Item — HN Reader

When you say "America has fallen into," it makes it sound like you believe that this is specific to America, and recent.

Was there some historic golden-age that I'm unaware of when people didn't get emotional over political views? (consider the duel of our founding fathers)

1 comments

I think there was, and it was pre-1990s. Something flipped after that. I feel like before the 90s, there was disagreement, but it didn't take on the extreme, vengeful tactics that it has today. This may be a result of the internet, or the 24hr news cycle, I honestly don't know. But something has changed. There's been a ratcheting up of attempts to silence dissent, and aggressively punish someone for disagreeing.

The end of the Cold War might have had something to do with it. The Other went away, so people pick another one.