Last week, former President Donald J. Trump was convicted in a New York court for crimes related to the 2016 election and the paying of hush money to a porn star. No matter where you fit on the political spectrum, my belief is that no one should be happy about this. As someone who is certainly no fan of Trump, last week’s guilty verdict brought out the worst in most people. Trump-haters were gleeful that the “orange menace” had finally been held accountable. MAGA-nation decried the trial as a “sham” and vowed retribution once Trump reclaims the office this November. None of this is healthy.
Whether you believe Trump is guilty or not, America is guilty of extreme partisanship. In my view, we’ve lost our way and the deep partisan divide that has ailed this nation for years is only worsening. Each day I look to our political leaders to bring the temperature down, to find common ground, to cross the aisle, and work to solve America’s problems, which are not partisan. Homelessness, border policy and immigration, access to abortion, federal deficits, inflation, etc. – these are not partisan issues. These are American issues. But American politicians are not resolving these issues for us. Americans have strong opinions on many things, both at the national and local levels. This is the beauty of being an American; the right to an opinion and the right to say our opinions. However, as a consequence of American partisanship, we don’t vote for people anymore. We vote parties. We vote red or we vote blue, regardless of how bad a person, how incompetent a person, or how unqualified a person is to hold such office. The power of incumbency is real, as is the reality that many of us are low information voters. We get fed brief news clips and postings on social media that are typically shared to serve an agenda, either by the poster and/or the news outlet. We don’t research our candidates, their history, their experience, or their education. We look to see if they are on team Red or team Blue, and if the colors match, it’s a go.
Congress has a 12% approval rating (per Statista, February 2024). Interestingly, congressional incumbents win re-election 94% of the time (per www.opensecrets.org). We agree on very little these days, but can we at least agree that this is nuts?!? We hate our congressional representatives, but we keep re-electing them. Why? We reward our incompetent leaders with re-election because they play for a certain team, they appear on a certain network, and they say nasty things about the other team. In essence, this has become our criteria for voting for candidates to enact legislation to make our lives better. We reward partisanship. We reward nastiness. We reward mean-spiritedness. In return, we get incompetence, but incompetence that we can easily blame on the other team. And partisan America buys it almost every single time. According to abc.com, the current 118th Congress is on track to be one of the least productive congresses of all time. Congress is held by Republicans, the Senate is held by Democrats, and the presidency is held by a Democrat. Divided government, in theory, is good and the checks and balances of the system are exactly what the founding fathers wanted. However, if alive today, I don’t think this is what they envisioned.
I love my country and I love my fellow Americans. But we need to take our collective heads out of our collective asses and start electing people who will truly represent us. For this, America is guilty and in my mind, there is no debate.
I agree with all you have written. It all begins with ourselves and voting for candidates that will steer us in a healthy direction. Have you checked out the Forward Party that Andrew Yang started? I believe it is a good place to start. It has a much more optimistic outlook than social media(which encourages conflict with it’s algorithms) and our news media( which is overly partisan.)
Thank you for this Jason!
Thank you for this Jason!