I have a question for oldfags (in the 'age' sense not the 'time on Jow Forums' sense):
Are we living in an especially politically contentious and divisive era?
The reason I ask is that I feel like we are, although I'm only 23 and I don't really remember anything earlier than the first half of the Obama administration. I remember there was some tense stuff going on then with the teabaggers and all that shit, but it seemed like on the internet at least, it wasn't shit that consumed literally everybody and worked its way into literally every hobby and subculture like it is now.
The way the culture looks to me right now is basically like a pyramid. At the very top, you have politics. Beneath that you have things like entertainment, sports, literature, business, etc. These things are basically subsidiaries of 'politics' because they all have to have a political perspective and that's what they're really judged on and what people in these 'interests' base their tastes/allegiances on.
Then below all the cultural shit, at the bottom of the pyramid, you have normies on social media, who are basically different voting blocks for the political players at the top, and whose preferences in cultural stuff (e.g. favorite athletes, shows, musicians etc) fall along political lines.
Politics was always pretty heated as far as I can tell, but this whole thing where it pervades and subsumed literally everything else seems fairly new to me. Is this correct or am I just viewing the past through rose-colored glasses?
It's mostly unprecedented in our living memory. 60-70s were similar in postwar era I guess
Logan Wright
This goofy little comic basically sums up how odd and fluid things are, whole new era. Our situation is absolutely unprecedented, based on the technology, new ideas, and titanic demographic shifts the world has never seen before.
everything is stems from WW1 and 2. its been nothing but one giant divide-and-conquer joyride since then, only more compounded by the internet and its flaws.
When I grew up it I remember it being a big concern on the news that not enough people were engaged in the political process and voter turnout was extremely low. >t. 80's oldfag
Joseph Jenkins
TIME TO KILL ALL BLACKS
Ian Bennett
You always had some fringe elements whining about oppression and pushing degeneracy, but it used to be mostly confined to the academia in a few West Coast universities. I don't remember normalfags caring much about politics in everyday life, other than when elections rolled around; it certainly wasn't like today when every little thing has to be made into a political statement and criticized over and over again. I'm sure the Internet, particularly 24/7 access to it via smartphones and other portable devices has very much to do with it.
Jackson Ramirez
Before the 2000 election the media was almost completely a creature of the government and acted as its mouthpiece
Shortly after Bush was elected a new generation of journalists got their jobs dreaming of being the next Watergate/Pentagon Papers guy
So now EVERYTHING is a political scandal that Could Potentially Bring Down The Government Because It Goes All The Way To The Top (TM)
But every single time it's nothing and they're not even touching the third rail that is Iraq/Afghanistan because they're obsessed with access and inside information
Daniel Cook
>they're obsessed with access and inside information Jokes on them because Jow Forums gets it all the time.
Unfortunately that led to the whole Q fiasco because of newfags who didn't understand how to spot LARPs.
Evan Bennett
>Are we living in an especially politically contentious and divisive era? No, there was just a lull from 1945 to 2005, roughly. Now we're reverting to earlier standards, more like the 1890-1920s.
Found the NPC
>So now EVERYTHING is a political scandal that Could Potentially Bring Down The Government Because It Goes All The Way To The Top (TM) Yeah, that definitely started with W. Fag
Liam James
it was backed by the israeli government that's why it wouldn't die. even paying off youtube influencers.
Nathaniel Cox
That's not what oldfag means. Fuck off child
Daniel Davis
The Bush years were pretty contentious
David Davis
I think a lot of it is hype. We're in an unprecedented era as far as mass media goes, but politics themselves? Frankly, no, this shit is smalltime.
Look up the weather underground. There were more domestic terrorist bombs sent in the mail during the 70s than there have been since 9/11. The the 60s-70s were a still unprecedented level of political violence and upheaval that only got calmed down after Reagan took office. It was the height of anti war protests, the height of lack of trust in the government, the height of domestic criminal violence, it was a fucking shitshow and the only good thing to come out of it was fucking 70s cinema.
Politics today are a fucking joke compared to that, it's just that media obfuscation of the truth in the age of the internet is throwing us into existential dread about wether anything can be trusted anymore, but it's not even the first time a previously non political career president took office. Ffs we had a cowboy actor with a pet chimp for president, this decade isn't that special.
Was pre-president Reagan as well-known in popular imagination as Trump was though?
Christian Davis
SJWs fucking with video games and popular entertainment redpilled a lot of people. All of the #metoo shit is also redpilling the masses. Politically correct shit and liberal propaganda are forcing people to the right. Everything is anti-trump, every tv show, every news story, all the shitty fake clickbait on the web. Either the normies fall for it, or they get tired of the shit and go to the right.
Normies didn't read the wikileaks or the dnc leaks or any of the shit during the election but didn't want to vote for hillary because she's really not likable unless you are part of the sjw neo-feminist movement only backing her because she's a woman. The more the liberals shit themselves and claim he's getting impeached and all of the stupid shit, the more they lose people. If you were here around the elections you know it's true because no matter how many paid liberal shills there were here trump still was the favorite. I feel like even liberal shills became red pilled at one point. I'ts ultimately inevitable if you lurk enough.
>90s cemented some bad cultural warfare stuff >everyone went batshit crazy after 9/11 I started bitching about political polarization during GWB's first term. Obama squandered a huge opportunity to mend fences. Shit's beyond fucked man.
Benjamin Martin
While digging for and reporting on political scandals that could end the presidency is nothing new, the emergence of the (((possibility of such scandals))) while reporting literally nothing did start around the Bush era, if only because of the internet's influence and the legions of self proclaimed investigators.
Bentley Edwards
The subversive movements of the 60s were a far bigger deal than politics today. Nowadays the left wing parasites have gotten almost every thing they wanted so they don't freak as much as they did before america was subverted.
Jackson King
At the same time, the while Antifa is worrying they largely haven't gone nearly as far as their predecessors like the Weather Underground with widespread bombing campaigns.
Even ignoring the context of 9/11, if leftist groups tried to perform bombing campaigns like that today, the best-case scenario for them is they'd be on the fast-track to the death penalty. God help them if a citizen figured out who they were first.
Sebastian Morris
In sweden they had some slogan in the 70s, "everything is politics". I suspect the same is true for other countries and i think that is something they have been working on in order to get control over things.
OP the answer is we headed for a Happening Singularity, basically we live in a time where everything that could happen is going to happen. It is an a cultural acceleration, This will end in chaos or war, we all know its coming. America is at the end of its turning point. The reason its so crazy is we have lost our identity and what is important to us, America needs to find out who she is again, then only can we enter the next age the Great Awakening and seize our destiny.
