Your rating:
Discover how American politics became a toxic system, why we participate in it, and what it means for our future--from journalist, political commentator, and cofounder of Vox, Ezra Klein. After Election Day 2016, both supporters and opponents of the soon-to-be president hailed his victory as a historically unprecedented event. Most Americans could agree that no candidate like Donald Trump had ever been elected President before. But political journalist Ezra Klein makes the case that the 2016 election wasn't surprising at all. In fact, Trump's electoral victory followed the exact same template as previous elections, by capturing a nearly identical percentage of voter demographics as previous Republican candidates. Over the past 50 years in America, our partisan identities have merged with our racial, religious, geographic, ideological, and cultural identities. Those merged identities have attained a weight that is breaking much in our politics and tearing at the bonds that hold this country together. In this groundbreaking book, Klein shows how and why American politics polarized around identity in the 20th century, and what that polarization did to the way we see the world and each other. And he traces the feedback loops between our polarized political identities and our polarized political institutions that are driving our political system towards crisis. Neither a polemic nor a lament, Klein offers a clear framework for understanding everything from Trump's rise to the Democratic Party's leftward shift to the politicization of everyday culture. A revelatory book that will change how you look at politics, and perhaps at yourself.
Publication Year: 2020
No posts yet
Kick off the convo with a theory, question, musing, or update
Your rating:
0 0A great analysis of the current American political system through a systematic lens. As opposed to the individualistic one we typically tend to look through, the systematic lens shows that not only is Trump's rise to power is explainable but, in fact, it's the logical conclusion to the interplay between the political system and existing political trends. Key elements among this interplay are identity-based polarization of people, media, and parties, nationalization of politics, and undemocratic practices that make elections unfair (e.g. the electoral college) and post-election bipartisan governance painfully difficult, if not impossible (e.g. government shutdowns, filibusters).
The critical point Klein makes, however, is that every member of this political ecosystem is generally acting exactly as they should. For example, when Majority Leader Mitch McConnell broke precedent by refusing to appoint any Obama-selected judge to the Supreme Court, he was acting in the best interest of his party and constituents who knew that court appointments are one of the biggest ways to leave a lasting political impact. In a system where rational actors are encouraged to do shitty things, we can't hate the player, we have to hate (and, therefore, fix) the game.
0
© 2024 Pagebound