerning enough, but the existence and manipulation of the 24-hour news cycle exacerbate it. News, like politics, is legally driven by money, and bad news sells better than good news, all you hear is bad news. 

Politics is and always has been a high stakes game with a lot of bad actors. It's easy to look at the current political landscape and say "that's just politics." This is a landscape that has been engineered and can be re-engineered to look different, if you only have the will.