I used to think that this was how a Venn Diagram of Political Shitty would look. I assumed that there were a few awful policies that both parties agreed upon but that mostly the awful policies advocated by each party was unique to that party. I would often use the standard formulation; Republicans support economic liberties and Democrats support civil liberties (as if there is a difference). Or that Republicans supported a strong national defense and that Democrats supported appeasement and Détente.
In fact, as I have grown older, I have come to see how dangerously naïve this viewpoint is. The reality is that there are only a few awful policies unique to each party and that there is broad agreement upon the core activities of the government and upon the support for the beneficiaries of those activities. That is to say we have a broad consensus for state control of the society and economy for the connected, by the connected, on behalf of the connected. The only substantive difference is that one party is in power and the other is not, which is no real difference at all. Therefore, the Venn Diagram actually looks something like this:
I offer this as a handy visual representation of what modern American political reality looks like.
Praise Be to God
