He dismisses rank-choice but mostly because it will take too long to get it everywhere. To me, it seems the best way to allow all sorts of candidates to run, and will likely reduce the chances of the wacko extreme candidates we're getting today.

Finally, he mentions Yang's new Forward Party, which imho likely won't do much good, but has the potential of causing another Ralph Nader-esque impact on a future election. Although we can't tell what would have happened with a Gore presidency, I'm almost sure we would not have invaded Iraq. Let's all hope the Forward Party dies a quick and painless death.

> Moreover, it is not guaranteed to facilitate viable third parties; this has not happened in Australia, for example, where it is the rule.

Australia has a Conservative colalition of two parties, Liberal and National with similar but unaligned goals, and a nominally Left (for some value of Left but not Copmmunist and not the trade union party it once was) Party in Labor.

That's three majors.

Australia also has (largely thanks to RC) a number of independants and small parties that also have a voice both the upper and lower houses (of the various States, and in the Federal Government).

The need to negotiate with small players to build numbers to pass desired policy is a major factor in avoiding the kind of extreme polarisation seen within the central north american region.

That being said, the problem with Fukuyama is that for all intents and purposes, forecasting the future in terms of grand narratives is impossible to do accurately.

Range (Score or Star) voting are significantly better.

https://www.equal.vote/star_vs_rcv

> Fukuyama argues that history should be viewed as an evolutionary process, and that the end of history, in this sense, means that liberal democracy is the final form of government for all nations. According to Fukuyama, since the French Revolution, liberal democracy has repeatedly proven to be a fundamentally better system (ethically, politically, economically) than any of the alternatives, and so there can be no progression from it to an alternative system. Fukuyama claims not that events will stop occurring in the future, but rather that all that will happen in the future (even if totalitarianism returns) is that democracy will become more and more prevalent in the long term.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_End_of_History_and_the_Las...

I'm going by his articulation on a recent podcast with Chris Hayes. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zY9yBZm_57w

He would say that its not that liberal democracy is some teleological final state. But more like a local optimum that we can't hill climb out of. There simply aren't different ideas about how to organize states "beyond" democracy.

I think the shift is subtle but important. It implies a lack of ideas as opposed to a "prediction" about the consequences of 1991.

having ideas and sharing them is of more value.

I reject the idea that technical moderates are the default, that they're non-ideological, and that a watery combination of left and right ideas is best because it appeals to the most people, if only because we've been doing exactly that since the 80s and it's gotten us here.

Ok, what are bigger weaknesses than the current polarization?

Agreed, but actual problems aren't profitable enough to garner much media attention.

> because we've been doing exactly that since the 80s

One can do the right things badly.

Personally, my preferred solution to polarization is voting reform (I actually think approval voting would be a better fix than RCV though) but he makes a good point that voting reform is a long term solution to a short term problem. I still think it’s worth pursuing, but there’s no way it will help us with the 2024 presidential election, for example.

The Democratic Party moving to the center could be done much more quickly, and if the strategy was successful in winning elections, might force the Republican Party to similarly adopt more moderate positions.

Another “solution” to polarization in the US is a civil war. This should definitely be avoided at all costs, but would probably eventually reduce polarization when the winning side forces the losing side to adopt their policies (like how the North forced the South to end slavery after the Civil War).

Having a single party dominate politics for a while sounds a little scary, but if they’re democratically elected, I guess that’s what people want, right? And, to me, it’s a much more palatable short-term solution to polarization than Civil War II.

And considering that the South was literally turning into traditional aristocracy including changing low codes and so on, now is much closer to what we would consider the center.

For example in 2016, the European Court of Human Rights rejected the claim that the “right to marriage” under the EU Convention on Human Rights encompasses same-sex marriage: https://eclj.org/marriage/the-echr-unanimously-confirms-the-.... In Germany, same sex marriage became legal by legislative vote, with Angela Merkel voting against it (putting her to the right of Donald Trump on the issue). There was no political crisis around these votes. While many in Europe support same-sex marriage, most see it as a political issue, not something beyond the reach of the political process.

Contrast the US, where progressives are talking about “packing” the Supreme Court over its rejecting the notion that the Constitution contains a right to abortion so expansive that it would render invalid nearly every abortion law in Europe. That decision made international news, with countries like France criticizing the Supreme Court, even though their own abortion laws were illegal under Roe, and the case in question, Dobbs, upheld a Mississippi law that was basically the same as the law in France.

It's true that Roe, especially as originally conceived, put America to "the left" of Europe. We're to the left of Europe on all sorts of things: bankruptcy laws, no-fault divorces, exclusion of illegally obtained evidence, same-sex marriage, the right to wear religious garb in public spaces, the insistence that religious education be kept out of public schooling, no mandatory military service, and, of course, the First Amendment.

But your argument here includes a sleight of hand, because you confining your analysis to Dobbs itself, but ignore the state laws that it enabled, many of which are radically to the right of the European consensus. For instance, Ohio bans abortion at the moment a fetal heartbeat is detected, with no exceptions for rape or incest, so that a 10 year old girl had to be smuggled into a neighboring state within weeks of Dobbs passing.

Your point is that Europe doesn't put these questions outside of the political process. But you've run far past the end zone with that (seemingly correct) argument, by trying, and failing, to characterize the positions of the American political poles. It's a shame, because the real point you have to make here is interesting; you shouldn't crud it up with the partisan stuff.

Polls show significant numbers of Democrats support packing: https://www.newsweek.com/new-poll-shows-court-packers-will-f.... It's not a majority, but it's hardly "fringe."

> But your argument here includes a sleight of hand, because you confining your analysis to Dobbs itself, but ignore the state laws that it enabled, many of which are radically to the right of the European consensus.

The European consensus on moral ideology versus politics enables laws (in Ireland until recently, and in Poland still) that are radically to the right of the European consensus on abortion. Nobody in Belgium is showing up to the houses of EHCR Judges over recent decisions rejecting the notion of rights to same-sex marriage and abortion.

The point is that both Ohio and France view abortion as a matter of political line-drawing. People in France manage not to freak out about how people in Poland choose to draw the lines, so long as Polish law doesn't apply to them. In my view that makes Ohio and France more similar to each other than to California and New York, where many folks think that issues like abortion and same-sex marriage should be outside of the political process altogether.

The point you said you were making, about who does the line-drawing, is one I agree with. But, as I said, you misled when you implied Dobbs aligned policy with "Europe" (if you had said Dobbs had the ultimate effect of aligning us with Poland, I'd agree, but you didn't say that because we all know Poland is significantly to the right of the European consensus, and it would have harmed the partisan argument you tacked on).

If things swing a particular way you might see a national ban bill next year.

I don’t know how likely that is but it’s certainly a position many Republicans take.

A national abortion ban can’t get 60 votes in the Senate. We’ll end up with a mix of laws at the state level, just like the EU. Public polling shows that Americans favor similar laws to Europe—abortions being illegal after the first trimester except under various exceptions. https://www.vox.com/2022/7/13/23204957/roe-wade-abortion-dob... (“At least three national surveys have shown majorities of Americans favor banning abortion after 15 weeks, even as those same respondents said they wanted to see Roe upheld.”).

The minute the Dobbs decision came down several states laws changed to dramatically limit abortion. Much more limited than the national polls suggest are the desired outcomes. Indiana of all places had to rush a change on the books to make sure their ban wasn’t too limiting.

In that climate, and the way midterm elections go, I think a national ban is a definite possibility.

Meanwhile, an assault weapons ban is very popular with the public, but is effectively impossible to get passed.

Structurally, this Supreme Court is more activist than the public wants and is misaligned with the majority opinions (though I’ll grant that’s not the courts mandate).

David Shor: "Unless we see big structural changes in the Democratic party's coalition, then the modal outcome for 2024 is Donald Trump winning a filibuster-proof trifecta with a minority of the vote." (emphasis his)

(And, of course, the GOP could weaken the filibuster with 51 senators.)

I don't particularly want a viable third party, I want people who appeal strongly to 30% of the vote and are hated by 30% of the vote not to win and all the goodness that flows from that.

Not everything should not be like a football game.

You can have the big "we like red things" and the tiny "we like red apples from new zealand" party, and keep the "We like Blue things and hate everything from new Zealand" party out of office because of how voters rank them.

Which then, in strategy meetings, leads to the divisive "We hate everything from New Zealand" policy getting ditched by the "We like blue things" party, because it only appealed to a small minority, who get to vote for a newly created extremist "We really hate NZ" party that reflects their views better anyway.

Ranked choice leads to very non-intuitive outcomes (including spoiler effects) and already has done so in a actual elections. Its complex to fill out and it forces choice on people that don't want to choice.

https://www.equal.vote/science

He you know how you evaluate restaurants, books, and most other things in live? You give things a score. That's how should evaluate politicians as well.

And guess what, the outcomes will be mostly intuitive rather then confusing as often happens with ranked choice.

It seems pretty clear from this essay that he thinks that polarization is a surface level issue best dealt with by tweaking "how we talk to each other" across the political divide rather than addressing the underlying structural issues that indirectly trigger a deep level of anger and resentment like staggering wealth inequality.

You said he's a "hack," I'm saying it's relative. If Fukuyama is a hack, then that doesn't leave many public intellectuals left.

Anybody really worth listening to is probably not going to be as corporate friendly as Fukuyama so they probably wont get much of an airing on the mainstream media.

There’s lots of good criticisms to be made of the system. But there’s also a serious intellectual case for why systems that facilitate people getting the material things they want is a good thing. To write that off completely is intellectual laziness; a desire to wish away the difficult parts of your own position.

I also think that while the suggestion is facile on the surface, there is something more psychologically substantive —I’m not sure it’s sufficient but it certainly would help.

The root of our issues in the US is the selling out the lower classes’s potential by the government and industry to offshoring, thus reducing their economic power and outlook.

Of course if we hadn’t pursued globalization we’d be less advanced and things would be more expensive —imagine a kind of Switzerland, but while the potential is less open ended the lower classes and the middle classes would be less diverged from themselves as well as from the wealthy. So an executive to staff disparity might be 10x instead of 100x.

Can you name just one civilization with staggering inequalities which has not been subject to social conflict?

> The root of our issues in the US is the selling out the lower classes’s potential by the government and industry to offshoring, thus reducing their economic power.

I don't think this argument holds. The US was the theatre or major class struggle long before the neoliberal offshoring waves. Popular riots and massacres by the local authorities is nothing new, see for example the battle of Blair Mountain in 1921: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Blair_Mountain

More to the point, the GDP/capita in the USA has kept growing over the years despite offshoring. The fact that some parts of the population struggle to feed themselves is due to conscious wealth-capturing schemes from the rich and government-friendly corporations. Or as Warren Buffet once put it, "Actually, there’s been class warfare going on for the last 20 years, and my class has won".

When the people realize how duped they've been with empty promises and scapegoats, they are bound to loose their shit and be at someone's throat.

As Buffett alludes to, this is recent. In the last 30 years -as a consequence of offshoring. Cobbling shoes and pickin up garbage ain’t glamorous but they're a living. All the mills closing shop in the south affected working class black employment, in the northeast it affected working class white employment. But add up all the industries affected.

Now we’re beginning to offshore food. The laborers who used to cross the border for jobs now have jobs in their own countries which may be better may be worse…

It’s all done by a greedy gov and greedy industrialists who turned to globalism and away from supporting local economies to the detriment of the lower and middle classes.

Sweden has rather high level of wealth inequality (about the same level as the US) while being quite stable politically and socially.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_wealth_in...

There are riots in Sweden too [0], and what some consider to be terrorist activities from the far left to the far right [1].

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Riots_and_civil_disor...

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terrorism_in_Sweden

Also, with regard to Sweden, they have been a destination for poor refugees who on average integrate less than ideally into their society, given social, economic, political and spiritual differences between host country and new arrivals.

That argument makes no sense: a lot of people have very exotic tourism in Paris, New York, or in Guadeloupe. Yet for those who look beyond the surface the situation is shocking and on the right day of BLM / gilets jaunes protests you may believe the entire society has lost their shit (when in fact it's just the logical conclusion of a tiny minority of officials/businesses exploiting the entire population).

See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris_syndrome

There are no societies, especially unequal or not, without social conflict. If there are no external enemies internal ones will swiftly be found.

“Only the dead are safe; only the dead have seen the end of war.” George Santayana

If the US fixed its city planning, stopped pushing every family to have many cars and managed its health care system with even minimal efficiency the data would look much different.

Offshoring is a bad argument, because that has happened in many places to a large extent and the results are not that American.

In any case, I agree that selling out the lower classes for is pretty much guaranteed to make them angry, resentful and susceptible to the charms of right wing populists wanting to ascend to power upon a platform of blaming one or more convenient minority scapegoats.

like 99% of history is monarchies and dictatorships, democracy is a blip on the radar

Yet he's arguing both here and elsewhere about how to defeat liberal democracy's new domestic and foreign opponents.

Of course that's true of all other proposals to reduce polarization too. Is it bad for the current duopoly? Well then it can't be allowed to happen, can it?

A variant: just check off the candidates you prefer, leave the others blank. No need to rank, just approve or disapprove.

By far the easiest way to do the task, and far better than what we do now. It is, at the very least, a significant step forward.

Not a fan of Putin, and I think the polarization is real, but then this should already be obvious to anyone whose not been asleep for the past few years.

Given the domain name includes the word persuasion, such a claim needs more substantiation, elaboration or citation. This feels like a student paper without much strong arguments beyond general hand wavy sentiments on the state of the union.

We need an electoral system that enables the existence and viability of a host of political parties, so that people can go to the ballot box and vote FOR something instead of against the "other" party.

A huge way both parties are able to capture support is through fear mongering. Dems shrewdly see some hope for political tailwinds when the GOP blocks abortion. Fox News rallies moderates and right wingers to the GOP by showing examples of the silliest examples of far left behavior (and by lying constantly).

If

* political parties had to campaign on what THEY would do rather than what their opponent does,

* Political parties could be quickly abandoned for failure to achieve those goals, and

* People could vote positively for what they support rather than against what they don't,

This country would be in a better place.

And friends, electoral reform will likely start local. If you like the idea, write your councilman. Get into municipal code and figure out what it would take to put such a system on city elections.

> In fact, I think it is fair to say that Mr. Trump moved the Republican Party closer to the center. He did so in part by rejecting libertarian intellectual ideas on fiscal policy, immigration, and trade. From my perspective, not ideal, as the kids would say.

> Many conservative pundits believe that a Republican Party with Mr. Trump’s position on issues but someone else as the standard-bearer could wallop the Democrats in 2024. But Fukuyama does not think in those terms at all.

> I suspect that Fukuyama simply fears and loathes the social class that forms the core of the contemporary Republican Party. Although he thinks that the Woke progressives on the Democratic side are electorally toxic and substantively misguided, I suspect that his class sympathies lie with them. Let me know if you feel that I am being uncharitable toward Fukuyama.

> I believe that the Republican Party could turn away from the personality cult of Trump while retaining and building on the support that he generated. Fukuyama believes that the Democratic Party could turn away from the Woke progressive movement. In that regard, each of us may be guilty of wishful thinking.

> But I would stop well short of claiming that there would be heaven on earth, or the end of polarization, should a Republican other than Trump lead the party to a decisive victory in 2024. Nor would heaven on earth ensue if Fukuyama’s wish for the Democrats came true.

https://arnoldkling.substack.com/p/francis-fukuyama-has-a-wi...

> "The path out of polarization needs to be a political one, given the nature of our democratic system: that is, a realigning election in which one party decisively wins control of both houses of Congress and the presidency and holds on to power through two or three electoral cycles. "

I can't think of any better way to speedrun the collapse of America than this happening, honestly. This might have been viable back in '12-'16, but now? Hell no. Every major political institution has set its social capital on fire in the past decade, and the only reason a lot of them are standing is because they can point to the 'other side' being obstructionist. A thin veneer of 'my team right or wrong' on the part of the least-informed voters (the least informed CITIZENRY don't vote at all) is the only thing keeping people from being radicalized into 'this entire system is bad and EVERYONE IN IT IS BAD'. (Right now we're radicalizing people into 'the system would work if we got rid of the deplorables/libtards'). Particularly since without the kayfabe of Democrats vs. Republicans, the media is going to have to invent a new thing to get people worked up about: The NYT/WSJ/Guardian/Reason/Daily Wire/terrible FB meme groups aren't going to shut down or say "Now that one party is in charge, we should give up the profits that come with outrage for the sake of our ~country~". Nor is such a situation safe from outside meddling; it's even MORE exploitable in some ways.

> "The problem with RCV is that for it to have a major effect, it would have to be adopted in a large number of states for both party primaries and presidential elections."

Yes. And why I think a successful implementation of RCV in the US would involve multiple states having it on the ballot in the SAME ELECTION (ideally an ODD YEAR election). As Fukuyama identifies, the major obstacle to this is the people in power on both sides, but his idea of politics as being only national down is showing here. Basic tactics suggest you fight a centralized, powerful enemy by spreading out your efforts - make them fight on multiple fronts and set up a situation where you can fail and still make inroads. (If 25 states have it on the ballot and it passes in 12, you still have made significant progress and if those 12 show it's viable, then the next run becomes a lot easier. Especially if you can make the 12 swing states.)

"The lack of RCV then affects the prospects of the second path towards depolarization, emergence of a viable third party."

Likewise, Fukuyama shows his idea of 'politics' is pretty restricted to 'national politics' in this case. My idea of a 'viable third party' would look to the history of them in the US, which would suggest that the most likely way to get a viable third party off the ground is to create a strong state/regional party (a la the Minnesotan Farmer-Labor party). That party then gives another viable route into politics for aspiring politicians, which means that the politicians in the Dem/GOP at the state/local have some ability to push back against national interests (e.g. a popular Minnesotan Dem state senator could say they'll run as F+L if the party doesn't bend on thing X, and if that person is on the shortlist for potential governor/national candidacy, then losing them hurts, tactically).

I could also see some major progress happening if a party arose and focused solely on local, officially non-partisan races. A "viable third party" doesn't just mean "a party that immediately has a substantial footprint in national Congress or can win the presidency". What an odd definition.

> "These approaches—changes in institutional rules, third parties, and grassroots organization—are all important components that could contribute to depolarization. Many political reform proposals face a chicken-and-egg problem, however: you can’t enact legislation to reduce polarization until you’ve reduced the level of polarization. The path to a long-term solution is blocked in the short run. The only way to resolve this conundrum is through the democratic process itself: that is, through a decisive electoral victory by one party that seeks to promote serious change, and is able to enact it."

What.

Seriously, how does the second half of this paragraph follow from the first? "We tried nothing and we're all out of ideas!"

He needs to justify this: "The only way to resolve this conundrum is through the democratic process itself." To say it's the ONLY way is making a very strong statement. For instance, reducing the size of the country until it was manageable (Balkanization) could solve that conundrum, it just has a really high price. So what Fukuyama is actually saying here is "the only way to solve this conundrum that doesn't have costs I consider too high is". That's a massive hidden assumption there. Somehow I doubt that Francis Fukuyama and I agree on how much suffering is acceptable to solve this problem and (more importantly) who can suffer for it.

> "Of the two parties, it would for better or worse have to be the Democrats."

Again, complete understanding of politics only on the national level. I'd say the best odds for a realignment type election would come from moderate conservatives in the Rust Belt or Plains States. Unlike those in the South, those communities are less religious (which makes cross-party appeal easier), have some policy positions that cross over with/are popular with liberals (e.g. being more pro-environment), and have a way to talk to some issues uniting a lot of Americans (e.g. being told what to do by people who don't understand how you live/being treated as flyover country or unimportant by coastal states + places like Texas). There are substantial logistical barriers to the Dems pulling it off. First of all, their bench is pathetic: The modern Democratic party is a gerontocracy and accepts far less internal division than the Republicans. Where are these new Dems supposed to come from?

> "But the Republican takeover by Trump and his MAGA movement has been much more thoroughgoing than anything that has happened on the Democratic side, and represents a much more toxic form of politics."

Tell me you don't talk to normal people who are conservative without telling me you don't talk to normal people who are conservative. I'm from a purple state, in a purple district, from a bipartisan family, and there are far fewer crazy Trump people here than people who are sighing and voting for the lesser evil. On the other hand, you sure do see a lot of crazy Trump people in the neoliberal filter bubble. Twitter =/= average Dem voter and Parler =/= average GOP voter. Sorry.

He even talks about this later but doesn't put together that Trump's MAGA takeover is way less stable than Fukuyama thinks, and is already working on being dismantled. Now, the people who are more competent than Trump but took notes, that's concerning. But it also hasn't happened yet.

> " The contemporary Republican Party will therefore never incubate a broadly appealing centrist vision, at least not until it begins to consistently lose elections."

As opposed to the Democrats, who didn't start incubating such a vision even when they started losing elections?

Fukuyama seems to think the illness of the Democratic party is limited to the cultural craziness of the last few years and ignores its ossification + the spending of their social capital until the bank is empty. Toning down on the culture wars would probably help them - temporarily. The wokeness is a signal of simmering tension and pressure, and it's going to break out somehow. Instead of co-opting the party/process, we'd probably see movements to OPEN hostility from both extremists instead. He seems to be under the odd delusion that both sides will just shrug if they find out what they believe isn't popular, and that all the perverse incentives for companies and politicians to fan the flames will just disappear if some elections go the way he wants.

In short: LOL

The article denigrates Bernie Sanders and "the Squad" as being extremely out of touch with mainstream American political views, but on average 40% of eligible voters do not vote in presidential elections, not to mention midterm elections with their even worse turnout. American adults are disillusioned, and feel that no matter who wins elections, nothing will change -- and to a large extent, this is true! The biggest economic proposals of any candidate in recent memory were the "Medicare for all" proposal from Sanders, and Obama's healthcare reform.

Imagine a world in which Obama had leveraged the 60 seats the Democrats had in the Senate to propose a single-payer healthcare system, rather than Romneycare. Of course the Republicans were going to throw a fit, stomp their feet, and call it socialism -- they've been doing that for decades. Starting from single-payer healthcare would've given the Republicans room to negotiate the bill into something actually bipartisan, but by starting with the furthest-right possible position, all they could do was say no. The desire to pass a bipartisan bill meant only that the Republicans were allowed to criticize the Affordable Care Act as socialism, despite the fact that they themselves had proposed an almost identical measure in the '90s under Gingrich, and Romney had implemented the same in Massachusetts.

Imagine a world in which Obama had leveraged the 60 seats the Democrats had in the Senate to propose a New New Deal, rather than the anemic $800 billion that ended up being spent on the Recovery Act. There was so much room for far-reaching infrastructure and green energy spending that just didn't get to happen.

The Republican party thrives on the government implementing half measures. It is worse to have an underfunded and thereby ineffective government program than it is to have no program at all -- look at the NHS in the U.K., which is a perfect example. The Conservative party removed a huge amount of funding from the NHS, and it began struggling. Wait times have increased, and quality of care has decreased. Now the Conservatives get to use the NHS as an example of an ineffective, inefficient, and failing government program, and are proposing private options to "bolster" it. If they just increased the funding and actually hired people and paid them well, this would be a non-issue.

In sum, I think that the Democrats need to show some cohesion and spine for once. They need to come up with a unified economic policy that is well-vetted, and they need to completely ignore Republican criticism, rather than waffling and watering things down. Nothing turns a voter off more than a politician who's views are blown about with the winds of opinion -- a simple, strong message that promises to make individuals lives better can be enough. They also need to stop proposing policies that result in large swathes of the population being immediately turned off -- there are nearly 400 million privately owned firearms in the United States -- it is simply not feasible to ban them at this point. What can be accomplished is regulation around the acquisition of firearms and ammunition: universal background checks, classes with meaningful exams, licensing to be able to buy (but not registration of the firearm itself, which plays right into the "gun grabber" fearmongering).

When Republicans say "this will mean tax raises!", the Democrats should respond "no, this will mean the closing of tax loopholes that allow the wealthiest individuals and corporations to shelter their profits from taxation".

When Republicans say "this is socialism and will take away your freedoms", the Democrats should respond "this is not socialism -- our European friends have policies that go far beyond these, and they are just as free as we are".

This stuff isn't rocket science -- the rest of the developed world has figured out a way for center-left and even left parties to move forward substantive policies that improve the lives of most citizens. The Democrats need to stop cowering and start leading.

It may be narrative, but it's also a major component of many people's worldview -- especially of late, as the polarization has increased. The strength of one's bond to that worldview and the number of people who feel strongly both feed back into the party's platform, as those people are the primary voters (or "base").

Consider immigration, which Fukuyama mentions. Looking at this as a foreigner, I don’t have a hard time understanding MAGA republicans. If Bangladesh, where I am from, were seeing the kind of immigration levels we are seeing in the US today, folks would be reacting in exactly the same way as Trump voters. Nothing about their reaction surprises me.

What does surprise me are folks who dismiss the reaction as “racist” and therefore beyond the scope of political debate. Not the Matt Yglesias types, who favor increased immigration on economic grounds and are willing to engage in persuasion over it. But folks who are so committed to “equality” as an overriding moral principle that precludes distinguishing people on different sides of a border based on cultural or ethnic affinities. That’s a remarkable new idea! Nearly the whole word subscribes to the Westphalian view of a nation state, wherein self governance for distinct ethnic and cultural groups is a human right.

Trump voters can understand the nature of Bangladesh and Japan as Bangladeshis and Japanese themselves understand it. I think for a growing segment of the intellectual elite in the Democratic Party, they really cannot.

More importantly, why is a more left-leaning Reddit front page your exemplar? The social, moral, and intellectual decline of the post-Trump Republican Party seems far more noteworthy.

I'm just giving one example, doesn't necessarily mean that I am a Trump supporter and covering up for Trump.

Forgive my guffaw. Politics are the way towards unity? Yeah right, and another drink is the way towards sobriety.

> The only way to resolve this conundrum is through the democratic process itself: that is, through a decisive electoral victory by one party that seeks to promote serious change, and is able to enact it.

Oh my gosh you can't be serious. Just elect a strong party that ramrods change through? That will solve our division?

What a terrifying article.

You don't need sarcasm tags, he's quite serious.

"Just give me power and I'll unify the country and bring us into the 21st century with lots of reforms!"

Ok Mao.