Modern Problems Require Modern Solutions | Alex Reinsch-Goldstein

Modern Problems Require Modern Solutions: Top 10 Ways to Solve Political Polarization

By Alex Reinsch-Goldstein

It is a fact universally acknowledged that our political system tends towards partisan deadlock and fruitless bickering, rather than doing anything actually important. Even the most basic functions of government are Herculean by today’s standards: in the past two years we have experienced no less than three shutdowns of the government because Congress couldn’t come to an agreement on how high the government’s allowance should be. Even though the government eventually gets taken to the Apple Genius store and rebooted, it appears that nowadays the government is built more on the pretense of governing than actually accomplishing anything of that sort. It is clear that a solution is necessary if we want to restore our government to its former functionality. Here are a few: 

#10 Compromise 

What if everyone came together and were able to offer solutions everyone could agree on? Unfortunately, the ship sailed on that one the minute Newt Kingrich burst KoolAid Man-style through the wall of the Capitol building in the mid-90’s. Compromise is dead; it was never very fun anyway.

#9 Secession

Don’t like this country? Secede and make your own! The more morally degenerative your founding ideals are, the better. Odds are that once you get your behind kicked by the mighty boot of Uncle Sam, retrogrades everywhere will continue to celebrate you and your ideas no matter how reprehensible they were–and put up statues to honor your moral inflexibility, which might maybe possibly be taken down a hundred years later. But at least you didn’t have to compromise. 

#8 Take All of Congress to Denny’s at 2 AM

Denny’s at 2 AM is a psychological phenomenon in itself. As sleep deprivation and liver failure from excessive maple syrup consumption begin to set in, everybody seems like a friend and life appears to be ok. Policy disagreements vanish in a frothy sea of high cholesterol. Put Mitch McConnell and Bernie Sanders in a booth in the middle of the night, give them pancakes, and they will be friends. I promise.

#7 Defenestration

In Prague in 1618, Protestants decided to resolve their sectarian differences with Catholic clergy by throwing them out the window of the Bohemian Chancellery. I like this idea a lot. 

#6 Appeal to God

The entire Congress assembles in the rotunda of the Capitol and makes offerings to the divine power. If there is anyone up there listening, it is only a matter of time before a godly lightning bolt or a Cthulu tentacle purges away the side with the wrong opinion. There cannot be any partisan discord if God has picked a side.

#5 Attack the Middle East 

Nothing unites members of different partisan factions quite like war. No matter what side of the aisle you’re on, raiding foreign oil fields and flag-waving and appropriating enormous amounts of money for the military industrial complex just feels right.  

#4 Having Each Party Scream into a Box, Then Open Them Both Up and Let the Two Boxes Scream at Each Other

Adds a middleman to lessen emotional tension in debate. Might work. 

#3 Anarchism

If you can’t find a way to make government work, throw up your hands and just give up on government altogether. Life without it is much more fun.

#2 Nuclear War

There can’t be any partisan deadlock if civilization doesn’t exist. Ask your garden variety Posadist (a follower of the ideology of the Argentine Trotskyist Juan Posadas) and they will tell you that starting a preemptive nuclear war is the only way to attain political change. (Like any good Trotskist, Posadists want to destroy capitalism–but they think the only way to do so is to nuke everything). Incidentally, Posadists also believe that we are being visited by aliens and these aliens are communists. Actually, do not talk to a Posadist.

#1 Do Nothing

Here’s a real hot take. When the problems of the world seem too big and the ideological divide too vast, just sit back and float gently along in the warm waters of nihilism. Let the planet get hotter. Let the big problems go unsolved. It would be really funny if that wasn’t exactly what our government has decided to do. 

Some intelligent guy who people like to quote on the internet once said that the definition of idiocy is doing the same thing multiple times and expecting a different result. I don’t know too much about quotes or anything, but I think it’s an argument in favor of doing diverse idiotic things to bring about different results. We’ve got to change up our strategies or else politics is going to stay as unproductive as me the night before a deadline. We’ve got to try new things. If you have an R or D next to your name, get yourself down to Denny’s for the love of everything holy. Please. Do something, anything. It doesn’t even really matter what it is.