How America Got Mean

[applegrove]

How America Got Mean

August 14, 2023 at 1:55 pm EDT By Taegan Goddard 175 Comments

https://politicalwire.com/2023/08/14/how-america-got-mean/

"SNIP........

David Brooks: “I was recently talking with a restaurant owner who said that he has to eject a customer from his restaurant for rude or cruel behavior once a week—something that never used to happen. A head nurse at a hospital told me that many on her staff are leaving the profession because patients have become so abusive. At the far extreme of meanness, hate crimes rose in 2020 to their highest level in 12 years. Murder rates have been surging, at least until recently. Same with gun sales. Social trust is plummeting. In 2000, two-thirds of American households gave to charity; in 2018, fewer than half did. The words that define our age reek of menace: conspiracy, polarization, mass shootings, trauma, safe spaces.”

“We’re enmeshed in some sort of emotional, relational, and spiritual crisis, and it undergirds our political dysfunction and the general crisis of our democracy. What is going on?”

.........SNIP"

and

"SNIP........

This is not politics as it is normally understood. In psychically healthy societies, people fight over the politics of distribution: How high should taxes be? How much money should go to social programs for the poor and the elderly? We’ve shifted focus from the politics of redistribution to the politics of recognition. Political movements are fueled by resentment, by feelings that society does not respect or recognize me. Political and media personalities gin up dramas in which our side is emotionally validated and the other side is emotionally shamed. The person practicing the politics of recognition is not trying to get resources for himself or his constituency; he is trying to admire himself. He’s trying to use politics to fill the hole in his soul. It doesn’t work.

........SNIP"


Applegrove:

If you want to live your life being afraid and angry at 2/3rds of the people you come across, vote Republican.

[Horse with no Name]

1. I have to agree

I have never seen patients/caregivers so mean and nasty.
It slays me.

[MutantAndProud]

2. Too many people prefer

The likes of David Miscavige to David Brooks is why. Criminal coercion, bribery, access peddling… they’ve taken down some high profile figures like Epstein and Weinstein (kind of, wouldn’t doubt his reach extends out of his cell or that he didn’t have backup minions) but that’s just a few heads off of this hydra

[Johnny2X2X]

3. Trumpism

It's a direct result of Trumpism. Trump brought this meanness out more than any other person or thing in the country.

Have a goodfriend who went to several Trump rallies just to people watch. He talked to me in detail of the kinds of things he saw. There were fights at every rally in the crowd, usually several or more. There was pushing and shoving in lines, cutting in lines. Aggressive driving into and out of the parking lots. When someone would fall in the crowd, people would step over them instead of helping. He once saw someone in a wheelchair get stuck in the mud and watch as everyone in the crowd walked past without helping.

It's a crowd ruled by selfishness and cynicism. They're angry at everyone and believe they deserve more and everyone else is after them. And they think everything is a scam and corrupt, thats why they love Trump because he calls out everything as beeing rigged, that language speaks to them.

[applegrove]

9. Yes. The article implies liberals are just as mean but I think that is so

right wing readers will not feel targeted and read the article all the way through.

[Initech]

21. Trump gave the assholes a megaphone with which to amplify their assholishness.

I think it would be interesting to go to a Trump rally and just observe the behavior from the parking lot. I bet you do see a lot of insane stuff.

[temporary311]

22. Goes back farther than Trump.

It started in the 80s I believe, when the right began relabeling politeness as "political correctness" and framing it as a negative.

[Mr.Bill]

25. And a president (Reagan)

pushing the narrative that people recieving government assistance (think welfare queen) were thieves who are stealing from the taxpayers.

[Sky Jewels]

27. This. With Reagan,

the Republicans stopped trying to hide their racism and misogyny and hatred of gays and brown people. And they worked hard to build right wing media empires that would catapult their hate.

[roscoeroscoe]

4. Listened to Brooks on Morning Joe

"People are mean... both sides... everybody is angry, everything is political... politics has replaced religion... both sides... people are mean..."

What an asswipe. BOTH SIDES, ALWAYS BOTH SIDES!!!!! Give it up Brooks.

[applegrove]

10. If it makes the medicine go down on the right, I am for bothsiderism

in this case. To be sure, I'm never pro bothsiderism but I think it is a necessity to get the odd right wing pastor to read it and then tend to his flock in a way that makes them nicer.

[Bluethroughu]

14. The right, for the most part, are not self reflective.

They are selfcentered.

[CrispyQ]

16. Bothsiderism never helps our side.

First, it's just not true, & second, it allows their side to shirk responsibility for their bad behavior.

Did you catch this story from last week?

https://democraticunderground.com/100218165705#post213

[RKP5637]

5. It's damn scary ... so many ugly hateful people for no reason. As I've told some, it's

like a virus of hatred has invaded the US. Just the fact that the best the GOP can do is Trump is so damn telling where many in the population are at.

[WhiskeyGrinder]

6. Twas ever thus. It's just that the harmful, false-scarcity policies based on white supremacy are

increasingly hitting the “wrong” people.

[XanaDUer2]

13. Best, truest DU post today. Nt

[haele]

7. Really started when some folks lost their damn mind when a outsider black man became president.

Then TFG encourage some more to just indulge their resentment
and let their bully nature.
I think the final straw was the confusion and isolation from COVID.

People who had borderline anger issues just took it as a final sign of the apocalypse and became infantalized, self-centered assholes.

Because they certainly aren't acting like grown-assed human adults. Chimps would be ashamed to act like most of them.

Haele

[applegrove]

11. Yes. That too.

[2naSalit]

17. That's when I noticed...

That tourists were suddenly not just clueless, they were turning into people who were mean and destructive to national park features. It's only become worse.

[maxrandb]

8. 20-30% of the Electorate have been fed cruelty and hate for 40 years on 1200 radio stations

in every nook and cranny in this country.

[applegrove]

12. YES!

[Torchlight]

15. I grew up thinking the easiest way to manipulate people was via fear.

The last twenty-five years have convinced me I was wrong, and the easiest mechanism to manage opinions and employ change in others is hatred. It's immediate, it's visceral, and it tends to swill around in our guts far longer than fear does. Fear is something we try to avoid. Hate? Not so much.

[2naSalit]

18. As Mrs. Smith once told me...

"If you want to gain control over a whole bunch of people in a hurry, start a religion or cult."

[WarGamer]

19. social media at least partly to blame.

[Hortensis]

20. "Watch for mean people." Single line of advice given by

an expert in authoritarian takeovers as the answer to the question of what ordinary people need to watch out for when assessing risk.

Btw, it spreads with fear and anger and becomes pervasive.

Everyone needs to REFUSE to be mean.

[Marthe48]

23. It isn't helpful that since 2002 at least, we hear about looming shortages

We hear about disasters near or far away. We hear about climate change, about people fleeing their environment or their country. The news I listen to offers true stories. Even facts leaves the door open for people to exaggerate the stories and what they mean. So people get fearful. They get fearful of losing what they have, of not having enough, of having to share what they do have with strangers. Fear generates meaness.

Locally, our weather has been fairly normal. The crops are bountiful. Most of the stores have most of the things I shop for. So it is hard for me to feel mean about climate change and food shortages. I noticed that if our area farms can sell their crop elsewhere for more money, then they offer crops to us locals for the same price. So our prices are high. We get our fuel from one distributor, so it is the same high price all over our area. I'm not living in a fool's paradise, and I anxiously await the other shoe. Because I know what is out in the world, and what is right next door, and it is easy to be scared.

[Donkees]

28. Overpopulation stress does play a role, and more people seem unable to inhibit themselves

from constant talking, creating noise in public space, staring at their phones.

[Marthe48]

29. I stay home as much as I can

I guess the emotional equivalent of burying my head in a pillow.

[Mysterian]

24. Hate radio / hate TV

Propaganda works.

[keep_left]

26. I used to think that a return to civics education by high school (at least)...

...might help, but I'm starting to worry that it's too late. We're now living in what historian Morris Berman calls an "anti-society".