At some point in our recent past, politics stopped being about policies that have an economic cost that 'we the people' are being asked to support. Instead, politics started becoming deeply personal about who the lawmakers are as people, and their hidden and devious motivations behind their politics. Someone always has a religious agenda, or a communist agenda, or a racial agenda, or a big business agenda - its never just because these politicians want to do things the way they think things should be done.
The trust in everyone and everything is at the thinnest in my lifetime. People like this crazy man have broken. Maybe this was his way to step in and bring a sense that these major problems are being solved.
If policy is discussed, its more and more rooted in emotion and personal attacks (name calling of racist / sexist / inhuman / greedy). Why can't we just discuss what the law is, if we want to change it, and what is required to change it? The man in charge of enforcing our laws is just dismissed as a racist just for trying to do the job he has. Costs are never discussed anymore. When we run a trillion dollar deficit, economists can start claiming "deficits don't matter" - and we get lulled into thinking them un-important. But somebody always has to pay - and then start the class warfare arguments (rich vs. poor) - nobody wants to pay for the programs with their own money.
Even when policy costs are discussed, they are based on economic models rooted in assumptions based on similar but different programs. These models are never discussed as models, they are considered as factual by policy proponents and fake news by policy detractors. They are never just seen as what they they are: predictions based on the way a law is intended to work.
We no longer discuss the purpose and purview of government, and when we have an opportunity to disagree about the role government should have in our lives, we again get deeply personal about who you are based on what your politics are instead of agreeing that there is more than 1 way to achieve a political outcome (for example, is health insurance always required to ensure health care is available to a person?).
I will fully agree that there are causes for our loss in our ability to talk to each other with respect or look at different ways of organizing our government:
- 24 hour news cycles featuring rantings of opinion commentators
- Journalist Provacateurs (infowars)
- Politician Provacateurs (our President for example)
- Opinionated friends and family
- Bias in our education systems
And then add that on to our governments inability to confront our own problems and enforce the rule of law. When you have government agencies run amok - you have a problem
- Selling guns to fund coups in foreign countries (Iran Contra) with no accountability
- Running guns to mexican drug cartels (Fast & Furuious) with nobody being punished
- Laundering drug money in American banks (Wachovia) with nobody being punished
- Bank failures through fraud where taxpayers fund massive bailouts and nobody is held accountable
- Cheating during presidential election debates (Donna Brazil) with no accountability
- Destroying evidence or mishandling classified information (Clinton emails) with no accountability
- Leaking classified information to the press with no accountability (Clinton, Comey, Russians, Bush2 & Valerie Plame)
- The health care costs in america - where there is outright fraud and grift in the system with no accountability
