Ezra Klein on America's Polarization Problem

Kickass News

Society & Culture, News

4.3 • 1.3K Ratings

🗓️ 27 February 2020

⏱️ 51 minutes

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Summary

Vox co-founder Ezra Klein reveals how America's political system is polarizing us and how we are polarizing it with disastrous results. He explains that the Founding Fathers planned for many things, but they did not designed a system of government that was intended to function effectively in times of hyper partisanship. He points out that politics came into being to represent deep social cleavages, but now politics is the cleavage, and our political affiliation has grown into a mega-identity that is consuming our lives, making us angrier, and destroying friendships and families. We discuss how politicians and voters got stuck in a feedback loop of negative partisanship and how polarization has lead many of our leaders in Washington to conclude that bipartisanship is actually irrational. Plus we discuss how demographic threat is fueling political anger, how the rise of extremism correlates with a decline in the influence of parties, and Ezra offers a few recipes for how to reunite the country and make America more democratic. Order Ezra Klein's new book Why We're Polarized on Amazon, Audible, or wherever books are sold. Read his political analysis at vox.com, follow him on Twitter at @ezraklein, and subscribe to The Ezra Klein Show on Apple Podcasts or wherever you like to listen. Today's podcast was sponsored by Wave. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	You're listening to an airwave media podcast.
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0:30.8	This is Kickass News, I'm Ben Mathes.
0:40.1	It's almost become a tired platitude to say that the US political system is broken.
0:45.2	Americans set it after the 2000 presidential election and they set it after the 2016 election.
0:51.7	They set it after the stall deployment of Merrick Garland and they set it after the
0:56.2	confirmation of Brett Kavanaugh. Many set it after the Mueller investigation and after the
1:01.6	impeachment acquittal of Donald Trump. But what if the American political system isn't broken?
1:07.6	What if it's working exactly as designed? According to journalist and vox co-founder Ezra Kline,
1:14.0	quote, the American political system which includes everyone from voters to journalists to the
1:19.6	president is full of rational actors making rational decisions given the incentives they face.
1:26.4	He says we are a collection of functional parts whose efforts combine into a dysfunctional hole.
1:32.5	And now in his new book titled Why Were Polarized Ezra Kline reveals how that system is polarizing
1:39.2	us and how we are polarizing it with disastrous results. Today Ezra joins me on the podcast to explain
1:46.7	how the founding fathers plan for many things but they didn't design a system of government intended
1:52.4	to function effectively in times of hyper partisanship. He points out that politics came into being
1:58.4	to represent deep social cleavages but now politics is the cleavage. And our political affiliation
2:05.2	has gone from being one of many identities Americans hold to becoming what he calls a mega identity
	...

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