Comment by wgerard
8 years ago
Huh, your comment actually caused me to re-evaluate my thinking a little bit.
Because you're right, in general this is true:
> There were no good ol' days of citizen-statesmen calmly discussing their political differences and coming to reasoned conclusions on policy.
It seems that way sometimes (calm debate and discussion), but US history of course is full of angry, threatening debates with even politicians themselves erupting into actual physical violence sometimes [1].
Still, it feels like there's been a notable shift. Compare one of the 1992 presidential debates [2] to a 2016 presidential debate [3]. The former feels like an actual debate, the latter feels like a segment on a political news show where basically the loudest voice "wins".
Of course, US politics has always been a thin veneer of civility masking some extremely aggressive adversarial acts (e.g. Watergate), but it seems like that mask has now disappeared almost entirely.
I don't know that Twitter is the cause of any of this (as opposed to just a reflection of where we're at), but it does feel like things have certainly shifted nonetheless.
1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legislative_violence#United_St...
> Still, it feels like there's been a notable shift.
I don't know if I agree completely...I watched your videos and yes- the debates during the 2016 election were absolutely ridiculous, I think that's mostly due to wider and more public acceptance of conspiracy theory, Fox News, and your Rush Limbaughs, and on the flipside thought-policing, extreme sensitivity, etc
It's funny, back to why I somewhat disagree with you, if you watch any news from the last twenty or thirty years everyone seems to have the exact same concerns as they do now. Donald Trump (and even Hillary Clinton when she was running) are just really loud mouthpieces for those concerns.
Setting aside formal debates among politicians, if you want to talk about why discussion of contentious topics by average Joes and Janes has degenerated into its current state of pointless shouting matches, I feel like it has less to do with Fox News, conspiracy theories, fake news, Russian meddling or whatever else is regularly associated with the alt-right. In the run-up to the election and the months following it, a large faction on the left has abandoned any pretense of discussing ideas and policies or of having civilized debate, preferring instead to become very aggressive with insults, wild accusations of racism, white supremacy, misogyny, etc., in order to demonize their opposition. You see it all the time on this forum and others. It's lazy and harmful, and it's being used as a tool to avoid any self-reflection.
I agree with one caveat- I think it's preposterous to say that the left is responsible for this- both sides participated in this nonsense and it's obvious that that is the case.
And, I think you have to take the context in which Donald Trump rose to power into account- to many (myself included) it's also preposterous that someone with a track record of failure, bankruptcy, and lack of experience could come to head our administrative branch...it's hard to have a conversation when the very idea of his election is so absurd, for better or for worse.
Another edit! I think it's misleading for you to present Fox News, Rush Limbaugh, et al. as things associated with the Alt-Right. These are very much poor sources of information and are very much so digested by a huge swath of conservative Americans.
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> I think that's mostly due to wider and more public acceptance of conspiracy theory, Fox News, and your Rush Limbaughs, etc..
That's a pretty serious shift!
Absolutely agreed