Those historical disagreements were about something. So much of the current sound and fury is just the marketing department of the status quo attempting to convince us that there's a debate going on at all. On a giant polo field of political possibility, the Bushes and Clintons fight furiously over a tiny postage stamp of "acceptable" policies. Anyone venturing outside that is just craaaaazy!

It sort of backfired on TPTB this time around, however. Not only did they get annoying one-step-beyond-the-pale "alternatives" like Cruz, they also got legitimately different directions like Sanders and Paul. TPTB had wisely saved the easily-controlled pseudo-alternative Trump for this election, though, so he's been able to take the wind out of those sails. His two terms will be like a rerun of W's (or, frankly, O's). In eight years, though, to whom will they turn? There's no way Hillary will be able to stomach "standing by her man" for that much longer. Christie is just too fat. If you want to see the next fake-alternative president before anyone else does, keep watching those reality shows!

In a lot of ways I agree with what you're saying, but that makes the whole "polarization" thing even more preposterous to me. The political parties are broadly in agreement with each other about many of the big issues even when voters are not -- how can anyone look at this situation and say the problem is that more "civility" or "consensus" is what is needed?

Yes we are in broad agreement. The only consolation I see is that the media echo chamber that reinforces this distraction is slowly becoming less effective at that task.

I generally agree with your blame TPTB first mindset, but in this case I think they underestimated Trump. Although he's not a deep policy thinker and historically has been indistinguishable from any other trendy NYC lib, he has two distinguishing traits. First, his massive ego, second, he's a violently pro-American nationalist, moreso than anyone in the past 50 years. That presents a major challenge for the globalist TPTB's current dialog - even his rhetoric is disruptive to their worldwide agenda. Maybe you're right and this is a cleverly planned dialectical antithesis that will be used to sneak in more Patriot Act style moves, but I think there's a genuine chance things have gone off script.

I don't think Donny has a monopoly, among politicians, on "massive ego". As for his nationalism, I won't be surprised when he declines to build mile one of the Great Wall of Arizona. After all, he'll point out, net undocumented Mexican immigration has been negative for years. This will be the big scandal of his third year in office, that he decided to spend all those billions of dollars on more plausibly useful public infrastructure, built in more politically valuable Congressional districts. (Also, public employee pension funds.) Obama still hasn't mothballed the running joke on the taxpayers that is Guantanamo Bay, and that was nearly as important to his supporters when he was running the first time. It will take a stronger person than Donny to ignore the personal surveillance dossiers that land on his desk the day after inauguration.

The election of 1800 springs to mind.

The only real difference these days is its idiotic in the current political climate not to polarize. You have to defend your beliefs and even defend areas you would rather compromise on because the compromise will allow you to be steamrolled. Look at the tech industry and our constant battle with DC over a lot of tech issues. We keep fighting this years legislation that was the same as last year.

Yes, exactly. Some perspective is in order. Your examples are on point. Also: duels, anyone?

I wish they would still do duels. That would get rid of a lot of crazy people in politics. Trump would certainly be very busy...

You seemed to forget some of these gems:

- The collapse of race relations. Everybody thought a black president would do wonders for the issues of race in this country, it's done just the opposite.

- Several ongoing wars with seemingly no end in sight.

- The illegal immigration ahem "undocumented workers" (for you PC types) issue. 42 million strong at this point and no signs of slowing down. This is quickly approaching a crisis point.

- Government spying, cryptography and the NSA. Snowden's leaks and how much the government really needs to keep us safe and what they're doing with the loads of data they're gathering every day.

- The economy and the recent stagnation and recession already occurring in several areas of the country. More capitalism, less government regulation, or should government be even more involved in regulating business?

There's plenty more, but these were off the top of my head. Ask anybody about one of these topics and they'll most likely give you a fairly polarizing view of where they stand.

I have never heard the claim of 42 million before. I have investigated only to the point of looking in Wikipedia, but they claim closer to 11 million, which is down from the peak number. Where are you getting that from?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illegal_immigration_to_the_Uni...

The total number of immigrants (i.e. foreign-born persons) in the US is at 45 million right now: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_immigrant...

About 11 million of those are illegal/undocumented immigrants. The remaining 34 million are people on visas, people with green cards ("lawful permanent residents"), and naturalized citizens of the United States. This does not include the children born to them, who are natural-born citizens, and are thus not counted as immigrants.

45 million is 14.3% of the US population, which might seem high, but if the list on Wikipedia is sorted by % of population, the U.S. is nowhere on the top of the list. Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Sweden, Norway, Switzerland, Ireland, Austria, Singapore, etc. all have more immigrants per capita than the United States. And gulf countries like the U.A.E. and Qatar have the highest.

Maybe including children? IIRC the 'going down' stat doesn't include them.

>- The collapse of race relations. Everybody thought a black president would do wonders for the issues of race in this country, it's done just the opposite.

I don't understand what you mean. Today we're actually starting to have conversations about race and how the establishment treats people of different races instead of not even addressing the issue. It's being talked about not as a serious issue rather than some fringe thing that most people don't care about.

I feel like progress was made during the civil rights era, then things stagnated for 40-50 years, and now we're having conversations again. It sounds to me like a black president or perhaps other things going on have done wonders for issues of race in the country. It hasn't solved the problems yet, but it's sure brought them front and center and helped given them the attention they actually deserve instead of letting them get swept under the rug.

So you think "race relations" were better during the Reconstruction period? I don't.

The point here isn't that there aren't disagreements.

It's obvious he's comparing to 90s and early 2000s. Originally I assumed things are the same, but people are just louder because of Internet. Then birthers and Trump happened, so I think it's debatable.

I don't know that it's obvious, or even who you mean by "he." But anyway, the point I wanted to make is that the recent handwringing about "polarization" lacks any sort of historical perspective.

Hear, hear.

I've been on a history bug about the Revolutionary War & the founding of America (admittedly, triggered by Hamilton).

In a nutshell, America has been incredibly partisan since 1796.

It doesn't make me like it better, but it's good to know it's not actually a big problem.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_ele...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_ele...

Not to mention the repeated references to Lincoln as a "depolarizing" figure, which is historically ludicrous. His election was the trigger for the Civil War.