Many Americans love to romanticize the history of the United States of America and believe that our current system of politics and government was something set in eternal stone by the founding fathers all those years ago. However, this idea of an unchanging political system is simply not true.
Similar to most things in this world, our current political system has been an ever-morphing entity, pretty much ever since George Washington left office in 1797.
Throughout our country's lifespan, American politics has undergone various changes, from small to big and from trivial to the utmost radical. In my opinion, the most important and most disastrous change to our politics was the creation of political parties. Political parties have intentionally and unintentionally, in many ways, affected our country for the worst. Here are a couple of my reasons as to why modern political parties are harming our democracy and our society.
They have fostered a state of social polarization.
We can see that Washington's opinion towards political partisanship were disapproving, to say the least. He witnessed how the factionalism growing in the government could seep into society causing people to divide amongst themselves solely based on political affiliation. Washington even made it clear in his farewell address that if America were to continue on this path of political partisanship, it would be the doom to our society.
Sadly, Washington's worst fear has become reality. If the past several decades haven't made it clear already, then these five years should show that we as American people have become more and more divided. With today's volatile political and social landscape, people feel this sense of pressure to lean one side. When people see others leaning more right, we are convinced that we need to counter this by leaning more left and vice versa.
This sort of polarization has become a problem that plagues many aspects of life in America. People have become prone to judge someone solely based off of what party they "belong" to. This kind of mentality affects the way we interact with one another in areas, such as school, business, relationships, and friendships. On a national level, this "us versus them" mindset can and has led to stalemates on issues that could only be solved through needed unity.
Government becomes less about the people and more about keeping power.
In the U.S., the two main political parties we mostly think about are Republicans and Democrats. People perceive these parties as ways of having representation for their views and beliefs; This idea is true, to a certain extent. However, over time we see that these political parties have become entities of their own.
When looking at the recent history of politics and the country, we have seen that one of the main priorities of both Democrats and Republicans has become to keep and gain political control over one another. It seems that even in some instances, politicians on both sides make campaign promises and then abandon them once elected into office.
For me, it just seems like there are so many politicians, both Republicans and Democrats, that promote themselves as one thing on the campaign trail, but seem to disappoint the people who put them in office.
Everything is politicized.
Now don't get me wrong, I agree with people expressing their beliefs whenever we want. But with how our current society is shaped and becoming more and more intertwined with politics, everything seems to have to have a deeper message.
From music, TV shows, to celebrities and award ceremonies, people are always looking for a deeper message about politics. I'm not against this, but I find it so overwhelming that it feels like everything I'm consuming in the media has some political meaning or rhetoric.
