> Growing up I do not remember political associations to be so strong in folks.
Depends on when you grew up, but assuming the 1985 is your birth year, then political polarization has been asymmetrically increasing since well before you were born. Take a look at the DW-NOMINATE data for the US House: https://xkcd.com/1127/large/
This asymmetric polarization mirrors doctrinal polarization among white US evangelicals, who have, for example, gone from having a plurality of views on abortion to treating it as an absolute doctrinal litmus test: https://www.patheos.com/blogs/slacktivist/2012/02/18/the-bib...
I can believe that for you personally 9/11 felt unifying, but that wasn't the case for a lot of people. Not just including the Sikhs and Muslims lynched, of course, or all the people who saw that and got nervous. But also the notable percentage of Americans opposed to the Iraq war, which Bush began beating the drums for just months after 9/11.
I also believe that you perceived American culture as more unified then. But based on what? Twitter didn't launch until 2006, and didn't really take off until 2010. If a bunch of people were upset about something, how would you have known? Especially if they were in some group that didn't get a lot of mass media attention, you wouldn't have. It's not that edgy comedians were any less awful then. It's that the people they were being shitty about generally didn't get the chance to express their feelings on it. I think the problem you're seeing is not differing views, but people with those different views finally getting their say.
> political climate has been so stifling since at least McCarthyism
Oh? Why don't you break that down for me with some examples. Go through the major harms of the Red Scare era and then some examples of people similarly harmed today. I think that's wrong, but I'm happy to learn something.
> was fucking Wikipedia is a crass, petulant move, and wholly inappropriate for something as counterfactual
I don't think you quite understand what counterfactual means, but I think take your point. Your notion seems to be that this is a fact-free zone, and that it's shockingly rude to ask if their claims have any basis in fact. I obviously think that's ridiculous. If you want to go entirely unchallenged, maybe get a talk radio show or something. But as long as I've been here, asking for evidence has been a popular activity.
Depends on when you grew up, but assuming the 1985 is your birth year, then political polarization has been asymmetrically increasing since well before you were born. Take a look at the DW-NOMINATE data for the US House: https://xkcd.com/1127/large/
This asymmetric polarization mirrors doctrinal polarization among white US evangelicals, who have, for example, gone from having a plurality of views on abortion to treating it as an absolute doctrinal litmus test: https://www.patheos.com/blogs/slacktivist/2012/02/18/the-bib...
I can believe that for you personally 9/11 felt unifying, but that wasn't the case for a lot of people. Not just including the Sikhs and Muslims lynched, of course, or all the people who saw that and got nervous. But also the notable percentage of Americans opposed to the Iraq war, which Bush began beating the drums for just months after 9/11.
I also believe that you perceived American culture as more unified then. But based on what? Twitter didn't launch until 2006, and didn't really take off until 2010. If a bunch of people were upset about something, how would you have known? Especially if they were in some group that didn't get a lot of mass media attention, you wouldn't have. It's not that edgy comedians were any less awful then. It's that the people they were being shitty about generally didn't get the chance to express their feelings on it. I think the problem you're seeing is not differing views, but people with those different views finally getting their say.
> political climate has been so stifling since at least McCarthyism
Oh? Why don't you break that down for me with some examples. Go through the major harms of the Red Scare era and then some examples of people similarly harmed today. I think that's wrong, but I'm happy to learn something.
> was fucking Wikipedia is a crass, petulant move, and wholly inappropriate for something as counterfactual
I don't think you quite understand what counterfactual means, but I think take your point. Your notion seems to be that this is a fact-free zone, and that it's shockingly rude to ask if their claims have any basis in fact. I obviously think that's ridiculous. If you want to go entirely unchallenged, maybe get a talk radio show or something. But as long as I've been here, asking for evidence has been a popular activity.