[Skybird]

While polarisation always seems to have been a part of the binary political system of the US, it always fluctuates a little bit over the years. However, fluctuation seems to have escalated and gone into extremes since Bush II.

Reasons for that:

1. Bush's agenda to go to war over Iraq, the problematic issues about Halliburton and Carlysle interfering with policiy making of the administration, followed by 9/11 and the hastly antedated war in Afghanistan - of which especially Iraq, due to its questionably nature, raised a lot of opposition and meant a formidable damage mounting for the US' global prestige and trustworthiness.

2. The unfolding of the housing and credit crunch, affecting millions, plus a general trend of a widening scissor between the wealth of fewer people at the top and the poverty of more people at the lower end.

3. a black man making it into the white House.

4. a principal self-understanding of orthodox Republicans that althoutgh an electoral system means that one can also lose elections, claim for power nevertheless is a natural right of the orthodox Repuzblicans, and the Obama/Democratic reign is a violation of this right to which they claim right of self-defence - by all means. And many of these means are so vitriolic and acid, and have been so since Palin started to infest the campaign before last elections, that the resuling hate and anger has not really helped to ease the hardening of fronts that came as a consequence form that.

5. Finally, a bigger part of the social middle class is negatively effected by the falling trend of the US then ever before since the great depression, leaving few and fewer people the option to flee into illusions about the future and the assumed superpower status of the US. Americans wake up to reality.

These five reasons, none of them having popped up all of a sudden but having developed over years (regarding the fiscal and debt policies: decades) to me seem to be the main factors that have turned US inner politics into what they are now. Palin, and in her wake the Tea Party movement, maybe additionally served also as a catalyst that helped to accelerate it all. I m not surporised by the current status, not at all. In the end there will be kind of a short-lasting compromise that is so foul that it stinks to heaven. there also seems to be a pendulum effect: ignoring whether or not it was deserved, the protest front against Bush and the hostility he attracted, was immense. Obama seems to get met with a similiar ammount of hostility now, by a logic of "tit for tat". This is not so much an exchange between two men, but between two political or public opinion camps. Not few people opposing Obama's democrats today also seem to take revenge for that their loved leader, Bush II, was met with so much hostility and rejection.

The three major obstacles today are
1.) the tea party's attitude to put their own ideologic positions and desire of damaging Obama before the interest of the people and the nation, no matter what, even at the cost of national interest, in order to have at least a chance in the next elections (thats why they insist on any "solution only lasting until next year, so that the Obama camp's campaign again will need to accept being confronted by an unpleasurable issue before the elections),
and
2. philantropist's desire to ignore that they cannot spend more money forever than what they create in incomes,
and
3. a fulminant lobby work that tries to protect big corporations from tax holes and evasion options being closed. As I linked to earlier, several of the big players do not pay any taxes at all - in fact get even more "returns" from the tax income of the state, than they contribute to it. These parasites must be dealt with.

Both parties must stop to prioritize their own classic client's interests only in order to get their votes (Democrats: blue collar workers, ordinary middle class, Republicans: rich elites at the top, business leadership, military).