(Whenever the solution is always the same, you have stopped thinking)
For those looking for answers as to why the U.S. has arrived at the political polarization point that it has, one could do worse than look at intellectual bankruptcy as a leading cause. There can little doubt that since at least the end of the 1980’s, the U.S. has been seriously misgoverned. Policy has been unimaginative. Failure and mediocrity have become entrenched (think education), the Federal Reserve has inflated two financial bubbles (the jury is still out on whether we are in a 3rd one), bad actors who caused the financial crisis have been bailed out while the middle-class taxpayer has been left holding the bag, a botched health reform bill, bureaucratic abuse has run rampant and often nobody is even indicted, let alone convicted. All of this has culminated in the election of Donald Trump, an act that has left the same people who brought us the mess above scratching their heads as to why anyone would choose that guy.
Usually mis-government has intellectual bankruptcy as one of its culprits, and this case is no exception. The world has changed radically over the last 30 years. You can’t go to work without computer skills. The internet has allowed us to have constant entertainment, personalized to each individual. We can watch news events happen nearly live on T.V., our phone, our computer, etc.; something unimaginable in 1987. The world moves faster. Changes that might have taken 50 years in an earlier time period now takes 5 years. And yet, our thinking about problems has remained the same as it was 40 years ago.
On the right, economic policy can be boiled to two concepts: Fewer regulations & tax cuts. The right as it currently exists (or at least as it existed up until Donald Trump) simply kept touting Ronald Reagan’s policies that tax cuts would cure all economic woes (and add revenue to the government coffers to boot). While this is not as insane as it sounds, Reagan’s tax cuts did spur some economic growth and increased tax revenues, Reagan was operating under unique political-economic conditions which allowed for that state of affairs. That won’t happen under all economic conditions, and yet the right has been happy to parrot that for the last generation as some sort of cure all.
On the left, getting the government involved is the solution to every problem. In this view, problems can just be legislated (or regulated) away by decree. Over the last 80 years, the left has essentially been touting an expansion of FDR’s policies. Whatever the problem is, government is the solution. Missing in this worldview is any appreciation for the inertia and inefficiency inherent in all large organizations. A large organization is often not an efficient or effective organization. While government has produced some good, where it is most effective is where there is a blindingly obvious need that people can see with their own eyes, and there simply isn’t another organization capable of intervening. Under most other conditions, government is often slow and ineffective. But just as the right views less regulation & tax cuts as some sort of cure all, the left views government spending and regulation as the same thing.
The result of this simplistic thinking is that the two sides have learned to stop thinking and start hate each other. The left views the right’s attempts (more in rhetoric than in practice) of cutting government spending and regulations as a heartless attempt to hurt people or leave them twisting in the wind, and the right views the left’s love of government command and control solutions as a secretly harbored totalitarian desire to rule over people. These hardened perceptions aren’t helped by media (including august outlets like the New York Times (last endorsed a Republican for President in 1956) and the Washington Post (has never endorsed a Republican for President since its founding in 1877)) who act as if one political party has all of the answers on everything and the other party is wrong about nearly everything.
Consequently, our political class has provided us pre-packaged solutions to everything. Whatever problem pops up, the solutions proposed are largely the same (with some modifications for the unique circumstances under which the reform is being proposed).
Contrast this with real life. We make decisions everyday at home or at work in which a solution is accompanied by a problem in the manner of trade-off. Sometime we may need to spend more on X. Sometimes we need to spend less on X, and more on Y. As our situation changes, we change. Sometimes, we even do the opposite of what we did before. We don’t blindly continue on doing the same thing when our situation has changed to where the previous practice is no longer appropriate. That is how life works. But the political class (and the media outlets) would have you believe that the solution is simple with no-tradeoffs, ever. And also that once you start spending on something, you can never reduce it even though it is no longer relevant to the current situation.
A final sign of intellectual bankruptcy is the following. In 2028, if the United State survives that long, there will be an election for President.
1.) We don’t know who the candidates will be.
2.) We don’t know how the world will look geo-politically at that time.
3.) We don’t know the economic challenges that we will be facing.
4.) We don’t know what the big issues of the day will be that will have captured everyone’s attention.
5.) But we do know that the Washington Post and The New York Times will be endorsing the Democrat for President.
6.) And we know that Rush Limbaugh (if he is still around) will be endorsing the Republican candidate.
This is NOT the characteristic of an intellectually vibrant society. It IS the characteristic of a politically polarized society. Which is what we have today.