Is the Left-Right Paradigm dumbing down America?

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To clarify, the Left-Right paradigm is the system of liberals vs conservatives, or simply a system where citizens are divided by a political binary.

According to this paradigm, you're a Republican if you're pro-life, conservative, pro-gun, pro-war, a fundamentalist Christian, etc. Also according to this, you're a Democrat if you're pro-choice, believe in gun control, are an atheist or a secularist, support gay marriage, etc.

But what if a voter doesn't fit the cookie cutter criteria above? From my own personal experience, not fitting into the political binary caused me to believe I was suffering from cognitive dissonance and I thought I was really confused. That is, until I did more research and realized that politics and philosophy is way more complex than an "us vs them" mentality.

I support small government, little to non-existent taxation, and am pro life. However, I also fully support the LGBT community, support abortion in the case of rape, and I think that both fundamentalist Christians and hardcore Atheists do little more than divide America even further. So if an average American has views on both sides of the political spectrum on different issues, who are they supposed to vote for? Many are not educated on political alternatives, and therefore, on election day, end up giving in to the candidate they feel is the "lesser of two evils." Many get their political education from Fox News or MSNBC, which only reinforces the political binary that America operates under, and it feels like people don't know how to debate or discuss politics without resorting to "stupid liberals" or "racist conservatives" as their line of attack.

The real question here is that is this Left-Right paradigm destroying intelligent political discussions in America, and has it caused the nation to become more divided over even the simplest disagreements?

That is an interesting supposition.


An aside, you need to throw CNN, ABC, PBS, CBS, NBC in with MSNBC on that list, there is only one Conservative leaning news station on the air and that is Fox News, all the others have a similar ideology with MSNBC, just some are better at hiding their bias than others.

The trouble is bringing together the people who do not fit into either category easily, organizing them and pushing them to support the cause, Party and politicians and I don't see that happening very well with a group of people whose only thing in common is that they are not conservative or liberal.

I don't get how the "political binary" could be dumbing down America since it's been quite a constant (with a few notable exceptions, US Presidential elections have been run as highly factionalized feuds between two contenders). Some of the partisan newspapers in 19th century America got quite ugly, actually.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of ... newspapers

I'm not exactly sure when the "left-right" schema entered America, but it's been around in France since the 18th century (where anti-monarcist liberals & radicals sat to the left of the assembly president and conservative-to-reactionary monarchists sat to the president's right). I really doubt something so old could be "suddenly" dumbing down America.

And I don't think "hardcore atheist" has been anyone's view of the average Democrat. Sure, "hardcore atheists" are more likely to be Democrats than average, but they're way to small a portion of the population to typify Democrats or left-liberals.

Relying too much on a set ideology to interpret things happening in the world is usually what's poisonous to intelligent discussion. While a left-right paradigm is limiting, I see lack of open-minded critical thinking as more at the root of the issue. That doesn't change much if you get everyone to buy into multi-axis political graphs.

Is the Left-Right Paradigm Dumbing-Down America?

Q.E.D.

It sure looks that way.

In this polarized environment, people like me do not have an acknowledged home or place. My only path is to act in opposition. I would be delighted, for once in my life, to vote FOR something rather than AGAINST.

ruveyn

The dichotomy itself may be centuries old, but its reliance on new media is a recent phenomenon, and one I think does lend itself to creating a much more exaggerated degree of polarization than before. The printed word can only go so far in influencing people. 24-hour cable news and internet access, however, provides constant, ceaseless bombardment by polarizing forces. The problem is exacerbated by each side's method of levying of attacks at the other, which includes targets which may or may not actually merit partisan criticism. In that atmosphere, no one and nothing is allowed to be apolitical, unaffiliated, objective, innocent, or dead-middle-of-the-road centrist anymore. I've seen each side make such ridiculous political attacks on the most innocuous aspects of life. "Happy Holidays" has come to be seen as a symbol of pinko Commie atheist secularist oppression, where what I really mean when I say it to someone is... well, a contracted form of "Have a Merry Christmas, and a Happy Thanksgiving, Hannukah, Kwanzaa, and New Year, and anything else you might celebrate this time of year". For Pete's sake, it's supposed to just be a friendly exchange. If we can't even tell when someone's trying to be nice anymore, is it any wonder the state of the country is so degraded?

I too think its always been binary - the only notable third parties in the history of American politics have basically been offshoots of one side or the other, that served to divide that side's vote in the face of the intact opposition party. Other third parties seemingly have no chance to ever win much, which is a byproduct of many things, but first and foremost I think its a byproduct of the natural tendency of political interests to collude (or devolve, if you will) into two sides. Why? Because in a democracy there's strength in numbers - it makes sense to align interests with as many people as possible, which means as many people whose political viewpoints you can stomach as possible. Everyone else can either get together or form numerous smaller splinter groups which will always have only a slim chance of winning elections due to inferior numbers.

The difference now is how our political discourse is conducted - often by people posting online anonymously (and emboldened to say more extreme things without fear of meaningful consequences as a result of that anonymity), and who dominates that discourse which has come to be more and more the extremists on each side.

Some truths are moderate, others truths are extreme.

Extreme truths only get called "extreme" when they are unpopular.

That's only true when most people's political views are relatively close together, then its easy to consider an outlying view to be extreme. But polarize people's political views so that there are two relatively large clusters with a relatively large gap between them, and few people outside of those two clusters, and you'll soon find that one side's ideas seem extreme to the other, and vice versa. Soon there are few ideas that are not considered extreme by large portions of the populace.

Yes and no, I think the media dumbs it down so as to make stories interesting that would otherwise be utterly boring. One side vs the other is dramatic.... there's a lot of grey area and overlapping.

The Democrat-Republican paradigm is dumbing down America because both parties are warmongers.

The American people are the only people who can end this nightmare because nobody else can vote for American leaders. I'm confident that the American people will see the truth one day ... as long as the first amendment stays intact.

If you can find a way of ending the "forever war" without destroying the economy on the one hand, and leaving us wide open to Jihadi murderers on the other, pray do let us know.

The "forever war" is destroying the United States. We cannot afford to fight it anymore.

ruveyn

The economy thing is something we'll just have to deal with.
The Jihadists will stop bashing America if America stops supporting Israel and sends the troops home.

I say we end our alliance with Eurasia and form an alliance with Eastasia. The Eastasian economy is in a much better state than the Eurasian economy, and Eastasia controls more of the neutral zone than Eurasia.