3 ms·

US politics has become so tribal that it's pulling new issues in. Anything that makes it into the media will accordingly have two opposing stances on it. I thi

US politics has become so tribal that it's pulling new issues in. Anything that makes it into the media will accordingly have two opposing stances on it. I think the real question is, why is US politics becoming even more extreme than it already was?

prawn 6y ago
Could it be anything other than the internet? Social media, YouTube, ease of publishing, etc. Has anything else relevant changed so much in the last decade or two?
- krapp 6y ago
  >Has anything else relevant changed so much in the last decade or two? No. Not a thing. Certainly not the election of an African American President, the Republicans normalizing conspiracy theories like birtherism in a cynical race-baiting attempt to regain power through neo-revolutionary proxy movements like the Tea Party, or the election of an extremely divisive President who pushed the Overton window of American political and social discourse so far to the right that beliefs which would have been too insane for talk radio are now standard discourse. Definitely do not look too deeply at American culture itself and study the deeply rooted, endemic issues which have been festering for decades and only allowed to burst forth in a pusculent river of hate and paranoia when the lunatics started running the asylum. It has to be social media and cannot be anything but social media. Everything is Google's fault.
  - prawn 6y ago
    I'm not American so I overlooked the US-specific question in my response. Things seem more divided in Australia too. We also have social media... A lot of what you have raised are topics/movements/messages pushed/strengthened via social media, easier publishing, etc. I didn't raise social media to blame Google; I was thinking of what these tools enable alongside the cooking blogs and DIY videos.
    - krapp 6y ago
      OK. I was specifically talking about US politics. Although now that I think about it, a lot of what I mentioned could also be traced back to 9/11 - calling Obama a crypto-muslim wouldn't have been a valid way of spreading FUD about his intentions otherwise. There is also apparently something of a global right-wing/right-populist movement underway. I don't know about Australia, though. As far as social media goes, I see it as a catalyst - it doesn't create the problems but it does help their effect spread. Deplatforming and regulation of social media might help stop the spread (although I support the former and not the latter) but we still as a society have to address the underlying issues. Something like QAnon doesn't take off simply because it's a viral meme, but because it resonates with people's existing fears and beliefs.
- rsynnott 6y ago
  > Around the end of the year, a bomb was defused outside the office of San Francisco’s chief health officer, Dr. William C. Hassler. Not 2020, surprisingly. 1918. Idiots have been getting upset about mask mandates for a while.

prawn 6y ago

Could it be anything other than the internet? Social media, YouTube, ease of publishing, etc. Has anything else relevant changed so much in the last decade or two?

krapp 6y ago
>Has anything else relevant changed so much in the last decade or two? No. Not a thing. Certainly not the election of an African American President, the Republicans normalizing conspiracy theories like birtherism in a cynical race-baiting attempt to regain power through neo-revolutionary proxy movements like the Tea Party, or the election of an extremely divisive President who pushed the Overton window of American political and social discourse so far to the right that beliefs which would have been too insane for talk radio are now standard discourse. Definitely do not look too deeply at American culture itself and study the deeply rooted, endemic issues which have been festering for decades and only allowed to burst forth in a pusculent river of hate and paranoia when the lunatics started running the asylum. It has to be social media and cannot be anything but social media. Everything is Google's fault.
- prawn 6y ago
  I'm not American so I overlooked the US-specific question in my response. Things seem more divided in Australia too. We also have social media... A lot of what you have raised are topics/movements/messages pushed/strengthened via social media, easier publishing, etc. I didn't raise social media to blame Google; I was thinking of what these tools enable alongside the cooking blogs and DIY videos.
  - krapp 6y ago
    OK. I was specifically talking about US politics. Although now that I think about it, a lot of what I mentioned could also be traced back to 9/11 - calling Obama a crypto-muslim wouldn't have been a valid way of spreading FUD about his intentions otherwise. There is also apparently something of a global right-wing/right-populist movement underway. I don't know about Australia, though. As far as social media goes, I see it as a catalyst - it doesn't create the problems but it does help their effect spread. Deplatforming and regulation of social media might help stop the spread (although I support the former and not the latter) but we still as a society have to address the underlying issues. Something like QAnon doesn't take off simply because it's a viral meme, but because it resonates with people's existing fears and beliefs.
rsynnott 6y ago
> Around the end of the year, a bomb was defused outside the office of San Francisco’s chief health officer, Dr. William C. Hassler. Not 2020, surprisingly. 1918. Idiots have been getting upset about mask mandates for a while.