15 thoughts on “Polarization”

  1. “Hammered: Biden falls to 38%, ‘not competent,’ ‘honest’”

    “In the worst showing since becoming president, President Joe Biden’s approval has fallen to its lowest ever, and the public no longer feels his team is competent, honest, or led well.

    As Biden struggles to recover from the bungled Afghan withdrawal and an interparty feud over his spending and tax agenda, his approval has sunk to just 38% in the latest Quinnipiac University Poll. A majority, 53%, disapprove.

    The survey follows a similar pattern in other polls, notably Gallup, that recently had his approval at a poor 43%.

    While partisanship remains as strong as it was during the Trump era, independents are weighing in heavily against Biden. By nearly 2-1, independents disapprove of Biden, 60%-32%.

    Of special note in the new survey, the public appears to have lost faith in Biden’s abilities. According to the survey:

    More than half say 55%-42% said the Biden administration is not competent in running the government.
    Fifty percent said Biden is not honest, while 44% said he is.
    Forty-one percent said he has “good leadership,” while 56% said he doesn’t.
    Fifty-five percent disapprove of his handling of the economy.
    Fifty-eight percent disapprove of his job as commander in chief.
    Sixty-seven percent said he’s wrong on immigration and border issues.
    “Battered on trust, doubted on leadership, and challenged on overall competency, President Biden is being hammered on all sides as his approval rating continues its downward slide to a number not seen since the tough scrutiny of the Trump administration,” said Quinnipiac University polling analyst Tim Malloy.”

    https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/hammered-biden-falls-to-38-not-competent-honest/ar-AAPcYOq?ocid=entnewsntp

    Even the main stream media can’t hide it anymore. How low can it go? 20’s?; maybe even teens? And under the new post Trump Impeachment metric this is grounds for Impeachment. After all if a phone call to the President of the Ukraine is “beyond the pale” then what pray tell is gross incompetence and dishonesty?

  2. The more things the government does, the more the chances that someone will disagree with something the government does.

    1. Also, the more things the government does, the more money it needs. As the tax revenue increases, so do arguments over how it is spent, who gets to spend it, and where it is spent. This helps usher in corruption as politicians, civil servants, and their families benefit from lobbying and business deals.

  3. This is excellent analysis. He certainly gets to the root of the problem. But I believe – or at least I hope – that most of us on the right hold to the traditional principles of our constitutional republic, and are only afraid that the Democrats present a “clear and present danger to American democracy” precisely because they are willing to jettison those principles in order to achieve their aims. I must admit, however, to being taken aback at the way many Trump supporters appear to simply want their own strong man in charge.

    It should also be noted that the background of this phenomenon is a shifting of worldviews, specifically the decline of the Judeo-Christian consensus. The princples on which the Founders based our form of government are as much rooted in a Biblical view of man as a humanist one: that we are all inherently sinful, and yet all precious to God and equal in his sight.

    1. “He certainly gets to the root of the problem.”

      I disagree. He beats around the problem without naming it and applies a false equivalency between Republicans and Democrats. The solution suggested would have been timely 30 years ago. Now, it is a bit late to posit a problem so ambiguously and suggest solutions so vague as to be nearly meaningless.

      “I must admit, however, to being taken aback at the way many Trump supporters appear to simply want their own strong man in charge.”

      I think you need to stop reading/watching DNC propaganda media. Trump was never a dictator. He wasn’t a Russian agent. He didn’t use the Post Office to steal ballots. He didn’t abuse his power the way Obama and Biden did/are. None of his supporters wanted him to. Trump governed the exact opposite as a “strong man” would in the context you use that word.

      How many Trump scandals did you fall for and how did you react when you found out they were carefully crafted deceptions propagated by the partnership between Democrat politicians, civil servants, and media? I was taken aback by how many intelligent people would fall for a DNC crafted deceit, learn it was fake, and then fall for the next one, never bothering to question why they keep falling for fake scandals.

      Did you see Trump murdering koi? He said vets are losers. He said people fighting in WWI were losers. He didn’t do anything about Russian bounties. He had two scoops of ice cream and only let guests have one. He said NAZI were fine people. He said all Mexicans are rapists and murderers. Trump wants to weaken NATO by making them spend more money on defense. Trump is a Russian agent because he wants to put troops in Poland. Trump is an anti-Semite because he was too good an ally to Israel. Trump organized an insurrection and ordered people to engage in violence to overthrow the government.

      None of this is true and yet people fall for the deceits over and over and over.

      I can tell you what has been a losing strategy, giving Progressive Marxists everything they want in the name of compromise while getting no compromise in return and letting Democrats trample through the institutions without putting up a fight to stop them because that wouldn’t be polite.

      Some people think we shouldn’t do anything until people get sent to the gulags and in the meantime, our entire country is being transformed into a gulag. There are people who should be on their side and helping but they mostly just say, “How dare you.”

      1. Whoa, friend! I am not the straw man you are looking for. I voted for Trump – twice – and I am very disturbed by the unscrupulous attempts to undermine him and the legitimacy of his presidency. But lately both Democrat and Republican presidents have relied on executive orders to accomplish their agenda and please their base. It’s getting worse with each administration, and Trump fell right in line on that score. I believe this is corrosive to the republic. And judicial activism is just as bad. But at least Trump was able to swing the Supreme Court more toward originalism, which is the only way ultimately to preserve a government of laws.

        The blame for this drift toward rule by fiat can largely be laid at the feet of an increasingly dysfunctional Congress, and you can blame that on increasing polarization, and you can blame that on diverging worldviews. That’s what I mean by the root of the problem.

        1. “Whoa, friend! I am not the straw man you are looking for. I voted for Trump ”

          Fair enough, sorry I was a little worked up there =)

        2. I would argue rule by executive orders is also heavily enabled by the huge amount of power in the administrative state. Why push things through congress if you can just EO it and get the respective agency to do it and challenge someone to take it to court. Also, some of Congress’s do nothingness can be traced to the fact that they’ve already given a lot of their power to agencies in the executive branch. Now if only the Supreme Court would take the non delegation doctrine seriously.

  4. Where does this but muh norms thing come from? It started because Trump argued with the media. Everyone said he was wrong to do so except for those people who knew why he was criticizing them. Time goes on and we find that the dominate narrative in the media from the left and right was wrong and Trump was right. His criticisms were right and he was uncouth but only uncouth for a Republican. Democrats regularly went after media that they didn’t like or even media they did like but who needed to be made an example of.

    The other norms angle directed against Republicans is that they saw cheating take place in the election and said so. Without getting into whether or not the cheating was enough to swing the election, it happened. But Republicans are expected to not say anything because that is the norm. The norm for Republicans. Democrats not only have a long history (well over a century!) of cheating but also questioning the outcomes of elections. Disagreements over elections is how our system of safeguards was created.

    Polarization, or people disagreeing with each other, isn’t new. Our system is designed to encourage it. Free people with the ability to speak their mind will do so. It is easier to read people’s opinions from all over the country but that doesn’t mean in the past that people all over the country didn’t have their own opinions or that they didn’t express them in a manner you might not like.

    “78% of Biden voters believed that the Republican Party wanted to eliminate the influence of “progressive values” in American life, while 87% of Trump voters believed that the Democrats wanted to eliminate “traditional values”;”

    This is true. Republicans do want to eliminate the influence of Progressive Marxist values in American life because they are antithetical to American values and Progressive Marxists are open in their desire to exterminate American society but the norm for Republicans is to ignore that this is happening.

    “75% of Biden voters and 78% of Trump voters believed that the opposing party’s supporters were a “clear and present danger to the American way of life.””

    Also true. This is what people believe but why do they believe it? The both sides trope wears thin when you look at the false reality that Democrats believe in. Republicans look at actual things Democrats are doing at all levels of governance while Democrats, for the most part, look at bigoted stereotypes they hold for other people.

    It is these stereotypes and narratives that Democrats use to justify persecuting people with the government. Abuse of power isn’t simply an abandonment of norms. Corruption is common throughout our history. The abuses happen with purpose beyond making money or keeping power. Democrats are persecuting the populace with government institutions so that those they persecute come to dislike our society as much as Democrats do. They are destroying institutions like the military because it is something Republicans view as a cornerstone of our society.

    The cherry is that Democrats also view persecuting Republicans as Social Justice, a moral imperative.

    Democrats will continue abusing norms. They want you to know they are abusing norms. They want you upset about it. They want a reaction. They want to demoralize the populace to lay the ground for a Progressive Marxist takeover of all levels of governance.

    The problem we face isn’t a both sides trope that so many gullible people like to talk about. The problem is that Progressive Marxism is ascendant in the Democrat party and that ideology and/or religion demands our country cease to exist and that certain groups of people be punished and their descendants punished for an unspecified period of centuries. Taking action against this like protesting a schoolboard meeting or calling commies out for what they are isn’t an abandonment of norms but rather fighting to retain our norms.

    The author is right that we need to interact with people on the other side so that they see us as humans and not the racist stereotype they have for us and he is right that we need to inculcate understanding of human nature and how abuses of power arise from it. But why can’t he put a name to the problem? If we can’t say Progressive Marxism is the problem, we wont be able to deal with it.

    And, how do we deal with it specifically? Shapiro hasn’t been a very vocal defender of people actually doing things other than talking. He has even taken sides against people doing actual work. What needs happen isn’t a return to “norms” but for Republicans to give up their normal behavior and get out in the streets and protest, run for government at all levels but especially in your local community, stop blindly believing everything the DNC media tells them, fight back against the DNC media, worm into the educational establishment and expunged Progressive Marxism, and do the same for other government agencies.

    TLDR: The problem is Progressive Marxism not some both sides trope and Republicans need to abandon their normal behavior and get involved locally and nationally. Republicans need to use every legal tool they have available even if the Shaprios of the world think its uncouth.

    1. The biggest norm Trump violated was not working his way through the political party to get his turn. Obama violated it too but made up for it by giving Hillary the SecState roll and making Biden his VP along with a bunch of other lower level party apparatchiks. Trump reasonably felt betrayed by the GOP that forced him to sign an agreement to accept the primary results, which they themselves failed to do. So Trump didn’t appoint all the apparatchiks the party wanted. Norms were violated. Years of grift was lost.

  5. Guys guys! All we have to do is talk to Democrats about human nature and then they won’t use the FBI to prosecute parents on terrorism charges for complaining to the school board that Marxism and pedophilia are being inculcated in the kids.

    Perhaps, and I’m going out on a limb here, Democrats know the dangers of human nature very well but they view them as ways to manipulate people to achieve their goal, Progressive Marxist one party rule, rather than as dangers to be mitigated.

    1. I’m reading your comment after having read an article about the Austin DA refusing to prosecute 5 gang-bangers involved in a rival gang shoot-out that left a person dead. Why? Because it was mutual combat in the streets with 70 rounds of bullets. Note, I said Austin and not Chicago, where prosecutors used the same reasoning in a similar case earlier in the week. So now, open warfare in the streets is condoned by Democrat prosecutors, while protesting of school boards is Domestic Terrorism.

      1. Struggling with a way to phrase this but there is a parallel between ignoring gang crime in Austin and Chicago and Democrats latest claim that people only notice when a white woman is killed. Since then, it has been endless stories about the need to focus on Native American women and ignore the deaths of white people.

        In Austin and Chicago we see Democrats turn a blind eye to the deaths (or potential deaths) of minorities. They do the very thing they claim the USA is systematically racist for.

        What are the conflicting l/r POVs here? The USA is racist so we must ignore the crimes that minorities engage in, even if woman, children, and the elderly are murdered, as a form of social justice. Enforcing laws keeps all people safe, especially minorities who live with gangs.

  6. I think it’s the lies. The press, the “Fourth Estate”, really is that important to a free society. When it degenerates to politicized messaging and outright propaganda, when it persistently lies, 24/7, people notice and they get mad and they lose trust.

    It’s no wonder we’re at each other’s throats. With no shared truth there is no common ground. How ironic that in the information age there is little information that can be trusted, which leaves only ignorance and paranoia and the madness they bring.

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