According to John Edwards, there are two Americas separated by wealth and privilege. Bill O'Reilly has declared there is a culture war ongoing in the United States. For a number of years, it seemed that political talk was dominated by the concept of "red" and "blue" states. (Incidentally, the only way I can remember which is which is by thinking of how "Red" and "Republican" begin with the same letter.) Is America, then, a nation at war with itself? If so, do these conflicts threaten the future of the United States?
Aristotle understood the concept of a divided society very well. I've written previously about his obsession with class conflict with a great deal of skepticism, but in some ways I find Aristotle more reasonable than some of those who seem to delight in separating America among antagonistic groups. In Book V of "Politics," Aristotle gives sage advice for any oligarchy or democracy that wishes to prolong itself: oligarchies, being dominated by the wealthy, must reach out to the poor, while democracies, being dominated by the poor, must reach out to the wealthy. Aristotle predicts revolutions will often rise where one class mistreats the other; thus, oligarchies are vulnerable to the uprising of the poor and democracies are vulnerable to the uprising of the rich. Governments which try to avoid cultivating these antagonistic relationships may persist. Too often the middle ground is lost sight of in politics; politicians like to convey some vision they have for the country and often just present it to the one segment of the population they are appealing to. John Edwards, for instance, speaks of two Americas but is searching for the support of only one -- the more numerous one, of course. The act of appealing to one group while ignoring the existence of other groups creates policy that does not fit the whole country, and can certainly help enlarge divisions that already exist.
I don't think America is tottering on the edge of a revolution, in spite of divisions. Indeed, I think too much is made of many of these divisions. The whole red/blue state thing, for instance, has never made much sense to me. If the current governor of California is a Republican, doesn't that alone shake the paradigm? While I can absolutely accept that certain regions of the country tend strongly towards a particular political party, I don't see this as necessarily being indicative of a fierce ideological division in the nation. As a formerly apathetic college student myself, I can tell you that there are a lot of other apathetic college students out there still. An awful lot of people just don't take sides in politics -- they are neither blue nor red, but they are plentiful in both blue states and red states. Similarly, the two Americas exist more vividly in John Edwards' mind than in reality. True, there are rich and poor, but how can you lump all members of either group together so? There are some poor people who are striving every day to BECOME rich; higher taxes for the wealthy may not be their top priority considering their ultimate goal is to enter that highly taxed upper echelon. There are also rich people that support wealth redistribution; Warren Buffett comes to mind immediately. And what of the robust middle class who Aristotle adored...being neither rich nor poor, don't they have an America of their own too? Very few causes bind so strongly that all members of a group will join together en masse, and that is fortunate for the sake of avoiding revolution.
Book link: Aristotle's Politics
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Are you sure you're just "learning" politics? The only indication I can see that you don't already know quite a bit about politics is that you don't seem to be locked into one narrow way of seeing things. I suppose the fact that you ask more questions than you try to answer might say something, too, but that just shows that you're thinking. I like it!
For Aristotle on class conflict, keep a few things in mind. First, in ancient Greece there was not much of a 'middle class.' Most of the free people of Athens, for instance, were more or less subsistence farmers. There was something like a middle-class among the merchants and skilled laborers, but often these people tended to be very wealthy. Many of them were also non-citizens, so they didn't fit neatly into 'the many' or 'the few.' That's one of the reasons why Aristotle doesn't focus exclusively on economic class, but pays attention to issues of status as well as issues of wealth. Generally, though, Greek poleis were more economically polarized than today's developed Western nation-states. And open class conflict was a very important part of the development of those states. The Athenian democracy is a great example; most of the advances towards democracy in Athens took place when the mass of the poor banded together behind some aristocratic leader who managed to work on their behalf; Solon and Cleisthenes are the two most important examples.
As for our own divisions, you're right to see serious problems with the idea. Very few of the 'liberals' that I know actually fit the stereotype of what a liberal is supposed to believe. Almost none of the 'conservatives' I know fit that stereotype. Most people I know are more subtle and intelligent in their thinking than the typical 'conservative' and 'liberal' mouthpieces that we can see on television. In that sense, the whole red/blue thing is nonsense.
On the other hand, people do tend to lean very obviously in one way or another. In my experience, it's more a matter of temperament than of ideology per se. Some people are extremely concerned about poverty or the availability of health care, and so they tend to be on the left. Other people are primarily concerned with keeping taxes low or fighting abortion, and they tend to go to the right. Some people focus on problems and see government as a tool to solve them; others focus on achievements and attribute many social problems to the failures of individuals. Yet just because people lean one way doesn't mean they automatically assent to everything that that 'side' is supposed to believe. The differences exist, they just aren't quite as rigid as people sometimes think.
The real trouble is that too many people do think that the differences are rigid and absolute. People on each side tend to think of people on the other as stupid, crazy, weak, or excessively self-interested. They tend to assume that since someone takes a liberal view on one position, he must also take a liberal view on all the others, or similarly with conservative positions. A great deal of people simply do not talk seriously with people who disagree with them, and so they have no real sense of what 'the other side' is like. If they did, they might start to see that our country is really only divided up into two 'sides' because the party-system more or less dictates it. In fact, there are numerous points of contact between different sorts of people on each 'side.' Some people really are just totally opposed to one another, of course, but overall things are not quite so polarized.
As for the different states coming down on one side or another, it is true that some states just are overwhelmingly composed of Republican or Democratic voters. Texas, for instance, consists almost entirely of Republicans; Vermont, of Democrats. Plenty of states, though, only go to one side or the other by a few percentage points; the midwestern states like Ohio and Illinois are good examples. The Californian case is special, though, for two reasons: first, he's an already-famous actor who got votes simply because of who he was, and second, he openly departs from the Republican party line on a number of crucial issues, like abortion and the environment. That wins him big, big points as far as traditionally Democratic voters are concerned.
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