The Source of Political Polarization

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American democracy was built on the foundation of compromises. For example, the Constitution would have never been ratified if the Bills of Rights was not part of the compromise. In a system that is built on making compromises, it is dangerous to have high levels of political polarization. The Republican-controlled House and the Democrat-controlled Senate are constantly at a gridlock and are on the path to becoming the most unproductive Congress since World War II. Despite the “growth” of self-proclaimed Independent, a quick look at their voting history would show that they are usually weak Democrats or weak Republicans. In American politics, party identification is still the single best indicator of how a person will vote. In recent years, both parties have become smaller and more ideologically homogeneous; Republicans are dominated by conservatives, while a growing number of Democrats call themselves liberals. Most Americans claim that they see important differences between the parties and many feel that they must stay loyal to their party especially during presidential elections. There is no question that the 21st century is experiencing increasingly high levels of political polarization but how did American politics become so polarized? Have Americans’ values and beliefs changed and therefore, they are taking more extreme positions? No. Rather, the answer lays on the emergence of a more partisan news media that has contributed greatly to political polarization and has caused Americans to support more partisan policies and candidates. Partisan news media revolves around careful selection of news and it utilizes “shrinking Presidential sound bites” and news leaks to fuel the political polarization in American politics today. ... ... middle of paper ... ...of the “shrinking presidential sound bite”. Sound bites, catchy phrases and slogans, are taken from larger speeches for the purpose of conveying the speech’s overall message in much less time. This mode of communication contributes to the polarized political atmosphere because the nature of this technique inherently creates the attitude that if you can’t make a memorable statement in less than ten seconds, then your political aspirations are over. Because of the strict time limit, candidates are no longer able to present their arguments or stance; instead they develop sound bites that will appeal to the viewers. The use of sound bites enforces extremist positions; before sound bites, news from major outlets were generally moderate but now, there are channels like FOX news who are notorious for taking speeches out of context and putting a conservative spin on them.

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