Aside on Politics

I try to expose myself a little more to political news than I used to. Admittedly, some tidbits come filtered through comedy faux-news shows, but I have CNN on sometimes too. And one thing that's bugged me a lot recently is the utter inflexibility shown by both Republicans and Democrats of late.

So, while driving back from Arizona, I turned to one of the few people in the world who I truly respect and trust to being able to look at US politics from a realtively objective standpoint and I said basically:
Okay, I see all this, with both sides refusing to give ground even if it means grinding the government's ability to do anything to a standstill. This feels so extreme, but is that just perspective? Is this just a part of the cycle, or is it really worse than usual now?
My father was silent for a few moments before giving a very careful and measured answer:
It is as bad now as I have seen in my adult life.
He went on to point out some periods where the two parties have been seriously deadlocked over one specific issue of the time, but rarely over anything and everything.

My step-mom chimed in with observations from a book she had recently read, saying that congressional disctricts have been tweaked so much over the years along demographic/political lines that most of them are currently a guaranteed vote for a certain party. That leads to an atmosphere where candidates are trying more to beat out fellow party members by taking the party line to the extreme (rather than trying to court a middle ground) and less fear of failure. Just get in office, vote with your party, and there's little chance of not being reelected...

As we talked, it seemed fairly apparent that there isn't much chance of that changing either. There's no real incentive to work together and it would take something pretty big at this point to shake things up. Another party had such an uphill battle to even make the big two blink, much less actually get the power to enact any change.

Ugh. Depressing to even think about, and one more reason I feel this society is recently past its peak.

"I weep for the species."