The political bubble and how it affects your opinion

[CJD]

(07-22-2019, 04:29 PM)Dill Wrote: Thoughtful post, C-Dawg. 

A couple of questions though, do you think this tendency of politicians to "demonize and caricaturize the opposing party" is of equal magnitude on both sides?

And if this sort of thing "comes between" the parties, do you think politicians are the primary "cause" of it?

Well, recency bias would lead me to think that the Republicans are much heavier offenders of the first question. But, of course, that's about 99.9% due to Donald Trump, who I think is the manifestation of this entire article.

But think back to the Presidency of George W Bush. The left's readiness to call him and his followers racist, in hindsight, seems pretty demonizing, doesn't it? (See: Kanye West saying W doesn't care about black people). Like, comparing him to Donald sure makes me feel like I was too hard on W and the people who voted for him. So if that's the case now, then I find it incredibly likely that at least a degree of that is occurring now, even if Donald is kind of making Democrats feel like it's 100% warranted right now.

I'll openly admit that I don't have any close friends who I know voted for Donald Trump. I have mostly Democrat friends and family who voted for Hillary (or didn't vote/voted for Jill Stein). I have friends and family who voted Republican their entire lives except for 2016. But I don't have any friends or family who (openly) voted for Donald. So maybe my bubble is preventing me from commenting on this accurately. Or maybe the kind of person who would vote for Donald would not naturally be someone I would pursue friendship with even before I knew their politics. I can't say for sure. Or maybe I do have friends who voted for Donald and, knowing my stance on him, decided to lie about who they voted for (I have a few friends who voted for Gary Johnson. Maybe they didn't actually. I dunno.)

As far as whether this is primarily caused by politicians...yea. I think so. Politicians kind of need you to feel like voting matters. If you think both candidates are basically the same (Hillary was pretty fiscally conservative and her socially liberal policies were pretty recent and not that all encompassing, especially compared to where the party is now), then you wouldn't really feel compelled to vote unless you have a specific issue that you vote on. So I think it's natural that politicians would try to make the other side seem worse than they are. 

Again, Donald is a perfect example of this. He is literally telling people the media lies to them regularly. He is attempting to divide the country by virtue of demonizing and de-legitimizing one of the main systems meant to check him. And he's no kinder to Democratic politicians either. Remember, before Donald, it used to be basically taboo to criticize the President before you. Donald insults Obama so much, it's not even newsworthy anymore.

AOC has been described as the liberal Donald Trump because she uses similar tactics. I think the squad in general does stoke the anti-Republican vibe, not just anti-Trump.

It's in politicians' best interest for their voting base to hate their opponents. It's how they get re-elected. Now, that's not to say that all demonization is a cynical attempt to falsify their opponent. I'm sure both sides believe part or most of what they say about the other side. But the reason decorum used to be important in politics was because outwardly calling other politicians bad people for what they believe is a great way to get them shot at on a baseball field or have bombs sent to their home addresses. And this hatred creates conspiracy theories, like the pizzagate thing.

It's just not good for anyone. And I hope it stops after 2020.