Why do political issues become such life & death issues in our modern world?

Well, one of the big issues today is, are we going to remain a Republic or become a trumpian Dictatorship?
And this is a life or death issue. Keep in mind, if we lose our Democracy, then we won't be able to vote out the "servants of the people." We'll be at their mercy, like the people in North Korea.

[quote]Why do political issues become such life & death issues in our modern world?[/quote]

Because they are. Politicians make war and peace decisions and have always done that.

I hear you, and maybe the party system is [i]a[/i] problem, but binary thinking, e.g., , believing that there's only one cause for things, and ignoring other contributing factors (causes), is another problem, imo.

You seem to be blaming politcians and parties for overemphasizing issues, and they do, but another contributing factor is people desperately looking for simple solutions.

Politics, government is an essential part of human society. Obviously telling us to hate government wasn't for our own good.
Idiocracy. Yeah, baby!

Here's the issue:

[quote]Politicians are temporary "servants of the people" [/quote]

This partial truth is becoming a full lie the moment that even the "temporary" part was annoying some to the point of instigating riots.