Earlier this year, I wrote briefly about perceptions of fairness in politics. The 2018 midterm elections recently came and went, and in some instances, are still being debated, with all the attendant lawsuits and public outcry. I try hard to look at things through the lens of an independent observer, and I continue to see that people interpret any given political “happening” strictly based on their affiliation. Take, for example, the debacle happening in Broward Country, Florida. People seem to be generally interpreting the events in one of two ways:
- The democrats are trying to rig the vote
- The republicans are trying to suppress attempts to get an accurate vote count
Very similar events are happening in other parts of the country, with similar views.
It is clear to me that, at it pertains to US politics, we now have only two teams to cheer for. Anything done by our team, or done in favor of our team, is fair and appropriate, and anything done by the opposing team or in favor of the opposing team is an example of dishonest, dirty politics.
The challenge I see is that politics seems, to me at least, to be built on the notion that people will make decisions that regarding leaders that are in their own best interests. What is happening, though, is that people’s interests seem to largely have become disconnected from the “team” they identify with – which is often based on less meaningful characteristics about us (in a political sense), like where we are from, and how our parents identified themselves.
I also find it fascinating that the country continues to balance out at roughly half democrat and half republican (negating the small-ish 3rd party population in the middle), particularly given the broad range of issues that each party has to represent.