Is America Creeping Away from Polarization?

THE VIEW FROM HERE - America’s number one problem is polarization.  Polarization is deadly because it makes a country ungovernable.  We face a host of problems from Ai, Islamization of Europe and now of America, attacks on the Constitution from the Right and from the Left including the DSA’s proposal to abolish the Constitution along with The Bill of Rights, increasing disasters from climate change, anti-vaxxers as extinct childhood diseases re-appear, etc.

Individual Inalienable Right Set the American Ethos

The Declaration of Independence’s individual inalienable rights including Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness set our core values. As Martin Luther King summarized, judge each person by their character and not by skin color, or religion, or race, or gender, etc.  In other words, one is not good or bad because the group to which he is assigned, but by virtue of their individual behavior.  

The purpose of government is to protect individual inalienable rights.  The farmers intended the government to consider, debate, and set a laws as a body of cooperating individuals hashing out different ideas.  The Constitution Convention was such an assemblage.  Some were theists, some were deists, some were Christian, but no man had more say in the Constitution’s drafting because of he belonged to a particular group. They agreed on one principle – because power tends to corrupt, the Constitution’s main job was to limit power from accumulating in one breach or one person.  Hence, the Constitution is an extraordinarily complex document which few Americans understand.  While people obsess on their rights, the Constitution compulsively imposes duties.

Fast Forward to 2000's and Group Rights

A pernicious idea took hold in the 2000's, i.e., that individual rights were not based one’s character, but rather by the group to which they were assigned.  The world was divided into two groups: The Oppressors and the Oppressed. In Soviet Russia, Capitalists were the Oppressors and Workers were the Oppressed.  In Nazi Germany, the same dichotomy was race based where Jews were the Oppressors and Aryans were the Oppressed.  American Identity Politics adopted the race-based Nazi pattern where Whites and Jews were the Oppressors and all minorities were Oppressed.  To make the world a worse, place Wokeism has the doctrine of intersectionality where each minority has to support each other minority no matter how many crimes they committee. Hence, we see Gays supporting Hamas.

The more Dem Identity Politics gathered together “oppressed” groups, especially Blacks and Hispanics, the more they saw Whites and Jews as the evil ones who were responsible for all the world’s ills.  Law enforcement advised Nancy Pelosi and other Democrats not to press this philosophy since the Alt Right was paranoid and violent, but Far Right was still a law enforcement problem  – and not a social movement. In April 2008, Senator Obama who was running against Hilary Clinton in the Dem primary said unemployed Whites, “they get bitter, and they cling to guns or religion or antipathy toward people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.” While Obama was taken somewhat out of context, millions of poor whites, who were not Alt Right, became polarized against the Dems’ growing Identity Politics.

By 2010, the tea baggers made significant inroads into Congress.  In 2011 France, the book The Grand Replacement, claimed that Islamists were replacing White Christian Europeans.  The America Alt White seized upon this idea, citing Identity Politics’ claim that when the minorities were the majority of voters, they would supplant the Whites and take reparations for the deprivations caused the Whites.  Thus, the Woke threats against poor and blue collar Whites resulted in a Right Wing militancy.

On June 16, 2015, when Trump descended the elevator at Trump Towers, he complained that Mexican immigrants are “bringing drugs. They're bringing crime. They're rapists” and then he distributed red MAGA hats.  In the polarization between White and minorities, Trump chose to side with Whites, while the Dems championed the minorities.

Hilary capped it off in 2016 when, just prior to the election, she called Whites in the Rust Belt a “Basket of Deplorables.”  In early November in Cleveland, Hillary had one of her re-election coronations, featuring Jay-Z, Beyoncé, Chance the Rapper, J. Cole, and Big Sean.  Not a single country western star was included.  In response, millions of Whites in the Rust Belt voted for Trump giving him a majority in the Electoral College, making him President. 

Thus, the polarization between the Wokeism and MAGA has torn apart the nation. Polarization treats cooperation as treason. A nation can peacefully govern itself only through consensus.  For years, MAGA was seen as the more toxic by Independents and Dems.  After Oct 7, 2023, and Hamas massacre of 1,200 Jews and friends plus that taking of 250 hostages, the Democratic Party emerged as the most anti-Semitic party in the United States history.  Similar to how the German Nazi party became the leader of the Germans, the DSA (Democratic Socialists of America) is taking over the Democratic Party and imposing an anti-Semitic litmus test.

The DSA is pro Hamas and spreads a series of hideously false Blood Libels against Israel and Jews in general.  DSA proposes disbanding the US Constitution and the Bill of Rights, e.g., Freedom of Speech, in favor of a government where there is a Congress to which the presidency and the courts are subservient.  Without the Constitution, there is no rule of law.

Are Americans Backing Away from the Extremists?

Recently, there are cracks in MAGA, especially over Trump’s love affair with Putin and his betrayal of Ukraine. 

Is DSA still on an upswing or have NYC Mayor Mamdani’s anti-Semitism and Michigan’s Senate candidate Abul El-sayed’s family’s association with the Muslim Brotherhood begun to frighten voters.  

Traci Park in CD 11 won her district in the primary over a DSA endorsed candidate.  In  CD 9, Councilmember Current Price’s chief of staff, Jose Ugarte, looks like he will prevail over the DSA challenger.  Just a few months ago, Raman thought she had made a smart move by appearing with the hateful Hasan Piker and agreed to the now disproved blood libels that Israel is committing genocide and that it is an apartheid state.  A couple weeks before the election, not a single city councilmember including its DSA members endorse Nithya Raman to be LA mayor. 

Are these the first signs that Americans are moving away from polarization?

Comments welcomed!

(Richard Lee Abrams is a former Los Angeles-based attorney, an author, and political commentator. A long-time contributor to CityWatchLA, he is known for his incisive critiques of City Hall and judicial corruption, as well as his analysis of political and constitutional issues. Abrams blends legal insight with historical and philosophical depth to challenge conventional narratives. A passionate defender of civic integrity and transparency, he aims to expose misuse of power and advocate for systemic reform in local government.  You may email him at [email protected])