It’s no secret that a significant number of people have lost their faith in our President. But why? And is this something we should be happy about? Ben and Rich discuss this, plus list their top 5 reasons they love politics. Also, we read your letters from the Sports Dilemma podcast!
Every week, Richard Clark and Ben Bartlett sit back and discuss the posts of the previous week on Christ and Pop Culture, acknowledge and respond to the big issues in popular culture, and give a sneak peak at the week ahead. We love feedback! If you’d like to respond you can comment on the website, send an email to christandpopculture@gmail.com, or go to our contact page. We would love to respond to feedback on the show, so do it now! Subscribe to us in iTunes by clicking here. While you’re at it, review us in iTunes! We’ll love you forever!
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Pop Culture is everywhere. We just acknowledge it. Christ and Pop Culture is an attempt to discuss and think rightly about the common knowledge of our age. 
Good podcast. Ben, your description of the media/internet and its effects on the people is very good and I think true. The media, in order to have 24 hour news networks, focuses on politics and focuses on the only people likely to watch politics in August of 2009 (a non-election year) and that is the more ideological. Further, the internet allows for small factions to build across state and regional lines that could not have found each other otherwise. Without these technologies, stuff like the Birther Movement or the Liberal Truther movement (that says the government, including president bush, were complicit in 9/11) dies from lack of cohesion and local support.
But I would suggest a help to combat such growing extremes: Political parties. Yes, I am about to praise political parties in spite of how cool it is to be independent. I will always be a member of a major political party (meaning one of the two) because I believe a two-party system best addresses the extremism that is fueled by media/internet.
Here’s why. If you have political parties and you have only two, then both are going to be fighting to get over half the nation’s votes. To do so, no party can play to only one small fringe group. We are too diverse in opinion and location to have such a narrow focus. You can’t win an election just on opposing or supporting abortion or just on cutting or adding to the budget. In other words, national parties must get a bunch of different, sometimes extreme groups to vote together in order to form a majority. In order to get so many groups to agree, a major party must moderate its members to keep them together. This makes it so that no extreme faction gets all or sometimes even much of what they want. In other words, the more groups you add, the less likely they’re all going to go along with tyrannical or ridiculous positions in the interest of keeping a majority coalition. Having only 2 major parties actually makes us more moderate than we would otherwise be.
@Rich – Don’t try to argue against Ben in politics. You will just continue to lose. And we’ll all be sad for you.
Also, I’d recommend reading some Chinese literature (perhaps in your next 180) before you suggest that Chinese people don’t talk politics. You’ll find that this isn’t the case.
@Adam – Support for a two party system is kind of a double edged sword in that while it certainly works to prevent incredibly bad government, it also actively obstructs greatness. I suppose in the long run it may be better to sacrifice to possibility of a great leader in order to mitigate against the tyrannical leader, but at the same time, an unbroken stream of mediocrity is a slightly bitter pill to swallow. (Granted within the scope of that mediocrity, we’ll find better and worse leaders.)
You’re probably right. :-/
But don’t feel bad about it. It’d be like trying to argue with me about the state and future of comics or Ben trying to argue with you about videogames. Everyone’s got their specialties.
Word.