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You could post this as a satire and it would work as is. Both sides see each other becoming more extreme & polarizing. It may not be apparent because it's very

You could post this as a satire and it would work as is. Both sides see each other becoming more extreme & polarizing. It may not be apparent because it's very easy to ignore sensationalism from your own side as sensationalist individuals that don't reflect the party/group itself while sensationalism from the otherside is endemic of that sides philosophy. The 'right' ran something about the "tan suit" but I am also sure I have read half a dozen articles about poorly fitting suits and bad fake hair.

mikepurvis 6y ago
But where is the left's QAnon? Where is the left's birtherism? Where is the left's Marjorie Taylor Greene? Election fraud claims that drag on for months, enabled by major party players who see an opportunity and refuse to clearly shut it down, culminating in an armed assault that some now claim as a false flag operation? Where is the left's Lindsey Graham, a pathetic husk of a man who waffles between saying "I'm out" and then continues to double down? Of course the tan suit "scandal" was trivial bullshit, but that's the whole point, that that's the source material that Fox News is working with to drum up this kind of outrage— the rest is pure fabrications, a self-feeding cycle where Fox provides a legitimizing platform for it, which then generates the interest and demand for "coverage". So it may well be that both sides see the other as extreme and polarizing, but it's important to not actually equate them, because that is super unfair when one of the sides is in a state of denial about basic reality.
- axaxs 6y ago
  The left literally treated the last 4 years as an election fraud scandal that they refused to shut down. I'm generally in the center, but dislike when one party treats the other as solely being the problem. While I can't think of a specific qanon level of craziness on that side, they have their own, different craziness.
  - mikepurvis 6y ago
    "The left literally treated the last 4 years as an election fraud scandal that they refused to shut down." Please cite sources for Democratic senators, congresspeople, and/or party officials advancing these claims.
    - axaxs 6y ago
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Efforts_to_impeach_Donald_Trump https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Efforts_to_impeach_Donald_Trum... Has plenty of names and links to read all about it, if you missed it.
      - _underfl0w_ 6y ago
        Attempting to impeach someone based on their actions != falsely claiming election fraud in the face of evidencd (and attempting to coerce others e.g. Pence into doing so)
    - throwaway3699 6y ago
      The alphabet soup networks pushing the Russia hoax for 4 years didn't convince you?
      - dane-pgp 6y ago
        Do "the alphabet soup networks" include the Senate Intelligence Committee? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Senate_Intelligence_Committee_report_on_Russian_interference_in_the_2016_United_States_presidential_election https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Senate_Intelligence_Committee_...
      - triceratops 6y ago
        What was the hoax? The Mueller report had an entire section about Russian meddling. The investigation also indicted a number of Russian nationals.
        throwaway3699 6y ago
        I'm not saying there wasn't an investigation, but I'm not convinced by the evidence after reading that document. The biggest thing that I saw was the ad spend was very small (<$1M)
  - munk-a 6y ago
    That's an interesting view to have - I know that at the start of Trump's term there was a lot of discussion about Comey's involvement and Russia that I really just wish people would shut up about. Most of that died down after the Mueller report. And by the end of his term Trump was (IMO) pretty blatantly trying to subvert the election. Where do you get your news, if I may ask?
    - axaxs 6y ago
      The Mueller report was released in 2019, 3 years after the election. Perhaps 4 years was incorrect of me to state. If your last question is in earnest...I guess nowhere in particular and yet everywhere. I don't particularly like any of the news media companies, as I find they all have a blatant bias.
      - loopz 6y ago
        There is a disturbing trend of news media. It's how they have to turn a profit, and starting to quote social media. That is not reporting, and news should be balanced, not just opinions and rage. However, in front of Tea Party, Trumpism and coup attempt, sadly outrage and calls for accountability are rightly justified.
  - hooande 6y ago
    You couldn't think of an equivalent of qanon for the left, so you just elevated some minor critique until it satisfied your desire to say "both sides" and shut down any actual analysis. THIS is the problem!
  - eyelidlessness 6y ago
    > The left literally treated the last 4 years as an election fraud scandal that they refused to shut down. Hi, I'm "the left", at least for the purposes of this conversation. The left did no such thing. I tried to get us to do so because there was clearly a fraudulent election. But it didn't matter what I said, the left didn't want to hear none of it. They were more concerned (legitimately) about Russophobia and not giving too much legitimacy to the alphabet soup agencies.
- Aunche 6y ago
  I agree that one side is worse than the other, but people tend to think the difference between their own side and the opposition is 20 to 100. In reality the difference is probably closer to 60 to 70.
  - eyelidlessness 6y ago
    What does this even mean??? These numbers don’t mean anything. You’re talking about people who’ve been intolerant of hate and shut down less of it than they should have, vs people who’ve tolerated or even welcomed and amplified hate because it suits them. Who fucking cares if they’re 10% apart? The difference is brownshirts or not.
- disposekinetics 6y ago
  I am not on either side in the US, there isn't a party that represents me, but something stuck out to me. >culminating in an armed assault that some now claim as a false flag operation? We had to hear all summer about how it was really Boogaloo Boys/White Nationalists/The CIA and not BLM rioting. This is something I see as endemic to all sides. I think this must be perspective based as everything in the above list has a mirror image from the other party, and in both cases it seems like a fair criticism.
  - eyelidlessness 6y ago
    > We had to hear all summer about how it was really Boogaloo Boys/White Nationalists/The CIA and not BLM rioting. I’m sorry the reporting is so bad. Here in the US as a leftist I saw most of my friends posting “in defense of rioting”, “property isn’t people”, and quoting MLK on the lessons of riots. The right just thought they could stage a coup and also get away without any criticism for trying.
    - esyir 6y ago
      Interesting take. The blm riots were supported and approved by both the mainstream levers of power (media, government) and continue to be so. They were both larger in scale and duration. The capitol riots were both smaller in scale and, more importantly generally condemned by their sides equivalent levers of power. I actually consider the right response here more reasonable than the left.
    - Red_Leaves_Flyy 6y ago
      If black lives mattered and politicians represented their constituents these riots would not have occurred. I expect more. Until the consequences of treating minorities as subhuman directly effect billionaires and their very lives nothing will change.
  - dane-pgp 6y ago
    > We had to hear all summer about how it was ... not BLM rioting. I think an important distinction here is that the riots had no political goal to them, and had almost no support from BLM figures themselves, and even less from national politicians. Indeed, if your goal is for the police to be defunded, then the last thing you would want to do is create a situation where people fear for their lives and their property and need the protection of the police. Contrast that with the goals of the people storming the Capitol and you'll see that they had national politicians who also wanted to interrupt the joint session of Congress and prevent (some of) the electoral votes from being counted, to ultimately change the outcome of the election.
- jpxw 6y ago
  Russiagate and the “piss dossier”?
- rayiner 6y ago
  Extinction rebellion? Members of Congress who think that climate change will destroy the world within 10 years?
  - scythe 6y ago
    >Extinction rebellion? I would say the key difference about the left is that the supporters of these kinds of movements rarely get much support at the top. Even Bernie Sanders and AOC have stepped back from supporting certain movements after criticism (I'm thinking of Venezuela), while such contrition on the right is rare (until the Capitol sedition). >Members of Congress who think that climate change will destroy the world within 10 years? Who, precisely? And what did they say?
    - rayiner 6y ago
      AOC: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/onpolitics/2019/01/22/ocasio-cortez-climate-change-alarm/2642481002/ https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/onpolitics/2019... > 'The world is going to end in 12 years if we don't address climate change,' Ocasio-Cortez says
      - scythe 6y ago
        Right, so that generally falls into the category I identified in the first comment: stuff that people on the left say in the heat of the moment, but don't stick to. She was, at the time, being interviewed by the notoriously fiery Ta-Nehisi Coates. It's kind of like comparing Elon Musk smoking weed on Joe Rogan to someone who smokes weed at work every day. I really doubt AOC actually believed at any time that the world would end in 2030 (cf. Paris Agreement's 2030 Agenda).
        zests 6y ago
        That's quite the stretch. We can lawyer our way out of anything if we try hard enough.
        6y ago
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- legostormtroopr 6y ago
  > But where is the left's QAnon? Twitter How much time was devoted to Trump and his "two scoops of ice cream", "dumping seed in the koi fish pond" or any of the hundreds of miniscule things he did - most of which were just mandanities, framed into a false lens and then magnified. I'm not saying that Trump was good, just that there was so much noise from social media about how absolutely everything he did was not just "bad", but the "worst ever". A lot of left-leaning source went into an absolute frenzy about anything and everything he did to try and spin it as the worst.
  - mikepurvis 6y ago
    Okay but "noise from social media" is very different from leading politicians and entire news organizations playing along with dangerous stuff like Trump's COVID denialism for months on end. Trump is almost certainly among the bottom 3-4 worst US presidents in history [1]. Was each individual action the "worst ever"? No, of course not. But the sum of the pieces was indeed ghastly, and it's ridiculous to claim that these are just gaffs like any public figure has, and once everyone calms down and stops blowing things out of proportion he will be regarded as just another normal, middle-of-the-road president. [1]: https://www.cnn.com/2021/01/15/politics/trump-best-worst-presidents-ranked/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2021/01/15/politics/trump-best-worst-pre...
    - cudgy 6y ago
      So, do you rate GW Bush better or worse than Trump? Why wasn’t the left all in a lather about killing 100s of thousands of innocent Iraquis based on false evidence of Chemical weapons stockpiles? Why not impeach Bush then? Why not now?
      - mikepurvis 6y ago
        If nothing else, Bush already served two terms.
        cudgy 6y ago
- CapricornNoble 6y ago
  >>>But where is the left's QAnon? Working at MSNBC? [1] The far-left conspiracy groups probably got really quiet after one of their own tried to murder Republican Congressmen. Did everyone just forget about that? [2] *On May 22, Hodgkinson wrote "Trump is a Traitor. Trump Has Destroyed Our Democracy. It's Time to Destroy Trump & Co." above his repost of a Change.org petition demanding "the legal removal" of Trump and Vice President Mike Pence for "treason". He belonged to numerous political Facebook groups, including those named "Terminate the Republican Party", "The Road To Hell Is Paved With Republicans", and "Donald Trump is not my President."* [1]https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/russia-has-been-cultivating-trump-as-an-asset-for-40-years-former-kgb-spy-says/ar-BB1dd1UA https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/russia-has-been-cult... [2]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2017_Congressional_baseball_shooting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2017_Congressional_baseball_sh...
eyelidlessness 6y ago
This is something I intentionally made available before I edited. But the clarification is important. “Both sides” certainly observe the same emotions in that respect. But one of the two peddles it and the other dabbles. I’ve seen people in both camps share awful, careless, unprincipled attacks. But one thing I’ve seen that’s an important distinction is that I’ve seen one side self-correct (eg a routine renouncement of body shaming and reminding people on the same side not to lower themselves to that), and the other side banish anyone who tries. I guess that’s the other important (and still not political) distinction: one party and its cohort is self-reflective and has an internal corrective feedback loop. That broke down in the other over the last decade, quite notably after a very honest and sincere post-loss retrospective/postmortem.
- zests 6y ago
  Do you base your opinion of each side off of what you see on the internet? "On the internet, nobody knows you're a dog."
  - eyelidlessness 6y ago
    Nope I’ve definitely grown up in and road tripped/train tripped red-purple country (edit: and I’m white trash and present male so it’s an easy pass) so I know what people really think. I’ve also been on the receiving end of violence by standing up and confronting them.
    - geofft 6y ago
      This is a key point - many folks who are left-leaning grew up in right-leaning areas, have right-leaning extended family, etc. We aren't extrapolating from the internet. There are a number of structural asymmetries between left and right, and it does no favors to any truth-based cause to assume that left and right are mirrors, as if their names required that.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
0xB31B1B 6y ago
The thing is, we have the data, DW nominate is a solid algorithm that can demonstrate rightward/leftward political movement over time. There has been a lot of actual scientific research on this, and over the last 30 years the democratic party has mostly remained the same with a slight left trend, while the republicans have become moved much much further right. https://voteview.com/congress/senate https://voteview.com/congress/senate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NOMINATE_(scaling_method) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NOMINATE_(scaling_method) https://voteview.com/congress/senate https://voteview.com/congress/senate
- edbob 6y ago
  > over the last 30 years the democratic party has mostly remained the same with a slight left trend, while the republicans have become moved much much further right. On visual comparison between the 97th Congress and the 116 Congress, it's obvious that the Democrats have moved pretty far downwards as well as bit leftwards. That is, they became much more liberal on the "Other Votes" dimension while moving much less on the "Economic/Redistributive" axis. Interestingly, this leaves Democrats and Republicans with a pretty similar distribution along that axis. I don't think this is a good method for comparing different time periods. In the 36th and 37th Congresses, the diehard pro-slavery Democrats versus the abolitionist Republicans, the graphs put the parties in the same relative positions as today and make the parties look less divided than today, even though the Democrats felt like they could no longer co-exist and seceded from the Union. It should also be obvious that the slave-economy Democratic Party was vastly different than the modern-day party, but the graphs don't reflect that.
  - pgcj_poster 6y ago
    I'm wondering what the "Other Votes" dimensions is even capturing, as Democrats seem to have been more conservative than Republicans on it up until the 2010s.
- brnt 6y ago
  That always surprises me, especially for a crowd that prides itself on data driven approaches such as this one. Use a source like the extremely well-researched Dark Money and it'll be evident that the GOP fundamentally isn't representative of the people, it doesn't even pretend to be, and if you listen in the right forums, their leaders don't even claim that. Yet, people, trained in data driven thinking or not, are boxed in into thinking with their guts, how they 'identify', and are taken for a run. Maybe the strategy of making you question the very possibility of even knowing truths about political actors is working as well as the instigators of such theories think they would.
lldbg 6y ago
Your post made me remember [0]. Can you get any more polarizing than suggesting that your opponent will start the nuclear anhilatiom of the modern world? [0]: https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2021/01/08/pelosi-prevent-trump-from-launching-nuclear-strike.html https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2021/01/08/pelosi-prevent-trump-fro...
- eyelidlessness 6y ago
  Is it that polarizing to /suggest/? I for very honest and reasonable reasons (one of his most prominent political positions prior to his presidency was aggressive use of nuclear power) worried he would and flinched anytime I saw unexpected aircraft for the last few months.
jjeaff 6y ago
Orange man has constantly been made fun of for his dumpy appearance but Obama was accused of lack of respect of the office of the president (including by orange man) for wearing a tan suit. He wasn't even the first president to wear a tan suit.
pelliphant 6y ago
Yes, but the polarizing figures on one side are mostly random people on reddit, on the other side, it's the party leadership...

mikepurvis 6y ago

But where is the left's QAnon? Where is the left's birtherism? Where is the left's Marjorie Taylor Greene? Election fraud claims that drag on for months, enabled by major party players who see an opportunity and refuse to clearly shut it down, culminating in an armed assault that some now claim as a false flag operation? Where is the left's Lindsey Graham, a pathetic husk of a man who waffles between saying "I'm out" and then continues to double down? Of course the tan suit "scandal" was trivial bullshit, but that's the whole point, that that's the source material that Fox News is working with to drum up this kind of outrage— the rest is pure fabrications, a self-feeding cycle where Fox provides a legitimizing platform for it, which then generates the interest and demand for "coverage". So it may well be that both sides see the other as extreme and polarizing, but it's important to not actually equate them, because that is super unfair when one of the sides is in a state of denial about basic reality.

axaxs 6y ago
The left literally treated the last 4 years as an election fraud scandal that they refused to shut down. I'm generally in the center, but dislike when one party treats the other as solely being the problem. While I can't think of a specific qanon level of craziness on that side, they have their own, different craziness.
- mikepurvis 6y ago
  "The left literally treated the last 4 years as an election fraud scandal that they refused to shut down." Please cite sources for Democratic senators, congresspeople, and/or party officials advancing these claims.
  - axaxs 6y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Efforts_to_impeach_Donald_Trump https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Efforts_to_impeach_Donald_Trum... Has plenty of names and links to read all about it, if you missed it.
    - _underfl0w_ 6y ago
      Attempting to impeach someone based on their actions != falsely claiming election fraud in the face of evidencd (and attempting to coerce others e.g. Pence into doing so)
  - throwaway3699 6y ago
    The alphabet soup networks pushing the Russia hoax for 4 years didn't convince you?
    - dane-pgp 6y ago
      Do "the alphabet soup networks" include the Senate Intelligence Committee? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Senate_Intelligence_Committee_report_on_Russian_interference_in_the_2016_United_States_presidential_election https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Senate_Intelligence_Committee_...
    - triceratops 6y ago
      What was the hoax? The Mueller report had an entire section about Russian meddling. The investigation also indicted a number of Russian nationals.
      - throwaway3699 6y ago
        I'm not saying there wasn't an investigation, but I'm not convinced by the evidence after reading that document. The biggest thing that I saw was the ad spend was very small (<$1M)
- munk-a 6y ago
  That's an interesting view to have - I know that at the start of Trump's term there was a lot of discussion about Comey's involvement and Russia that I really just wish people would shut up about. Most of that died down after the Mueller report. And by the end of his term Trump was (IMO) pretty blatantly trying to subvert the election. Where do you get your news, if I may ask?
  - axaxs 6y ago
    The Mueller report was released in 2019, 3 years after the election. Perhaps 4 years was incorrect of me to state. If your last question is in earnest...I guess nowhere in particular and yet everywhere. I don't particularly like any of the news media companies, as I find they all have a blatant bias.
    - loopz 6y ago
      There is a disturbing trend of news media. It's how they have to turn a profit, and starting to quote social media. That is not reporting, and news should be balanced, not just opinions and rage. However, in front of Tea Party, Trumpism and coup attempt, sadly outrage and calls for accountability are rightly justified.
- hooande 6y ago
  You couldn't think of an equivalent of qanon for the left, so you just elevated some minor critique until it satisfied your desire to say "both sides" and shut down any actual analysis. THIS is the problem!
- eyelidlessness 6y ago
  > The left literally treated the last 4 years as an election fraud scandal that they refused to shut down. Hi, I'm "the left", at least for the purposes of this conversation. The left did no such thing. I tried to get us to do so because there was clearly a fraudulent election. But it didn't matter what I said, the left didn't want to hear none of it. They were more concerned (legitimately) about Russophobia and not giving too much legitimacy to the alphabet soup agencies.
Aunche 6y ago
I agree that one side is worse than the other, but people tend to think the difference between their own side and the opposition is 20 to 100. In reality the difference is probably closer to 60 to 70.
- eyelidlessness 6y ago
  What does this even mean??? These numbers don’t mean anything. You’re talking about people who’ve been intolerant of hate and shut down less of it than they should have, vs people who’ve tolerated or even welcomed and amplified hate because it suits them. Who fucking cares if they’re 10% apart? The difference is brownshirts or not.
disposekinetics 6y ago
I am not on either side in the US, there isn't a party that represents me, but something stuck out to me. >culminating in an armed assault that some now claim as a false flag operation? We had to hear all summer about how it was really Boogaloo Boys/White Nationalists/The CIA and not BLM rioting. This is something I see as endemic to all sides. I think this must be perspective based as everything in the above list has a mirror image from the other party, and in both cases it seems like a fair criticism.
- eyelidlessness 6y ago
  > We had to hear all summer about how it was really Boogaloo Boys/White Nationalists/The CIA and not BLM rioting. I’m sorry the reporting is so bad. Here in the US as a leftist I saw most of my friends posting “in defense of rioting”, “property isn’t people”, and quoting MLK on the lessons of riots. The right just thought they could stage a coup and also get away without any criticism for trying.
  - esyir 6y ago
    Interesting take. The blm riots were supported and approved by both the mainstream levers of power (media, government) and continue to be so. They were both larger in scale and duration. The capitol riots were both smaller in scale and, more importantly generally condemned by their sides equivalent levers of power. I actually consider the right response here more reasonable than the left.
  - Red_Leaves_Flyy 6y ago
    If black lives mattered and politicians represented their constituents these riots would not have occurred. I expect more. Until the consequences of treating minorities as subhuman directly effect billionaires and their very lives nothing will change.
- dane-pgp 6y ago
  > We had to hear all summer about how it was ... not BLM rioting. I think an important distinction here is that the riots had no political goal to them, and had almost no support from BLM figures themselves, and even less from national politicians. Indeed, if your goal is for the police to be defunded, then the last thing you would want to do is create a situation where people fear for their lives and their property and need the protection of the police. Contrast that with the goals of the people storming the Capitol and you'll see that they had national politicians who also wanted to interrupt the joint session of Congress and prevent (some of) the electoral votes from being counted, to ultimately change the outcome of the election.
jpxw 6y ago
Russiagate and the “piss dossier”?
rayiner 6y ago
Extinction rebellion? Members of Congress who think that climate change will destroy the world within 10 years?
- scythe 6y ago
  >Extinction rebellion? I would say the key difference about the left is that the supporters of these kinds of movements rarely get much support at the top. Even Bernie Sanders and AOC have stepped back from supporting certain movements after criticism (I'm thinking of Venezuela), while such contrition on the right is rare (until the Capitol sedition). >Members of Congress who think that climate change will destroy the world within 10 years? Who, precisely? And what did they say?
  - rayiner 6y ago
    AOC: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/onpolitics/2019/01/22/ocasio-cortez-climate-change-alarm/2642481002/ https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/onpolitics/2019... > 'The world is going to end in 12 years if we don't address climate change,' Ocasio-Cortez says
    - scythe 6y ago
      Right, so that generally falls into the category I identified in the first comment: stuff that people on the left say in the heat of the moment, but don't stick to. She was, at the time, being interviewed by the notoriously fiery Ta-Nehisi Coates. It's kind of like comparing Elon Musk smoking weed on Joe Rogan to someone who smokes weed at work every day. I really doubt AOC actually believed at any time that the world would end in 2030 (cf. Paris Agreement's 2030 Agenda).
      - zests 6y ago
        That's quite the stretch. We can lawyer our way out of anything if we try hard enough.
        6y ago
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
legostormtroopr 6y ago
> But where is the left's QAnon? Twitter How much time was devoted to Trump and his "two scoops of ice cream", "dumping seed in the koi fish pond" or any of the hundreds of miniscule things he did - most of which were just mandanities, framed into a false lens and then magnified. I'm not saying that Trump was good, just that there was so much noise from social media about how absolutely everything he did was not just "bad", but the "worst ever". A lot of left-leaning source went into an absolute frenzy about anything and everything he did to try and spin it as the worst.
- mikepurvis 6y ago
  Okay but "noise from social media" is very different from leading politicians and entire news organizations playing along with dangerous stuff like Trump's COVID denialism for months on end. Trump is almost certainly among the bottom 3-4 worst US presidents in history [1]. Was each individual action the "worst ever"? No, of course not. But the sum of the pieces was indeed ghastly, and it's ridiculous to claim that these are just gaffs like any public figure has, and once everyone calms down and stops blowing things out of proportion he will be regarded as just another normal, middle-of-the-road president. [1]: https://www.cnn.com/2021/01/15/politics/trump-best-worst-presidents-ranked/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2021/01/15/politics/trump-best-worst-pre...
  - cudgy 6y ago
    So, do you rate GW Bush better or worse than Trump? Why wasn’t the left all in a lather about killing 100s of thousands of innocent Iraquis based on false evidence of Chemical weapons stockpiles? Why not impeach Bush then? Why not now?
    - mikepurvis 6y ago
      If nothing else, Bush already served two terms.
      - cudgy 6y ago
CapricornNoble 6y ago
>>>But where is the left's QAnon? Working at MSNBC? [1] The far-left conspiracy groups probably got really quiet after one of their own tried to murder Republican Congressmen. Did everyone just forget about that? [2] *On May 22, Hodgkinson wrote "Trump is a Traitor. Trump Has Destroyed Our Democracy. It's Time to Destroy Trump & Co." above his repost of a Change.org petition demanding "the legal removal" of Trump and Vice President Mike Pence for "treason". He belonged to numerous political Facebook groups, including those named "Terminate the Republican Party", "The Road To Hell Is Paved With Republicans", and "Donald Trump is not my President."* [1]https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/russia-has-been-cultivating-trump-as-an-asset-for-40-years-former-kgb-spy-says/ar-BB1dd1UA https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/russia-has-been-cult... [2]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2017_Congressional_baseball_shooting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2017_Congressional_baseball_sh...

eyelidlessness 6y ago

This is something I intentionally made available before I edited. But the clarification is important. “Both sides” certainly observe the same emotions in that respect. But one of the two peddles it and the other dabbles. I’ve seen people in both camps share awful, careless, unprincipled attacks. But one thing I’ve seen that’s an important distinction is that I’ve seen one side self-correct (eg a routine renouncement of body shaming and reminding people on the same side not to lower themselves to that), and the other side banish anyone who tries. I guess that’s the other important (and still not political) distinction: one party and its cohort is self-reflective and has an internal corrective feedback loop. That broke down in the other over the last decade, quite notably after a very honest and sincere post-loss retrospective/postmortem.

zests 6y ago
Do you base your opinion of each side off of what you see on the internet? "On the internet, nobody knows you're a dog."
- eyelidlessness 6y ago
  Nope I’ve definitely grown up in and road tripped/train tripped red-purple country (edit: and I’m white trash and present male so it’s an easy pass) so I know what people really think. I’ve also been on the receiving end of violence by standing up and confronting them.
  - geofft 6y ago
    This is a key point - many folks who are left-leaning grew up in right-leaning areas, have right-leaning extended family, etc. We aren't extrapolating from the internet. There are a number of structural asymmetries between left and right, and it does no favors to any truth-based cause to assume that left and right are mirrors, as if their names required that.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

0xB31B1B 6y ago

The thing is, we have the data, DW nominate is a solid algorithm that can demonstrate rightward/leftward political movement over time. There has been a lot of actual scientific research on this, and over the last 30 years the democratic party has mostly remained the same with a slight left trend, while the republicans have become moved much much further right. https://voteview.com/congress/senate https://voteview.com/congress/senate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NOMINATE_(scaling_method) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NOMINATE_(scaling_method) https://voteview.com/congress/senate https://voteview.com/congress/senate

edbob 6y ago
> over the last 30 years the democratic party has mostly remained the same with a slight left trend, while the republicans have become moved much much further right. On visual comparison between the 97th Congress and the 116 Congress, it's obvious that the Democrats have moved pretty far downwards as well as bit leftwards. That is, they became much more liberal on the "Other Votes" dimension while moving much less on the "Economic/Redistributive" axis. Interestingly, this leaves Democrats and Republicans with a pretty similar distribution along that axis. I don't think this is a good method for comparing different time periods. In the 36th and 37th Congresses, the diehard pro-slavery Democrats versus the abolitionist Republicans, the graphs put the parties in the same relative positions as today and make the parties look less divided than today, even though the Democrats felt like they could no longer co-exist and seceded from the Union. It should also be obvious that the slave-economy Democratic Party was vastly different than the modern-day party, but the graphs don't reflect that.
- pgcj_poster 6y ago
  I'm wondering what the "Other Votes" dimensions is even capturing, as Democrats seem to have been more conservative than Republicans on it up until the 2010s.
brnt 6y ago
That always surprises me, especially for a crowd that prides itself on data driven approaches such as this one. Use a source like the extremely well-researched Dark Money and it'll be evident that the GOP fundamentally isn't representative of the people, it doesn't even pretend to be, and if you listen in the right forums, their leaders don't even claim that. Yet, people, trained in data driven thinking or not, are boxed in into thinking with their guts, how they 'identify', and are taken for a run. Maybe the strategy of making you question the very possibility of even knowing truths about political actors is working as well as the instigators of such theories think they would.

lldbg 6y ago

Your post made me remember [0]. Can you get any more polarizing than suggesting that your opponent will start the nuclear anhilatiom of the modern world? [0]: https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2021/01/08/pelosi-prevent-trump-from-launching-nuclear-strike.html https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2021/01/08/pelosi-prevent-trump-fro...

eyelidlessness 6y ago
Is it that polarizing to /suggest/? I for very honest and reasonable reasons (one of his most prominent political positions prior to his presidency was aggressive use of nuclear power) worried he would and flinched anytime I saw unexpected aircraft for the last few months.

jjeaff 6y ago

Orange man has constantly been made fun of for his dumpy appearance but Obama was accused of lack of respect of the office of the president (including by orange man) for wearing a tan suit. He wasn't even the first president to wear a tan suit.

pelliphant 6y ago

Yes, but the polarizing figures on one side are mostly random people on reddit, on the other side, it's the party leadership...