Polarized Nation

We are at a point in time where the political parties are most distinct and there is little overlap in ideology. People's beliefs are more extreme than ever before. The two major political parties of this nation have polarized. Persons either identify as Republicans or as Democrats and are not easily swayed; people tend to vote along the party lines with less regard for the candidates or issues. 

In Why We Hate Us, Dick Meyer points out that many have become extreme to avoid what is popular American "culture" today. People are finding themselves in countercultures because they despise the mainstream media-induced, celebrity-and-reality-show-obsessed, consumerist culture that tells us it's better to "express ourselves" than live peacefully within a community. Individualism has devastated community, high culture, and privacy. 

Despite the rise of the countercultures and the hatred people feel toward others that represent opposing political values, people generally want similar things. That is, they want things that our mainstream society cannot provide. 

For example, Rod Dreher, a religious conservative who writes a column for The Dallas Morning News, writes in his blog:

 "We need to in some tangible and consequential sense set ourselves apart from the mainstream...It's my view that our culture is pretty messed up in some fundamental ways, and I know that my wife and I can't raise our children without community. We are learning how to creatively resist the consumerist values of mainstream culture...
Broadly speaking, the best ways we've found to do it is to form communities of like-minded people...who I consider fellow travelers/fellow  dissenters from our consumerist paradise. I've also found it important to turn off the television, and not only to protect them [children] from the usual pop-cult crap, but also to teach them to love good books, good art, good culture."

Meyer notes that Dreher is arguing the same thing that many liberals tend to talk about. Similarly, Meyer notes that many who identify as liberal Democrats come off as traditional to the point of being Puritanical when they "rant against materialism or sexploitation in entertainment and advertising," which we generally identify with more conservative belief systems.
It comes back to the idea that Americans are fed up with the over-hyped, explicit, and in-your-face culture that has become so prevalent. Conservatives and liberals alike are looking for "high culture," and a return to traditions and values.

Republicans and Democrats are on the same team in the war against mainstream culture. Members of both parties think today's humor is crass, today's television explicit, today's consumerist obsession exhausting, and today's journalists, children, and Internet bloggers rude. Yet, members of these parties see one another as the opponent, and blame members of the "opposing" party for the failures of our society. We point the finger at groups that are not our groups. Because of this, people become hardheaded when it comes to the issues and the way they are presented by politicians not of the political party they identify with. Ideas aren't heard if they come from "the other side," and the parties polarize further. Americans might find what they are looking for by working together and against the true enemies found in marketing, advertising, media, and reality TV; while we are focusing our attentions on hatred of another, we ought to be seeking common ideals and coming together.

--Megan