Originally Posted by
JBravo
Either side spewing hatred at the other is hardly anything new in American politics, especially when we're basically divided into two winner-take-all teams. Obama, Bush Jr., Clinton, Bush Sr., etc all had the opposite party standing firmly against them. In American politics, you don't win elections by working with the other side and getting things done. It's more profitable to drum up your base with negative campaigning and to demonize the other side.
This isn't new, just a product of our two-party system, imo. The polarization in our politics and candidates is also made worse by the Gerrymandering of our districts, which produces more polarized candidates, especially in the House of Representatives.
The US is already great. We'll never return to the relative greatness (compared to the rest of the world) of the Post WWII era that conservatives love so much simply because the rest of the world has mostly recovered from the devastation of WWII and is starting to catch up to us, economically. It doesn't mean that our economy isn't still magnitudes ahead of the rest of the world, but obviously when you're at the top, you can't expect to advance at the same rate as someone who is starting from the bottom.