Klik op een omslag om naar Google Boeken te gaan.
Bezig met laden... The Polarizers: Postwar Architects of Our Partisan Era (editie 2017)door Sam Rosenfeld (Auteur)
Informatie over het werkThe Polarizers: Postwar Architects of Our Partisan Era door Sam Rosenfeld
Geen Bezig met laden...
Meld je aan bij LibraryThing om erachter te komen of je dit boek goed zult vinden. Op dit moment geen Discussie gesprekken over dit boek. geen besprekingen | voeg een bespreking toe
Even in this most partisan and dysfunctional of eras, we can all agree on one thing: Washington is broken. Polticians take increasingly inflexible and extreme positions, leading to gridlock, partisan warfare, and the sense that our seats of government are nothing but cesspools of rancor, childishness, and paralysis. The shocking reality, though, is that modern polarization was a deliberate project carried out by Democratic and Republican activists. In The Polarizers, Sam Rosenfeld details why bipartisanship was seen as a problem in the postwar period and how polarization was cast as the solution. Republican and Democrats feared that they were becoming too similar, and that a mushy consensus imperiled their agendas and even American democracy itself. Thus began a deliberate move to match ideology with party label - with the vexed results we now endure. Rosenfeld reveals the specific politicians, intellectuals, and operatives who worked together to heighten partisan discord, showing that our system today is a product not solely of gradual structural shifts but of deliberate actions motivated by explicit agendas. Rosenfeld makes clear that the story of Washington's transformation is driven both by institutional change and by grassroots influences on the left and the right. The Polarizers brilliantly challenges and overturns our conventional narrative about partisanship, but perhaps most importantly, it points us toward a new consensus: if we deliberately created today's dysfunctional environment, we can deliberately change it. -- from dust jacket. Geen bibliotheekbeschrijvingen gevonden. |
Actuele discussiesGeen
Google Books — Bezig met laden... GenresDewey Decimale Classificatie (DDC)324.273Social sciences Political Science The political process Political parties North America United StatesLC-classificatieWaarderingGemiddelde:
Ben jij dit?Word een LibraryThing Auteur. |
While the word ‘culture’ is mentioned in the book (although perhaps most prominently in a final brief word that feels like a post-2016 election afterthought), the book treats America’s polarization as primarily a political phenomenon, and one influenced primarily by political activity. While this is a valid perspective, and a useful scope for a book like this, I’m personally convicted that much of America’s political divide is reflective of a greater cultural conflict, which to an increasing extent is being experienced globally. If the world is pairing off into two increasingly opposed camps (such as somewheres and nowheres), then it is inevitable that political organization will follow. The rapid and sudden changes in Republican Party priority under Trump suggest that traditional GOP conservatism may not be totally in synch with the party’s current constituency.
Ultimately, this is a systemic dynamic, one with positive feedback loops, such that change only encourages further response, and the response encourages further counter response. Perhaps once this process started, it took on a life of its own. ( )