We mentioned in class that because of blogging and increasingly biased media outlets, Americans are becoming more and more polarized in their political ideologies. In other words, people are alienating the other side and are becoming convinced not just that they are a hundred percent right, but that members of the other side are actually fundamentally flawed in some way for not agreeing with their own particular point of view.
As an example of this, I went on YouTube and typed in “Liberals are” and saw what YouTube suggested I end the statement with. Then I did the same thing for “Conservatives are.” Some of the results I got for both were, “retarded, stupid, destroying America, idiots, morons, anti-American, evil, dumb, racist, annoying, wrong, and ignorant.” In other words, rather than understanding that there are simply different legitimate approaches to running a liberal democracy like the US, many Americans need to convince themselves that the other side is wrong at its core rather than admit that there could be some legitimacy to the other side, because it’s a much simpler, easier way of thinking. It sets up the world in black and white.
This aspect of human nature isn’t so scary when you look at its effects within America, because in many ways the differences in lifestyle are still minimal, and thus the animosity usually doesn’t lead to extreme violence. This human tendency to polarize around an ideology and then demonize the other side plays a much more important role on the global scale. In order for a Muslim radical terrorist to perform a violent act of terrorism on innocent civilians who are not involved in politics, the terrorist needs to be fully convinced that the people he is killing are not only flawed in their ideologies, but are evil. If Pakistani terrorists would say, “We believe that the province of Kashmir should belong to Pakistan, but we understand that the Indian govt. feels that it is their territory as well,” the horrific Mumbai terrorist attacks of 2008 would likely not have occurred. When you admit the other side has some legitimacy, you are admitting that you might be wrong in some respects, and this is difficult for people to acknowledge.
The biggest danger is simply that people find it easier to believe that they are 100% right and everyone else is 100% wrong. American news outlets need to start combining liberal and conservative doctrines, just to show citizens that there can be two legitimate sides to the same coin. If we can’t even accept fellow Americans with slightly different ideologies, how can we expect our enemies to ever accept our existence and for the world to ever live in peace?
I wonder if Americans really are more polarized today that they were in the past or if it just seems that way sometimes due to the rise of new media.
ReplyDeletegood point doozen. i think back in the day people were a little more quiet about what they belived. that's why in the late 60s early 70s the majority was called the "silent Majority"
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