Quote:
Originally Posted by pietvo
What really wonders me, is why the USA has become such a polarized country.
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It was always polarized. It's only in the last ten years or so that people have easy, direct access to those on the other side of whatever issues they care about--the internet has made it obvious that we don't mostly agree on most subjects, and a lot of people are freaking out about that.
More than ten years ago, most people only talked with people they mostly agreed with on political issues (in part 'cos political opinions tend to run in communities), and if they knew anyone who strongly disagreed, it was a single person, not another whole community. And while they knew that, somewhere-out-there other opinions were dominant, they didn't have to think about that. They got their views on what America-in-general believes from news media, and thought it was biased toward "the other side," whatever that was.
Then, internet. Boom. All of a sudden, 10,000 blogs from *every perspective imaginable,* each with its own fanatic following. People had a hard time ignoring opposing opinions, or relegating them to "that one lone kook" or "those freaks who live in [city]." Looking for new news & blogs that agreed with you found a dozen that were directly opposed, because they use the same keywords.
A lot of the polarization and activism is just shock that "those people" really exist, and in seriously large numbers.