Not very by American standards. Mind you, what passes as normal American politics would collapse most other governments. We thrive on fussing and fighting where most nations collapse into anarchy when their folks just get mad.

Look, the US is ALWAYS somewhat polarized. This is most evident in the bases of the major political parties. The hardcore bases barely agree with each other on the time of day and sometimes will argue that just for spite. This is really normal.

Party leadership varies. Usually, it’s pretty divergent and arguably polarized. But leadership is mostly focused on winning enough seats to take power. They need differences in order to distinguish themselves to the electorate. This, too, is perfectly normal.

To be fair, most of you young ‘uns grew up with the Republican Party leadership was largely playing second fiddle to the Democrats. The explanation for that would take a while but suffice it that the Trump Era has decisively ended that nonsense. You’ll be seeing plenty of real fighting between the party leaderships from here on out. It’s just going back to normal but you’ll find it a little unsettling at first.

Don’t worry, this is how it’s supposed to be.

But the majority of the electorate falls into the third category – the rank and file. These are the normal folks who don’t live and breathe politics. They can strongly identify with a party or claim to be independents but usually they just claim a party, mostly vote with that party and live their lives. The rank and file is basically the loyal attendees. They show up more often than not and they usually claim one party or the other.

The rank and file are hardest to assess. It’s usually more than two thirds of a given party and it is incredibly diverse. They mostly share the party affiliation in common. They will often share the major party platform points in common but not always. They usually have very different priorities from each other as well as from the leadership and the base but will generally vote for their affiliated party.

Until you really tick them off. Remember last week I said the underlying foundations in politics weren’t fast? Well, breaking a rank and file is positively glacial. It takes effort and incredible stupidity to break a party’s rank and file.

Amazingly, this is the sixth time in American history that it’s been done. The rank and file abandoning their party is pretty much the definition of a party collapse.

So, a party system shift means polarization, right?

Er, no, the opposite actually. Getting to the party system shift often involves some polarization within the rank and file but the shift itself is usually not from polarization. The shift occurs as the rank and file give up on their party and chase the center.

America is insanely centrist. Just to make life difficult for political parties and political scientists, that center isn’t stagnant. The silly thing moves!

Usually, we call this the ‘political pendulum’ but it’s not a predictable, even motion nor is it always in one direction. Darn thing jerks around all over the place! It takes forever (in political terms!) for the pendulum to change directions and almost as long to detect that it has changed directions. American politics is too interesting by half and a royal pain to study at times.

The swinging part is the political center. Presently, it’s lurching rightward. Don’t get hung up on directions or terminology here. The path is more conservative/traditionalist. But there is so much baggage in these terms that you cannot assume ‘more conservative’ means the 2030’s are going to be a replay of the 1950’s. More liberal doesn’t mean a return of the flapper from the 1920’s, either.

Flapper? Look it up, whippersnapper!

Understand that the terminology has to be very general because the definitions change with the political behavior. This is why most people with degrees in political science go get law degrees. At least legal definitions hold still!

So, yeah, the pendulum is moving rightward.

The Democrat rank and file is showing every sign of following the center and not their party. It’s not like all these folks come to the same conclusion at the same time ’cause they most certainly don’t. Even once they decide the party isn’t really representing them anymore it takes time to admit that your political identity has changed, even to yourself.

Nor does the rightward movement of the pendulum happen quickly. It took four or five decades to get this far left and it will take a long time to get too far to the right. Then the whole process starts over again. You might see one or two of these in a given lifetime. Did I mention that this is a SLOW process?

It’s a slow process. But we’ve passed the tipping point. The political pendulum is definitely moving toward the right. The political landscape is changing as a result.

See, people aren’t monoliths. They change over time and culture, society and polity all change with them. It’s a feature, not a bug. When we decide we’ve gone too far, we start off in a different direction. But it takes quite a while for everyone to decide to change course, hence the process being so slow.

We’re in the part of the process where we can detect the change in direction. It can be a scary part, especially for those who aren’t convinced we need to change direction. In America, we tend to get even more rambunctious than usual while this is happening. That is what people are mistaking for ‘polarization’. The folks are a bit antsy and it shows but that’s just normal as they settle into the new center.

How do I know? All the polls say we’re the most polarized ever!

Er, more polarized than when we were literally shooting at each other in the 1860’s? Seriously, if we aren’t at literal war with each other we cannot possibly be at our most polarized, now can we?

I’ve explained more than a few times before why modern polling is not reliable in electoral politics. Most polls are completely useless for anything else. The samples are NOT representative and no one can afford to do a poll with representative samples. Weighting, the technique used to overcome a poor sample size, simply cannot work up against a volatile electorate or any question that has not had a reasonably recent representative sample used when asking it.

Where can we look of good indicators? Lots of places but for polarization the easiest is bar fights.

Yes, really. Stop giggling.

Look, if we are truly polarized as groups then we are also polarized as individuals. Chats at the bar should lead to more fights than normal in a polarized environment. In a really polarized environment like the ones pollsters claim we’re in should result in a whole heck of a LOT of bar fights.

I hear a lot about increased crime in New York subways but not a peep about increased confrontations in bars and restaurants. Even given that not every altercation will involve the police, we should still see a significant uptick and it’s no where to be found.

What else can we look at? Protests! There are a lot of those nowadays, surely that proves we’re polarized.

Let me introduce you to paid protesters. Yep, really, it’s very much a thing. Think about it, how come all these protests tend to happen during the week? Don’t these people have jobs? And why are they all carrying professionally printed signs?

Most of these protests aren’t organic and have few non-activists or people who aren’t paid protesters in attendance. That’s why all those man on the street interviewers get run off from interviewing protesters. It’s too easy to reveal the ones that haven’t a clue what the protest is about.

That doesn’t mean all protests are staged but the majority right now clearly are. Staged protests are PR stunts and do not gauge the political pulse. If anything, the need to stage fake protests is an indication that we aren’t very polarized. Very polarized populations don’t need activists and organizers to hire help to stage a real protest.

All the political violence is dominated by the left, but it is fairly mild in comparison to a legitimately polarized population. A huge amount of this seems to be either isolated crazies or incited violence. Again, not what we’d expect to see in a truly polarized population. Bar fights and unplanned protests, yes; Planned protests in places and areas sympathetic to the cause of the day? Absolutely not.

We’re a rowdy bunch by nature. There’s always a degree of fuss and fight in American politics. We’re gonna scream at each other and jump up and down. Those things are normal. It’s when the punches start flying every day that we need a reset. Despite what the media desperately wants you to believe, there’s no sign that we are anywhere near that kind of division.

Every state with a secession movement is looking at splitting the state, not leaving the country. Will any of them actually occur? Doubt it, but only because the corrections that are likely to placate the secessionists are all underway.

Populist movements, unlike what the stupid media claims, are not evil; they’re corrective. When enough folks become convinced the government has come off the rails, populist movements begin. If the problems aren’t addressed those movements grow over time. They aren’t linear or always well organized. Sometimes they seem to die only to come roaring back. Remember the Tea Party? That was the precursor to the MAGA movement.

Populist movements are usually narrowly focused. That’s because the coalitions that form them tend to be extremely loose and are only held together by the mission. As a direct result, populist movements are rarely long lived. They get the mission accomplished, whatever mission they were focused on, and start melting away as the members find other priorities or just leave the political arena.

This is a feature, not a bug. Also, ‘short lived’ in political terms is twenty or thirty years. MAGA probably has another good ten to fifteen left in her. But that’s not a bad thing. New coalitions form, usually within the major parties and they start working on whatever priorities they have. Once government is back on track, at least as on track as it gets, populist movements stop needing to fix the train and they move on to running the thing on time.

Basically, normal (for us) politics resume. Now instead of fixing what’s wrong with government as the main priority, we Americans get on with using government to fix other things. Then the real fussing starts as we debate what needs fixing first and what doesn’t even need fixing. Hilarity ensues.

At five o’clock, we all go get pizza. Politics is too important to take too seriously.

We’ve got three things happening all at once. A party system shift which is a corrective informal system that straightens out our major parties. A pendulum shift which is a corrective change that keeps our systems and crazies from taking things too far. Finally, a populist movement which is a corrective system that brings government back in line with the expectations of the people.

Wow, looks so simple in a paragraph, doesn’t it? Pity it only looks simple. In truth, these are complex political systems and forces and they are not fully understood. How do the American People know they’ve gone too far and need to head off a different way, let alone which way? We don’t know. Collective decisions like that are poorly understood but they are also the backbone of every single political system.

Political scientists prefer to study polling and elections. Those are much simpler and you get to use math! Makes us political scientists feel all sciency!

We can categorize the different systems and forces, that’s easy enough. Makes for some really cool charts, too. But understanding exactly how huge collectives like the American People make big, informal decisions that are then implemented to change government and society, that we aren’t even close to doing.

We know what party system shifts are and can identify them, sometimes while they are happening, but we can only guess at the informal forces that underlie such shifts. People only come in Size Complicated. Complicated people making complex decisions in unfathomably large groups with relatively little obvious organization are what drive politics and cause political scientists migraines.

The best we can do is observe their behavior. Polarized people tend to be much more confrontational than usual. Bar fights are one expression of this; organic protest another. Passively posting other people’s comments is not much of a confrontation and not a good indicator of polarization.

So, yeah, there’s some polarization. That’s baked into the formal US governing systems as well as the informal ones. We gotta have something to fuss about. We’re Americans, after all. But the destructive kind of dissention that tears cultures, societies and nations apart? That simply is not showing up in any indicator we can trust.

We remain rambunctious and insanely centrist. We’re Americans.

Pizza, anyone?