How did we get to the point where Americans fear members of the other party?

That may be true, but there are nations that are able to get along nicely (within themselves, internally) even without a big external enemy. New Zealand or Iceland, for instance, don’t really have a big threat to worry about but their internal politics are pretty docile in comparison. So there is still a fundamental broken/unhealthy underlying issue in U.S. society.

Someone once put what looked like a hand-written sticky note on our car (which had some pro-Dem candidate bumperstickers) telling us “Neighbor, I think someone has defaced your car with these leftist slogans.”

On closer inspection, it was pre-printed

On that note I do believe when people speak whimsically about a bygone era where political differences were only political differences and not indictment of character it can be attributed to the fact there was a generation of politicians who as young men would have served the country in uniform in wartime. So whether you voted Blue or voted Red, there was an intrinsic respect that your patriotism was not in question.

In my adult lifetime, I think the current mess can be traced to the Reagan Revolution. Ronnie opened the GOP to the fundamentalist Evangelicals. Now, these Evangelicals are not necessarily bad people, but they simply cannot compromise. A compromise would be to betray the will of God. It isn’t that they’re unwilling to compromise; it’s that they CAN’T compromise.

Now we have these people in elected positions throughout the government. Once they have staked out a position, they cannot be moved because they would see it as a betrayal of God. Then, of course, the person seeking compromise cannot be representative of the will of God – he/she must be representing some opposing force. And who would that be? [Church Lady voice “SATAN?!” /CLv]

Another offshoot of that would be that Christianity has a long tradition of people staking out “unreasonable” positions and then being rewarded for it.

Some are legit - such as Daniel’s three friends refusing to bow down to worship a statue and being thrown into a fiery furnace but then emerging totally unscathed. (The moral being that these three friends did what every sane person in society would consider “unreasonable,” yet they were greatly rewarded for their righteous “unreasonableness”.)

Unfortunately, this sort of teaching often leads to an unintentional mutation, which is that you see a lot of Christians staking out stances that are unreasonable and wrong, but they believe they’re behaving like Daniel’s friends and hence now cannot compromise.

To top it off, once such a Christian has publicly staked out such an unreasonable-and-wrong position, he now cannot easily back down, because to do so would not only be highly embarrassing but could even be perceived as a blow to the religion itself - even if, by this point, the Christian has privately come to realize that he’s staking out a wrong position.

So all in all, this makes compromise difficult or near-impossible in many situations.

That’s actually kind of funny, and – being an easily removed sticky note – not terribly impolite.

I once saw an Infowars bumper sticker on a parked car and wanted to smash every one of its windows.

yeah, all things considered, it was pretty innocuous (and sort of clever in a subdued way), but given the tension in our neighborhood already (we’ve had candidate yard signs stolen, etc.), smashing windows crossed my mind

It was probably some violent godless muslim fascist communist Antifa BLM who wanted to put it on his car.

I have seen quite few Infowars window stickers on the huge pickups around here. Oddly, I haven’t seen them on anything but pickups. Of course, around here, pickups are the vehicle of choice for the right. They wouldn’t be caught dead in my Subaru :slight_smile:

Getting back to the OP, Pete Buttigieg had a great book on the topic, Trust, published last October. He pointed out that almost everything all boils down to a lack of trust these days. And that if trust doesn’t come back, America will continue to remain screwed.

He began his book with an anecdote about his time in the Army in Afghanistan. An Afghan approached his vehicle. At that moment, the lives of both men depended on trust of a stranger. Buttigieg had to trust that this guy wasn’t a suicide bomber, and the Afghan had to trust that Buttigieg wouldn’t mow him down with a rifle. Since both men kept their calm, the situation went uneventfully, but could have gone a whole lot worse.

Right now, the different parties and factions in America are like the Afghan and Buttigieg, except that both have much less trust and believe the other side fully intends to harm them. And in fact, if the other side does intend harm towards you, then trust is a bad idea - trust would be suicidal.

But we know the other side intends to harm us – they tell us so every day. And their assertions that we’re out to harm them are 95% fantasy (with the other 5% being a reasonable response to the 100% surety that they intend to harm us).

IMHO it all started in the 1990s during the Clinton years, and Newt’s Contract on America rallying cry for conservatives. It could be just me, tho, in that the 90s were when I more-or-less became politically aware. The visceral opposition to Clinton (and his wife) was more palpable to me in the late 90s, and that is when I became more aware of partisanship and no compromising with the other side. Clinton got re-elected and that cemented conservatives to their crazy, power-hungry positions. Bush narrowly won in 2000, but some of that may be attributable to normal cycles of change in leadership.

The 90s were also the decade where conservative talk radio and news blossomed, so personalities like Limbaugh and networks like Fox News emerged to feed the masses whatever lies the party apparatus needed in order to foment fear (and make a tidy profit for themselves). Now we have social media where any whack-a-doodle can say anything and it’s believed.

Also, as mentioned, the lack of a common enemy like Communism meant something else had to take it’s place to be fearful of.

I don’t think a “common enemy” would do the trick anymore either. IMHO, we are now so divided and polarized that when a common enemy emerges, people would latch onto it as “See, the opposing party supports (Common Enemy!)”

Russia and China, for instance, ought to both be regarded as adversaries of the United States (perhaps not full-blown Cold War level, but hostile enough that they should be regarded with serious concern), but Democrats accuse Republicans of being in bed with Russia and Republicans accuse Democrats of being in bed with China.

I agree. We recently encountered a world-wide common enemy, yet somehow people of a certain persuasion made a conscious decision to politicize it, and make it some sort of tribal badge or something, against their own interests and health. SMH

I would have been tempted to tape the note on the INSIDE of the window (so it wouldn’t blow off), and add “No, but it was defaced with this right wing crap.”

Not that I’m excusing them, but from the Trumplican POV, liberals are intending to harm them. They have been told liberals will make America a godless, socialist/communist hellhole where they’ll be forced to pay reparations and respect to people of other colors, orientation, sexuality and religion. And speaking of which, they won’t be allowed to be Christian in public.

Yeah, it’s utter overblown, but they feel more threatened by the possible loss of status and moral authority than they would any physical threat. While, in general, people on the ‘liberal’ side of things are fearing genuine physical threat for their beliefs, skin color, or gender/sexual choices.

It isn’t balanced, and it isn’t fair, but that’s the perception that’s going on.

To zoom in on that a bit more:

IMHO, conservatives see that liberals intend non-violent harm towards them. While the right wing’s harm may come in more overt, violent form, conservatives can also perceive that liberals intend to slowly erode conservatism drop by drop and have in fact been doing so for decades. Conservatives are keenly aware, for instance, of all the stats claiming that white people may become a minority by 2050, that Christianity is on the relentless decline, that many Republicans are old and will die out, that each successive young generation tends to be more liberal, etc. They see that liberals want to abolish the Electoral College and/or add Puerto Rico statehood, both of which would erode Republican power. While this is all “ballots, not bullets,” it still amounts to a major erosion of the right’s power, and the right recognizes this.

(bolding mine)
Yes, they have been told this, but it isn’t true.

OTOH, the same people telling them this are the same ones actively doing real things to keep Democrats out of power, from McConnell’s SCOTUS scumbaggery to the attempted census ratfuckery to the current voting restrictions.

You can’t balance one side’s warped perception with the other’s experienced reality.

They “see” this because they’re fed heaps of bullshit every single day, not because any actual Democratic leaders have actually proposed anything of the sort.

I’ll repeat: You can’t balance one side’s warped perception with the other’s experienced reality.

It isn’t true in terms of intent, but it is true to a sufficient degree that allows the overblown hyperbole I referred to be extremely plausible. Again, from a Trumplican (and notice, I avoid the term conservative, because most Trumpees no longer have any idea what a true conservative viewpoint is) POV the fact that ‘Christians’ (whatever that means) don’t get automatic preference and deference, that they have to accept POC as full social and economic equals, that the various spectrums of LGBTQ+ are allowed social protections, and so forth are already direct attacks that have succeeded.

They want to push these back, but again, they feel this is a ‘correction’, not an attack. And they almost always coach it in terms of protecting themselves from being victimized, as others have pointed out in great detail. So, yes, they’re on the defensive as I an @Velocity just pointed out, and that encourages them to be as vicious in word and deed as any other corned animal.

I don’t respect this ideology, and I don’t support it, but we need to be aware of it, because a small, focused group that believes it’s on the side of justice and has everything to lose can be very, very dangerous. And while I’m not yet on the ‘fear’ side of the spectrum per the OP towards Trumplicans, I am indeed cautious.

I believe you and I agree on this. My earlier response was to @Velocity’s assertion that both sides “have much less trust and believe the other side fully intends to harm them.” I also agree with that, but my point is that our lack of trust is based on the reality we see every day, whereas their lack of trust is based on warped perceptions, ill-founded prejudices and heaps of bullshit from rightwing media.

IOW – let’s not blame both sides equally for not trusting the other.