Hi! German guy here,
From watching news and a few political channels on YT, it really seems like the US is a deeply divided country. I just want to learn a little more about your political system, because it honestly seems a quite odd, in comparison to many EU regimes.
Not trying to be disrespectful! I’m really uneducated when it comes to this topic and could need some enlightenment.
35 comments
In real life, among normal people? Not very
On the internet, among people who fight about politics for fun? Very
I haven’t seen a lot of division in real life, but the internet can make it seem like we’re at war with each other.
Not really, the overwhelming majority of us aren’t very divided nor do we care very much but the media doesn’t make money off of headlines like “Republican and Democrat neighbors differ on certain opinions, however they still get along.” They get money off of sensational headlines and interviews with borderline lunatics. I’m a liberal in Mississippi and my neighbors and I get along great. There’s one guy who’s a little too open about his politics on our street, but we all get along.
We are very split when you ask us politically for a variety of reasons. Echo chambers have been such a huge problem. Cable news and the internet allow people to cordon themselves off with only others who think the same as they do. That wasn’t possible previously and it has absolutely divided us. But it’s not like we’re going to collapse as a country or anything – we saw recently how strong our institutions are. As a government worker, my oath is to the Constitution, not any president or political party for a reason. There’s just an obnoxious minority making it seem like we’ve lost our minds.
Daily life? We normally get along just fine in the vast majority of places. Tough times? We tend to band together. We all just want to live our lives in peace. It’s very rare that one person won’t help another based on politics. Humanity tends to prevail on an individual level. But that doesn’t make headlines that generate revenue.
Edit: Hot take – Reddit is absolutely an echo chamber on many issues. This sub tends to draw more opinions out and had a relatively respectful environment that encourages it, but on other posts that may involve more complicated social/moral issues? Forget it. Tote the party line or be crushed.
Not as split as it’s portrayed on our news and international news. Sure people have different views on political topics but majority of people live their day to day lives without thinking about such things. People get along for the most part and there isn’t as much divide as your news would make it seem.
It is a case of a minority of people being very fringe and unreasonable and causing problems for the majority of us who might have different opinions, but sort of just want to live our lives. The influence of these terrible horrible stupid people is magnified by the internet and the politicians who use them as tools cause a ruckus or placate them for a variety of purposes. They are the ones who won’t let us be normal and just disagree on stuff and are labeling people nazis and white supremacists or commies or whatever for holding completely reasonable and in many cases obviously correct views that were considered perfectly normal 15 years ago.
At the local level, not too much. At the federal level, a decent amount. This is why we need to return much of the power the federal government has amassed, and return it to the states and localities. I want my own community governing itself, not people 1,500 miles away in a completely different situation.
The gap has been growing wider, but there are many things we agree on. It’s often a disagreement on to what extent we should regulate something and how accomplish a goal.
I think when it boils down to it, we (we being people who are generally on opposite sides of the political spectrum I mean) actually agree on far more things than we think. Culture wars and the exploitation of issues that are emotional affairs for some make existing divisions seem a lot worse. For example, personally, while I am certainly closer to a liberal democrat than a republican, very few issues are actually such that I would hate someone for having a different view than me. I would probably have a hard time accepting someone if they were vitriolically anti-LGBT or a flaming racist, but for instance, I’m not going to hate someone for disagreeing with me on fiscal policy. We do inherently want the same thing on issues like that — we just have different views on how to achieve it. And things like fiscal policy/where we spend our money and invest resources is really the bulk of politics and policy issues.
We have disagreements, and we have divisions, but I think the internet makes it look a lot worse than it is.
Edit: typo
Not as bad as perceived but the potential to get bad is there.
I would worry what happens a few decades from now but that’s enough time to fix things (or make them way worse.)
How would we have reacted if that scotus assassination would have succeeded as an example? That could get out of hand fast.
I live pretty close to the great continental divide, so, pretty split from up here.
More than many people think. It bubbles just under the surface for a lot of people. I regularly make small talk with strangers because of my job and it’s amazing how often and how quickly people will turn innocuous subjects political. I make a point to keep my customer service face on and just nod and smile unless they actually agree with me (seldom) and no one else is around.
It seems like there are only 2 sides online, but in real life there isn’t. I have many friends who do not hold the same political beliefs, but it never affects their friendship. There are also many areas in between what we consider right and left that many don’t fit in a certain box.
I’m a conservative/Republican. I’m very good friends with many liberal/Democrats. We get along fine.
So, I’ve lived in a very far right state as well as a Leftist state (by US standards). If you actually talk to people in person, whether it’s family, friends, or strangers, there’s nowhere near as much division as the media and the internet plays up. Unsurprisingly, most people are somewhere in the middle and we virtually all agree on what the issues are, even if we differ on what we think the correct solutions would be.
One thing that I always remind Europeans to keep in mind is that, unlike many other countries, the US does not have state-run/state-funded media. Our media being reliant on either ad revenue and/or a combination of grants and public donations means that there’s an inherent incentive to be sensationalist and alarmist to try to get views. Even Americans joke about this. (I mean, you mention Youtube and Youtube isn’t even a news channel. It’s entirely dependent on ad revenue.)
This means that domestic issues are played up and exaggerated compared to other countries’ state-funded media which is inherently pro-establishment and therefore tends to downplay domestic issues. For example, European media reporting on the migrant crisis in their countries vs what people tell you about the reality of it in the streets. The closest you can get to neutral US reporting is the publicly-funded news channels like PBS or NPR, or a coop like the Associated Press.
So, Europeans consume a bunch of US media and think they have a good picture of life here when it’s actually pretty warped and off base.
America is deeply divided *relative to recent American history*. We’re definitely a more divided nation than we were in the 90s and early 00s. Tensions politically are high and protests are a regular thing. There is nothing but Gridlock in DC right now.
But in comparison to other countries? We are fairly homogeneous and stable. Factions supporting a radically different system of government are very marginalized, they aren’t organized or armed, far right and far left politics have not overtaken the country, and even when our last President decided to attempt to overthrow an election our system held in check.
The extreme right and extreme left are very split.
Most people fall in the middle and just want to live their lives.
I think the internet can make any group seem divided.
On the internet we are about ready to burn it down. In real life we are just carrying on with our lives.
Like a 4/10.
I think I’m pretty much agreeing with what other people wrote, but I feel that in day-to-day life political issues don’t take up much of our mental energy. The media, however, thrives on controversy, so they like to portray every issue as being some kind of war. Apparently it gets people riled up so they keep tuning in. People who watch a lot of biased news tend to be the ones who carry this stuff into their daily conversations with others.
In real life not so much.
If you only ever talk politics on the internet we are basically on the verge of civil war.
No idea who is going to fight it because the loudest voices are sitting at their computer.
Politics are a very divisive subject, but ordinarily, people are able to get along fine and be perfectly polite and courteous to one another. But for some people, politics is all they seem to care about.
I was having a similar conversation with one of my left-leaning friends about this the other day.
The news is not a good litmus test for reality. There are a lot more people in the middle than there are on the outer fringe. People have more things in common than they don’t
You will see no division during the upcoming July 4th (Independence Day) holiday.
Go to a fireworks show and walk through the crowd and you will have no idea who is a Republican or Democrat, moderate or on the far edge or beyond – and no one will care.
You will also see all races and colors and social classes sitting side by side watching. That’s normal daily life.
Politics doesn’t intrude on everything, even if the internet suggests that. That politics are problems on an institutional level, not a personal level. If you get in a car accident nobody is going to ask you who you voted for. They’ll just help.
It’s hard to pinpoint when things started getting toxic, but I look at the Robert Bork hearings as the point that it started going from collegial to toxic, and it’s gotten worse since. It was bad during the Bush administration. Obama didn’t help. But I think Trump really broke the minds of leftists. I’ve never witnessed a collective mental meltdown before. I was hopeful that Biden would return some of the collegial mindset. There are small signs of progress.
But all of that matters only for extremists trying to score points.
The overwhelming majority of my interactions are fine. I’ve got friends across the spectrum. Pinko commies, green tree huggers, anti capitalists, right wingers, libertarians. The difference being that I know them as people.
It’s not really split, just the extremes get a disproportionate amount of attention and are more vocal than ever. I joked with my mom that the only good thing about the last two years has been that now we not only know who the crazy neighbors are, we know their brand of nuts.
News on the US online and even in the professional media, is geared towards sensationalism. It’s attention getting. The Der Spiegle scandal is one example.
Also Americans have been the chief focus of intense global propaganda campaigns aimed at sowing divisions that get a lot of assistance from useful idiots. Americans should check out the disinformation campaigns aimed at us and about us. The one that drives me nuts is the subtle, persistent attempts to cancel the name American. There are social media accounts that push the narrative that Americans calling themselves Americans are self absorbed and totally dismissive of the fact that it’s a continent. You’re talking about a name that’s been in use to refer to a people for hundreds of years. useful idiots push these non issues without thinking about what they are really calling for is the erasure of a culture.
It’s really bad but only at a political level.
I haven’t seen any arguments on the streets there’s hardly any violence from it at this point but I don’t see how we can avoid violence if the violent rhetoric doesn’t stop.
Some guy just put out a political ad where he’s hunting other republicans that he deems not republican enough. That’s fucking insane
But if you came over here for a vacation you wouldn’t see anything indicating how crazy our politics is, unless you watched TV. It’s very much at capital buildings and political conventions, it’s not on Main Street.
We are split politically. Things are very polarized.
But, on a day to day basis, basic interactions with others, it doesn’t come up. I work with people thinking all different things. And guess what, we don’t discuss non work stuff regularly. Yes occasionally, but we are all adults. We can discuss and stop discussing when it passes an appropriate point.
It’s pretty bad right now, but it would be a mistake to say that this sort of division is unprecedented. We have been through eras where division was almost as, just as, or even more the case than it is now. The 1960s, the 30s, and hell, we had a civil war once.
Really I see it as a disagreement between politics. Normal people really don’t give a fuck about the shit in DC.
We are quite divided – and politically the country is in the worse shape it has been in 150 years. But in day to day life it isn’t noticeable if you stay off the internet. People still need to buy groceries, they go ballgames and everyone – Democrats and Republicans (even qanon ones) stop at red lights and generally hold the door open for old people. But the divisions are real and are expanding. The country has a lot of pretty bad problems that one way or the other won’t go away.
I wanna second what most people are saying about us being pretty good at the local level. I have conservative friends and socialist friends, for the most part people just aren’t talking about politics to that extent.
When it comes to YouTube channels or news, you also gotta keep in mind that a video talking about “here’s a town that built a library. Here’s a state legislature that had a fairly uneventful session and got some decent bills passed. Supreme Court enforces precedent on property issue” just doesn’t really make as many waves as “LIBERAL CITIES ARE ANARCHIES//GOP HATES WOMEN”, otherwise C-SPAN would be prime time news. And trust me, you wanna see how “exciting” our congress is, go watch some C-SPAN clips and try to not fall asleep.
Also keep in mind, the US is a massive country with massive influence on the world. A crazy bill in Eritrea or Cambodia or Albania just isn’t going to make the news in the same way that one in Texas is. Divisions in Denmark or Italy just aren’t going to be talked about like they are with the US because the ramifications of those outside of their geographic circle are not going to be nearly as large as those the US makes.
I think some of our representatives and the media strive to divide us and report on it more than necessary. When I talked to people who regularly vote differently than I do I find we aren’t that different. And we get along with each other and are respectful of others.
If you believed social media – which you know is mostly people intentionally pissing off people so they can get views and likes – you’d think we were all just a second away from murder if each other.
The second half of the 20th Century began with a lot of cohesion and optimism. It also had a lot white supremacy and divisions over that, but we still were less divided then than we are now.
Starting in the 90s, with changes in Cable news and other things, the United States began a “a long fall into an epistemological abyss” (Credit, Jill Lepore). I sadly think that we’ve been hyperdriven into that since.
Also since the 80s/90s, the working class never saw its wages grow as production did. 00s and 10s things got even worse. This left us with a lot angry people, exploitable, people. There’s a phenomena called “aggrieved entitlement” or what is sometimes known as “main character syndrome” or “Tyler Durden syndrome” that has seriously caused divisions.
Oh and you know all those veterans from those dumb wars? They came back with PTSD, and we don’t take care of them to our great shame. Doesn’t surprise me that a lot of them are exploitable too.
I’ve lost at one 20 plus year friendship due to changes in politics. Lost several more too. I’m okay with it, because if fascists come to power, I don’t want to be friends with someone who thinks neutrality is the same objectivity or rationality. Definitely have zero patience for conspiricists.
I think our fundamental divides are about urbane, educated, and nimbyish against rural, low-income, and resentful. I’m not even saying (as an urbane, educated, and well paid person) that the rural don’t have serious reasons to be resentful, or that we’re not all suffering under neoliberalism’s failed promises.
But to go back to what Jill Lepore said, it’s hard to work together if you don’t have a common referent point for *knowledge.*