No, it won’t die out, it’ll just evolve, as in fact it is evolving today, was evoling four years ago, will be evolving four years from now. And nobody in the future will remember or care outside of stuffy textbooks, if in fact it’s that well remembered. Instead, they’ll be saying in 2080, “Gosh, the politics are nasty today. When did that start?” (Insert blame pointed at other party for something they did in 2062.)
Since Reagan and really snowballing in the Bush II era the fanatics and lunatics have gained enough power in the Republican Party to be an overwhelming force, and driven out most of the more reasonable Republicans atop that. They are pretty rabidly intolerant towards people in their own party too, it’s not just a thing against Democrats.
The Democrats on the other hand don’t show that kind of hatred for the Republicans despite how many people in this thread characterize matters. On the contrary, they are conciliatory towards the Republicans to the point or being self destructive and corrupt. They bend over backwards to suck up to the Republicans, they refuse to investigate Republican misdeeds, and participate in the effort of shielding people like Bush from any consequences for their actions. They are grovelling cowardly suckups, not the hatemongers (or even selfish politicians) some people are describing in this thread. The Democrats are self sacrificing and humble - in favor of the Republicans, not their own party.
Now, the Left (such as exists) does hate the Republicans; but they hate the Democrats too.
When I think back to the 60s, I see a significant distinction between campus radicals and the mainstream media at the time.
When look at people like Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck, it’s hard to imagine a whole lot of people who are more reactionary than they are.
It certainly isn’t true that there’s always some sort of balance, with radical idiots on one side always matched with radical idiots on the other side.
Sometimes one side has a lot more idiots, or a lot more loudmouths, or a lot more violent people, and so on. And sometimes one side is right and another side is wrong. We never hear about the two sides of the Civil Rights issue anymore, because we decided that the segregationists were all wrong. But back in the 50s and 60s, there were plenty of mainstream elected officials willing to publicly defend segregation.
But of course, settled political and cultural issues are just that, settled issues. Someday some of the divise issues of today are going to be settled, and our grandkids will look back and not understand why everyone wasn’t on the obviously correct side.
Roe V. Wade
There is no more divisive issue in politics over the last 50 years. It revitalized the Republican party and the issue lends itself to demonizing the other side.
I’m going to throw term limits into the mix. There used to be a pool of local politicians, the best of whom rose to state politics (I’m using the word “best” to refer to their political skills, not their moral fiber or statesmanship), and the best of those rose to national politics. Every level was occupied by people who were comfortable there, gaining experience, accumulating favors and power, and learning to work with familiar opponents. Young firebrands were tamed by their elder colleagues, and learned how to work with their opposites to get things done.
When term limits came along, that changed. The lowest offices are filled by new politicians who stay for a few years, move to the next office, move along again, until they’ve spent 10-20 years competing for name recognition so that, when they term-limit out, they’ll win the next election for a different office with a different constituency, never having stayed in one place long enough to build a collegial relationship with anyone from another party, or with a different point of view.
By the time they get to Congress, they’re in permanent get-attention mode, and will take a few more terms to learn how to cooperate with others. Meanwhile, at the bottom, there’s such a vacuum of leadership that any damn fool can be on the city council, many damn fools move along to the state legislature, and eventually some damn fool becomes governor because there’s nobody experienced who’s eligible to take the job, and another damn fool manages to shove a just-getting-experienced member of Congress out of office because the electorate had become used to playing musical chairs, awarding a seat in Congress to whoever’s loudest.
This doesn’t happen everywhere, every time, and some places don’t even have term limits. But it happens enough to poison the level of discourse.
Ding! Ding! Ding! We have winner!
Which is why the 911 attacks were as manna from heaven for Bush and the Republicans.
Now that’s irony.
That is a way for it to die out.
Within the next 20 years, some of the RW zeal most visible for the past two years will die out by, well, dying; that is, the elderly among the Tea Partiers will not be replaced by commensurate numbers of younger people who think like they do. It’s a generational thing.
Is this not the most perfectly representative GD thread ever? My god, look at the first four posts.
OP: When did the deep, dark hatred of the other party begin?
Liberal #1: Basically, it’s the fault of the conservatives.
Conservative: Basically, it’s the fault of the liberals.
Liberal #2: No, it’s even more the fault of the conservatives than Liberal #1 thinks.
And then there are some interesting posts that address the OP in a thoughtful, non-partisan way, in the midst of occasional not-too-inflammatory but nonetheless partisan entries.
And then **Shodan **and Der Trihs show up to try and steer the thread into the sun. There’s no way of knowing yet whether they’ll succeed in this particular instance.
(And Evil Captor’s post would be *brilliant *if it was satire.)
Not necessarily (I hope). It’s unlikely the U.S. will survive to see the end (even a temporary one) of such rancour, but ideas and culture do matter. At some point there may well be an effective taboo against all but the most inoffensive forms of partisanship.
All may have contributed, though I suspect you’re wrong about the last one. During the Cold War, the Democrats were equated to Soviet Russia by the hard right, including a young man who would become foolsguinea. The present hatred of the Left in the US is rooted in decades of fear of the global Left; it is strongest among those who came to adulthood well before the end of the Cold War. It’s a hangover. But I could be wrong.
However, note the one I have highlighted. I disagree with your argued cause. What pits “tax consumers” against “tax payers” is either of the following:
- An economy may have a large proportion of tax is paid by a few, because they’re much richer; hence wealth disparity; & the attempt to build a strong society despite that would be your "growth of government. "
- There may be a misperception that one is a “tax payer” oppressed by “tax consumers” by those who don’t notice that, as you say, “sometimes the person who pays for your perk gets his own that you have to pay for.” Griping about the growth of government ignores the fact that government taxation is growing in response to perceived need on the part of the populace.
I don’t think you know what fascism is. I bet you’re a country & western fan, because we rockers know that 1960’s youth culture was largely very unfascist, & the (substantially ironic) fascist pose came in later in the 1970’s, with KISS & Bowie.
This was a good post, but I really don’t see a strong parallel between Gresham’s Law and the rise of vitirolic politics. “Bad” money stays in circulation when it’s still accepted; “good” money is saved for anticipated hard times. Who’s saving civility for hard times?
I think abortion politics had a tremendous amount to do with the Clinton-bashing era. And what converged with that was the Right looking to replace the Commies as their main bugaboo and hitting on the Big Bad Liberal Government. This pproved to be explosive.
But once the Republicans were firmly in control of the government, they needed a new narrative, and 9/11 conveniently handed one to them. Now they were all about “patriotism”, and those who were previously pro-American “government” were now anti-“American”.
And then when Obama was elected, they reverted right back to anti-government paranoia like turning off and on a light.
Instead, it’s just accurate.
What the fuck? YOu don’t think Karl Rove, Dubya and Cheney weren’t dancing with glee in private at the political opportunities afforded by 911? What planet you been living, on? I’m not one of those who say they secretly were allied with those who did it, but it’s damn obvious it worked enormously to their political advantage. Manna from heaven, you bet! New enemies to fight! Anyone who didn’t join in was an ally of the Taliban, which made a lot of Dems piss their pants.
Baby Boomers, The political decisiveness of the 1960’s come back to screw us. Whatever their political bent, they come down to a few truths.
Their ideology is right and everyone else’s it wrong.
They deserve everything they can get.
Screw the future generations, they are a political force and will take a scorched earth policy to provide them comfort to their graves.
PS. I say this as an indictment of both political parties
I remember growing up in the 90s, and I remember it, even as a little kid with no understanding of politics, as being an intensely politically charged time, full of sensationalistic news reporting about Bill Clinton and his Republican enemies. I may have been young but I was keenly aware of the climate of political bickering and bitterness.
Lets state clearly what some posters are alluding to: The GOP needs the hate to win elections. They simply can’t win on the issues because very very few Americans favor fiscal policies that concentrate more and more wealth into fewer and fewer hands. Republicans have more support on social issues but not enough to win elections since local Democrats respond where the electorate is more socially conservative.
Take the health care debate. The law is unpopular even though what’s in the law is not. The GOP wasn’t going to back down just because they were on the wrong side of public opinion. They live on the wrong side of public opinion. So they went out and lied and created hysteria and tried to derail the bill. That’s what they do.
*Disclaimer: Nothing in this post should be construed as ignoring that there are other factors leading to the sad state of political discourse in America or that things haven’t been worse in the past. Nor that the Democrats are white knights that slavishly serve popular opinion or the common good. *
9/11 made it possible for them to do something (go into Iraq) that, I grant, they probably wanted to do anyway. However, to imply that they were therefore happy about 9/11 – and, specifically, happy about the opportunity to shore up political support through war – is, to understate, unfounded.
Some of these hardly seem divisive to me, unless anyone who’s hated irrationally is “divisive.” FDR, Truman, and JFK were widely despised, yet the political climate in those days hardly approached today’s level of right-wing blather.
As Der Trihs points out, left-wingers are almost as angry at the Democrats as they are at Republicans; the equation Democrat == Left is fully nonsensical today, and source of much confusion even here at SDMB. The claim that Democrat’s reaction against GWB was comparable to Republican reaction against Clinton is fully false. Let me state my own views:
I almost voted for Bush Sr., thought Ford was an OK President, would have been happy with Dole etc. and even agree that Nixon (despite his serious flaws) was more competent than most of the Presidents who came after him. I was initially disposed to accept Bush Jr. as a competent centrist.
The reason I ended up detesting GWB is not bitterness over 2000 election irregularities, not revenge for irrational hatred directed against Clinton, and not a routine dislike of right-wing by the center/left. I never “hated” Reagan, even accepting Iran-Contra as his prerogative despite that I disagreed. The reason I came to detest GWB and his cabal (Cheney, Rove, Rumsfeld) is because I found them to be obviously corrupt, incompetent and hypocritical, exceeding all precedents.
Right-wingers seem to think “We hate you; you hate us; what else is new?” This doesn’t apply to me. I’m sure there are many centrists like myself who are somewhat astounded that many Americans don’t perceive the extreme faults of the Bush-Cheney Administration. (I’d ask such Americans whether they’ve read books like Price of Loyalty?)
Whether or not they were “happy” is a pretty superficial charge. The fact remains that they blatantly exploited 9/11 both to push through the invasion of Iraq and politically–even as they and their supporters are constantly accusing their opponents of exploiting various tragedies for political gain.