4 ms·

> We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Yet here we are... the US two party system continues to devolve into a bitter no-holds-barred us-ag

> We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Yet here we are... the US two party system continues to devolve into a bitter no-holds-barred us-against-them battle. There are so many other foes - both internal and external - that need addressing, yet in-fighting is weakening the nation's foundation while the real enemies are rubbing their hands in glee.

antipaul 6y ago
I sometimes wonder if today’s political divisions are substantially deeper than in the past. Infighting seems to go back to the founding fathers. So is today the end of democracy? Or standard operating practice?
- vikramkr 6y ago
  We had a civil war. I would be very interested to see an analysis try and argue that we are more divided now than when we had a civil war over whether states had the right to decide whether or not black people count as people.
  - briandear 6y ago
    > we had a civil war over whether states had the right to decide whether or not black people count as people. That actually wasn’t why the civil war was started. It wasn’t until later in the war that emancipation was a goal. Slavery was legal in DC for the first year of the Civil War.
    - skybrian 6y ago
      This is more complicated. Southern states seceded over slavery. They put it in writing when they seceded and it was in the Confederate constitution. Although Lincoln attempted to get them not to secede with conciliatory gestures, they assumed the worst of the candidate of the Republican party, because it was the anti-slavery party. Although the stated goal of Lincoln and the US government at the beginning of the war was to preserve the union, the underlying north-south conflict that turned into a war was about slavery. You might argue, though, that it wasn't originally about ending slavery in states where it was established, because few people had a goal of doing that before the war. (Abolitionists did, but not as a practical, near-term goal.) The most serious political fights were about whether to expand slavery to more places, and here the South wouldn't take no for an answer - they not only wanted to preserve it, they wanted to expand it. And that was still about slavery. Yes, it was all really weird and horrible.
    - hef19898 6y ago
      Didn't some states explicitly state in their declarations of secession that it was about their right to keep slaves? And with secession being the cause of the civil war, it was about slavery from day one.
      - vikramkr 6y ago
        The very first state to secede made it pretty clear what it was all about. "The declaration stated the primary reasoning behind South Carolina's declaring of secession from the U.S., which was described as "increasing hostility on the part of the non-slaveholding States to the Institution of Slavery"." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Declaration_of_the_Immediate_Causes_Which_Induce_and_Justify_the_Secession_of_South_Carolina_from_the_Federal_Union https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Declaration_of_the_Immediate_C...
    - jeremysalwen 6y ago
      Did you read the speech? Lincoln's entire inaugural speech is about the conflict over slavery and how it could lead to secession. He says explicitly: >One section of our country believes slavery is right and ought to be extended, while the other believes it is wrong and ought not to be extended. This is the only substantial dispute. How much more in denial could you be?
    - newacct583 6y ago
      > That actually wasn’t why the civil war was started. That's misleading. The war was about slavery, period. Secession was the end result of a long train of conflict over slavery going back to the founding of the republic. A quick google pulled up this pretty well curated list (it's literally high school history material, surely you learned this stuff in school?) of "compromises" over the issues that were attempts at holding the republic together: https://herb.ashp.cuny.edu/items/show/1286 https://herb.ashp.cuny.edu/items/show/1286 Well, obviously it failed. In 1861 the slave states collectively decided to take their toys and go home. Now, at this point, it's true that, for political reasons, Union rhetoric was about "preserving the union" and not "emancipating slaves". They didn't immediately announce that now that the compromise had failed that's where they were going. And that's frankly a little shameful. But no one thinks this war was about anything other than the practice of slavery.
- RcouF1uZ4gsC 6y ago
  Given that we are not caning each other on the floor of the Senate[0], I think we are not as bad as we were in the past. In the past, we literally had a hot Civil War with American armies marching against American cities and laying siege to them and destroying them. Our rhetoric might be inflamed, which may be more noticeable due to social media, but I don't think we are at that point yet. 0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caning_of_Charles_Sumner https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caning_of_Charles_Sumner
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- protomyth 6y ago
  Read up on the election of 1800. When "brothers" fight and the father figure isn't around anymore, it gets ugly.
briandear 6y ago
You should read some history. The political battles of the day are not unique. The Constitutional Convention itself was extremely contentious. The 1850s in NYC were particularly brutal. The difference now is that you don’t have social amplification of every little utterance.
mensetmanusman 6y ago
Politicians used to attack each other with canes. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caning_of_Charles_Sumner https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caning_of_Charles_Sumner Bombings were part of political expression in the 60s and 70s. https://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/08/27/1969-a-year-of-bombings/ https://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/08/27/1969-a-year-of... Things are quite tame now in comparison. I wonder if Twitter is absorbing the small percentage of fools that used to do these things into an endless cycle of nonsense.
- gentleman11 6y ago
  Not the comparison I think you intended. The caning was a precursor to the civil war, and the bombing happened at a time when the administration seriously feared another civil war. The bugaboo [sic?] movement is working to push that envelope too. Things are legitimately bad right now even in historical context
- atomi 6y ago
  > I wonder if Twitter is absorbing the small percentage of fools that used to do these things into an endless cycle of nonsense. Seriously though, Twitter and other social media does make the FBI's job of finding domestic extremists easier.
DanielBMarkham 6y ago
"...two party system continues to devolve..." Negative. Humans form into clans. Washington's cabinet split into two groups of bitter enemies almost immediately. Clanning and being bitter and ugly is nothing new, sadly. What's new is everybody stuck in one big room yelling at one another. To attempt to use an innocuous example, I may be a rabid Cardinals fan and you may be a rabid Yankees fan. We could be best of friends. We meet once a week, perhaps argue some viciously about the other team sucking, and then move on to families, hobbies, and the rest of our friendship. Our friendship is bigger than our passions. But if we were stuck in the same room together 24/7, with hundreds or maybe thousands of other Cardinals and Yankees fans, we'd probably shoot one another with bazookas. Same people, same passions and opinions, different crowd size simultaneously communicating. The interesting question is this: at what point does it fall apart? If I brought another Cardinals fan to our weekly meeting and you brought another Yankees fan, would it still be a workable/fun lunch? Perhaps, but I bet by the time we get to six or more people all with the same passions but different opinions it would be impossible to do anything but bitterly fight. (Note: larger crowds happen all of the time, of course! But those are crowds gathered for a specific purpose under clear rules. They're not stuck together 24/7 memeing one another. Large crowds become boring crowds; once you take out any passions and passionate opinions, there's nothing left but cardboard people using pre-programmed responses in order not to get called out.) Now multiply that thought experiment by 500 million and add in advertising money chasing emotionally-driven conversations, liking, RTing, sharing, etc. That's why some companies should not exist. They don't have a business model that is compatible with the current evolution of our species.
newacct583 6y ago
> bitter no-holds-barred us-against-them battle Both sides, amiright? Just out of curiosity, you might try drawing up lists. Make a column for each party. And in each, list out the "barred holds" that they've employed in their pursuit of victory. Be specific, list the stuff that actually matters to you, and most importantly make it a list of actions taken and not just rhetoric. I think you'll find that it's not as symmetric as that framing implies.
- everdrive 6y ago
  Thanks for writing this. "Both sides" often implies a false equivalency, and I've struggled with a good way to describe why this is bad logic.
7532yahoogmail 6y ago
Wrong. Absolutely wrong. The continued divisive nature of American politics is not because of enemies or the two party system. It's incompetence and lack of backbone. Neither political party has had the conviction of enlightened reason whence backbone comes to do the right thing. Instead Washington DC ineptitude of politicization of what matters whether in practical administration, or basic fiduciary responsibility has been done. As the problems go from bad to worse DC instead aggravates it in two basic ways: - plays victim in units of outrage. Knock it of NRA groupies: the Dems aren't gonna take your guns. And on the left: the political correctness of victimization isn't helping the underlying injustice where it rests. The American public has bought into this. Shame on us. - DC but most especially the US Congress has no agency anymore. They gave up. Politicians do not do today but instead are constantly uttering cheap symbolism about what they will do next time.

antipaul 6y ago

I sometimes wonder if today’s political divisions are substantially deeper than in the past. Infighting seems to go back to the founding fathers. So is today the end of democracy? Or standard operating practice?

vikramkr 6y ago
We had a civil war. I would be very interested to see an analysis try and argue that we are more divided now than when we had a civil war over whether states had the right to decide whether or not black people count as people.
- briandear 6y ago
  > we had a civil war over whether states had the right to decide whether or not black people count as people. That actually wasn’t why the civil war was started. It wasn’t until later in the war that emancipation was a goal. Slavery was legal in DC for the first year of the Civil War.
  - skybrian 6y ago
    This is more complicated. Southern states seceded over slavery. They put it in writing when they seceded and it was in the Confederate constitution. Although Lincoln attempted to get them not to secede with conciliatory gestures, they assumed the worst of the candidate of the Republican party, because it was the anti-slavery party. Although the stated goal of Lincoln and the US government at the beginning of the war was to preserve the union, the underlying north-south conflict that turned into a war was about slavery. You might argue, though, that it wasn't originally about ending slavery in states where it was established, because few people had a goal of doing that before the war. (Abolitionists did, but not as a practical, near-term goal.) The most serious political fights were about whether to expand slavery to more places, and here the South wouldn't take no for an answer - they not only wanted to preserve it, they wanted to expand it. And that was still about slavery. Yes, it was all really weird and horrible.
  - hef19898 6y ago
    Didn't some states explicitly state in their declarations of secession that it was about their right to keep slaves? And with secession being the cause of the civil war, it was about slavery from day one.
    - vikramkr 6y ago
      The very first state to secede made it pretty clear what it was all about. "The declaration stated the primary reasoning behind South Carolina's declaring of secession from the U.S., which was described as "increasing hostility on the part of the non-slaveholding States to the Institution of Slavery"." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Declaration_of_the_Immediate_Causes_Which_Induce_and_Justify_the_Secession_of_South_Carolina_from_the_Federal_Union https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Declaration_of_the_Immediate_C...
  - jeremysalwen 6y ago
    Did you read the speech? Lincoln's entire inaugural speech is about the conflict over slavery and how it could lead to secession. He says explicitly: >One section of our country believes slavery is right and ought to be extended, while the other believes it is wrong and ought not to be extended. This is the only substantial dispute. How much more in denial could you be?
  - newacct583 6y ago
    > That actually wasn’t why the civil war was started. That's misleading. The war was about slavery, period. Secession was the end result of a long train of conflict over slavery going back to the founding of the republic. A quick google pulled up this pretty well curated list (it's literally high school history material, surely you learned this stuff in school?) of "compromises" over the issues that were attempts at holding the republic together: https://herb.ashp.cuny.edu/items/show/1286 https://herb.ashp.cuny.edu/items/show/1286 Well, obviously it failed. In 1861 the slave states collectively decided to take their toys and go home. Now, at this point, it's true that, for political reasons, Union rhetoric was about "preserving the union" and not "emancipating slaves". They didn't immediately announce that now that the compromise had failed that's where they were going. And that's frankly a little shameful. But no one thinks this war was about anything other than the practice of slavery.
RcouF1uZ4gsC 6y ago
Given that we are not caning each other on the floor of the Senate[0], I think we are not as bad as we were in the past. In the past, we literally had a hot Civil War with American armies marching against American cities and laying siege to them and destroying them. Our rhetoric might be inflamed, which may be more noticeable due to social media, but I don't think we are at that point yet. 0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caning_of_Charles_Sumner https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caning_of_Charles_Sumner
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
protomyth 6y ago
Read up on the election of 1800. When "brothers" fight and the father figure isn't around anymore, it gets ugly.

briandear 6y ago

You should read some history. The political battles of the day are not unique. The Constitutional Convention itself was extremely contentious. The 1850s in NYC were particularly brutal. The difference now is that you don’t have social amplification of every little utterance.

mensetmanusman 6y ago

Politicians used to attack each other with canes. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caning_of_Charles_Sumner https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caning_of_Charles_Sumner Bombings were part of political expression in the 60s and 70s. https://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/08/27/1969-a-year-of-bombings/ https://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/08/27/1969-a-year-of... Things are quite tame now in comparison. I wonder if Twitter is absorbing the small percentage of fools that used to do these things into an endless cycle of nonsense.

gentleman11 6y ago
Not the comparison I think you intended. The caning was a precursor to the civil war, and the bombing happened at a time when the administration seriously feared another civil war. The bugaboo [sic?] movement is working to push that envelope too. Things are legitimately bad right now even in historical context
atomi 6y ago
> I wonder if Twitter is absorbing the small percentage of fools that used to do these things into an endless cycle of nonsense. Seriously though, Twitter and other social media does make the FBI's job of finding domestic extremists easier.

DanielBMarkham 6y ago

"...two party system continues to devolve..." Negative. Humans form into clans. Washington's cabinet split into two groups of bitter enemies almost immediately. Clanning and being bitter and ugly is nothing new, sadly. What's new is everybody stuck in one big room yelling at one another. To attempt to use an innocuous example, I may be a rabid Cardinals fan and you may be a rabid Yankees fan. We could be best of friends. We meet once a week, perhaps argue some viciously about the other team sucking, and then move on to families, hobbies, and the rest of our friendship. Our friendship is bigger than our passions. But if we were stuck in the same room together 24/7, with hundreds or maybe thousands of other Cardinals and Yankees fans, we'd probably shoot one another with bazookas. Same people, same passions and opinions, different crowd size simultaneously communicating. The interesting question is this: at what point does it fall apart? If I brought another Cardinals fan to our weekly meeting and you brought another Yankees fan, would it still be a workable/fun lunch? Perhaps, but I bet by the time we get to six or more people all with the same passions but different opinions it would be impossible to do anything but bitterly fight. (Note: larger crowds happen all of the time, of course! But those are crowds gathered for a specific purpose under clear rules. They're not stuck together 24/7 memeing one another. Large crowds become boring crowds; once you take out any passions and passionate opinions, there's nothing left but cardboard people using pre-programmed responses in order not to get called out.) Now multiply that thought experiment by 500 million and add in advertising money chasing emotionally-driven conversations, liking, RTing, sharing, etc. That's why some companies should not exist. They don't have a business model that is compatible with the current evolution of our species.

newacct583 6y ago

> bitter no-holds-barred us-against-them battle Both sides, amiright? Just out of curiosity, you might try drawing up lists. Make a column for each party. And in each, list out the "barred holds" that they've employed in their pursuit of victory. Be specific, list the stuff that actually matters to you, and most importantly make it a list of actions taken and not just rhetoric. I think you'll find that it's not as symmetric as that framing implies.

everdrive 6y ago
Thanks for writing this. "Both sides" often implies a false equivalency, and I've struggled with a good way to describe why this is bad logic.

7532yahoogmail 6y ago

Wrong. Absolutely wrong. The continued divisive nature of American politics is not because of enemies or the two party system. It's incompetence and lack of backbone. Neither political party has had the conviction of enlightened reason whence backbone comes to do the right thing. Instead Washington DC ineptitude of politicization of what matters whether in practical administration, or basic fiduciary responsibility has been done. As the problems go from bad to worse DC instead aggravates it in two basic ways: - plays victim in units of outrage. Knock it of NRA groupies: the Dems aren't gonna take your guns. And on the left: the political correctness of victimization isn't helping the underlying injustice where it rests. The American public has bought into this. Shame on us. - DC but most especially the US Congress has no agency anymore. They gave up. Politicians do not do today but instead are constantly uttering cheap symbolism about what they will do next time.