Why is there so much hate, and why is the country (US) so divided?

The closest thing we've had to our current situation was in the 1960s, with the idea of counter-culture, & the mainstream's reaction to it, constituting our most pronounced, "culture war," since the Civil War. It was about drug use. It was about changing sexual morality. It was about judging people based on their views on civil rights. With Watergate, those snap judgements began to be applied on the basis of political party affiliation.

I believe McCarthyism bears perhaps special scrutiny, in relation to our current circumstance. He was also waging a culture war, punishing people for wanting to exercise their political freedom through choices he did not find acceptable; but nor did a large part of the population.

Much the way that freedom of speech, as long as you don't say anything that upsets others, is not freedom at all, so is the freedom to be a Democrat, a Republican, or an Independent, not free political choice. I would note that McCarthy also pursued homosexuals, in the Lavender Scare, who'd long needed to stay hidden, anyway, to avoid harsh prejudice; so sexual freedom is also too much for many to assent to, for others.

This is a flaw I see in your envisioning of events. From your abridged description, it seems you are portraying people as gullible but neutral, that is, easily-controlled by media propaganda. While there is some truth to this, I don't think the reason for the only partial success of the right wing effort you describe comes down to merely one's gullibility-threshold. Though they may espouse freedom, in their words, as passionately as McCarthy, or any all-American Crusader against people with objectionable moral character, I think the evidence is that a lot of people are only fully on-board with freedom, as it applies to themselves.

 

No. It’s still here in tiny pockets by 60s standards. The real racism is now prevalent in academia, govt and business and it adversely affects white people through AA policy. Through over compensation the racism has reversed course. It’s far more acceptable to bigot towards a white male because the impression is white males have no problems. But the sad truth is, white males specifically are feeling the brunt of overt bigotry. People don’t even have to hide it.

And there has ALWAYS BEEN racism both ways. Black people are just as racist against white people as the other way around. Thinking otherwise means you’re never spoken with black people or been alive.

If a white person crosses the street because they feel threatened by a suspicious looking black guy that is no more racist then any black person being suspicious of a white cop. The key difference here is the odds of a black person mugging a white person is greater than a cop “abusing” a black person.

Anecdotal “feelings” aren’t systemic racism. Only statistics and math proves racism.

 

Nope.

 

Uuum. Yup. AA is racist by definition. Rewarding people due to skin color or sexual identity punishes those that aren’t eligible. Any job or position reserved for anyone BUT a white male is bigotry plain and simple. There is no official policy that prevents minorities or women from getting jobs, loans, awards or college acceptance.

Harvard was doing it to Asians. It’s documented. Corporations across the country have Diversity managers and departments dedicated to picking and choosing and only ones prevented from obtaining certain jobs due to quotas, are white males.

Sad truth.

 

Definition of racism


1: a belief that race is a fundamental determinant of human traits and capacities and that racial differences produce an inherent superiority of a particular race

Sorry but its not.

 

Here's a look into the window that answers your question:

 

the economy is failing the people and the people are looking for someone to blame

the real issue is excessive foreign outsourcing, excessive foreign imports, automation and soon AI

greedy Corporatism is destroying Capitalism

 

It is not that difficult to understand. The level of intense polarization and animosity that hasn't been seen in at least over a century began the day after the 2016 election. The Democrats lost an election that they felt belonged to them and were 110% confident and assured of winning. But they lost, which resulted in an intense hatred of Trump and a party strategy that had the sole and singular purpose and goal to destroy Trump and get him out of the oval office by any means possible. That drive went on incessantly for four years and is still today their sole mission, though they think Trump is likely now out of office so they will focus on some high degree of retribution: They no longer feel they have to throw him out of office and will simply increase their efforts to destroy him (with a little tepid help from some Repubelicans I might add).

 

Yes they are.....by selling us out to Communist China!

 

That is just utter nonsense and a trite meme made up from fantasy.

 

Its crazy how the term racism seems to be subjective depending on who you asked. I have seen many progressives say racism has to be a system that is enforced like Jim Crow for example. Or from a person in a position of power like a boss who refuses to hire a black person. AA is a system that is enforced against whites. Seems like racism to me

 

Trump supporters are called racist, xenophobes, stupid, evil, sheeple.. etc. Try saying that to anyone and see what response you get. Of course the recipient of those remarks is going to dislike you, and over time, will turn into hate if heard enough.

 

So it’s not that AA is racist. It’s just bigotry? I was using the Leftist broad definition of racism, where if anything negative happens or is said about a minority, its racist. But if you point out similar faults or statistics about white people it’s NOT racist.

For example. Crime statistics about black people are racist no matter how fact based they are..to a Democrat. To a rational person, it’s just a statistic and math isn’t supposed to be racist.

Although AA is racist because any Black person is eligible for the same benefits regardless of economic opportunity. A wealthy black person can be more easily accepted into college than a poor white person simply due to race and not economic opportunity. The racism is assuming a wealthy blacks person deserves MORE opportunity simply due to race. The poor white kid is the one who is actually more “deserving”, but AA doesn’t account for that.

 

There are many examples. He is the one who started the hatred of our police departments :
"The Cambridge police acted stupidly in arresting somebody when there was already proof that they were in their own home. . . . What I think we know — separate and apart from this incident — is that there is a long history in their country of African-Americans and Latinos being stopped by law enforcement disproportionately, and that’s just a fact."
"My main message is to the parents of Trayvon Martin. You know, if I had a son, he’d look like Trayvon."

Calling Americans racist:
"It was usually an effective tactic, another one of those tricks I had learned: (White) People were satisfied so long as you were courteous and smiled and made no sudden moves. They were more than satisfied, they were relieved -- such a pleasant surprise to find a well-mannered young black man who didn't seem angry all the time."
"The point I was making was not that Grandmother harbors any racial animosity. She doesn't. But she is a typical white person..."
"I don’t believe it is possible to transcend race in this country. Race is a factor in this society. The legacy of Jim Crow and slavery has not gone away. It is not an accident that African-Americans experience high crime rates, are poor, and have less wealth. It is a direct result of our racial history."

Just blatant anti-Americanism:
"You know, the truth is that right after 9/11, I had a (flag) pin. Shortly after 9/11, particularly because as we're talking about the Iraq war, that became a substitute for, I think, true patriotism, which is speaking out on issues that are of importance to our national security, I decided I won't wear that pin on my chest..."
"If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help. There was a great teacher somewhere in your life. Somebody helped to create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to thrive. Somebody invested in roads and bridges. If you’ve got a business — you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen."
"You got into these small towns in Pennsylvania and, like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing's replaced them. And they fell through the Clinton Administration, and the Bush Administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are gonna regenerate and they have not. And it's not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations."
"In America, there's a failure to appreciate Europe's leading role in the world. Instead of celebrating your dynamic union and seeking to partner with you to meet common challenges, there have been times where America has shown arrogance and been dismissive, even derisive."
"My job to the Muslim world is to communicate that the Americans are not your enemy. We sometimes make mistakes. We have not been perfect. But if you look at the track record, as you say, America was not born as a colonial power, and that the same respect and partnership that America had with the Muslim world as recently as 20 or 30 years ago, there's no reason why we can't restore that."

 

But its not, it would in fact be discrimination.

 

Except your wrong.

 

I know redlining ended 50 years ago.

 

And it never will.

 

Not ironic that one of the first replies to the thread was hateful.

posts like this are exactly why there is hate, name calling, pettiness and hypocrisy, I have more pity for those that feel this way than hate it saddens me that there are people this angry, maybe its mental instability, maybe its that their mothers didn't hug them, I dunno..

This has been discussed before but its the tiniest minority of people (3%) on both extreme sides of the political spectrum that "hate" but the media thrives on conflict so those nasty voices get more than their share of attention.

The vast vast majority of people that don't fall on the extreme ends really don't give a dam, they don't hate, they generally don't even discuss politics or political parties because they know its useless dribble. Those in that group just wake up, eat breakfast and go about their day until its time for lunch, then go back about their day until dinner, then wrap it up and go to bed, all without even thinking about D's or R's or presidents or Twitter or the gram or facebook or (insert X).

circling back to the OP's question, it was always this "toxic" but those toxic individuals were just angry people we named crazy Bob that were at the end of the bar that everyone ignored. Now, when crazy Bob posts hate filled insults one direction or the other, twitter explodes because most of the 2% of the citizens that actively participate on sites like twitter are crazy Bob's too . So we've always had extremists, but it was better when extremists didn't have a voice that could be heard by millions.

 

Yes. The Left and many Democrats are completely wrong when they refer to racism. They use a VERY broad brush a label people and things racist that aren’t. Blacks being disproportionately arrested isn't RACISM. It’s crime statistics. Poverty breeds crime. But poverty is NOT racist since plenty of white people are impoverished. But The left conveniently claims poverty is racist only when it applies to minorities. When white people are poor it’s just poor people. When black people are poor it’s because the SYSTEM is racist. Sorry no dice. That’s where race baiting stems from. It’s where identity politics come from.

I await your stimulating rebuttal of “you’re wrong” without contributing anything.

 

More like maniacs but whatever. Hell the last happy liberal was Hubert Humphrey and he's been dead for decades.

 

By “AA” I am guessing that you mean Affirmative Action and not Alcoholics Anonymous.

I had a job for awhile at a very large defense contractor. My job was to evaluate the work output of engineers and designers - as a kind of quality control over engineering. To verify that things were up to spec, abided by industry and military standards, and functioned as desired. Over about a five year period, I evaluated the work of hundreds of engineers. Being as it was a defense contractor, there were a great deal of AA engineers.

Generally speaking about half of all engineers are entirely adequate when sufficiently directed. About a quarter are mostly inadequate and usually end up in an administrative or sales role. It is the top quarter or so, who do most of the critical and creative thinking. The AA engineers mostly displaced White engineers at the lower end of the spectrum. Those who often did little more than grunt engineering. To reach elite status, an AA engineer had to reach the same heights as anyone else. Though there were only a few, there were nonetheless a few who were able to compete at the highest level.

 

In your entire post I literally did not find 1 example, among all your Obama quotes, that could qualify, by any stretch, as expressing hatred of America or anti-American sentiment, which was your charge against him.

I will go through a sampling of your quotes, but it seems pointless, & redundant, to do them all. What seems to come across is that you believe that admitting that our nation has ever done anything that we should not be proud of, to you, is the equivalent of hating America. This is an objectively false equivalence. But I have little expectation of changing your mind about this, since you make your perspective clear even in your name-- Unapologetically American-- which you interpret with the warped twist to mean not just that you have no regrets about being an American, but that Americans should never apologize for anything we do.

So I'll start w/ this quote, which I had suspected you had in mind when I read your 1st, accusatory, post which cited none of his quotes.

How in the world is that the same as him saying that he hates America, or that America is no good? Here is your position, that these quotes are supposed to be proving:

The academia part helped lead me to my conclusion that, a person's speaking any non-complimentary TRUTH about America is, in your mind, unacceptable. That concept is just so patently false, I don't know what to say to show you that.

So, for me to acknowledge the U.S. Government having broken a treaty w/ Amerindians, throwing them off the reservation we put them in, because gold or silver was discovered on those lands, makes me an America-hater? I guess there's no point in asking about the instance of our giving smallpox-infected blankets to what was left (mostly women, children, & elderly) of one tribe that we forced to move. Is the idea just not to ever admit it, to others, or to refuse to believe anything negative about our country's entire history? Because being prideful of our willful IGNORANCE is hardly a complimentary image of Americans to project to the world.

There has been racism in America. There is a mountain of research backing this up (as criminal sentencing differences between whites & blacks, for the same crimes) as well as it being abundantly clear to anyone with even a superficial knowledge of U.S. history, or who can glimpse what is going on around themself.

So admitting facts means that person is America-bashing. And not only can we not say anything critical of our government but that applies to our country's police forces, as well? Whatever they do, it's always all good, huh? Well you know who would strongly object to the submissive way you seem to advocate Americans should treat those in authority: our founding fathers!

And I have a feeling there was a lot of hypocrisy in your, "speak no ill of America or its government," policy, while Obama was in office. Don't worry about explaining why that was different; I get it, he wasn't really an American, or something like that, right?

What's gonna be your excuse when Biden's in office, voter fraud? Because if you're allowed to make exceptions, why are Americans who complain about Trump, "anti-America--" don't they have the same right as you to make exceptions?

All he's saying there is that no one is an island (unless you were raised by wolves & live alone, in the woods). Obama's pointing out that any successful American has benefitted from growing up in America, & from having their business in America. How is that inspiring hatred of our country? To me, suggests exactly the opposite attitude.

 

Thx for clearing that up. I guess it was just jibberish.

 

China has nothing to do with our economic system. Nor political system.
Again, buzzwords with nothing to back it up.