Question

For your ninth discussion board topic, you will need to watch “State of the Union: Politics in Red and Blue,” which can be found in the Required Learning Materials for Module 13. Click on reply at the bottom. This will open a dialogue box. Respond to the following: How is the polarization of U.S. politics creating problems in the social structure? For this discussion, you may want to focus on the following key concepts in the course: Authority, Political Participation, Democracy, Polarization

Answer 1

Polarization in politics suggests that people support political decisions based on their identification with a party. So, one would support or oppose the decision of a government or the ruling party based on their interest in the party. For example, people who support the decisions of President Trump would be definitely people who are associated with his party.

One of the major drawback of political polarization is that people may tend to support decisions that are even wrong. This would lead the nation into a great trouble and create tension among the people. Secondly, polarization might create favoritism where the party that rules may show concerns for few groups in order to get their support. Thirdly, it's all about majority vs minority and not good vs bad in a democracy, so if the number keep increasing for a bad cause, it would affect the entire nation. Majority people may harm or ignore the interests of the minority groups because the political leaders would consider the vote bank and not the interests of few people who won't contribute to their success.