Public Highly Critical of State of Political Discourse in the U.S.
people-press.org
people-press.org
If there's one thing that unites us all, it is intense and hypocritical tribalism.
"You need to be tolerant of my beliefs, but I don't need to be tolerant of yours"
In practice this distinction of tolerance vs "all opinions are equal" is even more critical because many of the topics people love to get into heated arguments about have compelling, entirely factual, arguments supporting mutually exclusive conclusions. Life's fun that way. On these sort of topics - guns, migration, economic systems, etc - there are of course some completely unsupportable views, but there are no right answers. In fact they probably literally do not exist since even with omniscience, the answer would still be contingent on the state of a society and people at any given point in time and place.
We all believe the things we believe because we, tautologically, think they're what we ought believe - what is most right, or most supported, or whatever our personal value system tells us is correct. The problem we face today is when we then start assuming that because our value system tells us this belief must be the most valid, that we start to treat other completely supportable views as invalid.
For example, I can directly blame a senator for her votes. If her vote was for something I think is indefensible (like the Iraq War), showing disrespect is acceptable and deserved, as long as it's non-violent.
However, not all of her voters might have expected or condoned that vote. Even if they did, their responsibility for the vote is a small fraction of the senator's.
Joe Biden gave us a great example of this recently when he praised himself for getting along with segregationist colleagues. Treating them with respect was unwarranted because they didn't treat tens of millions of black Americans with respect.
What the public prefers is irrelevant. The content of public discourse is dictated by the acoustics of the media environment. We are trapped inside a terrible, gigantic conch, which resonates with the frequency of scandals and sound-bytes and dampens the sounds of thoughtful debate.
Fully 40 years ago I remember more public debate about politics than today. I'd characterize that as having been semi-productive. The newsertainment pundits today just try to rile people up. It's anger for-profit. Getting pissed off is a product you buy by watching or following a professional agitator. And that is not public discourse, in my view.
What the US needs is instant runoff (via ranked choice) voting.
Short of that, people with your mindset need to volunteer, fundraise, and vote. Otherwise those parties will never match the scope of the current duopoly.
The downside here is that proportional voting doesn't stand a bat's chance in hell of ever getting enacted because it really would lead to a major upheaval in DC. And the very people that would be 'losing their jobs' are the ones that'd need to work to pass it, which would be a tremendous undertaking. You'd need a 2/3rds majority in both the house and senate to start the process, and then you'd need 38 of the 50 states to ratify the change. And at the end of this process the two major political parties, who are in control of every single major political body in the United States, would have just ceded a tremendous amount of power.
If it were possible to transcend parties and vote just for candidates that represented my nuanced beliefs, I would switch in a heartbeat. Instead I'm forced to prioritize which issues are most important to me, and then plug my nose and vote for the party that best represents just those (even though said party comes with a lot of undesirable baggage).
With a president that openly labels the press the enemy of the people?
> If it were possible to transcend parties and vote just for candidates that represented my nuanced beliefs, I would switch in a heartbeat.
It's impossible. Everyone will have their nuanced beliefs and no candidate will match perfectly except in rare circumstances.
With a president that has appointed more 1st/2nd amendment-protecting federal appellate judges than any other president, you mean?
Similarly I presume the rise of Boris Johnson with Brexit is a reflection of the British people, regardless of whether he has his conservative credentials in order.
For a sufficiently loose definition of “reflection”, yes. For a sufficiently tight definition of “reflection”, no.
> does one define American conservatism by reciting a prescription of what people ought be when they say they're conservative
One defines conservatism by a set of values and policies. The same goes for liberalism, fascism, communism, environmentalism, nationalism, etc.
At this point, I'm for just about anything besides FPTP, as long as it has some level of proportional representation.