Culture War The Myth Of A Polarized America Analysis

In the article Culture War? The Myth of a Polarized America, Morris Fiorina addresses the issue of the illusion of political polarization. Political polarization is the separation of political beliefs into two separate extremes. The main illustration Fiorina uses is the use the electoral map. The electoral map is used to gauge which party won an election or polling. This is depicted when the states turns red if a state votes for the majority Republican, or the turns blue if the state votes primarily Democratic despite if there is a close margin. Fiorina discusses the uses the illustration to present the false illusion of political division and the influence media has on the public. The strengths in the text are Fiorina’s ability to persuade the audience. The persuasiveness is achieved by relating to the people. This is achieved by using outrageous examples and using language such as “left-winged guerrillas” and “right-winged death squads” to refer to the opposing sides. Fiorina refers to political polarization as “sheer nonsense,” and uses derogatory wording causes the reader to have a negative view on political polarization and not want to be associated with such radical ideas. This set the stage for Fiorina to present his opinion as a

The discussion of polling techniques relates because poll representations categorize people as for or against something, even when some people have no opinion. This supports Fiorina’s opinion, “The simple truth is that there is no culture war in the United states…”. The discussion of political influence is relevant because everyone has different opinions about everything. The different opinions are based upon political influences the person has encountered throughout their life. The discussion of media types and power is important because media influences the opinion of the