The American Political Deathbed
By: Joshua Dopkowski
Tags: Politics, USA, Economy, World, Election 2020

The American political situation today is terminal. While today, Americans from different political ideologies agree on very little, most do agree that there is a major problem.

Americans may not agree on what that problem is exactly, but most do concur that the problem, whatever it is, has been compounded by a sheer lack of political diversity, a failed system of checks and balances, and an utter collapse of thoughtful discourse.

In this age of misinformation, the best answer to targeted political propaganda is not more thought control, but less

The advent of digital technology has ushered in an era of rampant misinformation and populism, and this is now jeopardizing the preservation of democratic principles. The future of democracy depends upon voters having a resilience to misinformation, so that they are not so easily influenced by the devices of predatory propaganda and mass-induced ignorance.

America has become so politically polarized and vitriolic that even the most basic and obvious common enemy has become politicized and ambiguous.

A Crisis In The Union

In America today, the majority of voters feel unrepresented by a political party. Perhaps more shocking is that nearly the same number of people believe that the political side that they are aligned with is nothing more than the lesser of two evils. These statistics provide a clear demonstration that the two-party political system is failing as an instrument of democracy.

This means that 30% of the population will control 68% of the Senate

Under the current political configuration, there are millions of U.S. citizens and legal residents who are unrepresented at the federal level. Furthermore, a clear bias exists in the U.S. Senate, as today there are 15 states, all of which are firmly aligned with the same party, that have just 11% of the total U.S. population. However, those same states represent 30% of the total U.S. Senate. Furthermore, those very same states that send 30 senators to Washington D.C., have fewer people living in them combined than the state of California on its own, which is only allowed two U.S. Senators.

Mutual respect between the two political sides has now been entirely lost, and all that remains is two horrifically disenfranchised groups spewing hateful rhetoric and baseless lies at each other.

What is also troubling is that there are over 4 million American citizens living in either the U.S. territories or Washington D.C., who have no senatorial representation whatsoever. That’s about that same number of people that live in the states of Wyoming, Vermont, Alaska, North Dakota, South Dakota, and Delaware, combined.

Beyond just sheer numbers, the U.S. Senate as it is configured today gives far more representation to rural caucasian Christians than it does to urban minorities, which is a major problem for what is supposed to be a representative institution. Under the electoral system of today, it’s possible for a strong nationwide popular majority to vote for one party to control the White House and both chambers of Congress, and yet the other party could still gain control of all three.

This scenario is not just possible, but likely, and may play out in the 2020 election. Based on the political sentiments of today, it is very possible that the Republican party could continue to hold the majority in the Senate, despite the Democrats actually representing 16 million more people than Republicans. According to a University of Virginia analysis, this will only get worse, as they project that by 2040 half of the U.S. population will live in just eight U.S. states and that about 70 percent of people will live in 16 states.

This means that 30 percent of the population will control 68 percent of the Senate.

While it is certainly not accurate to say that citizens of the USA have historically agreed with each other on most issues, we can say that Americans have had a habit of uniting against common foes. A somewhat recent example of this was on September 11, 2001, when Americans across all 50 states and territories responded to the attacks on New York City and Washington D.C. with overwhelming solidarity.

Photo by Jesse Mills on Unsplash

However, this sentiment is all but lost now. If the USA was attacked today, it would likely only divide the people further. The liberal left would be blamed for the attack by the right-wing, who tends to believe that everything that goes wrong in America today is a leftist conspiracy designed to usher in a socialist government. The liberal left on the other hand would accuse the right of hiding behind religion and ideology, rather than facing reality.

Mutual respect between the two political sides has now been entirely lost, and all that remains is two horrifically disenfranchised groups spewing hateful rhetoric and baseless lies at each other.

Under the current political system in America, all representatives at the federal level are elected via popular vote, and this has contributed greatly to the rise of populist ideologues dominating the political arena.

The current political extremism gripping America has made it impossible for people to come together about anything, let alone about how to handle a war against a foreign power. Not since the American Civil War has there been divisiveness so extreme as we see today, and even during that time, there was still a widely-shared sentiment of mutual respect.

Since the attacks in 2001, America has not been able to agree on the wars against Iraq, Afghanistan, and ISIS, and has been hopelessly divided on who to side with regarding Syria, Iran, and Saudi Arabia. Americans have failed to come to the table regarding the mass murder of nearly two dozen school children, and the hundreds of adults who were senselessly shot and killed in a variety of insane mass-shootings. Americans have also failed to agree on the obvious threats from pollution and climate change.

It should come as no surprise then that the most recent disagreements over how to respond to a deadly virus of pandemic proportions have resulted in nothing more than further ideological distancing. America has become so politically polarized and vitriolic that even the most basic and obvious common enemy has become politicized and ambiguous.

Should aliens from outer space invade America tomorrow, I contend that there would be no consensus on how to counter the attack, or if the attack was even real in the first place.

While a full breakdown of the current federal system appears to be quite possible, the United States of America simply cannot afford to entirely lose all forms of unity. This is especially true for matters involving defense, interstate commerce, and certain vital aspects of infrastructure.

America has never been more vulnerable to a serious assault from a foreign power than it is today. While the U.S. military may be powerful, if the people cannot agree on how or when to deploy it, then any conflict is already lost.

Perhaps most importantly, if the world loses America, then only Europe will remain to resist the specter of populist driven dictatorship that is rising around the world. Should America fall, it will be a dark period all around the world.