I lived through the Reagan era, and I personally had close to the lowest opinion of him that a person could. The whole time, which put me in a maybe 20~30% group. The country seemed stable enough, and his team knew how to coöperate with the other guys.
Then the Bush years, which were still fairly collegial in DC, up until they ended. This was followed by the various shitstorms of the Clinton years, which spurred the growing them v. us atmosphere that has blanketed the nation.
The timing of this intense polarization is curious. It aligns pretty well with the collapse of the USSR. About which one could be paranoid, given more recent events, but it could also be that, left without a major foe, we ended up turning on each other.
Is combativeness and tribalism an inextricable part of human nature, or would some kind of cultural adjustment be possible, that might get this fightiness under control without CRISPRing?
I think the polarization is fake polarization. The Democratic party has moved to the right. The Republican party has moved VERY far to the right. People who are by any reasonable standard “somewhat left-ish of the middle” are now portrayed as extreme socialists. The fact is, they’re not. There is no polarization, just a wild and out-of-control lurch to the right that makes things appear polarized. In other news, the Republican party has decided to abuse Congress because that’s what gets them what they want. You got a problem with that?
I would somewhat disagree with you Dave. Using myself as an example, I’ve always thought of myself as somewhat conservative, but not rabidly so, and yet a great deal of what i see these days tells me I’m somewhat liberal. At the same time there are people out there (Bernie Sanders comes to mind first off) proposing things, there are movements happening, such as the mainstreaming and legitimizing of homosexual relationships that less than 20 or 30 years ago wouldn’t have ever been considered as more than a joke. I think the polarization is real enough, but just a phase as the world as a whole is going through a period of change at a more rapid pace than has been the norm historically
There is something about the collapse of the Soviet Union affecting current politics. The threat of Communism held us together after WWII. The parties could argue about what to do about the Soviet problem but neither party could take the side of the Soviets. With that unifying factor gone the parties were free to completely divide the country on other lines, there was no overriding danger to face, until 9/11. The threat was greatly overblown though, and as that became clear, and it became clear that the situation was exploited for greed and incompetently handled it kicked the last leg out of any common cause between the parties. As can be seen now, the parties are interested only in maintaining power for themselves, no matter what the cost to the country.
I think polarization is exacerbated by how many eligible voters DONT vote!
I believe, no matter how distasteful you find the politics of your opponent, it’d be easier to swallow if you were staring directly into the face of an actual, true, honest to God, clear majority. When upwards of 30% or so, don’t go to the polls, the loser isn’t really forced to accept their’s IS, unfortunately the minority opinion.
When so few turn out, interpreting the numbers can have a lot of creative variations. Unlike a loud and clear majority. Our opponents views may still offend, but we would all be more accepting, I think. Less contentious, escalating, attacking, manipulating dialogue might be the result.
I usually blame it on the 24 hour news cycle. Having to fill 24 hours of the day with news is difficult to do. So shows bring in “experts” to talk about things. The louder and more extreme voices tend to get better ratings. With dueling experts, you end up with two people trying to shout over the other while being as extreme as possible. Deliberately reasoned and middle of the road discussions has no place in this world of 24 hour news.
The crux of the argument is this. Without an external enemy like the USSR society is dividing over cultural and religious divisions instead. I’d argue racial too, being openly racist is more acceptable now vs the 90s.
The second book makes the argument that the 25% of Americans who score high on authoritarianism have moved to the GOP. Now the authoritarians have enough power there to make the GOP in their image. A paranoid, aggressive, irrationally hypocritical white nationalist party that disdains democracy.
I don’t think it’s a coincidence that all these proto-fascist movements are popping up one lifetime after the Second World War. Pretty much everyone who has actual memories of those times and the horrors they held is gone or on the way out.
It seemed to me to start with the 1994 mid-term (the Newt Gingrich revolution) so it is hard to credit it to the loss of memory with the passage of time, although that might explain the growth of authoritarianism world-wide. But that was the time that one party decided that they would no longer undertake any cooperation with the other. Ironically, Clinton was a pretty right-wing Democrat. And of course he ran the last budget surplus the US has seen. In fact, in 2000 there was a discussion of what to with all this surplus. Bush answered that: lower taxes on the rich and start two interminable wars. But Clinton signed the legislation that allowed the banks to run wild. Now the Republican Court has handed the keys to the Kochs.
The Fall of Communism left a void where the Right could direct its anger and fear. Without and external enemy they picked an internal one: Liberals. The Right always thought the Left were traitors but now the full weight of their energy was focused on them as a problem.
The Right created an Alternate Media Universe. It is a place that has its own Facts, History and Events. People on the outside are working with completely different ones and never the twain shall meet.
The Internet and Niche Media have allowed people to pick and choose their sources of Information and Entertainment. We have every few shared media experiences anymore and most of them are tragedies not triumphs.
The Right has pulled far right and pulled the median political spectrum along with it.
This leads to an increase in polarization and frustration but fewer solutions because half the Population is blaming the other half for the problems instead of the true causes.
In the same way that it was not a coincidence that Mikhail Gorbachev was the first premier of the Soviet Union who was not a veteran of either the revolution, or WW2.
I can agree with half of this statement in that the Republican party has become extremely conservative. I was raised in a home where my parents were moderately conservative Republicans. Were they alive now, they wouldn’t recognize the Republican party as it is now constituted. There would be no room for them. “Moderate Republican” is an oxymoron.
Pretty sure the whole “Republican Revolution”/“Contract with America” in 1994 and Gingrich’s speakership were the start, along with the associated increase in Republican party discipline.
Combine that with the Internet, and you end up with what we have today.
I do not think it is fair to conservatives to describe the Republican leadership as “conservative”. The more fitting term, for people who want to take us back to the '50s (choose your century) is “reactionary”. The conservatives are mostly democrats. Clinton was a shade left of Barry Goldwater. Obama was barely to the left of Reagan. There is no recognizable Left left.
True. But I think a big part is globalization, immigration, secularism and multiculturalism.
From the POV of the US alone the following have happened in the last few decades
[ul]
[li]China went from being a dirt poor nation of farmers to the worlds biggest economy (in PPP). [/li][li]Whites went from 85% of Americans to 60%. [/li][li]The % of Americans who are white christians went from 81% down to 45%. [/li][li]In just the last 15 years the % of Americans who are white evangelicals dropped from 21% down to 12%. The % who are secularists grew from 12% to 21%. [/li][li]The culture war between Islam and the west is in full swing. [/li][li]Immigrants have gone from 5% of Americans to 13%. [/li][li]We had a black democrat as president for 8 years (a black democrat who many thought was also a pro-terrorist Kenyan Muslim)[/li][li]A woman almost won the presidency. Women have been gaining a lot of power and influence in both the public and private sector. [/li][/ul]
Lots of places are losing their cultural identity. Places are rapidly becoming more and more multi-racial, mutli-religious and egalitarian.
The old order where Christian white men were the undisputed backbone of society is rapidly ending. People who don’t fit into that box are gaining more and more power and influence.
In America you have to add in the fact that we have our national identity on top of that (I don’t think a place like France or Germany has the feeling of ‘we’re No. 1 like we do here’) But you add in the fact that we will soon be no. 2 and China is no. 1 is going to hit.
Basically, we have to wait until all the older ones die off and are replaced. There is some appeal among the alt-right among younger white men who feel like their sense of privilege and identity is being taken away, but I think they are a minority of the next generation.
And yet 30 years ago, many liberals would have been aghast at the idea of gay marriage. And most of the rest would have taken it as a joke and then moved on to serious matters.
Goldwater and Reagan tried to shrink government. Clinton and Obama grew, or at least tried to grow, government.
Some people have an extremely warped view of what it means to “move to the right.” If this country had actually done what you somehow think it has done, then Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid would either done away with completely or at least greatly reduced.
Puleeze. Read some facts about the Reagan era economics. Nothing shrank at all. In fact, the national debt tripled!
Clinton eliminated welfare as we know it. It has been almost completely gutted. (He also produced budget surpluses, paying down the national debt!)
We are now benefiting from Obama’s economic policies to correct the massive problems caused by Bush II. But it’s not going to last thanks to trade wars and such.
that, and the Boomers having to confront their rapidly declining influence. And the loss of the Soviet Union deprived them of their big war to win to become the next “greatest generation.”