[Retra]

> I fear that the fractionism that George Washington cautioned us against in his farewell address is driving most of what we consume from the mass media.

If you have a significant part of people's attention, then people will give you campaign funds when running for office. So what do you do as a media company? Say everything you can to get people to talk about politics. You don't even need to sell advertising anymore once you can collect campaign contributions directly by selling airtime. It doesn't matter who runs for office, all that matters is that everybody hates them enough to run counter-campaigns, and that nobody wins who has to the power to restrict campaign spending.

All of this is why we had campaign spending limits in the first place.

[coliveira]

That's why the two party system used in the US, while in the surface looks democratic, engenders quite the opposite result. The nature of US politics is that everything a party will support (like global warming) will be bashed or denied by the other. Republican call this, quite accurately, wedge issues. Very soon, the only way to do anything is to get more and more money to be able to win enough support to maintain power (for a limited amount of time). It is clear that such a political system will benefit the owners of capital and restrict the voices of everyone else. We are just looking at the disfunction of a two-party system unfolding before our own eyes.

[Jedd]

Let me allay your concerns - 2pp as exercised by the USA doesn't look like democracy to anyone else. Even 'common' party politics, as seen in most other western societies, are mislabelled as democracies.