I am Colombian, but I want to focus on American politics. And just like that, you've closed this book, thrown it in the dumpster, and cried me a river, or something along those lines. People get mad when someone who is not an expert on a topic, speaks or has an opinion on that topic, and it also applies to this situation.
A foreigner complains about a country that isn't hers.
Sounds terrible right? As much as it will sound that I am complaining, and honestly sometimes I will, you're right. I'll give you that. Who am I to talk about your country? But I have a reason for it by stating something we already know.
The United States of America is a very powerful nation.
Think about it. The USA's decisions impact us all. They are this giant, important country. The US influences the world. Its decisions have an impact on all the other nations and sure, why should I talk about the US, when I have my own country with its struggles, but I am entitled to my opinion. I am allowed to think whatever I want, and if there is a nation with power that can have an impact on all these other countries, then I'm going to voice my opinion.
While I was thinking about the US and Colombia, two nations that no one thinks are intertwined in a political sense apart from some sort of coffee or flower exportations, I couldn't help but notice similarities between the two countries. The prime similarity is both nations are extremely politically polarized.
Political polarization is the division of two distinct, opposite groups or parties, in this case, democrats and republicans. First, let's talk about political polarization in America. Surprisingly, in the 1990s, democrats, and republicans had similar policies, but over the last 30 years, these two parties have grown apart. The democrats have gone farther left and the republicans have gone farther right. A great article that I read shows exactly how far apart they have gone and how
their policies are different. Overall, the main difference is that the Democratic Party is in association with socially liberal and economic policies, while the Republican party is more conservative. Regardless of what you may believe, you have to admit that these two parties are opposites.
The Democratic Party's policies could be:
The expansion of government-provided healthcare. Increasing the minimum wage.
Expansion of LGBTQ+ rights.
More pathways for immigrants to become citizens.
The Republican Party's policies could be: Lowering taxes on wealth.
Limiting the regulation of the economy. Immigration restrictions.
Now, I have to be honest. I lean towards the democratic side. I am a democrat, but I do not hate Republicans. If you came up to me, were very respectful and kind, and casually mentioned that you vote for Republicans, I won't hate you, as long as you are kind. That's the problem. We are programmed to hate the other side. Another problem is that people change their beliefs according to the party they have chosen. Once you choose the party you agree with the most, you feel compelled to agree on everything with them, even if they don't agree on everything with them.
These charts show how the two parties have grown apart from the year 1994 to 2017.
These other charts show how people felt about their children marrying a person from the opposite party. In the 1960s, 4% of Republicans and 4% of Democrats opposed it, but in 2019, 45% of Democrats and 35% of Republicans opposed it.
Now, what causes political polarization. Here are the four main factors of political polarization.
Political Activism.
Election Policies. In-Group Bias. Media Bubbles.
Political Activism, I think, is not inherently a bad thing. Activism has led to great things. The Civil Rights Movement was led by activists. The Suffragist Movement was led by activists. Gandhi was an activist, and so is Malala Yousafzai, and Martin Luther King, Rosa Parks, Greta Thunberg, Nelson Mandela, and Harriet Tubman. All these people made a change in the world. The thing about Political Activism is that nowadays, political activists are creating policies that lean more to the right or the left, and while they are not extremists or bad people, it contributes to the gap between left and right.
Another factor is Election Policies. Political activists have gained influence and power, which is not a bad thing. Power and influence is the only way to get people to support you, but because of recent Election Policies, activists and important groups can sway which candidates get nominated and manipulate say a local
or even national election. There's a reason states are either blue or red. Candidates that win a primary for their political party, to be liked and elected by the people, must be liked by activists.
In-Group Bias is a psychological factor that plays an important role in polarizing politics. If you are a republican, you trust and like other republicans, and dislike democrats. Therefore, any decisions republican politicians make, you feel compelled to agree with, even if you don't agree with them yourself. That's natural. No one can agree on everything with everyone. Just because you support someone, doesn't mean they are perfect, and they will do things that you may think are mistakes. The problem with this is that you have nowhere to run. You can't openly say, 'I disagree with that republican on this topic'. If you do, you are seen as an outcast by both parties. The other republicans will lose trust in you and call you a democrat. The Democrats will still see you as the enemy. To avoid being expelled from your group and to maintain the respect your party has for you, people will agree with everything they're party leaders say. This makes the gap between left and right even bigger.
Finally, Media Bubbles. As we all know, Social Media is a part of our lives. We get all our news on platforms like Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and so on. Social Media is also a way of making friends. Connecting with people who share your interests, which is not a bad thing. On these platforms, you can join fan clubs for your favorite book series or organizations for a cause you believe in. But what happens when social media leads you to Political Activism groups? It is clear that most people who have friends on social media, they are normally from the same political party. Few Democrats have republican friends and vice versa. In these bubbles that we create to only receive news and content according to whatever party we identify with, we are fed with only one opinion and that brings us to where we are, a politically divided nation.
So, what is the problem with political polarization? Well, it's not all bad, and I think that if we all agreed with everything, life would be pretty boring. With left and right going further and further away from each other, the country does not know how to progress forward. You can not make decisions for a country if about half of it disagrees with you. So as long as we keep disagreeing with each other, we will never progress as a society. Though there are some limits to
polarization. Though we may disagree, there are a fair few policies that some people agree with.
78% of Americans support highly skilled immigrants to come to the United States.
60% of American voters believe in spending $1.3 trillion to make homes more energy-efficient.
85% of Americans believe that people who buy guns privately must pass a strict background check.
What you can do to try to move forward is focusing more on the issues that matter to you, rather than what your party believes in. If you agree with the Democrats on an issue for one election, vote democrat, and if on the next election you think the republicans make more sense, vote republican. Another thing you can do is to listen to another opinion. Watch news and read newspapers that support both parties. Get perspective. If you recall, in January of 2019, the longest government shutdown in history ended. Government shutdowns have become more frequent because democrats and republicans fail to compromise. Polarization does not mean disagreement.
Disagreement is natural. Polarization is refusing to coexist with whoever has different political views than you. Polarization is empowered by tribalism. It means we form our tribes and refuse to contact someone outside of our tribes. This is a prime example of the consequences of what the Europeans did, divide, and conquer. Divide people, give them different values, watch them go to war against each other, and control them from afar. We were the puppets, and without us knowing, they were pulling the strings. And years later, we are still antagonizing each other and the consequences are massive.
We are segregated in our communities. We are all in tight-knit communities. Our families, our friends, our religious groups (depending on if you are religious and how tight-knit the people in your religion are), our ethnic group (depending on if you are in an ethnic group and how tight-knit the people in your ethnic group are), we are all connected. But when you realize that someone in your family, friend group, religious group, or ethnic group, disagrees with you on something, you distance yourself from them.
Political campaigns are becoming more antagonistic. Political campaigns inspire people who support their
parties. What Joe Biden says or does is supported by most of the democrats. What Donald Trump says or does is supported by most of the republicans. Hypothetically, if either of them made political ads antagonizing the other (and I'm sure they have), democrats and republicans hate each other even more because of what their 'leaders' choose to do.
We are constantly demonizing the other side. Just by knowing that someone is from the other party, we hate them, even if they are a good person. Pew Research Center in 2016 found that 47% of Republicans say that democrats are immoral, compared to other Americans. 35% of Democrats felt the same way about Republicans. Republicans with no or few democrat friends are twice as likely to antagonize democrats than republicans with democrat friends.
Studies also show that we are less likely to help someone if they are of the other party. Extreme political polarization has resulted in hostility and a lack of generosity. We are less willing to help people in need simply because of their political views. This doesn't only apply to politics. It is very visible when it comes to the division between social classes, something Colombia and America have in common.
The rich are more likely to help other rich people, and less likely to help the poor or middle class.
Politics and political polarization is very stressful. When we dedicate our energy to hating or receiving hate, we become sick, which is why political polarization is probably affecting our health. For example, studies have shown that people who experience racism are mentally and physically exhausted. And the people who harbor racial prejudices and fears are prone to sickness because of stress. It wears down their muscles and damages their immune systems. So whether you are a racist or the target of racism, or a democrat or republican, it will still damage your health.
We are all stressed out. As the years progress, discussing politics, studying candidates, and voting is becoming more and more frustrating. Even a person such as myself, who loves debate, can agree that confronting your opposition is scary and dreadful. In 2016, 45% said it was stressful to debate politics with the opposition, and by 2018, 57% were saying the same thing.
This other point comes up time and time again, but we are pressured into agreeing with our party on everything, even and especially when it makes us queasy. In a paper from 2016 named The Nature and Origins of Misconceptions they state that in these cases, we feel, "social pressure to think and act in ways that are consistent with important group identities", which could not have been more true.
There is a term said by researchers called a blue lie. Lying is not correct, at least that's what we tell our children. While lying is not encouraged, somehow it is seen as socially acceptable when it is told to the opposite party. This is a blue lie. George Edwards, a political scientist at Texas A&M University, says, "People condone lying against enemy nations, and since many people now see those on the other side of American politics as enemies, they may feel that lies when they recognize them, are appropriate means of warfare".
Political polarization is costing people money. Government shutdowns are happening because our politicians can not find a middle ground. Because of this, we are losing money. The Congressional Budget
Office estimates that the last government shutdown cost the economy $11 billion.
Because we are pressured into trusting everything the politician we believe in says, we are losing trust in institutions that are essential to our society. Things like higher education, libraries, the military, and others.
How do we move forward? How do we keep our children safe in the wake of so many school shootings, when half of the population believes that we should ban guns completely, and the other half believes that everyone should be armed. How do we solve our immigration crisis when half of our population believes we need to abolish ICE, and the other half thinks that we need to ban immigration and put children in cages? How do we solve problems when we disagree on everything?
Violence is more likely. Violent groups are rising. Hate groups are rising. The country is going to war on itself. The KKK, the Neo-Nazis. These are the new terrorists. There are also other groups, like the Me Too movement and the Black Lives Matter movement that fight for equality and noble causes, but are caught in a constant
struggle against their government. Think of the George Floyd protests, BLM versus the Police. The people who are supposed to serve and protect are violently harassing peaceful protesters. I know that not all Police are bad, and a lot of them are serving and protecting. But we are in a civil war. The Police are attacking. The people are rioting and looting. Chaos is everywhere.
So, what do we do? This is the result of political polarization.
Now, to talk about more current events, the 2020 election is a few months away from taking place and this is a prime example of political polarization's effect on America.
The Pew Research Center in 2019 shows that democrats and republicans trust opposite media environments. This graph shows that out of 30, Democrats trust more than 22 news sources and Republicans distrust more than 20 of those sources.
Another thing that was discovered is that the different parties watch different news tv shows when it comes to the 2020 election between Joe Biden and Donald Trump. Only 7 out of 30 sources are trusted by Republicans, one of which is Fox News. I do not agree with Fox News and their opinions, but they are a news network, watched by many people, so I will attack them the same way they would attack me if they stumbled upon this piece. A study shows that people were asked if they were familiar with several sources and then asked if they trusted it for information on the upcoming election. The graph below shows how people are very familiar with CBS news. 45% trust it, 20% distrust it, 25% feel indifferent, and 9% have never heard of it. Politico, which is another news outlet, was trusted by 13%, distrusted by 8%, indifferent by 23%, and 56% had never heard of Politico.
What is visible from these reports is that Democrats and Republicans are so divided, they won't even agree with the same news sources. In this other chart, it shows how democrats, overall, seem to trust news sources like CNN, NBC News, ABC News, CBS News, and PBS, while republicans mostly trust Fox News, and have an estimated average of 30% trust for other news sources.
What you might ask is, why Fox News and nothing else? Well, there is no rival to Fox News. Other news networks like CNN, CBS, NBC, and others are targeted to mostly democrats, so democrats have a wide range of options to watch something that appeals to them, but there are very few news outlets that appeal to republicans, which is why Fox News receives tremendous support from them.
It also applies to newspapers. 66% of Liberal Democrats trust the New York Times, but only 10% of Republicans trust the New York Times.
In this upcoming election, it is important to inform ourselves. Now more than ever, we need change, so inform yourself about both candidates and come up
with your own opinion and vote how you feel about these candidates. Don't watch one news source. Watch and read them all. Even if you disagree with them. We need help.
We have explored in many ways the extreme polarization that controls American politics, but as you can recall, I'm not American. I am Colombian, and we face the same problem. I think the one thing all Colombians can agree on is that we can not agree on anything. Colombian and American politics are different. Our elections are different, our problems are different, our form of government is somewhat different, but the division is there. I think all cultures have taboos or conversations that can get you into trouble, and I think that if I were to think of one for Colombia, it would be politics. In Colombia, you don't discuss politics. Before any sort of social gathering, you are always reminded, 'no politics', because you don't want to be caught in this vicious fight of opposite opinions. So, just to clarify, any scenarios that I may list here are hypothetical, they do not in any way mimic that of something that happened in Colombia, and if they do, it is purely coincidental. That being said, let's dive into polarization in Colombia.
Colombia is a very polarized country, and experts have ideas and answers as to why that is. According to Héctor Serrano, polarization "is the process by which public opinion is divided into two opposite extremes, referring to the extreme factions of a political party that gain space ...".
One thing that promotes polarization is the spread of lies and not being able to tell the difference between an opinion and a fact. Keep in mind that in Colombia, we don't have democrats in republicans and more politicians that have formed a giant amount of supporters and act as their party, but the issue once again is divided between left and right.
Hypothetically, let's assume there are politicians called politician A and politician B, to avoid touching sensitive topics.
You can say that politician A is a terrorist or a criminal, with nothing to back that up with except the for the fact that you dislike them, but by posting that on your social media, all of a sudden the other side retaliates calling your preferred candidate a corrupt, fascist politician.
Regardless of if it is a true or false statement, (And a lot of the times it is false), now the media is dissecting this story piece by piece, both sides grow angrier, and the public is more divided.
I'm not saying that criminals and fascists don't exist in government, they certainly do, and are another, totally different we need to take care of, but by saying things and making statements that are empowered by your fear and hate for the other side, you contribute to everyone in your group hating the other side and everyone in their group hating the other side.
Just like in America. By stating that Obama is a Kenyan, Muslim terrorist, which is a very dumb accusation, you contribute to an ever-growing left-right division. What information do you have behind it? Only the fact that the names Barack and Hussein trigger something in your brain, and that is honestly your problem, so stay off social media, and go to therapy to treat your xenophobia and islamophobia.
So, the consequences of polarization in Colombia?
Moderates lose power. Believe it or not, more than half of Colombian citizens are moderate and uphold
moderate views, but the power that these two opposite poles hold is strong enough to silence all of them.
Polarization comes from hate. People only make decisions based on fear and love and in this case, people have chosen to fear and hate.
Love, don't hate it.
Sounds generic and straight forward? So then do it!
By teaching us to hate, polarization has divided, families, friends, and neighbors. You're supposed to love people, despite differences. I'm not saying, love everyone. There will always be people who deserve your hate and not your love but don't throw away the chance at a potentially good friendship simply because they don't agree with you.
Now, what is the difference between Colombian and American political polarization?
Out of all the 27 amendments in the constitution, the one Americans invoke the most is the first amendment.
"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof, or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press, or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances".
In other words, you can say whatever the hell you want, and no one can silence you.
That doesn't exist in Colombia. Sure, we have it in our constitution.
Article 20 of the Political Constitution of Colombia of 1991 states that:
Every person is guaranteed the freedom to express and disclose his thoughts and opinions, to inform and
to receive impartial and truthful information, and to found broadcasting media.
It exists, so does the law that makes murder illegal, but that doesn't stop people from breaking it.
In Colombia, anyone who publicly voices that they don't agree with some politician, that person gets killed. If you say that you lean right or left, they will come for you. Which is why I have to be especially careful. I can't talk about actual politicians.
That's what's so beautiful about America. You might think that this is just some immigrant ranting about some country she hates, but no. I love America. It's the land of the free and the home of the brave, and as children, as outsiders, we look up to America, we see the greatest country in the world, as we are told. America has problems and I will talk about them, but that doesn't mean I hate it. The beauty of America is that you can say these things. You can name politicians. People will hate you for it, but you are
entitled to your opinion, as long as it doesn't hurt anyone else.
Polarization is pretty stupid. I don't like it. Competition, debate, and a pissed-off attitude are not bad, I live for them, but when we hate each other so much, the entire world descends into chaos, we have to draw the line and say,
"Listen, I may not agree with you, but we need to work something out. We need to come to a compromise before we screw ourselves over for good".
If we said that, If we listened, If we loved,
And if we minded our own damn business when something doesn't concern us, I see no reason why we can't move forward. When a country divides itself between left and right, and the left keeps going left,
and the right keeps going right, no one can ever move forward. We can never progress. Just remember that you are independent and you can think, say, or vote however you want. You have options. It's not either Fidel Castro or Adolf Hitler. There needs to be something in between that upholds your ideals. Or in other words, there needs to be peace and harmony in your world, or in other words, there needs to be moderation.