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posted by janrinok on Monday January 27 2020, @05:46PM   Printer-friendly

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

Political polarization among Americans has grown rapidly in the last 40 years—more than in Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia or Germany—a phenomenon possibly due to increased racial division, the rise of partisan cable news and changes in the composition of the Democratic and Republican parties.

That's according to new research co-authored by Jesse Shapiro, a professor of political economy at Brown University. The study, conducted alongside Stanford University economists Levi Boxell and Matthew Gentzkow, was released on Monday, Jan. 20, as a National Bureau of Economic Research working paper.

In the study, Shapiro and colleagues present the first ever multi-nation evidence on long-term trends in "affective polarization"—a phenomenon in which citizens feel more negatively toward other political parties than toward their own. They found that in the U.S., affective polarization has increased more dramatically since the late 1970s than in the eight other countries they examined—the U.K., Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Germany, Switzerland, Norway and Sweden.

"A lot of analysis on polarization is focused on the U.S., so we thought it could be interesting to put the U.S. in context and see whether it is part of a global trend or whether it looks more exceptional," Shapiro said. "We found that the trend in the U.S. is indeed exceptional."

Using data from four decades of public opinion surveys conducted in the nine countries, the researchers used a so-called "feeling thermometer" to rate attitudes on a scale from 0 to 100, where 0 reflected no negative feelings toward other parties. They found that in 1978, the average American rated the members of their own political party 27 points higher than members of the other major party. By 2016, Americans were rating their own party 45.9 points higher than the other party, on average. In other words, negative feelings toward members of the other party compared to one's own party increased by an average of 4.8 points per decade.

The researchers found that polarization had also risen in Canada, New Zealand and Switzerland in the last 40 years, but to a lesser extent. In the U.K., Australia, Germany, Norway and Sweden, polarization decreased.

More information: Levi Boxell et al, Cross-Country Trends in Affective Polarization, (2020). DOI: 10.3386/w26669


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  • (Score: 4, Informative) by DeathMonkey on Monday January 27 2020, @10:44PM (15 children)

    by DeathMonkey (1380) on Monday January 27 2020, @10:44PM (#949625) Journal

    Yes, it is. One side is like "Nazis are totally cool now" and everyone else reacts in horror.

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  • (Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday January 28 2020, @05:59PM (14 children)

    by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday January 28 2020, @05:59PM (#950141) Journal

    One side is like "Nazis are totally cool now" and everyone else reacts in horror.

    Which side is that? Last I checked both sides were still comparing the other side to Nazis and they weren't saying the other side was totally cool by that comparison!

    • (Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Tuesday January 28 2020, @09:57PM (13 children)

      by DeathMonkey (1380) on Tuesday January 28 2020, @09:57PM (#950261) Journal

      The side with all the people who call THEMSELVES Nazis.

      • (Score: 0, Troll) by khallow on Tuesday January 28 2020, @11:29PM (12 children)

        by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday January 28 2020, @11:29PM (#950316) Journal

        The side with all the people who call THEMSELVES Nazis.

        Which side would that be again?

        I find it interesting how you never actually state that side. Strikes me that your subconscious knows you're lying and that's why you can't say it.

        Or maybe you'll doing the peeling the onion [soylentnews.org] thing and we'll find a dozen posts down the road that's it Moon Nazis controlling both of the parties through their Lizaroid allies and the Freemasons. But you can't let your true beliefs slip right now or it'd totally derail the thread - with laughter.

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 29 2020, @12:34AM (1 child)

          by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 29 2020, @12:34AM (#950345)

          Hmm, your deflection away from the overly obvious is strange. Do you just hate being associated with Nazis and think it is unfair? Or are you gaslighting everyone with the "democrats are the real nazis" line?

          • (Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday January 30 2020, @03:47AM

            by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Thursday January 30 2020, @03:47AM (#951018) Journal

            Hmm, your deflection away from the overly obvious is strange. Do you just hate being associated with Nazis and think it is unfair?

            I think everyone who's willing to associate me with Nazis is an idiot. That's all. Moving on, let's explore the onion technique a little. For example consider this little bit of racism [ricochet.com]:

            Marketwatch posted a piece today listing the American cities where violent crime is most prevalent. The worst of the lot is Detroit, which was, 65 years ago, the wealthiest city per capita in the United States. Then comes Oakland, Memphis, St. Louis, Cleveland, Little Rock, Baltimore, Rockford in Illinois, Milwaukee, and Birmingham in Alabama.

            The piece is an honest attempt to find what unites these cities. But it is skewed by its trust in the standard liberal cliches. So after specifying the crime rate, the population of the city, and the number of murders in 2013, it specifies the poverty rate — as if to imply that poverty is “the root cause” of crime. No other common denominator is mentioned.

            And yet, apart from poverty, there is one other common characteristic uniting these communities — a characteristic that we are not allowed to talk about.

            Spoiler: it's the blacks. Notice how he doesn't come out and say it? He has to creep up on it like a lion stalking a zebra.

            Now for our former resident flat Earther. He starts out with the assertions [soylentnews.org] that there are photographic artifacts in Apollo mission videos from the Moon that indicate they were taken in atmosphere, along with the assertions that the Apollo program is faked and the Earth is flat. He spent much of that thread claiming he had conducted all sorts of experiments that showed the world is flat and non-rotating. Now you might ask, isn't claiming that there's a flat Earth pretty damn far out there? Well, it turns out that there's more layers to that onion than merely that the world is flat.

            The next bombshell came a few weeks later when someone, perhaps me, asked why the several hundred thousand people working on the Apollo program never blabbed. It was fear of the Freemasons which kept them in line. Googling around, I saw that the Freemason narrative is that Satan is using the Freemasons to hide that the world is flat. Ok, so why is that important?

            The final piece fell into place when the concept of "energian planes" was introduced. From a single biblical verse [franknelte.net] (2 Thessalonians 2:11):

            And FOR THIS CAUSE God shall send them STRONG DELUSION, that they should believe a lie:

            That emphasized part was in the original Greek "energian planes" (literally translated would be "working of delusion"). What this means in practical terms is that the entirety of science, not just the shape of the Earth or the structure of the Moon, is a deception sprung upon the wicked by God himself. Satan and the Freemasons are just incidental actors going along with it. That means every bit of science is subject to the same level of deception as our knowledge of the Earth and Moon. And of course, the righteous are the only ones who can see through this.

            Once again, the same stalking upon the truth that dares not tell everything at once because otherwise, it'd just get laughed out of town on the first go.

            So anyway, perhaps you will be insulted by this comparison to racist dog-whistling and flat Earth conspiracies. Good. I hope it will eventually spur you to change your ways.

        • (Score: 3, Informative) by Azuma Hazuki on Wednesday January 29 2020, @01:18AM (9 children)

          by Azuma Hazuki (5086) on Wednesday January 29 2020, @01:18AM (#950375) Journal

          The side, you disingenuous walking abortion, that chants "You will not replace us," throws the heil, scribbles malformed swastikas all over the place, and thinks the number 1488 is sacred. That side. The side, you Hellbound sack of evil in a human skin, that aligns themselves with Nazis in belief and word and deed.

          That side.

          --
          I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
          • (Score: 0, Troll) by khallow on Thursday January 30 2020, @03:51AM (8 children)

            by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Thursday January 30 2020, @03:51AM (#951021) Journal

            The side, you disingenuous walking abortion, that chants "You will not replace us," throws the heil, scribbles malformed swastikas all over the place, and thinks the number 1488 is sacred.

            Which side would that be again, you bed-wetting imbecile?

            I'm not surprised that you decided to waste a post on this. Here's my take [soylentnews.org] on this bit of looniness.

            • (Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Thursday January 30 2020, @03:35PM (7 children)

              by Azuma Hazuki (5086) on Thursday January 30 2020, @03:35PM (#951206) Journal

              Go to Hell. You know very well which side it is as they've been all over the news for the last nearly 4 years. Here's a free hint: I've never seen a liberal spraypainting a swastika anywhere.

              --
              I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
              • (Score: 1) by khallow on Friday January 31 2020, @12:45AM (6 children)

                by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Friday January 31 2020, @12:45AM (#951513) Journal

                You know very well which side it is as they've been all over the news for the last nearly 4 years.

                I've seen plenty of nazis all over the political spectrum. No particular side to them.

                Here's a free hint: I've never seen a liberal spraypainting a swastika anywhere.

                I haven't seen anyone spraypainting swastikas. But I have read about hoax hate crimes. Those occasionally involve spraypainted swastikas. .

                • (Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Friday January 31 2020, @11:47PM (5 children)

                  by Azuma Hazuki (5086) on Friday January 31 2020, @11:47PM (#952062) Journal

                  Ah, I see your problem: selective attention. Sure, if you deliberately tune out what's happening in the world and just go looking for incidents that validate your pre-existing prejudices, all that will happen is reinforcement. That's dishonest, though, and makes you critically uninformed. It also means you have zero credibility in the wider world outside your own skull.

                  --
                  I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
                  • (Score: 0, Troll) by khallow on Saturday February 01 2020, @04:26AM (4 children)

                    by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Saturday February 01 2020, @04:26AM (#952187) Journal

                    Ah, I see your problem: selective attention.

                    I find it interesting how you went immediately from "I've never seen a liberal spraypainting a swastika" to "selective attention" after I gave the counterexample of hoax hate crimes. Nobody here projects harder than you do.

                    Frankly, I don't care for your absurd concerns. There's laws against spraypainting stuff on other peoples' property: vandalism and trespassing. It's a solved problem once the laws are enforced.

                    My take is that you're just another nutcase here like oh, the white nationalists or the flat Earthers. You have the same shoddy reasoning and the same filtering of reality. When your brain is engaged and you're thinking, you can be quite interesting to listen to. When you're off your meds, meh.

                    • (Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Saturday February 01 2020, @03:07PM (3 children)

                      by Azuma Hazuki (5086) on Saturday February 01 2020, @03:07PM (#952339) Journal

                      I actually never have seen a liberal spraypainting a swastika, so that still holds. And "selective attention" also still holds, and is a serious problem among your kind. Why do you think, also, that one person committing a hoax suddenly makes all the real crimes become not-crimes? Take your worthless whataboutism and shove it up your ass so hard you choke on it, then die and burn in Hell. You are, in the final analysis, just as guilty as the ones who actually do the crimes, because you support and defend and deflect from them.

                      --
                      I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
                      • (Score: 0, Troll) by khallow on Saturday February 01 2020, @05:40PM (2 children)

                        by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Saturday February 01 2020, @05:40PM (#952408) Journal
                        And I've never seen anyone outside of movies spraying those things. Guess that means it doesn't happen outside of the movies, right? Because otherwise why is your or my perceptions relevant?

                        Why do you think, also, that one person committing a hoax suddenly makes all the real crimes become not-crimes?

                        Oh how the worm wriggles! False accusations! No, I didn't say such a thing. Nor is this some case of whataboutism. You made a broad claim. I provided a counterexample. Now you're saving face.

                        Finally, the premise of this whole thread is ridiculous. A few people spray swastikas and sudden a whole "side" is alleged to be tainted. By that same poor logic why aren't you tainted because there are hoaxes somewhere in the world?

                        • (Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Saturday February 01 2020, @11:04PM (1 child)

                          by Azuma Hazuki (5086) on Saturday February 01 2020, @11:04PM (#952544) Journal

                          Because I'm 1) not speaking of the hoaxes and 2) specifically pointing out that there is no such thing as neutrality; even if you yourself are not goose-stepping and throwing the Heil, if you do not oppose these people, and if you keep posting shit in support of them, you are one degree of freedom/guilt away from them. Yes, it's guilt by association when you freely choose to associate with them.

                          --
                          I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
                          • (Score: 0, Troll) by khallow on Sunday February 02 2020, @04:00AM

                            by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Sunday February 02 2020, @04:00AM (#952631) Journal

                            not speaking of the hoaxes

                            So what? I spoke of them. Good enough for me.

                            specifically pointing out that there is no such thing as neutrality

                            Falsehoods remain false no matter how many times you point them out.

                            if you do not oppose these people, and if you keep posting shit in support of them, you are one degree of freedom/guilt away from them.

                            Here's the straw man building again. If I don't engage in the Orwellian two minute hate then I "support" Nazis. That's such a stupid argument.

                            you are one degree of freedom/guilt away from them

                            Here's the only part of your post that has a sliver of truth to it. We're all one degree of freedom away from the unpopular assholes and freaks of society. It's easier to destroy their freedoms than ours. That's why I defend their right to be assholes and freaks. Because if I don't, I'll be next.