Polarizing Patterns of Politics

While American politics may seem like a big sloppy mess (and it is), it actually follows relatively predictable patterns. Basically, one party holds power until that power distances them from the people that they are supposed to represent, and then the other major party makes an appeal to those voters until the same thing happens. 

Around it goes, like a turd in a toilet.

This is why looking at a graph of US political leanings over an extended period of our history is like studying the tracks of a drunk snowmobiler. It swings widely in one direction and then the other, back and forth as if through imagined slaloms. Every once in a while, the whole cumbersome machine spins out of control, wildly in all directions. 

However, amidst the chaos, there is an underlying logic to it all. According to British political scientist Paul Allen Beck, American politics follows a three-part recurring cycle. First, there is the "realigning" period, which is when the major political parties are restructured with different coalitions, platforms and financial support. Then there is the "stable alignment," which is when the political parties maintain a consistent brand identity for an extended period of time, and the third stage is the "dealigning" period, where the political parties implode only to start the whole process over again.

John Travolta's career has followed a similar pattern. 

Beck claims that these political cycles repeat every thirty to forty years. When he wrote this article back in 1979, he accurately noted that American politics was then in a period of "dealigning," and as a result, he believed that the country would soon take a very different direction. The following year indeed brought us the Reagan Revolution -- and with it, the aggressive normalization of the neoliberal economic model throughout the world. A decade later, when the Berlin Wall finally fell, capitalism was declared the winner by TKO. Ever since, the free market has ruled the world virtually unopposed, though voices of dissent have steadily grown louder, particularly in recent years. 

In 1986, famed historian Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. wrote a book called The Cycles of American History that explores a very similar premise, while also touching on broader patterns of U.S. expansionism and isolationism, as well as economic cycles of boom and bust. His basic argument is that the whole point in understanding history -- this field of study to which he had dedicated much of his life -- is to learn from it so that the same mistakes shall not be repeated. 

The patterns that he descibes echo many of the ideas in Beck's model, which also seem to have played out in real life. Further, both of these authors would contend that we are once again in a period of political dealignment, to which leading scholars say, “Yeah… no shit.”