Quote:
ORIGINAL: HuntingEd
I for one think it would take something tragic to unite this country once again.Â* Unfortunately...
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It doesn't get much more tragic than 9/11 and that united us for, what, 3 or 4 months, if that?
I think we'll always be polarized. That's just how it is in politics. There are many more issues to polarize us now than there were in the old days of American politics. Go back 70 years or so and Americans were debating the New Deal and a few other core issues that primarily revolved around foreign policy and economics. We didn't have to debate things like climate change, oil exploration, abortion, gay marriage . . . and that's just the start of the list. There are so many parts of our domestic policy today that weren't a part of the agenda a couple of generations ago, and nearly every one of them are argumentative at their core.
One area where I think we have changed for the worse is on our foreign policy. When military action became unavoidable, most Americans rallied behind Washington. Somewhere along about Vietnam we decided to just bicker about it simply for the sake of bickering. In 1998, Republicans were saying "nonsense" when Clinton was beating the Iraq war drum, and Democrats weren't really speaking up against it. Skip forward five short years and Democrats were the ones railing against war in Iraq while Republicans were suddenly all for it. Afghanistan . . . look at how many people say the war in Afghanistan was unnecessary. Pre-9/11, I would've never thought I'd see the day where America would be attacked on our soil and there would be folks who wouldn't want to go after those who perpetrated the attack.
Polarized?
