How Hatred Came to Dominate American Politics | Hacker News Reader

How Hatred Came to Dominate American Politics

fivethirtyeight.com

25 pointsadrian_mrd7 comments

The article notes the death of local news reporting. This is paralleled by the fact that many Americans get their news from social media. Wherein:

1. People mute or “unfriend” opposing political voices thus negating a moderating feedback loop.

2. The social feeds themselves are engineered to maximize engagement. And generating outrage is a sure fire way to maximize attention.

I hope I didn’t do anything wrong by “vouching” to unflag this; it didn’t take any sides politically and seemed neutral and relevant.

Would ranked choice voting cut into the two party system if people felt better about voting for what they believe in instead of the less wrong candidate from one of the two leading parties?

That's my belief. Separate out the Democrats into the centrists and the socialists. Separate the Republicans into the capitalists and the racists. Add the libertarians and the Greens. Then you'd be able to vote how you actually felt, and feel that if you'd compromised you'd at least done so on your own terms.

I'm not so sure people would feel that way. We've already got a multi-stage process, where people vote in primaries, and then in a general election. It's not a full ranked-choice voting scheme, but it's also not just a one-step winner-take-all process.

Nonetheless, a lot of people seem very dissatisfied when they lose the primary. I don't know if they'd feel any better if they lost it in a ranked-choice voting scheme instead.

The successful party is the one that enforces conformity rather than encouraging diversity. Hammering out that compromise is hard, because it means forging coalitions and making people swallow things they've objected to in the past. But that seems to be more effective than pointing to a set of voting rules and saying "You agreed to these, so go out and live with having lost."

My two cents: I think starting in the early 1990s, when Newt Gingrich went to war with the Clintons, it became very person for both sides. This was exacerbated by Tom Delay, which was compounded by Pelosi when the Democrats took over in 2006. Then it boiled over with the acrimony between the parties and President Obama, and it has only gotten worse.

I doubt our political leaders are even speaking to one another anymore. Trump and Pelosi need to go play a private game of golf together.

That sounds correct to me.

I will say that perhaps we should be thankful for even now - 150 years ago Republican and Democrats fought a deadly civil war over the issue of slavery and other issues.

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