The American Constitution has mixed qualities, but has enabled an effective architecture for governance.  Meant to make sure that the people have ownership in the government, to prevent concentration of power, and accept the complexity of human behavior.  A democracy that is meant to prevent the concentration of power by spreading power and authority to the people broadly.  Meant to enable a peaceful transfer of power based on elections.  A federalist system in which state and federal governments counterbalance each other.  Protection of free speech that protects human freedom by enabling negotiation through sharing different views rather than through violence. 

 

But there are problems within the America political system that prevent effective governance.  Three problems are tribalism, social media, and the political systems’ structure.  Wanting to belong is normal for people, but tribalism effects how people process information.  Tribalism distorts thinking, and oversimplifies information.  Tribalism enables various cognitive biases that distort information in favor of one’s own political party and against the opposition.  Social media amplifies the cognitive vulnerabilities and intensifies tribal prejudice.  Social media uses tribal biases to find reaffirming views, without enough verification of the information. 

 

The American two-party political system polarizes the tribes, which enables a destructive rivalry.  A rivalry that has criminalized politics as each party mutually recriminates the legal actions against the other party with more force.  Rather than encourage bipartisan efforts to uncover the truth when there are major accusations and enable an appropriate prosecution of politicians, the criminalization of politics has negative consequences.  Consequences such as that the ideas become prosecuted no matter the guilt or innocence of a person, takes energy away from governing effectively to use towards hatred of political rivals, and deters talented people from politics.  

 

The book was written in a neutral manner to be acceptable by the different political parties, but infrequently the author’s biases become salient.  Infrequently utilizing the same tribal biases.  Knowledge of the biases does not prevent the biases. 

 

The political system is complex, that makes finding resolutions difficult.  There is little on ways to resolve the problems that the American political system is facing.  Some resolutions have mixed qualities, such as having more political parties to reduce the destructive tribal competition for power.