Polarization in the U.S. didn’t rise gradually. A new machine-learning study shows it surged after 2008- but why?
People here are blaming racism and Obama and that is part of it, but another bigger factor is 2008 is the year neoliberalism died. And unlike in 1932 there wasn’t any reckoning with it, holding anyone to blame or charting a positive vision for what might replace it. Obamaism ended up being a bunch of empty platitudes and the attempt to just bandage things up and keep rolling. Bernie tried to name perpetrators and chart a positive vision (back to the 1930s at least) but he was ratfucked. So ever since we’ve been living in this hypernormal world where everything sucks, everything’s getting worse, nobody believes in anything and an increasingly fringe set up carnival barkers are the only people with any resonance.
Hmm I wonder what significant thing happned in 2008 that broke racists brains?
My parents before Obama: your regular run of the mill uninformed apolitical bigots
My parents after Obama: your regular run of the mill uninformed hyperpolitical bigots
Racists gonna racist.
Social media and rural Internet access. The country dumbass should have stayed offline.
also, a black man was elected president. I think the rural racists without Internet still heard about it.
