6 ms·

> Our politics has become all about hurting other people, instead of trying to create something positive. We used to go to the polls and say, here’s what I’m vo

> Our politics has become all about hurting other people, instead of trying to create something positive. We used to go to the polls and say, here’s what I’m voting for. Now we go to the polls to vote against something and we hope it makes others really mad. This feels like a really uncharitable interpretation on what is going on. To me it feels more like you have two sides, the two sides have viewpoints that feel very alien to the other side, so extreme that they feel like attacks but actually it's just a clash of worldview.

goatlover 2y ago
Also, the loudest voices being amplified online today, along with a political strategy to pursue divisiveness, because it motivates the base to vote, while making unreliable independent votes less likely to vote.
atmavatar 2y ago
When one side has a repeatedly-stated policy goal like sending the military against "the enemy within" while specifically calling-out political opponents as belonging to said group, it's difficult to interpret that as a mere clash of worldview, even when assuming it's mere bluster to gin up engagement at rallies.
- naming_the_user 2y ago
  Right, I don't doubt that, but it's clear to me that this isn't the nexus of all of this. What you're looking at is the later stages of a disagreement. It didn't start out that way, it started as something like, hey can we put the ketchup in the fridge, nah I'd rather leave it out, I prefer it warm. (I'm obviously deliberately being silly here). You move on in time and suddenly blows are being exchanged because everyone loses patience.
  - llamaimperative 2y ago
    [flagged]
    - NotSammyHagar 2y ago
      That was the thing that broke my family. The older generation became way more openly racist after that. I didn't want to accept that it was happening, but I finally gave up denying it. And then Trump came along and all rationality went out the window. Distinguished people with engineering degrees, PE some of them just lost their minds. Wealthy boomers with no care in the world just couldn't handle that (I know not all are that way, but half my family became that). Looking back there were some racist tendencies in that generation but it wasn't openly talked about with me or more likely I just missed it.
      - llamaimperative 2y ago
        I'm sorry to hear it... I guess it shouldn't be as surprising as it was. You basically just need to be a non-zero amount of racist/sexist/whatever to think that [category x] shouldn't hold the presidency, given that it's the highest office in the world. Any tiny amount of x-ism will do. Turns out a whole lot of apparently normal people are at least a tiiiny bit racist, and it absolutely broke an entire political party.
      - ElevenLathe 2y ago
        I think its as simple as the fact that "we" won the Cold War, and that was the only thing putting any leftward pressure at all on US politics. The psycho right wing didn't materialize in 2008 out of nothing (think about LaRouchism, the "moral majority", Pat Buchanan, and on and on). Yes, Republicans are racist, but so are Democrats and Obama did actually win twice so somebody must have voted for him. Rather, Obama's election was the just the last time that the New Deal coalition was strong enough to hold together, having deteriorated over the course of the 90s and 2000s because it had no clear purpose. Capital no longer feels any need to throw scraps (like limited NLRB-disciplined union organizing, Social Security, Medicare, consumer surplus) to workers to prevent 1918 happening here, which had been the Democratic Party's entire purpose since FDR. It had seemed increasingly ludicrous that revolution would come to America over the course of midcentury, but the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 brought the farce to light. In other words, we're still eating the leftovers of anticommunism, the 20th Century's original sin (to mix a metaphor).
- dimitrios1 2y ago
  hard to tell which side you are talking about here TBH, because while one side has talked up a big game about what they may or may not do, the other side has been actively weaponizing our institutions against aforementioned side.

goatlover 2y ago

Also, the loudest voices being amplified online today, along with a political strategy to pursue divisiveness, because it motivates the base to vote, while making unreliable independent votes less likely to vote.

atmavatar 2y ago

When one side has a repeatedly-stated policy goal like sending the military against "the enemy within" while specifically calling-out political opponents as belonging to said group, it's difficult to interpret that as a mere clash of worldview, even when assuming it's mere bluster to gin up engagement at rallies.

naming_the_user 2y ago
Right, I don't doubt that, but it's clear to me that this isn't the nexus of all of this. What you're looking at is the later stages of a disagreement. It didn't start out that way, it started as something like, hey can we put the ketchup in the fridge, nah I'd rather leave it out, I prefer it warm. (I'm obviously deliberately being silly here). You move on in time and suddenly blows are being exchanged because everyone loses patience.
- llamaimperative 2y ago
  [flagged]
  - NotSammyHagar 2y ago
    That was the thing that broke my family. The older generation became way more openly racist after that. I didn't want to accept that it was happening, but I finally gave up denying it. And then Trump came along and all rationality went out the window. Distinguished people with engineering degrees, PE some of them just lost their minds. Wealthy boomers with no care in the world just couldn't handle that (I know not all are that way, but half my family became that). Looking back there were some racist tendencies in that generation but it wasn't openly talked about with me or more likely I just missed it.
    - llamaimperative 2y ago
      I'm sorry to hear it... I guess it shouldn't be as surprising as it was. You basically just need to be a non-zero amount of racist/sexist/whatever to think that [category x] shouldn't hold the presidency, given that it's the highest office in the world. Any tiny amount of x-ism will do. Turns out a whole lot of apparently normal people are at least a tiiiny bit racist, and it absolutely broke an entire political party.
    - ElevenLathe 2y ago
      I think its as simple as the fact that "we" won the Cold War, and that was the only thing putting any leftward pressure at all on US politics. The psycho right wing didn't materialize in 2008 out of nothing (think about LaRouchism, the "moral majority", Pat Buchanan, and on and on). Yes, Republicans are racist, but so are Democrats and Obama did actually win twice so somebody must have voted for him. Rather, Obama's election was the just the last time that the New Deal coalition was strong enough to hold together, having deteriorated over the course of the 90s and 2000s because it had no clear purpose. Capital no longer feels any need to throw scraps (like limited NLRB-disciplined union organizing, Social Security, Medicare, consumer surplus) to workers to prevent 1918 happening here, which had been the Democratic Party's entire purpose since FDR. It had seemed increasingly ludicrous that revolution would come to America over the course of midcentury, but the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 brought the farce to light. In other words, we're still eating the leftovers of anticommunism, the 20th Century's original sin (to mix a metaphor).
dimitrios1 2y ago
hard to tell which side you are talking about here TBH, because while one side has talked up a big game about what they may or may not do, the other side has been actively weaponizing our institutions against aforementioned side.