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Reading an otherwise excellent book, “Polarized America,” published in 2006. But this line strikes me as a bit naive through the lens of December 2023:

“there is simply no question to us that the United States is a far more tolerant place [than] it was fifty years ago.”

The authors couldn’t have imagined what - and who - was coming. #politics

in reply to Sheril Kirshenbaum

Cesspool of hate hidden beneath the surface bubbled over when we stopped paying attention to it.
in reply to Sheril Kirshenbaum

Damning with faint praise. 1950s America was unbelievably intolerant. Things are clearly better, which sadly is the animus that drives MAGA.
in reply to Sheril Kirshenbaum

The lesson here is that culture changes swiftly.

2006 wasn't so long ago. But social media was in its infancy & we had no idea how it would be weaponized to divide us. And this was also before the Tea Party movement. And before Sarah Palin took the national stage.

I do believe that we were less divided in 2006. I was working in the Senate then. But like the authors of this book, I could not have predicted what was on the horizon. /2

in reply to Sheril Kirshenbaum

The differences were there, I guess. They just feel free to talk openly about the darker antagonistic ideas?
in reply to Sheril Kirshenbaum

This one is simple: they are right, and you are wrong.

The world I grew up in did not have Black, Hispanic, or Asian professionals. Not just no news anchors or Mayors, no doctors, lawyers. Almost no women doctors, either. No Asian dentists.

There was one woman in my 1980 engineering grad class of 52. Five of my last six engineering supervisors (2005-2017) were women.

Kids these days; no idea at all the battles that were fought to hand them the world they think is "normal".

This entry was edited (11 months ago)
in reply to Sheril Kirshenbaum

hmm. but congress was already pretty polarized by 2006, no? where's that diagram i saw of blue and red separating on legislation over the decades?
in reply to Sheril Kirshenbaum

as dark as things sometimes feel here in 2023, I would encourage you to consider what was and was not tolerated in the US in 1956.
in reply to Sheril Kirshenbaum

Yes! Nobody could have imagined, much less predicted that.

#Obama's election threw #White #Christians into apoplectic rage, paving the way for #TeaParty, #NewtGingrich, and the #religious #FarRight, culminating in #MAGA and #Trump

#GOP

in reply to Sheril Kirshenbaum

His example of it being less bigotry between "white ethnic groups" is, uh... telling.
in reply to Sheril Kirshenbaum

This was in 2006. Did they forget the rampant Islamophobia from 2001-2003?

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