Politics is cultural, so fixing our democracy is possible. In the Washington Post yesterday, there was this article about how strange our politics looks to a German reporter.

Western Europeans can’t begin to comprehend our politics

From the article:

Unlike the formal, coalition-building, consensus-driven politics of his native land, the American campaign is a bare-knuckle brawl. Other parliamentary democracies tend to see it the same way. Western Europeans typically can’t begin to comprehend, for example, the boorish insults spewed by the GOP front-runner, Donald Trump. Or even Hillary Clinton’s fervent bashing of Republican economic policies.

My point is that what happens in our politics is due to our culture. It’s not due to being American or loving freedom or anything else. We can change it.

Plus many Americans disapprove of our politics. 53% think the parties don’t represent the American people. This article says “58%, say a third U.S. political party is needed because the Republican and Democratic parties “do such a poor job” representing the American people.” And this article says that most Americans think money corrupts our politics.

This article says 90% of Americans think our officials should have a decent understanding of science. Yet many people are voting for Marco Rubio who said, “I’m not a scientist. I’m not qualified to make that decision,” when asked whether humans contribute to climate change. In a committee hearing, much of the science Ted Cruz “cited, however, was presented in perplexing ways. He confused completely different geographic locations, took data out of context, and made at least one unintentionally hilarious historical comparison“. And his stance on climate change is contrary to what 97% of scientists agree on.

This article says “of over 4,000 younger Americans. What they find is that their respondents rarely think, talk or consider politics.”

So our politics is cultural, and our people disapprove of our major political parties and think our political system is corrupt. Plus, the basic qualifications of leading presidential candidates are insufficient and young people don’t participate.

Politics is cultural, and we don’t like our politics. But does this mean we can fix it? We’ll see that this is true in the next post.