I really think the defining political problem of our age is campaign finance reform and to a lesser extent election reform.
https://www.npr.org/2016/02/06/465781632/fact-check-clinton-...
But didn't those three things exist when the sanity you want to restore prevailed?
The first is softball and obvious. Things can work on a small scale and collapse on a large scale. We started with around 30,000 citizens per congressional district (and thus per representative). And there was a strong urging to push it lower by some. This number was envisioned as remaining as a constant, for if you dilute the power and "connection" of the average voter too much, you risk exposing yourself to politicians too far detached from their constituency which can breed tyranny, corruption, and so on. And indeed 30,000 is already pretty far up there. Today we have more than 700,000 citizens per congressional district.
The second is a more contentious issue, but perhaps even more relevant. Today we've become an increasingly divided and polarized society where nuance is increasingly a lost art. Democracy does not work in such situations. Iraq is an extreme example. Iraq is fundamentally broken up into three major groups - Shiite, Sunni, and Kurds. And these groups tend to be extremely intolerant of one another with members of each group generally adopting wholesale all views of their own group and only their own group. It just turns into a tyranny of the majority.
Somehow the United States has started trending towards this exact behavior. This wasn't always the case. While we may have had vice president engage in a duel to the death with a secretary of the treasury, these were personal conflicts. Today people are engaging more in group conflicts. Democracy works when people are willing to work together, not when they view politics as a team sport where the idea is for your side to "win" and the other side to "lose."
The US has had that precondition for centuries, so if we were to lose it, it would be a very different case fro Iraq, who never had it.
I think the factor behind increased polarisation in the US and across the democratic world probably is this thing right here. The internet! People are now increasingly getting their news and information, and thereby their world view from "social media", not the traditional mass media of the last 2-3 centuries.
It's a huge sea change, and we're only seeing the beginning of it. So far it't looking kinda scary, but things will keep changing quickly, and I think we'll sort things out. We better :)
The US was broken in the 1800s. It was broken in the 1820s-1840s with the fight over slavery. It was broken in the 1860s, and we had to fight a civil war to restore any sort of santy. It was broken in the 1880s after Restoration was rolled back. It was broken in 1900 with the rise of the Klan again. 1915 was WWI, in 1920 we were back to being broken. 1930s we were broken by depression and the fight against fascism, 1940s we had WW2. 1950s we had Korea, 1960s we were broken, 1970s we were broken, and that begun the decline of any sense of civility in the congress.
1980s we were completely broken, 1990s we were completely broken, 2000s we were completely broken, 2010s we were completely broken...
The lack of justice for Nixon broke any sense of normality left in the nation. And the Republicans nevertheless played off the idea that Nixon was somehow crucifed, and elected Reagan, then went on a witch-hunt against Clinton. Then they elected a historically bad president in Bush, started the longest wars in US history, and when people complained they crucified Obama in response. And then they elected the loudest finger-in-the-eye they could find in response.
The US has been somewhat broken for literally its entire existence but it has been actively unable to transact its internal business for about half of that... about half of that being in the last 50 years.
First, the study specifically avoided self identification and labeling. They clustered people based on their answers to core belief questions. From which they found 7 key clusters. One of those the study labeled Progressive Activists. But that's a label put on after the fact. So it doesn't mean 8% of the population identify as progressive activist. Just that from the study, there's 8% of the population with very similar core beliefs.
Then the study demonstrates that self labels like being left, right, middle, conservative, Democrat, Republican, etc, are bad predictors of shared common issues.
Only 3 out of the 7 groups cared most about jobs, and only one group, the smallest one, cared most about immigration.
The groups the study labeled liberals make up 26%, and the ones labeled conservative 25%. But again, that's the labels the study gave people based on their answers.
Also, the wealthiest and withest cluster identified of them all is the Devoted Conservative.
Finally, the whole point of the study is that appart from the wings of progressist activist (composed of young professionals mostly), and from the traditional (old, white middle class mostly) and devoted conservatives (old, white and wealthiest mostly), all other groups are much more willing to compromise and have varying beliefs depending on the situation, and are most bothered by the wings polarizing the country. Thus when you look at the silent majority, they are much more diversified in opinions.
This reminds me of the futurama episode with the clones running for president: A: “your 10c titanium tax goes too far” B: “well I say your 10c titanium tax doesn’t go too far enough!”
But these days, once you get past the five-second sound bites and the rhetoric, there is very little difference between what Republicans and Democrats actually do.