Date: 2025-08-21 Page is: DBtxt003.php txt00028876
US SYSTEMIC DYSFUNCTION
POLITICAL POLARIZATION
NYU School of Law: The Forum: The Moral Psychology of Political
Polarization: Many Causes and a Few Possible Responses
POLITICAL POLARIZATION
NYU School of Law: The Forum: The Moral Psychology of Political
Polarization: Many Causes and a Few Possible Responses
Original article: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1OnTTWkAv_E&t=322s
NYU School of Law
Nov 21, 2014
23.2K subscribers ... 12,008 views ... 154 likes
The Milbank Tweed Forum: The Moral Psychology of Political Polarization: Many Causes and a Few Possible Responses
The results of the just-concluded midterm elections capture just how polarized our nation is politically. What are the roots of these divisions and how might we learn to navigate them and find our way out of political gridlock?
NYU Stern Professor Jonathan Haidt, a social psychologist whose research examines the intuitive foundations of morality, spoke on the subject at the weekly Forum. His most recent book is the New York Times bestseller The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion, in which he offers an account of the origins of the human moral sense and shows how variations in moral intuitions can help explain the American culture war between left and right. Fresh off arguing a US Supreme Court case on racial redistricting (a topic that overlaps with polarization), Professor Richard Pildes offered commentary.
This event took place on November 19, 2014.
Peter Burgess COMMENTARY
I came across this video in July 2025, more than ten years after the event took place.
The presentation and discussion has aged well. The issues in 2025 are similar to 2014 except bigger and more urgewnt.
When I was growing up in the UK in the 1940 and 1950s I became very aware of the cost of war. Though Britain was on the winning side, the cost was huge. Fifteen years after the end of WWII, many essential items for day to day living were still 'rationed'.
There was a huge difference between the impact or WWII on the British economy and the impact on the US economy. A massive amount of wealth changed ownership from Britain to the United States during the war years and into the post war period. Most of Britain's pre-war gold reserves were shipped to the United States to pay for military suplies and essential items like food during the war and afterwards.
I am reminded of these old times because the United States under Trump leadership is going to be faced with a massively changed world economy that I don't think he understands. For many decades post WWII, the United States played an essential role and was in a position to teke advantage of its economic abundance. Over time this has changed, and other countries now have important positions in almost all supply changes that used to be dominated by the USA.
The world has changed! Trump has not.
And Trump is not very smart! Neither Trump nor many in his administration have much idea how fragile the US economy has become and how global supply chains will likely change in the near future to the detriment of the USA.
I have experience going back decades as a corporate cost accountant. At this point in time most everything can be produced outside the United States at a lower cost than in the United States. While the law has worked to the benefit of the USA up to the present time, it will likely break if the USA tries to bully its way forward without appropriate compromises.
For the first time since WWII the USA is in a very weak competitive position ... and Trump is making things worse!
The discussion at NYU a decade ago has aged well ... with the trends identified in 2014 now moving considerably faster.
As long as Trump retains any power at all, things are likely to get worse for the uSA rather than better!
Even the US military is a problem. Everythng the US military does is very costly ... not so much because it needs to be, but moreso that it has been designed that way. Military contractors in the USA rarely optimise for cost effectiveness. Years ago ... decades ago ... I was tasked to rework a military product for profitable sale into the civilian market. It was an 'eye-opener' ... a civilian version of the military product needed to be an order of magnitude lower cost in order to be competitive in the civilian marketplace! The US military is VERY costly ... with a lot of this cost being a benefit all the wrong players ... a problem identified by President Eisenauer when he was still Presedientin the 1950s!
Peter Burgess