US Political Polarization

This is patently untrue. All this navel gazing in this thread is bizarre and forgets the past 30 years of political history in America.You'll (Americans) have long ceased to have a conversation with each other.People seem to have forgotten the many decades of Fox News (when there was no internet), the steady movement of debate from policy to stuff like "birthers", tea parties, gun boats, creationism, and so on.The larger debate has been going south for decades. Why do you

I don't think that's all of it. Politics has continually gotten more polarizing over the 20 or so years. I don't think this is the worst it's ever been in the US, but it definitely seems like the Trump era is the worst it's been since mass adoption of the internet. Because of things like 24 hour news networks and social media, we're also reminded of our differences much more frequently than we used to be.I think politics is just a bigger part of peoples' liv

The US is so polarized now that no one looks at an action's merits any more, just whether or not the red team or the blue team did it, and then they either express maximum outrage (always maximum, never anything less), or do mental backflips to justify it, depending on whether it's "their" team doing it or not. Political discussions are reduced to spewing hate at anyone or anything perceived as being attributable to the "other" team. Nuanced thought is not tolerated

I don't think that this is true anymore. Trump is moving the Overton Window to the right [1], while a part of the Democrats, lead by Bernie Sanders and other left politicians are trying to pull it to the left. So right now, a lot of people are travelling from the center of the Overton window to the sides. This also leads to more "political fights" and political tribalism.1: https://www

Very much agree with this sentiment.Even 10 years ago everything seemed to be "normal" in the sense that it's same old stuff, nothing too major. There's always going to be the political disagreements and all that. But things have shifted like crazy.And I don't think it's just because of technology that we are able to read what more people are thinking right away and have more instant access to news. Although, it kind of is simply because we are able to see ho

For me it was the politics as well. And not even the amount of it, but rather the toxicity of discussions. Not that things were polite in elder days... but they were not so actively hateful.I still wonder sometimes if it's a shift in the Slashdot audience specifically - seeing how movements like neo-reaction have been springing up in the tech community in the past few years - or it just mirrors the increased polarization in American society (I know Slashdot has international audience - h

Tribal politics. I don’t know if it already existed, but it seems like in the past 10 years there’s a growing intolerance and outright hatred for people who don’t think or look like us, and it’s prevalent - at least here in the US - among both political parties. And the media is amplifying it 10x because at the end of the day, the most important thing is profit.And secondly, the rate of growth and change seems to be working us towards a less resilient system overall. As an anecdote, my co wor

On some level I feel like my country is unwinding, like somehow over time we have developed these parallel economies and social institutions, and now we don't know how to talk to ourselves anyhow.. and it scares me. The fact that one side can't see the other is struggling is an example of this.There is another observation I have too - and some point everyone became offended at everyone - when I was younger, merely having a different opinion was never offensive, now in certain circle

This is not unique to the US. I see similar partisan issues causing division around the world. Same pattern, no constructive dialogue, no way to move forward, just constant conflict. I think people were either better at dialogue before, or people have always sucked at it, but it took the Internet becoming really widespread in day-to-day use for people to notice it.

During my several decades I would say polarization and tribalism has been a mainstay of American discourse. Think of “communist” as an all-purpose slur in the 50s, the Vietnam and establishment vs. counterculture situation in the 60s/70s, some weak anti-Yuppie stuff in the 80s, etc. But I can’t think of any time this bad.I personally blame not only the algorithms, but the focus of political parties on activating their more extreme constituents rather than on achieving reasonable compromi