According to the article, this phenomenon is most obviously manifested in the humorous expression “own the libs”, and not, say, by shrieking scaremongering about fascism and comparing the other side to the Nazis.
The core problem is that America uses a two party system and that can only result in heavy partisanship.
The other side sees this as hysterical nonsense spouted by sanctimonious hypocrites and people blind to reality, who deserve to be mocked, hence “own the libs.”
These two sides are not equivalent. One is doing a lot more “othering”. The real equivalent would be some sort of Red Scare accusing the other side of being infiltrated by freedom-hating communist spies, demanding their removal from all institutions and positions of power.
Otherwise, I accept your downvote as proof that facts are not relevant to you.
All of the examples were one sided (and imo true, with many worse ones left unmentioned), while there was no mention of the elephant - the world view that all members of a certain race are racist by definition, and that all interactions between races are, by definition, based on race, no matter what the context. How is this not demonizing the "other" ?
My fear is that what used to be disagreements over what rights an individual has (who to marry, what to do in your personal space, what if any deities to bow before, what you are able to do with your own body) have turned into disagreements over what framework we should use to govern our society.
Individual rights, imo, need to be respected, and can be done without infringing on anyone else.
However, the current undercurrent of how we should govern ourselves as a society (marxism vs capitalism) is something that we all, as a society, need to abide by, and that differences in these views, historically, has been settled through war.
The short video at the bottom of the page is particularly interesting.
Only one American political party needs white supremacist votes in order to be elected. Only one.
The point is that associating one political party in particular with fascist and white supremacist views is not an exaggeration; one party’s leader embraces them as “very fine people.”