How about both parties pushing more or less the same policies that hurt the lower half of the country and destroy the middle class, pushing voters to ever more extreme "solutions"?
No, it's not just a republican problem - though they are the worse.
We can talk of the fall of the republic of Rome. Indeed ambitious men eroded the rules before it fell. But at the center of it was the disappearance of the farmer-soldier that fought for his farm. The land and assets got concentrated into a few hands of rich families. Very few people had sufficient wealth to man the legions, of which only sufficiently rich people used to be a part. A professional army was the result, i.e. just mercenaries in the service of the state. And with a poor enough crowd, any demagogue offering to distribute enough wealth could take control of the crowd. Sounds familiar? The root is the inequality that even democrats contributed to build.
Yes the republic is in danger. The only positive point about the Rome comparison is that its apex came *after* the fall of the republic.
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/19/opinion/how-republics-end.html?WT.mc_id=2016-KWP-AUD_DEV&WT.mc_ev=click&ad-keywords=AUDDEVREMARK&kwp_0=299459&kwp_4=1147910&kwp_1=526748&_r=0
"So what’s driving this story? "
How about both parties pushing more or less the same policies that hurt the lower half of the country and destroy the middle class, pushing voters to ever more extreme "solutions"?
No, it's not just a republican problem - though they are the worse.
We can talk of the fall of the republic of Rome. Indeed ambitious men eroded the rules before it fell. But at the center of it was the disappearance of the farmer-soldier that fought for his farm. The land and assets got concentrated into a few hands of rich families. Very few people had sufficient wealth to man the legions, of which only sufficiently rich people used to be a part. A professional army was the result, i.e. just mercenaries in the service of the state. And with a poor enough crowd, any demagogue offering to distribute enough wealth could take control of the crowd. Sounds familiar? The root is the inequality that even democrats contributed to build.
Yes the republic is in danger. The only positive point about the Rome comparison is that its apex came *after* the fall of the republic.