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'The world 9/11 created: What if the U.S. had not invaded Iraq?'

washingtonpost.com

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Re: 'The world 9/11 created: What if the U.S. had not invaded Iraq?'

#31

Post by throw0101a »

Apocryphon wrote: post #11

The Bush administration’s post-9/11 policies have done immeasurable harm to the U.S. and the world. Even a lot of the domestic political polarization and social crackup we see in America today can be traced back to the divisions that be Iraq War created.

> Even a lot of the domestic political polarization and social crackup we see in America today can be traced back to the divisions that be Iraq War created.

The polarization started during the Civil Rights era of the 1960s. Or rather, the parties started sorting themselves on various issues after that point.

Ezra Klein has a good US-perspective/history in his recent book:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Why_We%27re_Polarized

Humans were always polarized. The political parties in the US just didn't bother acting on that fact until the national Democrats turned their backs on the Dixiecrats, and the GOP then started their Southern Strategy.

Re: 'The world 9/11 created: What if the U.S. had not invaded Iraq?'

#32

Post by dragonwriter »

throw0101a wrote: post #31
Apocryphon wrote: post #11

The Bush administration’s post-9/11 policies have done immeasurable harm to the U.S. and the world. Even a lot of the domestic political polarization and social crackup we see in America today can be traced back to the divisions that be Iraq War created.

> Even a lot of the domestic political polarization and social crackup we see in America today can be traced back to the divisions that be Iraq War created. The polarization started during the Civil Rights era of the 1960s. Or rather, the parties started sorting themselves on various issues after that point. Ezra Klein has a good US-perspective/history in his recent book: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Why_We%27re_P…

> The polarization started in the 1960s started during the Civil Rights era of the 1960s.

No, the polarization on racial issues started before the founding. It came to a head numerous times, the Civil Rights Era of the 1950s-1960s being, while one of the more recent notable times, not anywhwere close to the most significant. (I mean, its quite obviously absolutely dwarfed by the time racial issues came to a head in the 1850s-1860s.)

> Or rather, the parties started sorting themselves on various issues after that point.

No, they’d been doing that since the Democratic New Deal Coalition of the 1930s broke the old partiaan alignment, what changed in the 1960s is that, unlike the similar split in the Democratic Party in the 1940s that broke off the Dixiecrats over racial issues, the Republicans sought to exploit the Democratic divisions and welcome disaffected racists via the Southern Strategy.

The current partisan polarization is largely because, since the long political realignment largely settled out in the 1990s, we’ve had the longest period in a century where the main ideological divides are aligned with the partisan divide between the two major parties.

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