These modern political battles do not reflect a 50-50 nation equally divided between two clear paths for the country. These battles are what you get when a two-party system allows small but powerful minority factions on both sides to determine the course of politics at the expense of everyone else who is less certain about things and more willing to deviate from pre-determined party lines. Instead of trying to build a productive way forward on issues where broad consensus exists, you get irrational ideological conflict waged under partisan banners.Talking to random folks at the corner bar, most aren't the sort of people who hang out in echo chambers like Tumblr or Gab, amping each other up over the latest outrage obsessing the Very Online partisans of the Left or Right. Thanks to the way party politics and primaries work, though, the lunatics have control of the asylum.
There is no clear way out of this predicament given hard-to-change electoral laws, legacy media coverage that obsesses about partisanship, and increasingly disconnected-from-reality social media.
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