Why the past 10 years of American life have been uniquely stupid

> ... but many of them have been devastating for the mental health and education of children, who desperately need to play with one another and go to school ...

I see this repeated a lot and pretty much every time I see it, it is implied that teachers (and, by extension, their families) are expendable. Sure children need socialization (to varying degrees) but someone has to supervise in-school learning. Those teachers are at higher risk than the children are of complications from COVID and their families might be even higher risk. I take exception to this devaluation.

This belies a dark truth of people in general: many people (if not most people) absolutely do not give a fuck about people they don't know if it even mildly inconveniences them.

> Of course, the American culture war and the decline of cross-party cooperation predates social media’s arrival.

Yes it does. Can you spot the trend [1]?

> The ideological distance between the two parties began increasing faster in the 1990s. Fox News and the 1994 “Republican Revolution” converted the GOP into a more combative party.

It goes back further than that: White evangenlical institutions were weaponzed to deliberately foment a culture war because of white supremacy and racism. Consider abortion [2]:

> In 1970, a poll conducted by the Baptist Sunday School Board found that 70 percent of Southern Baptist pastors supported abortion to protect the mental or physical health of the mother, 64 percent supported abortion in cases of fetal deformity and 71 percent in cases of rape.

> Three years later, a poll conducted by the Baptist Standard newsjournal found that 90 percent of Texas Baptists believed their state’s abortion laws were too restrictive.

What changed? It's a deep topic but in summary, Brown v Board of Education ended racial segregation in schools. Mississippi tried to get around this with private schools for K-12 education (where the white enrollment in public schools in Holmes County dropped to zero). In 1970, Green v Kennedy prevented such academies from receiving full tax exempt status. Fears of misagenation caused Bob Jones University (under duress) to admit a token handful of (married) black students. Starting in the mid-70s, efforts were made to motivate voters around abortion, which proved successful in the 1978 midterms and probably helped Reagan defeat Carter in 1980 when Carter refused to consider a constitutional amendment banned abortion.

And the rest is history.

But we see this culture war continue to this day as Republicans have been incredibly successful creating wedge issues to motivate their base around trans rights, gay marriage, critical race theory and the like.

[1]: https://theweek.com/speedreads/454162/rise-filibuster-madden...

[2]: https://www.baptistpress.com/resource-library/news/how-south...

The populist movements of Occupy Wallstreet and its more effective mirror image - the Tea Party - were a direct result of distrust of the "system" (i.e. government, politicians and corporate America) in the aftermath of the great recession where people observed large-scale foreclosures, while the government was pouring billions to bail-out corporations and, justice wasn't seen to be done regarding those who precipitated the crisis.

Social media didn't help,but IMO, trust in institutions was severely eroded and a lot of people felt left behind by the unevenly-distributed "recovery", which splintered people into self-reinforcing ideological echo-chambers.

The third act was the Trump presidency, and I have nothing to say which hasn't been said before about polarization in that era.

Like, sure, there are plenty of middle-to-upper-middle-class white liberals with “In This House We Believe” signs in their front yards. But while they may be culturally liberal, if you poll them on Medicare for All, wealth taxes, putting workers on corporate boards, or a $15 minimum wage, you’ll probably find that the rich white people of America aren’t clamoring to do anything that would threaten the status of corporations of people with lots of property. However the people who are (like the Amazon workers who just unionized, or the diverse coalition behind Bernie’s campaigns) are more sympathetic than suburban white liberals, and don’t fit as nicely into the horseshoe shape.

Meanwhile the Right is all in line on their agenda. The Right’s rich white folks aren’t worried about their masses voting against corporate interests, and they’ll happily sign off on whatever culture war issues it takes to keep the middle and working class parts of their constituency coming to the polls.