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Alternatives to congress (lemmy.world)

submitted 2 months ago by Modern_medicine_isnt@lemmy.world to c/asklemmy@lemmy.ml

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What alternative ways can you think of to handle making legislation and passing laws that would negate the increasingly polarized political climate that is happening in more and more countries?

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[–] orcrist@lemm.ee 4 points 2 months ago (1 children)

I don't see the problem originating from Congress necessarily being polarized. I think the problem is that corporate and big money interests are too strong, and they fund politicians that will try to divide the people on social issues so that they can distract the people from badness happening on the economic front. In other words, I think we're seeing a problem with corruption that's expressing itself as polarization.

Even the term "polarization" can also be used as a trap, because it tends to be used in a way that frames politics as a linear spectrum, and your views are somewhere between these two end points. In reality everything is far more complicated. People have highly nuanced views on many different subjects with good reason, and there's no way you can easily capture it on one single sliding scale.

[–] Modern_medicine_isnt@lemmy.world 2 points 2 months ago

Well polarization can be used to measure how much the nuances affect things. Like the border bill that Biden tried to put up. The nuances were ignored in favor of what was good for the party. Bills that would be passable 20 years ago as bipartisan thanks to those nuances can't pass now because the parties have driven more people to ignore the nuances and just vote for one party or the other no matter the platform. And thus anyone who crosses the line fears they won't get reelected. And yes, money drives it as well. But not only directly. The media makes money portraying politicians as extremists to. So they help drive it as well. I don't think the money can really be controlled, so I think we need a different way to pass legislation that can somehow negate it's effect. I just don't know what that is.