Why are We so Polarized?

Quote by DamonX
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And when I say "we" I am mainly referring the the USA, but if I put that in my thread title there are certain people that will get mad.
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Quote by DMBFFF

Yeah, because we Canadians are never polarized.

(and doesn't this belong in the Think Tank?—though I am kinda new here)

The Reagan Revolution embodied the concerted efforts of the right-wing oligarchs of America to fund talk-radio fear-mongers like Rush Limbaugh and his ilk to poison the minds of middle-America to believe any public policy for the common good was socialism.

I blame Candy-Corn, but I may be wrong.

Quote by kistinspencil

I blame Candy-Corn, but I may be wrong.

Oohhhh, don't let MollyDoll see this or she'll throw banana runts at you while I watch and use candy corns as vampire fangs.

when a guy reveals top secret information about nuclear submarines - and I guess is considered a hero of America.

just a totally bonkers weird group we live with.

I am in the UK. I do not in any way consider myself even vaguely knowledgeable on politics, but I do see a type of herd mentality when it comes to emotive news articles. We all seem to defer to the strongest most publicised argument which is normally whoever has the most money to throw at it. I try not to be, but even I have found myself having one opinion before I have looked further into it, only to find I did not know the full circumstances.

Moved to Think Tank.

Because we have a simplistic way of dividing the world into good and evil and victimization has become a social currency. Seems like everyone is very eagerly searching for reasons to be offended and oppressed. Can't be oppressed without an oppressor, so we need to find a suitable enemy. The more aggrieved you are, the louder you shout, the more tears you shed in public, the more justified you feel in lashing out at "the enemy" or doing whatever the hell you feel like with righteous indignation, leading to more bad feelings on the other side, and we begin the cycle anew. Multiply that process by 330 million people (not to mention a handful of media outlets that ratchet up and amplify the outrage for various political or corporate ends), and here we are, deeply divided.

Quote by MsStep

I think it’s a result of how easy it’s become to communicate, and how that’s being exploited. Since forever, we’ve learned our group identities like national, or religious, or gender from the tribe we’re born into. Now businesses have learned to make money from advertising by contrasting ‘your’ tribe with others (Fox & HuffPost for example) or mischaracterizing ‘your’ tribe. It started with newspapers, increased with radio and TV, and is exploited by the social media services like Facebook, X, and others to sell ads. It’s that exaggeration of those normal differences driving the polarization we see in here, in Canada, Spain, Italy, Brazil, and now Argentina.

I think there's something to this, too. We've always been tribal, but at least in the 20th century we had a unifying media. Take something like music. In the 1990s, MTV (or Much Music in Canada) dictated pretty much everyone's taste in music. That meant that if you wanted to see your favorite Limp Bizkit video, you were going to have to sit through some Matchbox 20 or Puff Daddy music videos, and if you hated all that stuff... good luck to you. Having fewer music media outlets led to more cultural consensus building as a society since there was less competition in taste-making. As social media developed in the new millennium it allowed for greater democratization over our music preferences, but it also destroyed whatever consensus-building apparatus we used to determine what was 'cool' or not.

In the 90s, a song was cool because MTV said so, which positioned MTV as the authority on cool. They were the major taste-maker and influencer. Now, with social media and the ability to tailor our exposure to music based on our personal individual preferences, I have my taste in music and you have yours, and we never come together and cross-polinate our tastes. I can sit very comfortably in my little arty Radiohead silo and you can camp out in your Guns n Roses silo and we can completely ignore everything going on outside of our individual silos. Our silos can get very narrow and specific - not enough to just be generally into 'electronic dance music' (EDM), I'm into lo-fi ambient instrumental italo-disco. Therefore we see greater cultural division and polarization in music (and every other aspect of culture).

It's not that no one is making music that wouldn't traditionally have been included in the 'classic' canon these days - that no one is producing music on the level of Radiohead or GnR - but we have lost the ability to make any song a true 'classic' (the sort of song guaranteed to fill the dance floor at a wedding because everyone knows it). Attaining 'classic' status requires everyone to know of a song and agree that it's actually enjoyable. We can't do that when everyone is only listening to their own music. Individual customization of our media means that we'll never have another universally beloved artist like GnR or Radiohead. Even Beyonce who still seems to be going strong, got her start in the culturally centralized MTV era. It's hard to think of anyone reaching that level of success whose career began in the last decade when that star-making machinery has been largely dismantled.

It's the broad agreement across society that produces culture (culture being defined as a shared set of beliefs, values, experiences, and worldviews). There's no culture without communal sharing and our social atomization through customized individualized social media feeds prohibits that sort of large scale sharing of ideas.

It's simple... Half of the people are very stupid. The other half is not as stupid. It's always been that way and it always will be. If the not-as-stupid half becomes super patient with the very stupid half then the very stupid half will take over and effectively make everyone 100% stupid.

Quote by Chryses

I agree. The creation of those 'echo chambers' by enabling the exclusion of others is polarization. It is an unwise use of social media technology, although it is a temptation difficult for many to resist.

It was a conservative who coined the term "alternative facts" in an attempt to dismiss the reality most of us can see in front of us and legitimize the unhinged delusions of the right.

https://hartmannreport.com/p/why-the-reagan-revolution-scheme

Under Joe Biden's leadership, the end of the Reagan Revolution is plainly in sight, if we can all just come together... There are more of us, then there are of them. MAGA won't cooperate, they wish bloodshed as their first alternative solution when people reject what they claim they want.

The GOP worked hard in the seventies and eighties to create this polarization... The italics are my comments --wmm

As we stand on the edge of the end of the Reagan Revolution, an end signaled by one particular phrase in President Biden‘s speech in early March (which I’ll get to in a minute), its really important that Americans understand the backstory.

Reagan and his conservative buddies intentionally gutted the American middle class, but they did so not just out of greed but also with what they thought was a good and noble justification. (You'll have to read the article to learn what the GOP of the 50s and 80s thought was so noble).

Reagan told us that the nine most frightening words in the English language were, “I’m from the government, and I’m here to help.”

Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, billionaires associated with the Republicans built a massive infrastructure of think tanks and media outlets to promote and amplify this message.

It so completely swept America that by the 1990s even President Bill Clinton was saying things like, “The era of big government is over,” and “This is the end of welfare as we know it.” Limbaugh, Hannity and other right-wing radio talkers were getting millions a year in subsidies from groups like the Heritage Foundation. Fox News today carries on the tradition.

Which brings us to President Joe Biden’s speech.

Probably the most important thing he said in that speech was almost completely ignored by the mainstream American press. It certainly didn’t make a single headline, anywhere.

Yet President Biden said something that Presidents Clinton and Obama were absolutely unwilling to say, so deeply ingrained was the Reagan orthodoxy about the dangers of “big government” during their presidencies.

President Biden said, “We need to remember the government isn’t some foreign force in a distant capital. No, it’s us. All of us. We, the people.“

This was an all-out declaration of war on the underlying premise of the Reagan Revolution. And a full-throated embrace of the first three words of the Constitution, “We, the people.”

A house divided cannot stand. By distilling politics down to a binary 2 party system the billionaires succeeded in stopping the poor from uniting. It’s heavily manufactured.

For instance, I’ll tell someone the Democrats are bad for the working class. The assumption than becomes that I’m a Republican and my opinion is silenced because I’m from the ‘others’. Republicans are bad for the working class too, more overly even. The only real path forward is to forsake both political parties.

Until that happens the polarization of the people isn’t an unfortunate circumstance that prevents us from finding a middle ground, its an intended feature of our political system. It’s working just as intended, but Trump has become an element they never planned on. He’s whipped up an extremism and defies the powers that be’s ability to control everyone. That’s not supporting his movement, he’s gained this power by encouraging hate mongering and violence. But it’s now a force that is no longer in the hands of the richest group of wealth hoarders, but one powerful man.

Yanno Rowan...the fucked up part of this whole thing is...by the time you've lived (as an attentive adult) through the previous 15-20-25 years of your life...and the drive to procreate is diminishing for you (or you've seeded 2 to 3 to 5 children with your partner (and she's doing all the heavy lifting) -- you begin paying more attention to which party is fucking you over the most - half of your rebel yelling life is over. You've got another 20 to 30 years left to speak truth to power.

This works if you're a pink Caucasian and never works if you're in the minority.

Let's create a powerful 3rd party!! We can suck votes away from the better of two horrible candidates and end up with Donald Trump in 2016.

Or George W Bush in 2000.

Or Richard Nixon in 1972.

Then let the Democrats clean up their fucking problems in the next 2-3 years after America has voted against more of the same.

Let's work on changing the system when we don't have to worry about a Trump or a Reagan or a Bush or a Nixon winning a national election.

Instead of bitching about how impotent the Democrats ALWAYS SEEM TO BE. Ignore congress and the role of Republicans (think Newt Gingrich) in outcomes for the benefit of Americans.

Blame it on Democrats as a whole.

Lazy fucking thinking.

Has never worked in the last 70 years.

Quote by PissedOffWhiteGirl

Both the Democratic and Republican parties are at fault. But the blame for this Third World shit hole status falls squarely on the shoulders of “we the people“

Bullshit. Are you an agent of the GQP?

These tactics - employed ONLY by the Republican corporatists eager to build up capitalism at the expense of the middle and lower classes in America. Here's a glaring example from the early 1970s -- unfolded onto our society by a recent (as then) Supreme Court Justice (who went to lengths to disguise his true leanings during his Senate confirmation hearing).

If you can read the following and think you can come back to this thread and throw blame for the world today onto the backs of We The People - you are definitely working against we the people.

https://hartmannreport.com/p/how-the-monopolists-stole-the-us

(...From Reagan’s inauguration speech in 1981 to this day, the single and consistent message heard, read, and seen on conservative media, from magazines to talk radio to Fox, is that government is the cause of our problems, not the solution. “Big government” is consistently—more consistently than any other meme or theme—said to be the very worst thing that could happen to America or its people, and after a few decades, many Americans came to believe it. Reagan scare-mongered from a presidential podium in 1986 that “the nine most terrifying words in the English language are: I’m from the government and I’m here to help.” )

So I think polarisation to some extent is a necessity. Without competing ideologies all parties grow complacent. That being said it’s easier to watch that happen when people are discussing boring topics and less so when it’s about life and dignity for the average person.

I can think of nothing worse for innovation than everybody having the same mindset. Friction is what causes change.

Quote by PrincessC

So I think polarisation to some extent is a necessity. Without competing ideologies all parties grow complacent. That being said it’s easier to watch that happen when people are discussing boring topics and less so when it’s about life and dignity for the average person.

I can think of nothing worse for innovation than everybody having the same mindset. Friction is what causes change.

You can have multiple different views on many topics, without being polarised as a society.

Quote by noll

You can have multiple different views on many topics, without being polarised as a society.

Sure in a rational world - but do we live in one?

Quote by PrincessC

Sure in a rational world - but do we live in one?

I'd like to think there's still hope for that.

Quote by noll

I'd like to think there's still hope for that.

But do you agree with my statement that competing ideologies are a good thing?

Quote by PrincessC

But do you agree with my statement that competing ideologies are a good thing?

They sure can be, but they don't need to mean polarisation. And while I agree that you need competing ideas for progress, current day US seems like a good example that competing ideologies do not necessary guarantee progress, and may in fact stifle progress, or even lead to regression.

Quote by noll

They sure can be, but they don't need to mean polarisation. And while I agree that you need competing ideas for progress, current day US seems like a good example that competing ideologies do not necessary guarantee progress, and may in fact stifle progress, or even lead to regression.

They don’t need to, but you have to make allowances for it.

Regression in your estimation sure. A lot of people in the US think that is progress as evidence by them voting in those opinions.

Because if we don't fiercely resist cockamamie ideas like calling coke, soda, it will spread. It's coke, like sprite coke, pepsi coke, rootbeer coke, coke coke. Biden's America.

Quote by Magical_felix

Because if we don't fiercely resist cockamamie ideas like calling coke, soda, it will spread. It's coke, like sprite coke, pepsi coke, rootbeer coke, coke coke. Biden's America.

Coke makes a lot of sense in the context of this post.

Quote by Magical_felix

Because if we don't fiercely resist cockamamie ideas like calling coke, soda, it will spread. It's coke, like sprite coke, pepsi coke, rootbeer coke, coke coke. Biden's America.

That graphic is highly inaccurate.

It's Coke!

Drink it! Snort it! Put it on your dick and fuck her pussy! It's American! Put Jack Daniels in it!

But don't fucking mix it with non-tax paid corn-fucking liquor, ie. Moonfuckingshine!

Imagine being like, I'll have some pop please.

lol