It's circles. We're all trapped up in the circles we participate in. The two sides of America are almost invisible to each other. In my opinion Facebook is the worst offender here. My liberal friends write long rants about how they no longer understand America-and all comments are in agreement. They like and share left leaning posts-so Facebook shows more of them. And they see more people who agree with them. Their glimpse into the other side resides mostly on the nuts who actually comment on those posts. As for my friends on the right-it's a motherfucking meme fest. It's vindictive, it's cruel, and it's self-congratulatory. It's the easiest out to just call someone a "snowflake" or a "liberal pussy" and move on without any real discussion. What aboutism is rampant. Right wing talking points are top notch-self righteousness is fun and easy. Tommi Lahren videos feel good to share. Look-an attractive women who's "calling it for what it is". To be fair I have a large number of conservative friends who are much better about this-unfortunately nowadays they're mostly silent. Ramblings aside-my point is that these two groups barely interact with each other. Targeted ads and content leads you into similar minded threads. I'm lucky in the fact that I grew up in an extremely liberal area, and work in an extremely conservative one. I've been able to toe the line between the two decently well. Not that I particularly enjoy it anymore-I think it's time to quit Facebook.
Again, I absolutely agree. Instead of ushering in an era of truth, learning, and warm fuzzies, the internet has been engineered into a series of echo chambers and paths of least resistances. I attend an extremely liberal university, and thus all of the friends I've made within the last couple of years serve to only reinforce a lot of my own liberal-leaning opinions. So, several times a week-ish, I have been visiting foxnews.com, just to get an idea of what the other half of America is consuming for their news. "Information warfare" so perfectly describes what we're witnessing. It's too bad infowars.com belongs to one of the biggest fuckwits of them all. Earlier tonight, I decided to text an old friend of mine who was stationed in Iraq for a bit. He is pro-Trump, and was livid about The Kneelening. He finds it ironic that these multi-millionaires are (in his eyes) snubbing the country that gave them the opportunities they have. It's very depressing to me that the heart of the issue seems to be his unwillingness to admit that black people face a different reality than whites. And I think that issue is central to why I find myself on the left, even with all its problems. It's interesting to imagine what would've happened if Hillary won the presidency. The polarization might have continued on in a manner without much fanfare, at least for the time being. Trump is almost forcing us to confront the issues. Right now, it seems to be primarily race, and urban vs. rural America, but income inequality has to eventually crop up after his base realizes that ya can't just magically bring back coal, or whatever impossible thing they're expecting him to do to fight increasing automation and globalization. Still, I think we are in trouble. It's like we've developed a subconscious, collective yearning for a major disaster that forces us all to band together. The imagery of people of all races helping each other out after hurricane Harvey apparently blew some peoples' minds. I also think there's probably something to the idea of "living memory", and the veterans from Vietnam and WW2 are dwindling in number*. What really churns my gut is the thought that millions of deaths on the Korean peninsula might not affect America directly enough for us to reverse this trend of polarization. The graphic in the link from this post is still one of my favorite illustrations of the polarization trend: *I'm not trying to diminish anyone who served in Iraq or Afghanistan, but the nature of our recent warfare is very different, as is the scale of our involvement.
That seemed to be the core of the issue to the vet I talked to. I can understand how taking a knee offends veterans and those in the service, but I don't get how offended people are. It seems like a really small offense to me, that it would be easy ignore it, that ignoring it would be healthier than getting butthurt.He finds it ironic that these multi-millionaires are (in his eyes) snubbing the country that gave them the opportunities they have.