Social how long has this cultural and political divide been going on in the US?

[Hellowhosthat]

Since the beginning but social media and the bias MSM has really amplified it in the last decade and made everything hyper political.

10 years ago, people didn’t care about Wendy’s corporate stance on transgenders but now everything is a big deal. Social media and outrage culture are awful and the mainstream media is the cancer that is speeding up the death of western civilization

I think there's more to it than social media, we have the same access to social media in the UK and the vast majority of people are pretty centrist.

We don't have your hyper partisan news channels though, they did try to get a right wing news channel going but its viewing figures are appalling.

 

[ThaiSexPills]

I think there's more to it than social media, we have the same access to social media in the UK and the vast majority of people are pretty centrist.

We don't have your hyper partisan news channels though, they did try to get a right wing news channel going but its viewing figures are appalling.

Most people in the states are pretty centrist too, it’s just that the media has polarized everything and forced them to pick a side.

 

[Satan's Daddy.]

It's not going to stop anytime soon.

 

[steveflynn]

I think it's pretty clearly because of social media and politicians like people arguing about inconsequential cultural issues of the day instead of more pressing and actual substantive ones.

 

[steveflynn]

I noticed in the lead up to the 2008 election, there was a lot of rhetoric like:

“this is historical”, “we have to vote for him”, “first black president”, “if you vote for McCain, you’re kinda racist/backwards”, “it’s MLK’s dream!”

From what I remember from that election, the actual policies of the candidates were secondary. No-one seemed to care, it was all about the story!

Before that election, while their were some divisions, no-one really cared that much about race, at least from my own personal experiences. Since around 2007, it seems like almost everything is about race.

This is absolutely absurd. You think before 2007 nobody cared about race in American politics? Are you serious? Ever hear of the Willy Horton ads ? Karl Rove spreading rumors of John McCain (during the 2000 election) having an illegitimate black child ?

 

[Wet Blanket]

Most people in the states are pretty centrist too, it’s just that the media has polarized everything and forced them to pick a side.

 

[regmma123]

Those responding are entertaining the trolls (like the ts) whose aim is to literally deepen the political divide

 

[Goonerview]

This is absolutely absurd. You think before 2007 nobody cared about race in American politics? Are you serious? Ever hear of the Willy Horton ads ? Karl Rove spreading rumors of John McCain (during the 2000 election) having an illegitimate black child ?

I literally didn’t say that.

 

[jx820]

Some of it has kind of always been there, but it really started with two or three things.

24 hour cable news - prior to 24-hour news people used to watch 30-ish minutes of news a day. A lot of it was local and had to do with their community. National stories were generally a "just the facts" affair. The news was in no way an entertainment product.

Rush Limbaugh - Rush kicked off the anger-based media craze that we still live in today. Before he came along hour long political commentary shows were basically unheard of, certainly not popular. You absolutely wouldn't have expected someone to get on the radio refer to the President of the United States as a clown, and accuse their political opponents of trying to ruin America. Now it is absolutely standard practice for basically all political commentary. Outrage gets clicks.

Newt Gingrich and CNET - CNET used to broadcast anything they did in the halls of Congress, but it was largely a stale boring broadcast that no one cared about. Both sides of the aisle could more or less work together many of those people even liked their counterparts across the aisle. So there wasn't much TV friendly drama. Then Gingrich came along and as long as the cameras were running he would give fire and brimstone speeches even if he was talking to an empty room because it was being broadcast to hundreds of thousands of people.

Within a decade of these events you should have an election so contentious that it had to go to the supreme Court to be decided, you'd have the rise of Fox News, and 9/11. Primaries started to be overrun by radicals on both sides.

Today we have politicians who would rather see America fail and their political opponents get a win.

Honorable mention:
Huge campaign budgets - The whores in our political machine will say or do just about anything to raise money. Giving people an enemy to be afraid of is a good way to get them to loosen their purse strings

 

[steveflynn]

I literally didn’t say that.

Okay, you're right (I guess)

You said:

"Before that election, while their were some divisions, no-one really cared that much about race, at least from my own personal experiences"

 

[Wet Blanket]

Cultural Marxism. Like the poster above explained its been in full effect since the 60s. There has been a shift over the last 10 years but that's just a culmination of various agendas coming into fruition. All the groundwork laid down in the 60s-90s started to really show itself in the mid-2000s.

The true foundation for the cultural marxism ravaging our society today was the Civil Rights Movement. The CRM was a Bolshevik financed Black Communist movement no different than BLM is today. Its important to really wrap your mind around this fact. The reason conservatives have such a hard time fending off constant pushes for the creation, acceptance, and "equality" of more and more identities and groups of people is because they accepted the idea of "racial equality". The very concept of "equality", regardless of the catalyst, is the fuel that runs Marxism.

America simply cannot last as a society until they reject the Equality Doctrine across the board. But that is most likely an impossibility at this point. The cancer is terminal.

Sherdog staying classy with its antisemitism.

 

[Tairy Hesticles]

Sometime between 2004 and 2014. Check out the graphs in this article: https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2014/06/12/political-polarization-in-the-american-public/

There's probably a ton of reasons for this divide, but I personally think a lot of it is social media and the 2016 election circus. Seeing the other side used to be a virtue, but now you're called a grifter for understanding different points of view. Oh, you're an independent? Nah, you're just a Republican trying to grift the lefties, or vice versa.

Instead of encouraging empathy and understanding, we decided it was better to pick a side and fling our shit at the other. That happened somewhere between 2004 and 2014 and has only gotten worse since.

 

[Tairy Hesticles]

At this point, there's probably not much use for debate (to change the other side), because the two sides operate with completely different morals, standards and worldviews.

That's the entire reason for debate. 100 million people don't vote in national elections, and that number is probably much higher for local politics. Not everyone has chosen a side - you just don't hear much from the people that haven't. If you want to convine them to vote for your "side" then you need to present good arguments and debate. It's not to convince the person that you're debating against, but for the undecided audience listening.

 

[steveflynn]

The cultural and political divide has been gradually increasing but I think we formed completely different standards and worldviews around 2015

At this point, there's probably not much use for debate (to change the other side), because the two sides operate with completely different morals, standards and worldviews.

And you think this just started around 2015? Come on, there's been a stark divide when it comes to abortion, gay marriage, stem cell therapy treatments, transgender rights, etc. since before 2015 between the two sides.

 

[MaxMMA]

It will continue until the liberal rejects toughen up a bit, and finally come to grips with the fact that the whole world isn't against you and the country wasn't specifically designed to see you fail.

Quite the opposite actually, but that would require a little more than just crying and complaining all the time. They might actually have to seek employment or some other form of revenue stream.

 

[emefer]

It really broke the surface when a black man was elected president and then Trump exacerbated it by attacking the left calling them evil people that want to destroy America.

 

[Zazen]

It really started much earlier than that. We are just seeing the high level of control that the Marxists have over the country now. There was a progression of advancement for the agenda going back to the 60s and 70s. First came the infiltration of education. It was complete by the time I entered the college system in the early 90s, but one could still defend traditional ideas (like free market principles being better than Communism, etc.) without being called Hitler, unlike now. When I studied education over the years, it became clear that a dramatic shift began in the mid 2000s, culminating with the insanity we have in the education system today. I witnessed the Marxist infiltration and corruption in the education system firsthand, from both sides. By the 2010s, Marxist ideology was in full control of education. It is really a complicated question, but education has never really been about anything other than producing obedient worker drones anyway, but now, they don't even teach anything useful. I left education because I couldn't deal with the endemic fraud and Marxist nonsense.

 

[nostradumbass]

It's mostly the internet. It existed to some extent before, the media always pumped out fake news to protect narratives, but instead of being more careful now that people can fact check them, they've actually turned it up to 11 and become more steadfast in their dishonesty.

Couple that with people now not only interacting with each other who probably wouldn't have before, but doing it semi anonymously where you can be as rude as you want and say shit you would never say to someone's face.

You can see the difference in Obama's 2008 campaign vs his 2012 campaign that coincides with all of this. 2008 was mostly about his left wing policies, and 2012 it turned into almost entirely identity politics after his first term brought the worst economic recovery in 100 years and the middle class was becoming the minority. It turned into crying about Fox News, calling everybody who doesn't support him a racist, and "Trayvon Martin could have been my son". Then of course a year into his 2nd term after getting substantially fewer votes than 2008, the middle class finally did become a minority, BLM sprouted up with the "hands up don't shoot" lie, and anybody who didn't like it was called a white supremacist.

 

[Long Dark Blues]

The National Defense Authorization Act of 2016/2017 created an entity within government to develop and disseminate "fact-based" narratives.

These narratives get picked up by traditional media and whispered on down the lane via social media until they aren't narratives but instead become some sort of subjective reality for many people.

 

[steveflynn]

It's mostly the internet. It existed to some extent before, the media always pumped out fake news to protect narratives, but instead of being more careful now that people can fact check them, they've actually turned it up to 11 and become more steadfast in their dishonesty.

Couple that with people now not only interacting with each other who probably wouldn't have before, but doing it semi anonymously where you can be as rude as you want and say shit you would never say to someone's face.

You can see the difference in Obama's 2008 campaign vs his 2012 campaign that coincides with all of this. 2008 was mostly about his left wing policies, and 2012 it turned into almost entirely identity politics after his first term brought the worst economic recovery in 100 years and the middle class was becoming the minority. It turned into crying about Fox News, calling everybody who doesn't support him a racist, and "Trayvon Martin could have been my son". Then of course a year into his 2nd term after getting substantially fewer votes than 2008, the middle class finally did become a minority, BLM sprouted up with the "hands up don't shoot" lie, and anybody who didn't like it was called a white supremacist.

It's funny how you say that Obama had the worst economic recovery in 100 years when he had a higher economic growth rate than both Bush and Trump.