Why does everything have to be so polarized these days?

Great Debates
1

I’ve noticed in recent years that everything seems to be becoming dramatically more polarized, and I’m being expected to “pick a side” more and more.

I mean, it’s not like someone can have a middle of the road position on something controversial anymore- it’s got to be all-in on whatever the position is. Like I can’t have a position that generally thinks that cash bail isn’t the unmitigated evil that some on the Left think it is, without being tarred with accusations of racism and classism. Or I can’t think that EVs aren’t quite there yet, and that it’s a reasonable and normal thing at the present for people to be skeptical, or that their arguments against them are valid, without being thought of as a shill for Exxon or something.

Whether it’s here, Reddit, or real-life, it seems to me that this pressure to “pick sides” is becoming greater and greater - you have to buy into one side or the other’s entire belief system, or risk being associated with the other side.

Which is unmitigated bullshit, if you ask me. There’s no reason someone has to hold with the beliefs of either side of the socio-political spectrum. Middle views are perfectly reasonable, and this idea that if you’re not with us, you’re against us is toxic from either side of the spectrum.

I even got my original thread shut down because mentioning trans issues is apparently controversial. I didn’t say anything hateful or intolerant, but took a middle position. I’m not sure if the mods are taking a stance against controversy, or if they’re disagreeing with what I said. If it’s the former, that’s fair. If it’s the second, it’s EXACTLY what I’m talking about in this thread.

So how do we stop this socio-political polarization? I’m really tired of being expected to believe things that I don’t, and being lumped in with one side or the other if I don’t.

2

It’s a mixture of:

  1. Everyone loves to feel righteous anger;
  2. Some threats are genuinely quite serious (you can’t expect people to be chill or on-the-fence when it comes to a guy like Trump or Putin. You can be nuanced when it’s someone like McCain or Romney, but not a real villain.)
  3. As people’s suffering gets worse these days (with climate change, inflation, etc.) they are less and less inclined to feel any sort of patience or nuance. Pain and anger has a way of driving people to very black and white thinking.
  4. Even people who don’t have reason to feel anger or alarm, enjoy feeling it - so they will even invent reasons to feel angry or alarmed. (See QAnon, or a lot of conspiracy theories - they’re all based off of enjoyable anger.)
  5. One issue with some progressives these days is that they can only see what you disagree with them on, not agree on. Even if you agree with them on 90% of things, the 10% of disagreement will get you labeled a bigot.
  6. Human nature just hates fence-sitters. You see this even in middle school: “You can only be friends with me or Janet. Pick one side.”
3

There is indeed a lot of polarization, and some people do go to extremes over what seem like trivial disagreements. But when it comes to something like “trans issues,” you have to realize that you’re talking about people and their rights. A “middle position” on human rights is really not a reasonable compromise for the people most intimately involved.

4

Because there’s a fortune to be made on rage and grievance. I think this is the single biggest reason. Rush Limbaugh pioneered this in the 80s, and decency has been downhill ever since.

5

I have opinions and prejudice. We all do.

I choose, usually, to keep them to myself.
If I’m in no physical danger, I’m just okay doing that.

Authority figures kinda get my hackles up. I’m no criminal, but police telling me what to do, where to go and how, just bugs me. I still comply and do as I’m told.

I find if you categorically state something where others are who may feel differently you’re basically asking for trouble.

I just keep my mouth shut. If directly asked I may say I prefer to keep my opinions to my self.
I don’t like a face to face confrontation. I can’t talk fast or debate well.

I’m a successful fence sitter.

6

This is a big, big part of it, especially now with social media. Meta, Twitter/X, etc., figured out that the most profitable way for them to monetize their customers was to build algorithms that learned which sorts of polarizing content each user was most likely to engage with, keep feeding that user more content like that, and keep stoking the fire of worry and rage within that person.

7

I find the people most likely complain about everything getting polarized are the same folk who post aggressive, confident opinions (or often outright falsehoods) as facts and then meltdown when even the slightest challenge is posted.

8

This is a rather good post. Because I agree it’s not one thing.

Though I would also add that the extremes are generally the most passionate and thus the loudest. I don’t actually find people to be as polarized when I talk to them individually.

Though I would also say that the “sides” have an internal logic to them that connects the beliefs. And, a lot of times, the middle positions don’t seem to. They seem more about a natural desire to avoid extremes rather than a well reasoned, consistent worldview.

That’s why my beliefs at least are more polarized than they used to be. I stopped with trying to always find the middle ground and follow where my beliefs take me. It’s why I can’t be moderate on bigotry-related issues, for example. I can try to be tolerant of those with good hearts who just need to catch up, but I can’t act like some bigotry is okay.

With something like EVs, it just doesn’t matter enough, so I don’t have an informed opinion. Predictions will or won’t come true, but there is no morality there.

So I find that there is justifiably more polarization, but also not as much as it seems.

9

There’s an extreme position that believes that any accusation of racism or sexism is the end of the world and is itself an extreme position. To me, that’s a pretty problematic approach that shuts down conversation.

I’m absolutely sure I take positions that are biased, whether by class or race or gender or religion or culture or what-have-you. If someone claims one of my positions has that bias, that doesn’t mean they’re being polarizing. It means they’re making an argument against my position, and I should examine that argument.

They might be wrong. They might be right. But if I treat it as polarizing, I won’t be able to consider it.

I don’t know what you said. But often the middle position between “Let’s persecute people for harmless behaviors and beliefs” and “Let’s not persecute people for harmless behaviors and beliefs” is “Let’s just persecute them a little bit.” And that’s not really a middle-of-the-road position. If you plan on persecuting me at all, you’d better have a very good reason; if you don’t, I’ll push back pretty hard.

Edit: oh shit, I just read the original post, and realize that this response of mine is possibly the sort of hijack that the mods closed your previous one to avoid. I’ll leave it in case it’s not, but don’t want to go all the way down the road of trans sports participation.

10

Also starting in the 80s or very early 90s Newt Gingrich kind of pioneered demonizing the Democrats from within the government. Then there were the misinformation-spreading political operatives like Lee Atwater and Karl Rove, who had had a particular evil genius at political misinformation. Rove would attack candidates on their greatest strengths. I heard that very early in his career he was involved in running a local campaign in his town in which the opponent was a strong supporter of youth- he would often take photo ops with schoolkids whose school he had donated to, or whatever. So Rove started a ‘whisper campaign’ spreading the rumor he was a pedophile. Then of course much later he ran the campaign against John Kerry, one of whose outstanding characteristics was that he was a veteran who had served his country with distinction. So Rove engineered the “Swift Boat Veterans Against Kerry” brouhaha.

I think there’s a definite through-line from those days to the way things are now,

11

We live in a time not seen since the 1930s, in which a feeling that America is doomed is in the air. Doomed is a word actually and actively being used in the discourse.

One side believes that America is doomed because of lies spread about the other side. The other side believes that America is doomed because of words being said by the leaders of the first side.

Doomed is a life-or-death condition. It does not allow middle ground. Policies do. There were many ways to battle COVID. However, rejecting vaccines was not one. People died. There are many ways to limit the effects of climate change. Denial that it exists is not one. People are dying.

Doom is a destabilizing condition. Within it lie a multitude of smaller threats where the consequence is death. Floods or wildfires, drugs or disease, a policeman with a gun or an individual with a more powerful gun. Policies exist that can diminish these and many more threats and in normal times policies can be enacted to diminish and mitigate them.

What happens when America seems doomed? Why go through the motions of legislation that might ease the threats but only in some distant future? Existential threats require immediate action, even if that action is objectively insufficient or even imaginary. Yet the sides are too far apart to agree upon, much less implement, any action at all. Doom is reinforced and touches all disagreements.

Back in the 1930s millions of Americans believed capitalism and democracy was doomed and therefore flirted with other economic and political options. Roosevelt substituted immediate actions. Some worked, some did not, but the mere appearance of action subverted those.

In the 1950s, the threat of global nuclear war generated a number of science fiction stories that concocted a phony alien invasion to force the opposing sides to work together for common survival.

Something similarly gigantic but real will be needed to dislodge the notion that America is doomed. Clearly, if everybody believes in doom, doom will happen. Historically, doom has occurred from the rise of a charismatic totalitarian strongman. That’s an existential threat which already looms and polarizes the country. We’re trapped in that circle.

12

Doomed can go hand-in-hand with “our current divided government is utterly dysfunctional” to make an authoritarian take-charge leader seem like a decent idea.

13

I really hate the “baiters”
They ask you questions and kinda figure they know your answer and are prepared to fly into you for nothing gained. But their supposed superiority.

14

I’ve come to like baiting baiters.

As a follow-up on them asking you questions that fit their preconceived notions, they have some “canned” preconceived answers/rebuttals. I like to make them go off script, so to speak, by giving answers that force them to reformulate what they have to say on the fly.

15

This is a large part of why I posted the thread; there’s a feeling I have that I’m expected to be 100% on board with the ‘slate’ of non-Trumper beliefs, that are largely Progressive ideals. It’s a sort of “If you don’t believe all this stuff, you’re hateful, a bigot, and ignorant.” kind of feeling.

I feel that is pretty absurd. I mean, there are nuances to a lot of things, but it seems like believing that is a fast path to being labeled as in league with the other side. It has a very Inquisitorial feel to it; as if there are self-evident truths in a lot of these difficult issues, and I’m somehow ignorant for not seeing them. Which is almost self-evidently untrue, because if it was so obvious and easy, they wouldn’t be “big” points of contention in the socio-political arena.

16

This will be a U.S. focused response.

One long term reason is that the liberal Democrats in the North used to be in the same political party with the segregationists. There were, in Congress, liberal Republicans and reactionary Democrats. Now, party loyalty reinforces ideological conformity.

Maybe less certain, but I think failure to clearly win wars we fight lessens the kind of patriotism that brought us together after World War II.

Then there is the end of almost everyone subscribing to a middle of the road paper newspaper, delivered daily. If you pay money to bring a centrist perspective into your home, you are more likely to adhere to it.

On the internet, I have noticed that if a web site is even slightly right of center, the commenters will be ridiculously far right.

And there is also a little of this on the other side. If a web site is even slightly left of center, anyone who is isn’t left of center is made to feel uncomfortable. Not complaining, but I feel this has happened a bit on SDMB – even though the Straight Dope columnists themselves were/are resolutely centrist.

The last two paragraphs don’t really answer the thread question – they just illustrate it.

17

There’s a very large difference between “you’re a hateful, ignorant bigot” and “you said something that’s ignorant and bigoted.”

Pretty much everybody’s going to say, at some point, about something, something that’s bigoted; if only by accident.

And absolutely everybody’s going to say occasionally something that’s ignorant. Because nobody knows everything. Nobody even knows most things.

The trick, it seems to me, is in the response. If the response to ‘you just said something bigoted’ is ‘you just called me a terrible person!’, it’s really hard to think through that to ‘why did they say that’s bigoted? are they maybe right about that? even if it doesn’t look like that from where I’m standing, does it look like that from where they live?’

And if the response to ‘you just said something ignorant’ is in effect ‘you just called me a stupid worthless person!’ – that makes it really hard to learn anything. Maybe general-you is indeed ignorant, and should learn more about the subject before talking about it. Maybe the person who said it’s ignorant is the one who’s ignorant. Maybe – quite likely – both of you are ignorant of different aspects of the matter. But the person who’s just furious about having been told they were ignorant is never going to find out which – unless they can learn to take a deep breath, step back, and think about the matter.

Now if people have done that to exhaustion in twenty threads on this board already and the mods have decided it’s not necessary to deal with another two hundred such threads – that makes a good bit of sense to me.

There are lots of things that are “big points of contention in the socio-political arena” of the current United States because they are being deliberately built up as such for political and/or financial advantage. When something’s a big point of contention: look at who’s doing the contending, and why.

In addition: to leap all the way to what from here may look like extremes: slavery was a big point of contention in the 1860’s. The right of women to vote was a big point of contention in the early 1900’s. Because there’s a big fight about something doesn’t mean that there isn’t a right and a wrong side.

18

I think I would like to disagree. ‘I don’t understand any of this, but I will not get in your way’ might be one possible position that is not at either extreme, as would ‘I will support you as far as I am able, which may not be as much as you desire’ would be another.

Edited to add: People who take the position of activist (by personal necessity or because their heart leads them to) will tend to regard anything less than that position to be inadequate, but there are any number of worthy causes that people could devote their time, attention and effort to, but for one reason or another, do not (perhaps because their own attention is devoted to some other thing); nobody has an infinite supply of time and effort; nobody can occupy the extreme-support position for even the full subset of causes they believe are right and true.

19

Just what are these middle of the road positions on things controversial?
'Cause in the 1930s in, say, Germany, the Warsaw Ghetto was the middle ground between letting the Jews live their lives unimpeded and the death camps.

So, what is this “middle of the road position” on cash bail?

20

Maybe restrict it to violent crimes, and set it at a reasonable amount? (I haven’t been following the cash bail controversy and I may be missing what it’s really about)