How America Works... and Why it Doesn't Quotes

“The two-party system amplifies and exacerbates polarization by pitting two juggernauts (Democrats and Republicans) against each other in a bitter, all-consuming rivalry—and gerrymandering, closed primaries, and the Electoral College compound the problem.”
― William Cooper, How America Works... and Why It Doesn't: A Brief Guide to the U.S. Political System

“A big part of why America isn’t working is because far too many Americans neither know nor care how it’s supposed to work.”
― William Cooper, How America Works... and Why it Doesn't: A Brief Guide to the US Political System

“Ginsburg was an American hero who broadened legal rights and protections for all Americans as both an advocate and a judge. She will rightfully retain a special place in the long history of American law.”
― William Cooper, How America Works... and Why It Doesn't: A Brief Guide to the U.S. Political System

“Obama’s presidency deeply unsettled and angered millions of Americans not ready for a Black president.”
― William Cooper, How America Works... and Why It Doesn't: A Brief Guide to the U.S. Political System

“Those who cast the votes decide nothing. Those who count the votes decide everything” Attributed to Josef Stalin”
― William Cooper, How America Works... and Why It Doesn't: A Brief Guide to the U.S. Political System

“Within the character of the citizen, lies the welfare of the nation” Marcus Tullius Cicero”
― William Cooper, How America Works... and Why It Doesn't: A Brief Guide to the U.S. Political System

“There are only two industries that call their customers ‘users’: illegal drugs and software” Edward Tufte (1995)”
― William Cooper, How America Works... and Why It Doesn't: A Brief Guide to the U.S. Political System

“The truth unquestionably is, that the only path to a subversion of the republican system of the country is, by flattering the prejudices of the people, and exciting their jealousies and apprehensions, to throw affairs into confusion, and bring on civil commotion” Alexander Hamilton (1792)”
― William Cooper, How America Works... and Why It Doesn't: A Brief Guide to the U.S. Political System

“Steve Bannon, for example, is an alt-right hero to the pro-Trump white working class. Bannon rose from Breitbart News editor to running Trump’s victorious 2016 presidential campaign. From there he became Trump’s White House Chief Strategist and Senior Counselor. His politics derive from his father’s experience losing his life savings during the 2008 financial crisis. According to Bannon, the elites (inside and outside American government) who built the global capitalist system emerged from the wreckage unscathed—often even richer—while working-class heroes like his father were decimated. Bannon doesn’t hide his intent: “Lenin wanted to destroy the state, and that’s my goal too. I want to bring everything crashing down, and destroy all of today’s establishment.” These sentiments, more than anything else, explain the Trump phenomenon. For what better vessel is there in the entire world for accomplishing this goal—for bringing everything crashing down—than Donald J. Trump? That’s why Trump’s behavior in office was okay. That’s why his lies about the election are just fine. That’s why the January 6 riot didn’t matter. Not because Trump’s base thinks those things are good for America … but because they know those things are bad for America. Trump has come. And he will go. But what does it say about the underlying state of the American polity that a politician whose central platform is lying about elections is the unrivaled champion of one of the two major political parties? Something broad and deep is afoot. Something pernicious. Something likely to last.”
― William Cooper, How America Works... and Why It Doesn't: A Brief Guide to the U.S. Political System

“Pew Research highlighted in August 2020, “The United States has more immigrants than any other country in the world. Today, more than 40 million people living in the U.S. were born in another country, accounting for about one-fifth of the world’s migrants.”
― William Cooper, How America Works... and Why It Doesn't: A Brief Guide to the U.S. Political System

“According to New York University’s Brennan Center for Justice, “The United States has less than five percent of the world’s population and nearly one-quarter of its prisoners. Astonishingly, if the 2.3 million incarcerated Americans were a state, it would be more populous than 16 other states. All told, one in three people in the United States has some type of criminal record. No other industrialized country comes close.”
― William Cooper, How America Works... and Why It Doesn't: A Brief Guide to the U.S. Political System

“Moreover, America’s inequality is worse than other wealthy nations. The Gini coefficient is a common measure of a country’s inequality. It measures inequality from 0 (perfect equality) to 1 (complete inequality). According to the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development in 2017, “the Gini coefficient in the U.S. stood at 0.434.” This number “was higher than in any other of the G-7 countries, in which the Gini ranged from 0.326 in France to 0.392 in the UK, and inching closer to the level of inequality observed in India (0.495).”
― William Cooper, How America Works... and Why It Doesn't: A Brief Guide to the U.S. Political System

“The optimal response to Covid 19 would have been measured, balancing protecting vulnerable populations with tailored health measures against the heavy toll of closing schools and businesses. Few advocated for this approach. Americans’ reflex of running to extremes and addressing complicated policy challenges with the blunt weaponry of tribal warfare—reinforced by years of muscle memory—was simply too strong to shake off.”
― William Cooper, How America Works... and Why It Doesn't: A Brief Guide to the U.S. Political System

“When asked unprompted to name the protections specified in the First Amendment:77 o   One in 4 respondents (26%) said they can’t name any or don’t know o Freedom of speech was cited by 63% o Freedom of religion was named by 24% o   Freedom of the press was named by 20% o Right of assembly was named by 16% o   Right to petition the government was named by 6%”
― William Cooper, How America Works... and Why It Doesn't: A Brief Guide to the U.S. Political System

“The Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania has conducted the Civics Knowledge Survey since 2006.76 The 2022 findings include the following jaw-droppers: •   “Less than half (47%) of U.S. adults could name all three branches of government (executive, legislative, judicial) … One in 4 respondents could not name any.” •   “Over half of Americans (51%) continue to assert incorrectly that Facebook is required to let all Americans express themselves freely on its platform under the First Amendment.” •   “1 in 5 (22%) incorrectly thinks that it is accurate to say that under the Constitution a president can ignore a Supreme Court ruling if the president believes it is wrong.” •   “Nearly 1 in 3 people (32%) incorrectly thinks that a judge has the prerogative to force a defendant to testify at trial.” •   “Asked what it means when the Supreme Court rules 5–4 in a case, just over half (55%) correctly chose ‘the decision is the law and needs to be followed.”
― William Cooper, How America Works... and Why It Doesn't: A Brief Guide to the U.S. Political System

“In sum, the two-party system creates a bitter rivalry between two mega-tribes; closed primaries sharpen the divide; gerrymandering disenfranchises millions of Americans; the Electoral College renders the votes of tens of millions more irrelevant; and the highest court in the land consistently defines the Constitution in strident opposition to the people’s majority preferences. When the resulting anger and frustration are combined with already enflamed tribal biases and then run through the social-media outrage machine, the result is as predictable as it is alarming: a polity on fire.”
― William Cooper, How America Works... and Why It Doesn't: A Brief Guide to the U.S. Political System

“Tribalism and social media wouldn’t disappear. And other defects in the political system would remain. But a vibrant multi-party system would directly address and materially reduce the biggest problem in US politics: tribal rivalry and irrational partisanship that diverts people’s attention from—and therefore undermines—the essential principles and traditions of American democracy.”
― William Cooper, How America Works... and Why It Doesn't: A Brief Guide to the U.S. Political System

“The fewer tribes there are, the worse tribalism gets. And in America the two political tribes battle each other—and only each other—every single day. This myopic rivalry amplifies bias, distorts the political debate, warps the marketplace of ideas, shunts policy platforms, fuels outrage, and stifles compromise and negotiation. A deeply backward approach now dominates American politics: hating the other side even more than you like your own. A study published in Science magazine, titled Political Sectarianism in America,71 highlighted this new paradigm: “Democrats and Republicans—the 85% of U.S. citizens who do not identify as pure independents—have grown more contemptuous of opposing partisans for decades, and at similar rates.” Recently, the study continues, “this aversion exceeded their affection for copartisans.”
― William Cooper, How America Works... and Why It Doesn't: A Brief Guide to the U.S. Political System

“America’s founders understood the dangers of bias and tribalism. America’s Constitutional framework is designed to dilute the potency of factions, or political tribes, through the separation of powers and federalism. The 1st Amendment prevents a dominant tribe from silencing weaker clans. And representative democracy, as opposed to direct democracy, insulates the government from popular, bias-driven hysterias. Little did the founders know, however, that just over two hundred years after they enacted the Constitution, millions of connected computing machines harnessing and multiplying the world’s information would make tribalism a whole lot worse.”
― William Cooper, How America Works... and Why It Doesn't: A Brief Guide to the U.S. Political System

“The essence of tribalism is to be biased in favor of your tribe and against another tribe. To understand tribalism you must therefore understand cognitive biases, which are systemic mental processes that simplify and distort people’s observations and experiences. Most people are familiar with cognitive biases and see them in numerous everyday contexts. Sporting events are a great example, where fans rabidly cheer for their team and, in the process, consistently interpret events (like close calls from the referee) inaccurately in favor of their team (or tribe).”
― William Cooper, How America Works... and Why It Doesn't: A Brief Guide to the U.S. Political System

“The root cause of America’s twenty-first-century decline is the combination of (1) tribalism, (2) social media, and (3) a malformed political structure. (1) TRIBALISM Humans lived in tribes for most of our history. The bonds of tribalism are thus deeply hardwired into the human psyche. Tribalism makes us loyal to and biased in favor of fellow members of our own tribe. In the process, it distorts our thinking, overriding facts and data. And it makes us biased against outsiders who we dislike and perceive to be a threat. This makes some sense. For a very long period, human survival depended on being tribal. The more loyal and organized the tribe, the more effective it would be at fending off threats from animals and rival clans. Yale law professor Amy Chua highlighted the power of tribalism in her book Political Tribes: Group Instinct and the Fate of Nations: “Humans, like other primates, are tribal animals. We need to belong to groups, which is why we love clubs and teams. Once people connect with a group, their identities can become powerfully bound to it. They will seek to benefit members of their group even when they gain nothing personally. They will penalize outsiders, seemingly gratuitously. They will sacrifice, and even kill and die, for their group.”
― William Cooper, How America Works... and Why It Doesn't: A Brief Guide to the U.S. Political System

“American democracy is backsliding in the twenty-first century. The root cause is the combination of three factors. First, political tribalism that enflames age-old cognitive biases. Second, brand-new social-media platforms that transform how people publish, consume, and process information. And third, long-entrenched structural deficiencies, like the two-party duopoly, that distort the US political system. The combination of these three components is a flywheel spinning faster and faster every day. Social media exacerbates tribalism by feeding users confirmatory and incendiary political news. The two-party political system compounds the resulting irrationality by pitting two juggernauts against each other in a bitter, all-consuming rivalry that stifles and deforms the marketplace of ideas. The polarized political debate, in turn, turbocharges over-stimulated tribal biases with partisan falsehoods (e.g., Trump colluded with Russia to hack the DNC’s email servers), gross caricatures (e.g., Hillary Clinton is a crooked felon), and abhorrent stupidities (e.g., Barack Obama was born in Kenya). And so the flywheel spins. This throbbing frenzy erodes respect for the Constitutional principles and essential traditions of American democracy examined in Part One—a respect that is necessary for them to function. Indeed, these principles and traditions aren’t laws of physics; they are rules for structuring society that require good faith, compromise, and broad consent to work. And they will eventually disintegrate if the American people continue to ignore them while fixating instead on short-term political battles.”
― William Cooper, How America Works... and Why It Doesn't: A Brief Guide to the U.S. Political System

“Mike Pence didn’t have the courage to do what should have been done to protect our Country and our Constitution.”
― William Cooper, How America Works... and Why It Doesn't: A Brief Guide to the U.S. Political System

“Donald Trump’s malfeasance surrounding the 2020 presidential election was the worst behavior of any president (or former president) in American history. He attacked America’s election system. And in the process, he likely broke the law.”
― William Cooper, How America Works... and Why It Doesn't: A Brief Guide to the U.S. Political System

“A criminal case requires a scalpel, not a sledgehammer. A more narrowly tailored case focusing on just Trump (and perhaps a few others) would have been much better.”
― William Cooper, How America Works... and Why It Doesn't: A Brief Guide to the U.S. Political System

“The House of Representatives, moreover, is throbbing with underqualified mediocrities.”
― William Cooper, How America Works... and Why It Doesn't: A Brief Guide to the U.S. Political System

“A former Speaker of the House is threatening jail time for members of Congress who are investigating the violent January 6 attack on our Capitol and our Constitution. This is what it looks like when the rule of law unravels.”
― William Cooper, How America Works... and Why It Doesn't: A Brief Guide to the U.S. Political System

“While these are the most high-profile examples of politicians feeling the criminal law’s heat, many others have, too. The list of American politicians who’ve been found guilty of a crime this century is long and growing:”
― William Cooper, How America Works... and Why It Doesn't: A Brief Guide to the U.S. Political System

“Never before has the whole conservative movement banded together to systematically prepare to take power day one and deconstruct the administrative state.”
― William Cooper, How America Works... and Why It Doesn't: A Brief Guide to the U.S. Political System

“Our criminal justice system treats you better if you are rich and guilty than if you are poor and innocent.”
― William Cooper, How America Works... and Why It Doesn't: A Brief Guide to the U.S. Political System