5 ms·
USSR fell in 1989, the climate in the US is a post-iraq thing and China is fiercely rivaling and competing against the US in all fronts. Even America's reactio
by _8j50 5y ago
USSR fell in 1989, the climate in the US is a post-iraq thing and China is fiercely rivaling and competing against the US in all fronts. Even America's reaction to Russia bs Ukraine is tailored to send a message to China.
The Xenophobia in America is a walk in the park compared to any European country. Still the best place for immigrants. Income inequality is bad but povery has improved a lot and so has crime compared to previous decades. I mean, the great depression was literally before WW2 which is obviously a worse time than now (ask any black person or non-european immigrant how unequal or xenophobic America was back then!) after which there was a great economic boom.
Perhaps the past is easier to measure than the present?
A lot of the political norm that is being erased now is for 20th century norms. I would say Andrew Jackson shooting people on the whitehouse lawn was a norm. Congress attending Church every sunday at the Capitol was also a norm and it was erased.
I think a lot of people correlate without articulating causation to sound smart.
- HWR_14 5y agoWhen do you think America's political divisions got so tribal? I couldn't tell.
- thehappypm 5y agoFacebook launched its news feed feature in 2006, and set the stage for a generation of doomscrollers.
- HWR_14 5y agoSo, you don't think there was tribalism pre-2006? I'm just curious, do you remember that time? Was it much better then? I ask because it seems like we have mostly the same politicians (McConnell, Pelosi, Biden, even Trump ran as an independent) as we did then.
- irrational 5y agoI remember pre-2006. I was in my mid-30s by then. I don’t recall much open animosity between Republicans and Democrats. Certainly nothing like today. There was a lot of coming together post 9/11. I do think social media was the main instigator of the country falling into open tribalism.
- pigeons 5y agoI can't think of how to make a more constructive response, but I too remember pre-2006 (that really seems funny to say), and I'm just laughing at your response. The laughing isn't to ridicule it, I just think its truly funny how much I disagree. I guess back then it was talk radio that was blamed for stoking the animosity.
- throwaway0a5e 5y agoWhile the tribalism definitely existed back then the amount and openness in which it existed was so much less as to be categorically different. For example, people openly blaming one tribe or the other for some aspect of reality that doesn't even fall nicely along party lines wasn't just a fact of discourse back then like it is now.
- HWR_14 5y agopost-9/11 coming together is an interesting confound. How to you disambiguate a reversion to a more tribal pre-9/11 nature from social media's influence?
- GeekyBear 5y agoIf you are optimizing for keeping eyes glued to screens to deliver more ads, people being hateful to each other is very engaging. This certainly predates social media (tabloids, tabloid television), but social media definitely took things to a new level.
- barry-cotter 5y agoThe broadcast media stopped being the way a huge majority of people got their news starting in the 80s with cable. So the US returned to normalcy, with large portions of the population absolutely hating each other. The post civil war era was also abnormally amicable. Conservative Democrats found it easy to work with liberal Republicans and their constituents would still vote for them out of tribal/regional loyalties. Hating the political opposition is the norm, not the exception.
- marginalia_nu 5y ago> Hating the political opposition is the norm, not the exception. Not in a healthy democracy, but I guess that is the exception as well.