Greater Political Acrimony

[Rvaughn]

[Haruo]

Certainly something to it, although there were feuds, civil wars, insurrections and whatnot in pre-electronic days, too, so social media shouldn't take all the blame.

[Jim]

Politicians and media-hacks/sycophants constantly use the term non-partisan to describe the ideal state of affairs, though they neither believe that nor act accordingly. Elections are supposed to promote one partisan cause(s) over another, thus actually changing government at a given time, usually when one party has run the nation to the edge of the proverbial cliff and it has to be rescued, as was the case in 2016, though the rescuer may have plenty of warts, as was/is the case. Trump is clearly a partisan, whereas Obama thought himself not the U.S. president but the president of the world, leaving his own country at cliff-edge in favor of establishing a stupid level-world-wide playing field. Hillary would have by now brought in 500,000 Muslims to guarantee a tilt, however, in favor of terrorism within the borders...beautiful world-wide non-partisanship...and deadly, as witness the Olde Europe countries in some city-neighborhoods of which the police eschew a presence.

[Dave Roberts]

[Haruo]

I'm just glad the US kicked out all the Italians and Irish before they caused intractable problems.

[Sandy]

[Sandy]

[William Thornton]

"Greater political acrimony" is the best named topic I've seen on BL for quite some time.

[Rvaughn]

Good title, bad topic? (I don't see much discussion of the actual topic, but perhaps some demonstration of it!)

[Rvaughn]

[Sandy]

[Rvaughn]

Well, that explains the acrimony on the right, and since there is none on the left, I guess we're done here.

[Sandy]

There doesn't always have to be an automatic "the left does it too," The right, especially the ultra-right that includes most of the Evangelical wing, is not objective or open minded enough to discern facts in media, and sees anything that doesn't gush with agreement as having a "left wing bias." Of course, you can find a few examples, here and there, to use as "proof", sort of like a Biblical prooftext, to support your claim that the entire media has a left wing bias, but virtually any examination of the facts from an unbiased, neutral position, doesn't produce any real evidence to support the claim. What happens, time and time again, is the affirmation that the media, especially the big "left" sources like the New York Times, and the Washington Post, goes out of its way to be fair to all perspectives, and because of the screeching, is doubly fair to the extremist right.

[Dave Roberts]

The reality is that social media make it almost impossible to escape the acrimony. We have new platforms for this rather than a way to compare it to the past. In my lifetime, the greatest spreader of political disinformation was Richard Nixon. It's hard to find a comparison now with electronic media.

[Jim]

[Jim]

[Jim]

The prexy had a physical, was pronounced more fit probably than anyone in this forum (certainly in better health than me) but CNN FOUND a Dr. Gupta who lectured solemnly about the prexy's heart disease, non-existent but threatening any thought of further gainful activity. I'm still laughing and have explained the circus here: http://ruckmaker.blogspot.com/2018/01/.