Surely, political and cultural tensions seem more pronounced these days. Liberals and conservatives often live in different worlds, shop in different stores, eat in different restaurants and consume different media. Research by the Pew Research Center has found that half of Democrats and half of Republicans consider the opposing party frightening. Discussion in online forums and social media often descends into ad hominem attacks. Compromise doesn’t get much of a hearing.
It won’t get any worse than the civil war era. People just think they are living in extraordinary times constantly regardless of the times. Also perhaps the abundance of news and various media outlets have led people to be exposed to such news more frequently but how is this different from rest of history? iamrite6
I think that social media contributed significantly to political division as it enables fringe groups like Tea Party to become publicly vocal and proliferate their views. If we credit Facebook for enabling Arab Spring or other progressive movements, we also have to think about how online media empowers regressive or divisive minorities to become nationally popular.
It’s amazing how it allows people to organize. While I don’t know if the amount of people believing conspiracy theories has changed over time, I’m pretty confident the homogeneity of those theories has increased due to the internet. Instead of gossip and false beliefs being localized they are much broader
lol social media essentially makes it easier to connect with like minded people to have positive affirmations that’ll ultimately lead to polarization. is it a bad thing? i dont know. i personally like uniformity. it makes it easier to peg, generalize, and judge a person!
It’s hopeless until you send troops into the corporate media office buildings, and simply power down the entire disinformation apparatus. But there is no entity/law/referee that can do that. So until a revolutionary force emerges, or until the corporate-government state switches strategies (unify thru WWIII), it continues.
I’m hopeful. If social media was a catalyst for polarization, I think it also is the vehicle to help bridge the gap for those who want to. I think the fact that the divide has gotten so ugly, that this is exactly what people are being moved to do. I coach at an all women’s liberal arts college… breeding ground for pampered millennials left wing uber feminist? Actually no! I was talking with a couple of them yesterday. Both told me about how they were raised in a left leaning environment, but in their classes and in their own time they are practicing the value of weighing both sides of the political spectrum. I was very impressed by the one girl who, prompted by no one but herself, goes on youtube to watch right wing posters and forces herself to try to understand the opposing point of view. I wanted to high 5 her!.. so cool
Half of all republicans and half of all democrats still only equals 30% of americans, so there is room for being hopeful. To Samcry’s point above, it’s always been like this, but social media plus obama plus trump…has brought it to the surface and public square. We all have a vision of the kind of society in which want to live, that’s an important thing, and worth arguing about.
Ya know, this is shocking to me considering all I’ve heard for two years is that “Marxist professors” have staged a coup on college campuses and free speech isn’t allowed any longer.
I was so worried that our children wouldn’t be able to learn that taxation is theft! Glad to hear this isn’t the case.
Usually, the sensible types in colleges and other intuitions are not vocal in their advertisement of beliefs and have actual research jobs they have to attend to. The majority of these uber left-leaning types are from shitby departments who have no real value but exist anyway. It’s kinda hard finding super left STEM professors let alone Economists and Business professors who feed themselves by capitalism.
^I studied engineering, and those profs were generally liberal, but not silly. Science liberals are different, their basis is a skepticism of religion, and a strong aversion to people who deny basic science and math…which are both often found among right wing. I made this generalized point before, college liberals are a good thing, they learn to be passionate about things, diving change, but once they graduate and have to pay taxes and find good schools for their kids, they invariably move to the center. College conservatives on the other hand tend to graduate and get more extreme in their views.
