Mason Walker

Pols 1100
July 25, 2022
What Is The Issue
What is America NOW? For many of us, it is a place of political conversations with
friends where you can agree to disagree right? Does that place even exist anymore? Can we
really even talk about politics without getting into an argument? Over the last 20 years, the U.S.
political division rating has gone up at rates never seen before anywhere in the world. This is
staggering because many Americans look at other countries and think about the problems that
they have because of political issues, and they don’t realize the issue that they have right on
their doorstep.
Mason Walker
Pols 1100
July 25, 2022
For many years scholars would have theories about what this looks like and what will
happen because of such a divide. Our democracy will struggle every day more and more to
agree on issues. Most of the time whatever the decision is one side or the other will feel like it's
an attack on their lives and begin to have us versus them mindset. A leading cause of much of
the polarization is theorized to be because when politicians look over the aisle they see
someone who has no similarities rather than in the past seeing a person who is kind of similar.
Now just because they are different isn’t to say that it's a bad thing, it is just the issue. For many
of politicians, they don’t have common ground to build off of so they try to build off of something
they think is common.
Why Does it Matter
Jack Balkin, a constitutional law professor at Yale, talks about how we are on political
cycles. He theorizes that the 3 cycles we are on can make healthy times and then make dark
times like the one we are on now. He states that if we aren't careful only a “regime” will be in the
power of the government and use polarization to dis way people from getting them out. This is
very dangerous for our government because we strive to let every voice be heard and if only
one side ever has the power we will have voices silenced. He scares that if we push forward
more we will get to the days where government serves large corporations instead of the people
it was created for. Many of us want a chance to do whatever we want in life but when the
government serves only the people who already have what they want we will never make it.
What is Being Done About It
There are many companies and organizations now that recognize that the USA isn't
what it once was with politics and are trying to get it back. One, in particular, is Braver Angels
they are working hard with a movement trying to get people to agree with each other more often
even when agreeing means that they disagreed. They recently did a run in Texas, the red state,
where it is predominantly one political party. They had 16 people 8 of one party and 8 of another
talk to each other and try to be civil about it. After hours of them talking all of them had similar
takeaways. The way the USA is right now is not healthy and they have more in common than
they once thought.
How Can We Make a Difference
We are so divided is there any hope? For many of us yes there is but it will take work
and we all need to be willing to do it. The first step is to act and try to work with the other person
rather than just push your agenda on them or theirs on you. Another step that we need to take is
education. We need to help people be educated and understand that when we are trying to talk
not everything is us versus them. After we have properly educated people that not everything is
an attack on them we need to make a change in our government. Like many other countries that
struggled with political division, we need the government to be changed and have it mend its
way back. This sounds like a call for dissolving the government but it's not rather a long drawn-
out way that we fix the government. We need to fix our issues now starting today by talking to
our city officials and then working our way up. It isn’t something that started overnight and it
won’t be fixed overnight either.