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Knowing this, the news media decades ago started covering politics like a war, or a sport (in the biz, they call it "horse race coverage") where the reporting is entirely about which side is winning -- at the expense of figuring out the actual impact the resulting election or legislation will have on you as a human being. We tune in for "Us vs. Them," so that's what they give us.
Knowing that, it's kind of hard to draw any other conclusion: Democracy is screwed up because while agreement and compromise make the world better, bitter rivalry is just more fun.
The two opposing political parties utilize their tremendous hold over mainstream media to dramatize political distractions and engage in covert warfare and operations, in grand performances of bureaucratic rivalry meant to propagandize and divide the populace. Divisive issues are purposefully fed through the major media outlets to divert attention away from the ruling class's hidden and ulterior (and sometimes global) agendas. By drawing attention to the differences between the two embedded political systems, ideologies, races and classes, the political groups obscure political clarity and divide unity among the masses. The tactic creates confusion and frustration among the population, which enables the ruling class to increase and consolidate their wealth and power through maintaining an illusion of a two-party system of checks and balances that actually works.