The Polarization in America

 

Brown University

This is not a new topic for me but here I am tackling it again:  The Polarization in America.  It bothers me.  I find it stifling and am pretty certain it prevents us from truly solving the issues and problems we have.

We are about to inaugurate a new president in 35 days.  As yet, President has not conceded to President Elect Biden.  All indications are that Trump’s fight to overturn the election results will continue on into the new year and culminate when the House and Senate meet in joint session to confirm the December 14 Electoral College votes.  From what I can surmise, it seems that if seven or more Representatives and one or more Senators raise objections to the results, both houses must deliberate separately… or something akin to this.   The talking heads on TV all think this has an extremely weak chance of overturning the election.  Armed with real and fake news, people are polarized on this.

Four years ago, excluding the not conceding part, the situation was familiar.  The supporters of Hilary Clinton were besides themselves with the notion of Donald Trump becoming President and Trump supporters were joyful in what they thought would be the second coming of Ronald Reagan.  It is just the opposite today.

The biggest problem for me is this polarization at the national level.  To quote from a post on Janury 22, 2017, The Inauguration and the Day After, I wrote the following:

 We are divided people.  The divisions are along the overlapping lines of:

• Liberal and Conservative
• Rural and Urban
• Coastal and Inland States

We are further polarized issues that arose this year with the Pandemic and the Black Lives Matter initiative after the death of George Floyd at the hands of the hands of the police in May.

I see issues and problems that need to be solved.   They include, in no particular order:

• Fixing our decaying infrastructure
• Improving race relations
• Having thoughtful and realistic policies to address:
  - The costs and quality of higher education
  - Making healthcare available and affordable to all
  - Climate Change
  - Relations with China, the Middle East, and, well, the rest of the world
  - Immigration
  
  

I am pretty certain China will eventually replace us as the number one economy in the world.  If the 20^th Century was the American Century, are we now in the Chinese Century?  Are we going skid and tumble into some ill-defined 2^nd place or do we want to be more planned in both staving it off and being preparing ourselves to be a #2 to be taken quite seriously?  China has a one party and a more planned approach to capitalism.  It seems to be working.  We need to borrow from their play book a little.  We cannot swing right and left swings of policy and programs every four or eight years while they are more steady and true to their course.  What is that course they are on?  I think it is to improve the economic stature, well-being, and global influence of their country.  Hey, should we define a similar course, in our own way, that works for us?  Their model is hardly a panacea, but I do believe our current method of keeping up them is not competitive or effective enough.

If we were only to do one thing, I believe that a worthy objective for of this nation would be to improve the quality of our education system.  We should focus on science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (that STEM thing we only talk about). 

How do we fund these initiatives?  Well we could stop being the policemen of the world.  We could stop fighting decades long costly wars where winning (whatever that means) seems illusive.  In this “defund the police” year, I am not advocating abandoning defending our military.  We have to have a strong military to defend ourselves.  The emphasis here is on defend and ourselves.  That would take less money then we are currently spending on “defense.” 

We can then reallocate budgets to focus on investing in the quality of our country to truly make America great again.