George Saunders Quotes

Trump is, to some extent, redefining what we think of as polarization in this country. Where polarization has been seen as ideological, it is now being seen almost as behavioral.

In addition to the decline in competition, American politics today is characterized by a growing ideological polarization between the two major political parties.

In America, we have this bell curve of certain values. And then we have another bell curve of different values, which is the Republican Party. And they're out of sync right now.

In Israel, there is this reduction of the political discourse to something that is very limited. It's as if you have that pitch that only dogs can hear. Sometimes I feel I speak at such a pitch that very few people around me communicate with what I'm saying.

Why is this polarization in America? Why is there these very different views about the world? Part of it is that there are very different worlds that people are inhabiting.

The people we elect aren't bipartisan. The American public is bipartisan.

Palin, Limbaugh, Glenn Beck and others have made an art form of convincing far too many Americans to suspend their disbelief, and they have severely damaged the ability of our country to have serious discussions about serious challenges.

So the - the part of the problem is not just the rhetoric. It's the fact that we - we're so polarized in what we've done to each other as parties over the last thirty years in redistricting that it's very, very hard to overcome your own constituencies and move to the middle.

Not a lot of conservatives on this list. Are more liberals than conservatives screwing up America?

It's a sad commentary on where politics is today. If someone disagrees with you, you're either Attila the Hun or a leftist liberal.

I mean, look, we're living in a country where you can't have a non-denominational response. If you're slightly critical of either party, all of the partisans jump on you like you're a lunatic.

In the United States I have always believed that there was a big difference between Conservative and stupid. Boy is it getting harder to prove that one by the minute.

But instead, Democrats are so bent on seeing Republicans as a bunch of angry, right wing, intolerant, unreliable extremists that they have a track record of missing the mood of the country, especially the sentiment of people who don't wake up to 'The New York Times.'

The thing that sustains a strong Fox network is the thing that undermines a strong Republican party.

Because of the structure of the contemporary American party system, every president is polarizing.

In this closely divided nation, it satisfies no practical purpose for the entertainment elite to be identified as so intensely political and utterly one-sided.

The field of politics always presents the same struggle. There are the Right and the Left, and in the middle is the Swamp. The Swamp is made up of know-nothings, of them who are without ideas, of them who are always with the majority.

In politics, good gets better; bad gets worse.

In my opinion, the polarization of our politics has mostly been brought about by the massive infusion of money—mostly spent on negative advertising that create divisions among the population that watches television and the two parties.

Newt Gingrich developed a whole vocabulary of polarization in order to get Republican candidates elected.

These days everything is discussed in terms of political partisan perspective including the weather—especially the weather.

To understand the workings of American politics, you have to understand this fundamental law: Conservatives think liberals are stupid. Liberals think conservatives are evil.

Perhaps the reason Trump voters are so frequently the subject of caricature is that they so frequently conform to type.

The struggle between right and left rips us apart.

When liberals dismiss all Trump supporters as racists, this only fuels their anger.