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136 frasi
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Maybe you've noticed.
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The echo chambers are loud.
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The divisions wide.
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Our Fox News dads and our MSNBC moms may as well be living in different dimensions.
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And our majestic eagle friend is looking way less majestic than when we last saw him.
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You okay there, Baldi?
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Stop picking at your feathers.
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You're only going to make it worse.
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So how did we get here?
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Screaming at each other across an ever -growing cavernous divide?
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And what does that mean for the fate of this country?
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Hi, I'm Kushan Avidar, this is Crash Course, and we're answering big questions on US government.
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While it's true that the media we consume contributes greatly to our super -polarized political culture,
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to understand the full scope of what's going on, we have to take an even wider view because this thing we've got going on goes back a long time.
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For decades, there's been a widening divide between the two major political parties in terms of political ideology,
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where people fall on the spectrum of beliefs about how society should work.
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Very simply, from left to right, liberal to conservative.
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And when we say liberal and conservative, we're not actually talking about Democrats and Republicans, at least not yet.
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Liberal really just means falling on the left side of our political spectrum.
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These folks tend to support more government involvement in people's lives.
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Conservatives on the right side of the spectrum want the government to conserve the status quo, which usually means less intervention both socially and economically.
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So for example, a liberal person would probably support government -funded healthcare, while a conservative person might think that's something better left to private companies.
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In a centrist political culture, most voters hold moderate views, falling somewhere between liberal and conservatives.
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Sure, you've got your fair share of leftists and right -wingers, but the largest cluster of voters are hanging out in the middle, and in an election, they could swing either way.
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But in a culture of political polarization, like ours, voters are camped out farther away from each other in their views.
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These days, we tend to think of the political spectrum as falling along party lines,
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with liberal meaning the same thing as Democrat and conservative meaning the same thing as Republican, with a vast, seemingly uncrossable canyon between them.
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But the left -right divide between the parties wasn't always this clear cut.
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So what happened?
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To help explain things, let's head over to my colleague, historian Buff.
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Just Buff, that's his whole name.
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Hi there, Kusha.
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You are not what I was expecting.
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What do you mean?
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Don't worry about it, Buff.
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Go ahead, friend.
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You got it, Kusha.
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Well, back in the day, political parties didn't really mean the same thing they do now.
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There were liberals and conservatives sprinkled throughout both parties.
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I'll give you an example.
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In the wake of the Civil War, in the period known as Reconstruction, who do you think led the charge to expand voting and civil rights for Black Americans?
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It was liberal Republicans from New England.
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And who do you think instituted Jim Crow laws that made it harder for Black Americans to exercise those rights?
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It was conservative Southern Democrats. In fact, the voting records of Southern Democrats in Congress skewed significantly more
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conservative than their Northern Republican brethren until well into the 20th century.
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And here's an interesting way that shows up.
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In 1964, President Lyndon B.
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Johnson, himself a Democrat, signed the Civil Rights Act into law.
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The act made it illegal to discriminate and segregate by race in public spaces, and it generally enjoyed pretty bipartisan support in Congress.
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But the folks who didn't support it, most weren't Republicans.
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They were Dems from Johnson's own party.
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When white, conservative Southern Democrats saw other Democratic presidents like LBJ and his predecessor JFK embracing civil rights legislation,
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it sent a message.
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Democrats became the party more associated with the civil rights movement.
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So those conservative Democrats steadily left the party for the Republican Party, or died out.
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Congress was pretty old, even back in the 60s.
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Meanwhile, those liberal Republicans decided to fully align themselves with the Party of Civil Rights and made the swap over to the Dems.
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Back to you, Kusha.
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I'm sorry.
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Thanks, Buff.
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That is just one example of how party alignment shifted during the mid -20th century, giving us the system we know today,
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with Democrats being pretty universally liberal or left -leaning and Republicans being pretty universally conservative or right -leaning with a,
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you guessed it, ever -widening gap between them.
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These days, when Congress does manage to get legislation passed, it's often not with the same bipartisan support of the days of yore.
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Like 2025's One Big Beautiful Bill Act passed through the House with support from 218 out of 220 total House Republicans and,
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count it, zero Democrats.
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The 1960s set us off on a journey where conservative and liberal have become more and more synonymous with Republican and Democrat.
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And things have started to turn into kind of a self -perpetuating spiral of polarized intensity.
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As the parties become more associated with specific values, like liberal support for LGBTQ plus rights, or conservative support for the Second Amendment,
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they attract people with those same values, which then enforce those conservative or liberal associations.
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All of this makes it a lot easier for people to fit neatly into slots along the left -right continuum, a process known as ideological sorting.
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Essentially, it's become a lot easier to guess which party somebody supports just by their stance on individual things like abortion, taxes, gun control, foreign policy,
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the environment, or importantly, their go -to news network, and a lot harder for voters to hang out in the center.
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But it's not just that Democrats and Republicans have grown apart in terms of how they think about issues.
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They've also grown apart in terms of who they are as people.
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Until recently, you couldn't reliably predict someone's political party based on their gender or race or anything like that.
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But thanks to what's known as social sorting, for the past two decades or so, certain identities have become increasingly tied to one party over another.
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Take gender for example.
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Across the entire US population, men today are more likely to identify as Republicans and women more likely to identify as Democrats.
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To be clear, that doesn't mean there aren't men or women who buck the trend.
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There definitely are.
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It's just that gender is becoming a stronger predictor.
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And so is race.
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White voters are more likely than any other racial or ethnic group to identify as Republican, while Black voters are more likely than any other group to identify as Democrats.
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So even though women in general more often vote Democrat, if we look at exit poll data on votes cast by white women in the 2024 election,
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the Republican candidate Donald Trump comes out four percentage points higher than his opponent Kamala Harris.
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On top of all these other factors, there's a growing geographic divide too.
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People in rural areas increasingly identify as Republicans, while people in urban areas identify as Democrats.
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So thanks to the combined effects of ideological sorting and social sorting, our politics aren't just something we believe, they're becoming who we are.
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So it didn't take just one ingredient to cook up our current situation.
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It was decades of shifting party ideology, calcifying identities, and increasing partisanship from both sides.
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And as the gap between us widens, it's harder and harder to find common ground.
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What do we have left?
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Gardening?
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The Bachelor?
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The Bachelor in Paradise?
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Of course, political polarization has way bigger consequences than, like, it's hard to know what to talk about at family dinner.
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As political affiliation becomes more closely linked to other core parts of who people are,
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it stops being just a political identity and becomes something new — a mega -identity, or one identity and set of values to rule all others.
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The term mega -identity was coined by political scientist Liliana Mason in the 2010s.
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It describes a pattern where someone's partisan identity, whether they define themselves as Republican or Democrat,
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affects how they see and interact with people that identify the other way.
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And as a result, we're more likely to think bad stuff about the other side or even view them as a threat.
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Research has shown a rise in what's known as affective polarization, a kind of polarization that goes way beyond whether or not the two sides disagree on policy issues,
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dipping into big emotions like distrust, animosity, and contempt.
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In other words, the more polarized we get, the less we recognize each other as 3D human beings and the more we cast each other as 2D bad guys.
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And that has direct consequences on Election Day.
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Voters are increasingly motivated less by what they like about their own party's platform
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and more by negative partisanship or their hatred for the other party.
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This isn't new by any means.
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Negative campaign ads were swaying your grandpappy's vote before you were born.
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But as Republicans and Democrats have gotten more polarized, negative partisanship has become increasingly powerful.
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More and more, we're out there voting against someone instead of for someone to the point where we might start to ignore candidates'
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actual political platforms.
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And I know we've been talking about national stuff, but the inability to divorce politics and partisanship can also affect voting habits at the more local level,
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leading to nationalization.
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Basically, as the parties have divided into these two big,
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at -odds camps, voters increasingly cast ballots based on what they know about the national party they identify with or identify against.
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Not necessarily what's happening in their own town.
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And unfortunately for us, our country, and our little eagle friend Baldi,
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all these effects of increasing partisanship feed back into the causes.
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It is a vicious cycle, creating a feedback loop that's really shi - bad.
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Because not only is it seeping into how we, the citizens, interact with each other, but how the people running our government work together to actually get stuff done.
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Just because something's hard doesn't mean it's not possible.
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Our government and our country as a whole has weathered plenty of challenges
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and come out on the other side with a desire to be better.
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And today there are plenty of people, both in the government and on the street, willing to reach across the aisle to work together for a better future.
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Today's super -polarized politics have been brewing for decades, but it's not the end.
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And there are plenty of people thinking there must be a better way.
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So next time, that's exactly what we're asking.
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Why does the US only have two major political parties?
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This episode of Crash Course Big Questions on US Government was produced in partnership with USA Facts,
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a non -partisan civic tech project that makes government data easier to understand.
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For more resources that go along with these videos, go to usafacts .org slash crash course.
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Thanks for watching this episode of Crash Course Big Questions on US Government, which was filmed in Indianapolis, Indiana, and was made with the help of all these nice people.
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If you want to help keep Crash Course free for everyone forever, you can join our community on Patreon.
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Vocabolario e note di pronuncia per questa lezione
Questa lezione di conversazione di livello B2 si basa sul video “Why Are US Politics Today So Divisive?: Crash Course US Government”. Le parole che ritornano più spesso: Democrat, Republican, conservative, liberal, identify. Questo video contiene 136 frasi e 1899 parole da ripetere con lo shadowing. Il parlato dura 12:07. Chi parla ha un ritmo naturale di circa 157 parole al minuto, vicino a una conversazione quotidiana. Il 84% delle parole rientra nelle 3.000 più comuni dell’inglese; conviene studiare le altre prima di iniziare.
Vocaboli chiave di questo video
Le 15 parole più avanzate del video, con pronuncia e significato:
| Parola | Pronuncia | Significato |
|---|---|---|
| voter sostantivo | /ˈvoʊtɚ/ | elettore, elettrice |
| partisanship sostantivo | /ˌpɑːtɪˈzænʃɪp/ | partigianeria |
| divide verbo | /dɪˈvaɪd/ | dividere, dividersi |
| polarization sostantivo | /ˌpoʊlərɪˈzeɪʃən/ | polarizzazione |
| widen verbo | /ˈwaɪdn̩/ | allargarsi |
| bipartisan aggettivo | /baɪˈpɑɹ.tə.sən/ | bipartisan |
| majestic aggettivo | /məˈd͡ʒɛstɪk/ | maestoso |
| universally avverbio | /ˌjunɪˈvɝsəli/ | universalmente |
| ideological aggettivo | /ˌaɪ.di.əˈlɑ.d͡ʒɪ.kəl/ | ideologico |
| partisan sostantivo | /ˈpɑː.tɪˌzæn/ | partigiano, partigiana |
| ideology sostantivo | /aɪ.diˈɑ.lə.d͡ʒi/ | ideologia |
| interact verbo | /ɪn.təˈɹækt/ | interagire |
| consequence sostantivo | /ˈkɑn.sɪ.kwəns/ | conseguenza |
| eagle sostantivo | /ˈiːɡəl/ | aquila |
| lean verbo | /ˈliːn/ | pendere |
I phrasal verb che sentirai
| Parola | Pronuncia | Significato |
|---|---|---|
| go ahead verbo | /ˌɡoʊ əˈhɛd/ | procedere, andare avanti |
| go along with verbo | accettare, adeguarsi | |
| go back verbo | tornare | |
| pass through verbo | trapassare |
Frasi da ripetere
Frasi brevi e complete del video che puoi riutilizzare nella conversazione di tutti i giorni:
- You're only going to make it worse.
- What do you mean?
- I'll give you an example.
- What do we have left?
La grammatica di questo video
Le strutture che chi parla usa di più, con le parole esatte del video:
| Struttura | Nel video |
|---|---|
| Present perfect continuous have/has been + -ing — un’azione iniziata prima e ancora in corso | we've been talking · have been brewing |
| Present perfect have/has + participio passato — un’azione passata che conta ancora adesso | you've noticed · there's been · have become |
| Forma passiva be + participio passato — conta ciò che accade, non chi lo fa | are camped · was coined · were born |
| Frasi relative who / which + frase — un’informazione in più su una persona o una cosa | women who buck · Government, which was |
Pronuncia a cui fare attenzione
Chi parla usa 27 contrazioni e forme ridotte, come we're, didn't, aren't. Pronunciale nella forma breve, così come le senti.
- I suoni “th”: brethren /ˈbɹɛðɹən/, feather /ˈfɛðə/
- I suoni “sh” e “zh”: partisanship /ˌpɑːtɪˈzænʃɪp/, polarization /ˌpoʊlərɪˈzeɪʃən/, affiliation /əˌfɪliˈeɪʃən/, vicious /ˈvɪʃəs/, socially /ˈsoʊʃəli/
- Parole lunghe — attenzione all’accento: partisanship /ˌpɑːtɪˈzænʃɪp/, polarization /ˌpoʊlərɪˈzeɪʃən/, bipartisan /baɪˈpɑɹ.tə.sən/, universally /ˌjunɪˈvɝsəli/, ideological /ˌaɪ.di.əˈlɑ.d͡ʒɪ.kəl/
I suoni difficili per chi parla italiano:
- /h/ — va soffiata, non è muta: historian /hɪˈstɔɹi.ən/, hatred /ˈheɪtɹɪd/
- Consonante finale — senza aggiungere una vocale dopo: partisanship /ˌpɑːtɪˈzænʃɪp/, polarize /ˈpəʊ.lə.ɹaɪz/, divide /dɪˈvaɪd/, majestic /məˈd͡ʒɛstɪk/, interact /ɪn.təˈɹækt/
- /æ/ — più aperta della “e”: partisanship /ˌpɑːtɪˈzænʃɪp/, partisan /ˈpɑː.tɪˌzæn/, interact /ɪn.təˈɹækt/, animosity /æn.ɪˈmɒs.ɪ.ti/, calcify /ˈkælsɪfaɪ/
Come esercitarsi con questo video
- Ascolta tutto il video una volta senza parlare e annota le parole che non conosci.
- Inizia a velocità 0,75×, fai shadowing frase per frase e torna alla velocità normale quando diventa facile.
- Registrati e confronta con l’originale, facendo attenzione a parole come voter, partisanship, divide.
Cos'è la tecnica dello Shadowing?
Shadowing è una tecnica di apprendimento delle lingue supportata da studi scientifici, originariamente sviluppata per la formazione dei traduttori professionisti e resa popolare dal poliglotta Dr. Alexander Arguelles. Il metodo è semplice ma potente: ascolti un audio in inglese di madrelingua e lo ripeti immediatamente ad alta voce — come un'ombra che segue il parlante con un ritardo di solo 1–2 secondi. A differenza dell'ascolto passivo o degli esercizi di grammatica, lo shadowing costringe il tuo cervello e i muscoli della bocca a elaborare e riprodurre simultaneamente i modelli di discorso reale. La ricerca dimostra che migliora significativamente la precisione della pronuncia, l'intonazione, il ritmo, il discorso connesso, la comprensione dell'ascolto e la fluidità del parlato — rendendolo uno dei metodi più efficaci per la preparazione alla prova di speaking dell'IELTS e per la comunicazione reale in inglese.