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It's adversarial, because it's good strategy for winning elections. In a two-party system, there's no need to compromise. All you need to do is to beat one pers
by gorbachev 7y ago
It's adversarial, because it's good strategy for winning elections. In a two-party system, there's no need to compromise. All you need to do is to beat one person (generally speaking). The worst way to do that is to agree on anything with the other person. You want as many wedge issues as you can, if your constituents are in favor of your position. If they're not, you attack the other person's character. Preferably you do both.
It's been this way for a very long time, and it's only getting worse.
- madez 7y agoMy impression is that the adversity extends the formal political process. For example the hierarchy in work relationships seems adversarial, because of the treatment and behaviour of labour unions. In the justice system, the harsh sentences and the popularity of /r/justiceserved, which celebrates cruel and archaic ideas of justice, are another example. This is not just dumb, but also dangerous. So much that I doubt that the culture in the USA genuinly cheers these violent escalations but rather foreign intelligence services (Russia?) push things like those subreddits to make the USA look bad. But even in other subreddits and events like shootings people are happy when the shooter is killed and not arrested uninjured, and the cheering of that gets massively upvoted. That reveals an underlying adversity which makes the culture of the USA look immature, uneducated, dumb. I don't mean to judge all the people of the USA here, and I don't even trust what I've read, because all I received was through (social) media and that might be manipulated or portrayed disproportionately. The image of excessive adversity still remains after I take a step back and look sceptically and what I've been shown and told.