4288

I was referring to activity on this message board specifically, as indicated by the preceding sentence.

4289

Yeah, except for that bit about confirming the polling above. Also, QT3 is not a representative sample or microcosm.

4290

This is the polling I was referring to that Qt3 discussion seems consistent with.

4291

Again, not a representative sample, since that only looks at young people, at the present time, where people are reacting to decades of right wing attacks.

The actual history of discourse over the last few decades is a massive wave of right wing attacks on liberals. Limbaugh, Fox, Hannity, Breitbart, Trump, etc. You can try to gild the lily all you like but that’s the truth.

4292

I’m not pretending to be sharing a representative sample of any slice of the national population, and obviously that isn’t a requirement for posting here. Just my observation from my own personal experience, including on this message board.

And note you’ve described me as separated from reality, “in a gilded lily” (?) and totally isolated. All I shared was my personal experience on this board and living in a red state, purple-to-blue state, and extremely blue city over a few decades, without any insults.

4293

I think few people have the political knowledge or even care that much compared to people on this forum. To many people politics are something they deal with maybe every 4 years, and most of what they think they know they don’t. They vote based on their paycheck and their bills. On what their parents or friends have experienced.

4294

i do not have party allegiance. this is not a team sport. i do have eyes, ears, and a brain and i use them to vote for people who are aligned with my views. i have voted independent and even for gop/libertarian types when i was a foolish child. this isnt about party allegiance, this is about the gop being filled with people i want nothing to do with not because they vote gop, but because people who vote gop are shitbirds currently.

4295

So when was the gop not full of shit birds in your opinion?

4296

Certainly not in living memory.

4297

That is kind of the way I feel.

Unfortunately for the majority of the GOP, they are supporting despicable policies and agendas.

I can’t be friends who agree with things that I despise. I can be cordial, have conversations, but there will never be a trust there. I am sure there are flavors of GOP leaning people I could befriend, as there are nuances to every person. But anyone voting for the Trump style GOP is not worth spending time on.

4298

TLDR: I think it has gotten steadily (and then very rapidly) worse since the latter half of the 90’s but I’m sure my answer would be very different if I weren’t a cis white male.

Most everyone I knew back in the 90s or so was a Republican (no surprise, given where I live). I was usually the token “lefty” in various friend circles, although at that age most weren’t overly political. There were a couple exceptions with one friend in particular being an Ayn Rand fanboy and hardcore libertarian. Despite us disagreeing on pretty much everything when it came to politics, I didn’t feel like we were looking for two radically outcomes (prosperity and good economic outcomes for people). He believed his various political viewpoints resulted in better outcomes for people and I disagreed and pointed out why I thought the various policies he supported and campaigned for were wrong and would harm people.

I could have arguments with friends and acquaintances like that and while we really strongly disagreed, I understood where they were coming from and they understood where I was coming from. We thought each other was wrong, but in general terms we shared some commonality in terms of goals even if we could never agree on how to get there.

In my personal experience that all seemed to change with the rise of Rush Limbaugh and conservative radio popularity, which was further entrenched with the likes of Fox News. Even something like Fox News used to have Hannity and Colmes and at least include a liberal viewpoint/punching bag. I’m not saying the show was good or anything, but I think it does show how the GOP has gotten worse. They used to pretend to be fair and balanced and the only reason they advertised that is it was because it was attractive viewers (telling them it was fair and balanced while shoveling rightwing talking points their way). I can’t imagine Tucker Carlson or Sean Hannity cohosting with a progressive in 2022. It’s kind of hard to cohost with a groomer/cannibal/enemy of the state.

Anyway, this is all clearly anecdotal and only applies to my particular social circle but those people I used to share some goals with and disagreed on how to achieve them… they’ve changed. The cruelty is the point and the suffering is a feature now. It used to be “oh noes, if they give my taxes to the poors they’ll never get strong enough to pull themselves up by the bootstraps!” but changed to “Fuck those people, I want a livestream of them suffering!”. In both cases the policies they supported led to be bad outcomes but it sure feels like the intent has changed.

So, that’s a super long and boring rambling answer to your question. I’ll put a tl;dr up top so you don’t feel like you have to read my drivel.

4299

I do think Limbaugh was a turning point in that the smirking anti-liberal, anti-common sense GOP BS had a face, and people started quoting his cute little trashy lines. The disagreements were no longer cordial as Limbaugh called people names, hmm, I wonder who adopted that behavior?

I am sure I have mentioned before that I have two brothers who, mainly for religious reasons, have probably voted GOP for years. I am biased but they are not bad people, both volunteer in the community and help others. It is just that damn abortion issue.

4300

IMO the last time the GOP had an internal majority of policies and voters that I consider non-shitty was probably the Teddy Roosevelt era. By the 20s, the majority of the GOP was already too far into laissez faire for me to be onboard (although that was not the entirety of the GOP at that time, just a majority). There was a time in the 50s when the top of the GOP, Eisenhower, etc., was relatively tolerable in my view, but they did not reflect a lasting base within the GOP. By the 60s, the GOP had turned to the Southern Strategy and then got steadily worse with Reagan, Gingrich, Limbaugh, Bush, Trump et al.

In terms of being able to be friends with people in the GOP, for me the breakpoint was the George W. Bush era - prior to that I had always had friends in many different groups and we could agree to disagree in a civil fashion. Even though I disagreed with the Republican party platform my entire life, there were GOP voters who I could still talk to. The W. era, with the lying us into war, slander of liberals as traitors and terrorists, violations of rule of law in the US Attorney scandal, and a whole host of other things, along with the increasing embrace of more and more GOP voters of the most extreme distortions of reality (rejection of climate change, acceptance of W’s lies about Iraq, etc.) just made it so that by the time Obama got elected, it was really hard to converse with active GOP folks (the kind of folks who actively watched Fox news etc.) That got worse with Trump.

Even now, there are still some GOP voters who I can talk to, but I feel like they are but a fraction of the party. Like I’ve said, I feel like roughly 3 in 4 GOP voters has embraced the extreme, turned off critical thinking, and both believes in ideas and acts on those ideas in ways harmful to the country. As a specific example, I don’t believe it’s possible to have a civil conversation on politics or current events with people who believe in Trump’s election fraud claims. They’ve just moved too far from reality and are supporting an anti-democratic coup to place a defeated candidate into power against the wishes of the voters. I’m just not down with that, full stop.

4301

And he got his schtick from

4302

This is it for me as well.

4303

what they said

george w is when i said oh hell no, but had friends prior to that who were hardcore gop and we could each tell each other they were full of shit and go get beers. now they would want my daughter to carry a fetus to term if she had been raped, so you know, they are good christians.

4304

Bingo. The steady rise of the GOP propaganda wing in the 90’s (radio) and the last 20 years (television and internet) has lead directly to where we are now. For decades now the GOP has been building this idea of politics as a team sport. You either live/breathe/vote Republican or you are an enemy of the party. This started to rapidly increase in intensity during the Obama Presidency, and built to a fever pitch during Trump’s reign. There is no going back now either, as not only are the vast majority of those who identify as Republican thoroughly brainwashed by their own media, but now the same is happening to the left as a reaction to Trumpism. People who routinely vote Democrat have given up on compromise and bipartisanship, and are now vehemently anti-Trump and anti-GOP. I am a perfect example. I went from being what would be classified as an Independent voter going into Obama’s first term, to a “radical Democrat” now post-Trump largely because I can see plainly how our Democratic System is literally under attack and how dangerous that is to everyone, no matter how they vote.

Bingo again. The problem is, a lot of people voting GOP are doing it not because they love flying Let’s Go Brandon flags and calling their neighbors “libtards”, but because they still believe the GOP is more aligned with their interests even as they witness bullshit like Trump, Abbott, DeSantis, Cruz and their ilk. I know, I live amongst them. On the West side of Cincinnati I am surrounded daily by people who vote GOP not because they love Trump (most of the people I know think he’s embarrassing at best, an idiot and crook at worst) but because they want something the GOP is promising them. That something could be striking down Roe v. Wade if the person is a practicing Catholic. That something could be opposing any real change in gun laws if that person is a hunter or sport shooter invested in their Second Amendment rights. That something could be as simple as cheaper gas and/or more and better blue collar jobs if the government allows oil companies to drill/pipe more oil and provides incentives for manufacturing to return to American towns.

When I talk to these people, they’re not ignorant, they’re not hostile, they’re just convinced this is the way. It amazes me when I talk to the Catholics I know about abortion, many of them are perfectly fine with exceptions based on rape/abuse/incest and medical issues. When I talk to the gun enthusiasts I know, many of them are perfectly fine with common sense gun laws, up to and including age limits, registration and licensing that involves gun safety courses. When I talk to the blue collar folks, many of them understand and are sympathetic to the fact that there are environmental concerns to be factored into achieving their goals and the fact that corporations are as much or more to blame for the loss of American manufacturing and trade jobs as any politician. Yet they are unlikely to get any of those exceptions and inclusions if they continue to vote GOP. It’s scorched earth or nothing.

I believe the issue is that GOP media has these folks convinced that it is better to get too much of what they want than not get anything at all. Vote Democrat, and abortions will be legal up to and including birth. Vote Democrat and the feds are going to come for your guns, no matter how responsible you are. Vote Democrat and gas will be $10.00 a gallon and your family will go on welfare before you ever see a good paying blue collar job again. Vote Republican, and yeah, maybe some girl somewhere has to raise her uncle’s rape baby, or some kid somewhere buys a pair of AR-15th on his 18th birthday and shoots up a school full of 4th graders, so what? None of that affects you directly. That is right up until that lake you used to like to take the family to in the summer gets polluted by the runoff from new oil drilling or refining equipment. Or that new job that promised $24 an hour turns out to be for some foreign company your Senator owns stock in, and they don’t allow unions and only give employees a 10 minute break every four hours, with docked pay if you’re a minute late back to the line because you had to use the bathroom which is on the other side of the plant. By the time it hits home, it’s too late. Limbaugh and Hannity and Carlson lied to you, Trump and McConnell and DeSantis lied to you, and you can’t do fuck all about it because you handed the country over to them to get what you thought you wanted.

4305

exactly. shitbirds.

4306

Never heard of him. West Coast bias probably.

4307

I knew a lot people then who by the end of the Bush presidency agreed the war was a mistake and then poorly run once started. I have always blamed Cheney and Rumsfeld, but Bush had a lot to answer for.