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It just struck me. We haven’t had a pure meta thread. What is at the core of the breakdown in America between two sides. Is it just social media boosting of traditional sports team enthusiasm in sports? And at its core team left and team right get along in person but in online like fighting each other for entertainment? Team left likes standing up a fentanyl addicted criminal as a martyr or a male swimmer in female sports to accuse those who will take the other side as racists Hitler types? And team right likes to own them. Or is there some marxists conspiracy or Christian white behind all this?
I’ll take the view that traditional status symbols still dominate day to day life. I’ll take the view that liberal rich trust fund kid is still going to date the hot brunette from Vassar. And the liberal girl will still marry the frat boy whose parents are real estate developers.
Sure I’m setting up a lot of motte and Bailey’s. Is this just a game among elites and then followed on by keyboard warriors on social media.
I'm not convinced that Team Left and Team Right do, in fact, get along in person and simply fight online. I suspect that a significant amount of online toxicity bleeds into meat-space interactions, particularly as the unwritten rule of "Leave politics and religion out of your professional interactions" gets more and more abandoned. I think there's some polling data that shows that political differences are increasingly a dealbreaker when it comes to dating; I can't find it at the moment, though.
With regards to the core question, I think there's a few things going on. My personal theory is that with the end of the Cold War, America was no longer faced with an external threat to fight, and so ended up expending its energy on fighting each other. Mix that in with the decline of Protestant Christianity as a unifying factor and the rise of the Internet amplifying differences and killing common culture, and we end up with the situation we're in now.
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