The Issue
We are being lied to.
In fact, the Program for Public Consultation (PPC) at the University of Maryland has published a detailed list of public opinion on the 150 issues most important to Americans, finding that the majority of us agree on almost every matter.
As it turns out, when you examine the biggest issues in America today through hard, reliable, non-partisan data, we are actually one big party who agrees on almost everything. Unfortunately, much of the media and nearly all of our politicians focus on the smallest, most extreme and most contentious factions among us with the goal of keeping us divided and on edge. Why? Because unity, as it turns out, is not great for their wallets. Read on!
So, if most of us agree on almost everything, why does it feel like the country should be split in half? Well, the PPC had an answer:
Massive increases in private, corporate, super pac and dark money have been flowing into and corrupting American politics on all levels.
The special interest groups now funding our political campaigns on both sides care only about their wealth and power, not your best interests. Our elected officials in turn do the bidding of these special interests because if they don’t…they won’t be re-elected, and they won’t get all the perks waiting for them once they leave office. Your voice doesn’t matter, because your wallet can’t compete with corporate America.
So why don’t politicians just change campaign finance laws?
Because when you let greed into the system, it takes over. Politicians get rich from insider trading, conflicts of interest, expense accounts, and their raw power to do favors for their donors and friends. When they leave office, they look forward to slush funds, lobbying gigs, and high paying jobs with the very companies they took campaign money from. All of that is on top of their $173,000 a year salary! When money gets this deep into politics, the checks and balances meant to keep it out start to crumble.
So politicians are corrupt. How do they benefit from the right hating the left?
American politics have become what’s called a duopoly, which allows two entities, in this case the republican and democratic parties, to pretend to compete for dominance, while actually being perfectly content to split the winnings so long as nothing really changes in the market. Think Pepsi and Coke. Politicians and corporate America have figured out that as long as we are divided into two groups bickering over nonsense, we’ll usually ignore what they’re really up to: scratching each other’s backs and hoarding all of the money.