The Politics of Divisiveness
89) Relationships continued to get frayed in our hyper-partisan political world
Last week from August 19th-22nd was the 2024 Democratic National Convention. It’s very cool that we were all able to watch the whole thing on various social media platforms along with linear TV. But just so you know - this post isn’t about last week’s festivities. If you weren’t able to catch much of it, you can still watch some (if not all) of the speeches on YouTube. That’s what I have been doing.
I get more email responses to my articles from people that appear to “hate-read” my political articles, then actually read them who are in agreement with me. For example I recently had a reader who wrote to me in response to this article I wrote saying
“The Democrat Party abandoned me as a White Jewish American man”.
The email was roughly a paragraph long. His comment where he said “Democrat Party” appeared to be a deliberate act and not simply a typo.
For the record, I have had numerous conversations with fellow members of the Jewish community who represent just about every side of the American political spectrum.
Among my Jewish friends who happen to be very conservative, we do have some very strong differences around foreign policy. However, one thing we do typically have consensus on is that the world-wide rise of antisemitism has infected both major political parties.
As for this concerned reader, I did respond to him. We did have a civil back and forth. Eventually he suggested that we end our email exchange on this matter where we essentially “agreed to disagree”.
Even though I didn’t like how this person initially disparaged the political party I identify with, I still did feel for his concerns, and I applauded his maturity for how he gracefully exited the conversation.
Another reader of mine wrote to me in response to this article telling me that the Democrats are cheaters, and that since the Democrats are cheaters, anybody that wants to vote for Harris can’t possibly be one of the GOOD GUYS.
This time I was really caught off-guard by such a harsh response. I was also a bit shocked at how pointed it was. I didn’t want to react right away to this person, as it would have been him getting his way by baiting me. But, I still felt like I was boxed in a corner with only two ways to respond to him.
I could get in the mud with him, and get all worked up
OR
I could choose to no longer engage with him, and simply ignore his email.
Needless to say, I ultimately chose door #2. I’d be lying if I said I haven’t thought twice about what he said. After-all, here I am writing about this guy, a couple weeks after he sent that to me.
It saddens me that civil conversations can so easily be ruined by politics. I have also witnessed close personal relationships get ruined because of politics. The prevalence of these strains wasn’t nearly as common before Trump.
The conversation around and about politics online, while more easily accessible than ever before, has actually made the internet less fun and more monitored.
Going back to the years 2011-2015, political chat groups on Facebook were excellent for online brawls, where a lot of ideas were exchanged, and feelings might have been hurt, but we moved on from it, not nearly as scathed.
With the emergence of Trump in 2015, he flipped politics on its head. Unfortunately, his over the top antics, and unfavorable opinions of minority groups emboldened others to be more open about their bigoted views. Certain members of minority groups have even grown to like Trump, as they see him as less phony than every other politician they come across in person or on TV.
By 2016 the engaging conversations on FB completely disintegrated into deeply personal grievances. Arguments about Police brutality were also taking center stage. Everyone had an opinion on something, and many relationships truly frayed.
Facebook, a place that used to be a reasonably safe-space for political debate, has grown to feel more and more like a very effective political network that recruits extremists on both sides of the ideological spectrum.
After the 2016 election, things were still at a fever pitch. So the powers that be (the ever adroit puppet-masters that they are), Mark Zuckerberg and his team of technocrats created algorithms to divert people away from political chat groups, and political conversations. People on FB were going to FB Jail for periods of 1-3 months, or they just were getting shadow-banned without even fully realizing it.
I never went to FB Jail, but maybe I have been partially shadow-banned. After-all, any story I share from my Substack on FB hardly causes a ripple in the water of the ocean of content that FB constantly generates. However, a pic of me and my kids, or just my kids alone will generate plenty of likes and other positive reactions.
I’m by no means a stranger to people who are Trumpers. I talk to people who like Trump and plan on voting for him (again). I engage with them. I even have friends that share stories and news articles with me about the decline of civilization and how Democrats have already been taken over by “Marxist-Communists”.
I know some of these people are deadly serious about how dangerous they find the Democratic Party to be. But, I can’t help but find some of their arguments somewhat comical, especially given that they appear to be getting their talking-points from Trump, himself.
Trump on not wanting to receive intelligence briefings
“We have a Marxist that’s going to try and be president, and this country is not ready for a Marxist or a communist president, and that’s what she is… So I don’t want that, because as soon as I get that, they’ll say that I leaked it.” - Donald Trump
For the record: Nominees for President always have gotten intelligence briefings prior to elections dating all the way back to 1952.
Despite these outlandish claims of democrats being a bunch of Marxists, even some of my conservative friends will admit that the Trump Act has worn incredibly thin. Many of them bemoan the fact that the Republican party does not have a new standard bearer in place like a Ronald Reagan type figure.
These are people who I’m able to share my differences with in a way that makes me a little smarter each time I speak to them, and more importantly, a little more compassionate, too.
If anything, social-media and soundbites have allowed us all to remain too juvenile for too long. Dunking on each others’ heads on a social media post, or for a sound bite in a speech, is not only common - but often encouraged.
That’s not going to change anytime soon. But, I’d like to shed light on what it is we have become and how our political discourse has evolved (more like devolved) in ways that serve no one well.
-JPJ
Whenever I write a story, I geek out and discover new things I hadn’t seen before. The video links posted above are all things I discovered on YouTube while researching this story.
Along with this one -
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