No one event, but there has been a deliberate campaign to increase the partisanship in this country since Gingrich in 1994.
I agree with this.
Online, I saw increasing levels of hatred at the elections of both Obama and Trump. To a lesser degree, GWB. Covid19 may have accelerated the process slightly, but it's been building for over 2 decades.
Agree, polarization has been getting worse over time.
For a couple of decades, I've been told I supported child murder (vaccination), pedophilia (LGBTQ+ positions), and racial hatred (hope that's obvious). In my personal life, I have seen no increased animosity, but I have a small social circle. All this is nothing new to me.
Yes small events, that affected (affected/effected I’m terrible when it comes to these 2 words) sections of the population.
When I made the comment about what situation in 2000-2019 happened to bring out this much hate and what the actor was getting at was Covid was a massive issue for everyone. Unlike some people in this forum believe, Covid was not a 2 party political fight. It was not left vs right.
During the last 20 years there has not been a situation that affected every single person. We took kids out of school. We shut down businesses. We canceled weddings. We couldn’t attend funerals. People were laid off. Stopped allowing people to attend church. There were restrictions of state to state travel. We could not visit family. Could not take kids to the park. People arrested at the beach.
This was personal. Each and every person was effected. Not politics. People on the left/right who had their business shut down were upset because they lost their income stream and wanted the lockdowns lifted at the same time people on the left/right who worked for the government didn’t mind the lockdowns because they still had a paycheck. People who had paychecks coming in were lashing out on people wanting to go back to work to receive money to live. Again not political but financial.
Yes politics and policies started to add to this massive fire. Left leaning states kept up the lockdowns. Conservative states eased up on them. Yet the average citizen watched as the ruling class didn’t follow the rules in their states. Little more political but more of citizen vs ruler politics that upset everyone who is not a ruler.
Vaccines was the turning point when it became more political yet extremely personal. Health, compassion, mandates, travel, entering businesses(daily life), keeping jobs or side effects all influenced people’s decision to get vaccinated or not. It was a personal decision.
Yet the hate was the worst it has been. Online, in person, with family, at work, at church or social groups. More so than any event in 2000-2019. I think the only other times in American history was independence from England, Civil War, WW2 and Civil rights.
All other examples do not affect everyone personally. LBGT- nope, Border - nope, WMD - nope, online hate - nope, radicalized political parties- nope. President- nope. All of these things can bring hate but not at the degree of what Covid brought.