You know how when you tweak your ankle and it hurts when you bend it a certain way, but you still do it because it sorta feels good at the same time? Like that.
Meh, it was pretty rabid in the Clinton years as well. Total political warfare didn't start in the 2000's, I don't think. As I've posted many times, it's getting worse because a lot of people now stand to make a lot of money if they get and keep viewers inflamed and angry. Cable news and AM radio have made everything much, much worse over the last 20 years.
Eh, it's about how I remember it from the old days. It was a cesspool then and it's a cesspool now. I agree with the poster who said that anyone who thinks they are actually accomplishing something here is a fool. I ask myself on a daily basis why I bother; I really don't have time for it, the GARM is far more interesting, and I notice that many of the annoying people who post here don't post in there. Seems it's impossible to have a rational debate anymore. It always devolves into childish poo-slinging.
The game really changed in the late 90's when Fox News launched. This was the first outright political propaganda network. The tone shifted dramatically from then on. Networks focused more on creating News than reporting it. Opinion and commentary took the place of investigation and journalism. It took several years, but eventually other networks had to change their format, and new ones start popping up catering to other audiences' desires. For years inflammatory nutbaggery was confined to AM radio listened to almost exclusively by paranoid reactionary idiots who lived in their mom's basement. Then, that wall broke down and it started spilling into the American living room, disguised as "news". Unfortunately after 9/11, people were all too eager to eat it up, too.
I think 9/11 had a big impact - it amplified from the Clinton years. It's like a seesaw. Repubs went after Clinton with reckless abandon with a smear campaign culminating with Monica Lewinsky. Then Libs had their fun bashing Bush to no end, and Repubs escalated further with Obama. When I first came to D&D I thought it was funny how poorly the right was making its case, so I decided to see if I could do better. Weird thing is that debating on that side started to actually make me more conservative. So I think that what happens is debating on here doesn't make you more open minded, it actually pushes you further out to the extreme. It's rather ironic isn't it?
It is extremely difficult to have a rational debate with someone who believes that Christians are being oppressed in America or that the entire Democratic party are traitors to the United States or that the entire party are environmental extremists.
I think political discourse really changed back in the early 90's when talk radio (specifically Rush) went mainstream. Clinton's election had a lot to do with that since he was the first Dem President since the 70's. Then came the controversial election of 2000 and things REALLY got ugly.
second post of this thread already blaming others.. not reading anymore cause I feel the rest is more of the same... would rather have my minutes back. :grin:
I didn't have a TV in my dorm room in college and listened to alot of One-on-One and Supertalk from 97' - '01. I think before all the Fox News guys got talk shows, Reagan, Hamblin, Boortz and even Savage, moreso as a novelty, were a little more bearable. Partly because I think even as a liberal I wondered if Clinton was guilty of something and would just listen to all the stories out of curiousity. I think what's made it worse now is the synergy and redundancy of hearing Hannity and O'Reilly on TV and radio, and then seeing all the same blog or twitter posts repeated everywhere. Ironically enough that's made cable news and talk radio alot more lucretive, though.
And it's difficult to have a debate with someone who doesn't recognize that for the past couple of decades the movement to remove all public references to or expression of belief in God has been coming from the Left side of the aisle, or that a large chunk of the Democratic party ARE environmental extremists. The ONLY rational thing I've seen come out of you is your distrust of Islam and recognition of the deleterious effects it has had upon Islamic societies. Everything else, you are a left-wing crank through and through, who for some strange reason is in denial about ti and tries to present himself as some sort of thoughtful, middle-of-the-roader. It's REALLY hard to have an intellectually honest debate with someone who won't even admit to themselves what they are.
The D&D is fun enough: you have educated adults with a certain amount of familiarity discussing issues, it's also regionally oriented so you can veer off into state or local issues as well. I don't know if people are more extremist or if, once you're in the middle of a specific debate, you're more concerned about one upsmanship than about earnestly or fully stating your entire views on a subject.
Interesting -- I don't have the radio listening background. (Was either working at or listening to KTRU for all those years.) The resonance and redundancy points make sense to me. I also think the competition drives everyone to more hyperbolic on-air emotion and rhetoric. If a pundit has 30 seconds to catch the audience's attention before they change channels, he's got to get them agitated fast.
As a 99'er, I can reassure you the attitudes on this site were very different with the 2000 election. For the most part, everyone got along. After that, (pre D&D forum), arguments and fighting spilled all over the site from the hangout.
Well, along those lines, how would you describe yourself? Me, I'm a skeptical person who leans more left than right. I get frustrated with both sides for group think -- or more like group no-think -- and here in SF, I am commonly angering people if I question their accepted liberal orthodoxy (e.g. people literally shouting at me when I tell them there's no accepted scientific evidence that GMOs are dangerous.) On a TX BBS though, I come off as liberal and I own that. It's fine.
