I think almost everyone would feel the same way. I know I would. We should reflect on why we feel more like this than in 2010.
Persoanlly, I think it has to do with the moral realm vs the practical realm. We think of morality as a good thing, but it is more about absolutes than goodness. As we bring more things into the moral realm -- who you vote for, for example -- it shuts down reason, discourse, nuance, and understanding.
Traditionally, the moral realm is about what you do. There's not much value in society discussing murder and whether its a good thing to do or not; and there's a lot of potential harm. If murder becomes an issue of nuance, people can rationalize it too easily and you get chaos.
Now, I feel like our thoughts are becoming part of the moral realm, and that's a bad thing. There's no chance to discuss and learn together if one person thinks that the other is evil. It also means that it's easy for an otherwise good person to do horrible things because they feel that they are attacking evil.
I don't meam to say that moralization is new. It has certainly happened in the past, say with McCarthyism, or the Spanish Inquisition. But it does feel like the pendulum is swinging in the direction of everything-is-a-matter-of-good-and-evil.
And frankly, it seems like most of this moralization of thought is coming from the left. There's still some socialism-is-evil sentiment on the right, but that was pretty minor this cycle compared with the Trump-is-evil sentiment.
It is dangerous that political differences are now being moralized. You vote for Biden? You're evil and should be fired. You vote for Trump? You're a Nazi and should be fired. Then what? What's the next step? I used to read about the French Revolution in horror. Parisans cheered when a Guillotine dropped, for they thought it was the righteous thing to do. And the history repeated itself in China 55 years ago and then 35 years ago, all in the name of upholding superior morality.
On the contrary I think your perspective represents a clear problem: you seem to think the spread of DEI and woke bs in certain segments of society can somehow be equated with a literal attempt to turn over the results of an election, a storming of the fucking capitol like we're some 3rd world country, QAnon, attempts--some successful, others less so--to make cruelty a major point of immigration policy, etc. Not to mention issues such as climate change.
There is no sense of morality in what you're saying. I have traditional values and would vote for a center right party over Dems, if we had one. But what we have are two parties very unequal in terms of morality and intellectual credentials.
Funny, the machinations we devise to skirt the core problem, which is an increasing dearth of fundamental moraltity.
Look around.. Something's gone completely wrong. Everyone is angry and there is decreasing value placed on kindness and decency. In fact, selfishness is increasingly a virtue. Observe how POTUS behaves. I don't care what side you're on, there is nothing normal or healthy about that level of chaos, narcissim, and mean-spiritedness. Yet, this is the leader of the free world? It's a sad reflection of where we are.
We can set up all the incentives and disincentives we can imagine but, as the saying goes, "you can't legislate morality". Until we deal with that issue, we'll continue to see all manner of its manifestations.
It's very sad that people feel this way, no matter if it justified or not. I feel like this presidential election has had more groups than usual come out and talk about similar feelings and/or actions. Is this a byproduct of new (accurate or not) being much more available compared to previous elections? In other words, did stuff like this happen before and we just never heard about it or is it really happening more this time around?
But I also think that, even though what you said can be true, that there has also been an increase in how these political positions are becoming more extreme (both on the left and on the right!).
I think that these extreme ideas/views and conflicts have been greatly amplified by social networks and information bubbles.
Or maybe it's just that these extreme cases are more visible now, I don't know.
But I am still quite worried that we are not heading in a good direction.
I feel like we've all witnessed so much madness the past few years that we've become desensitized. Nothing shocks us any longer. This is worrying because it allows for gradual escalation until the inevitable.
(I think this is true regardless of political orientation.)
People have such short memories, and media cycles are too quick. I'm the least fan of Trump, but this is truly one area that the US is taking a stronger stance on than even in my own home country (which I considered more moral, until now).
Like I said, I think it was the change in society. We've become aggressively intolerant which is manifesting in various ways. Do you recall during the primaries when Trump supporters were literally being assaulted and hounded, just for being Trump supporters? Or how the media was running, non ironically, pieces literally comparing Trump to Hitler. The sort of stuff you might expect from internet trolls, not actual reporters.
Compare this to, for instance, how the media and society society responded to e.g. Romney, McCain, or Bush. Society has shifted sharply towards intolerance which is making obtaining accurate information very difficult when that information might leave one within the crosshairs of said intolerance. This creates a major chilling effect which leads people to misrepresent their views. Take the state of society today and then imagine somebody calls you and asks if you're voting and if so, for who. You're going to get some decent chunk of Trump supporters that will lie here. Voting is anonymous, but phone calls are not.
The burden of somehow trying to overcome this problem is on pollsters, and the only thing that's certain is that it's not going to be easy. Gallup was way ahead of the game here -- deciding for the first time ever to not make predictions about the 2016 election.
Although I don't believe this is worse than the injustices of generations past, it's certainly sad to witness politics in 2018 contain a plethora of virtue signalling, charades, and ineffectual action. We support the killings of innocents with our military industrial complex, and our media tells us its necessary because otherwise we will lose jobs[1]. Where is the investigation of 500 million missing dollars of charitable relief to Haiti[2]? Not to mention, where is the media coverage of the CLOUD act, and why did congress underhandedly sneak a law that harms Americans rights into a "must pass" omnibus spending bill without[3]? The war on drugs and prison state? Or any of the homeless crises? Unjust and corrupt healthcare and public health? Cities with murder rates higher than anywhere in Africa or the Middle East? Surging suicide rates[4]? And we are just scratching the surface here, and when you get to the bottom there are things you can't even talk about, like human rights for Palestinians[5]
Tyranny, injustice and oppression were not simply eliminated at the end of WWII. And living today to witness the convenient virtue signalling about a historical artifact of a long-defeated tyrant, juxtaposed with the willingness to tolerate current injustice, is really sad.
But isn't that what made Nazi Germany possible? Our willingness to tolerate injustice, so long as it doesn't happen to us? Our desire to follow authority--to serve in the court of despots? That is the irony here, which calls to light the real meaning of this kind of virtue signalling: If we lived under the reign of any of those other tyrants, in Imperial Japan, Nazi Germany, or wherever, would we all suddenly be among activists, not just mere virtue signallers championing the virtues of our leaders?
I don't mean to come down hard on you personally; I just personally wish to see the conversation move away from moral grandstanding to moral responsibility.
I wonder how common this issue is, hoe often we're just talking past one another. Even though we're agreeing.
I think some folks on my side of this are stuck in the past, Trump's election in some ways paused our internal mental realization of our own progress greatly.
If anything it made us feel as if the last 20-25 years of progress was imminently threatened, and we're seeing the reaction to this right now. It saddens me so very greatly, because it just inflames things further and somewhat perversely that reactionary tendency puts the progress at risk.
This is someone responding on Hackernews too. Every time I go to the US on business I see a different world. Adult bible study groups talking in coffee shops about how they are praying that, and believe that Trump will save america, etc.
People can think what they want I guess. It just has more of an effect on the world than I thought it used to so I feel a little saddened watching this new dark age come about.
To add to this. More and more people are living in bubbles of ideological similarity[1]. There isn't really an exchange of ideas anymore between people who have divergent views. These days it is between moderates and extremists on the same side, rarely against someone who opposes an idea.
So when something happens that goes so against the grain, that is so shocking it demands a response you see the results like "trump derangement syndrome". Where everything bad the president does is hyped up far more than was under previous presidents, and every effort is made to return to the status quo.
Not to say that Trump is a good president, far from it. But Barack Obama banned people from travelling from the same countries as Trump and there wasn't massive outrage, protest and court challenges.
Societies are becoming more fragmented. Less and less are believing in the American dream or its equivalent and this is the outcome. I hope this isn't the start of the decline and decay and slow slide to irrelevance of the West like it was for so many past civilisations.
The rationale, which I am a bit worried about, is that the unspoken norms of how American politics has always operated are getting decimated. If some sort of positive reinforcement loop gets established... But more conscious awareness of these norms and how important they are is only better. Read up on Masha Gesson [1]. I think it is more apparent exactly how aberrant the GOP has become and that is a good thing. But a clear and present danger, like he's going to hand America over to Putin next year? No, there is enough pushback going on that I am not very worried. As long as eventually, someone publicly goes to jail...
But now I am reminded of the Bush years when a survey of 18 year olds found most of them thought the First Amendment should be limited in some overly strict way... it was something like that - it was nothing like the understanding of things when I was 18, so yes, society's morals or what constitutes "common understanding" can shift in response to current events. Trump needs to be seen as a serious aberration, not just a speed bump, and this needs to be communicated to the under-18 crowd.
What's more eggregious is that if this news story were to come out during Trump presidency, everyone would be losing their shit here on HN. It would be so insane, try to imagine us ramping up the Fascism toeing line on all conservatives who have nothing to do with this.
There is no moral compass left in people I feel. We haven't got a north star that we used to. Subjectivism has occupied us all. The only way to move forward is to anchor your beliefs with sound fundamentals, no matter what others are doing around you.
I still remember vividly when the left used to believe in net-neutrality or in free-speech.
Edit: Those downvoting this, can you explain why this wouldn't be true? Can you try to imagine what would have heppened to this story in 2019? I understand you might not agree with my take, then please respond below.
Yes. Probably the worst thing about this election for me is that it seems to demonstrate conclusively that 2016 was no aberration, no temporary mass hysteria, no failed experiment in electing a political outsider to “drain the swamp”. This distorted world view of us-vs-them tribalism seems to have totally consumed our political system. Objective reality is dismissed by the majority of the population—most blatantly on the right, but also, increasingly, on the left. Even more shocking to me, highly regarded election data scientists have twice now somehow been blinded to this, releasing poll after poll that fail to capture what is actually happening in the minds of the electorate.
Carl Sagan, in his 1995 book ‘The Demon-Haunted World’, wrote:
> I have a foreboding of an America in my children’s or grandchildren’s time — when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the key manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what’s true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness.
The moment he prophesied now appears to be upon us. I don’t know how we can restore this country to one where people mostly act in good faith and try to base decisions in science and fact. I see so many incredibly compassionate people supporting the most despicable politicians. Right-wingers on Twitter repeating false talking points that the left are trying to destroy the country while tweeting about how proud they are of local youth offering free lawn care to disabled and senior citizens. Left-wingers openly insulting rural and conservative people as the scum of the earth while relentlessly supporting policies intended to improve those same peoples’ lives. How does this happen? What do we have to do—as individuals, as nations, as humans—to get it to stop?
Persoanlly, I think it has to do with the moral realm vs the practical realm. We think of morality as a good thing, but it is more about absolutes than goodness. As we bring more things into the moral realm -- who you vote for, for example -- it shuts down reason, discourse, nuance, and understanding.
Traditionally, the moral realm is about what you do. There's not much value in society discussing murder and whether its a good thing to do or not; and there's a lot of potential harm. If murder becomes an issue of nuance, people can rationalize it too easily and you get chaos.
Now, I feel like our thoughts are becoming part of the moral realm, and that's a bad thing. There's no chance to discuss and learn together if one person thinks that the other is evil. It also means that it's easy for an otherwise good person to do horrible things because they feel that they are attacking evil.
I don't meam to say that moralization is new. It has certainly happened in the past, say with McCarthyism, or the Spanish Inquisition. But it does feel like the pendulum is swinging in the direction of everything-is-a-matter-of-good-and-evil.
And frankly, it seems like most of this moralization of thought is coming from the left. There's still some socialism-is-evil sentiment on the right, but that was pretty minor this cycle compared with the Trump-is-evil sentiment.
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