The stupidity of bipartisanship and America, the numbing of the global electorate and it's impact

Oh, well, if Canada does it, then it's okay. Let the rest of 'em eat cake. Why don't you relocate to Canada instead? Snob.

I have never, nor will I ever, watch a Freddy movie. Next?

Not even...HALF?

Why would I relocate any where? And why is advocating sound economic policy snobbish just because you don't like it?

Fox News launched 18 years ago.

It actually goes back further than that to when Reagan killed the fairness doctrine.

I suspect it's a combination of a few things:

1. Not having the Cold War anymore. Regardless of what people thought about Vietnam, Grenada, etc., pretty much everyone agreed that there was a Big Bad out there, and that forced a fair amount of overlap in parties' policies. That's gone.

2. Pre-Cold War politics, particularly early turn of the century politics, was not less ruthless than it is now (some of the editorials and campaigns attacking Cleveland, McKinley, Wilson, and others make our era look downright civil (and then Wilson fought back with the Alien, Sedition, and Espionage Acts!), and let's not forget that the election of 1860 led to the Civil War), but the reach of any given statement or campaign was more limited than now due to inferior communications technology. Of course it's also harder to compare politics out of living memory to that within, and it's easier to extrapolate backwards from when most people remember (the Cold War) than it is to actually examine the source material. So people have a rose-colored view of the politics of the past, despite this era being more a reversion to the mean than an exception.

3. On the topic of improved communications, the sheep have megaphones in the Internet where they didn't before. This makes propaganda much more effective - it's well known that hearing something from multiple sources increases your belief in it (worse, it turns out that hearing something multiple times from the same source is almost as effective, but the number of unthinking political blogs re-reporting the same manufactured scandals without asking why they matter certainly outnumbers the times that any given pundit can tell you about them).
3a. I also suspect, though I don't have proof, that this can actually be tied back to the invention of the in-car radio. It seems very plausible to me that driving takes up enough of your concentration to force you to suspend some of your critical thinking which would otherwise filter out the bullshit of talk radio. But again, this is strictly speculation.

4. Education has had an increasing focus on obedience and submission to authority in the past couple decades, and a decline in emphasis on skepticism and critical thinking. What passes for critical reading now is nothing more than analysis. There's no examination of assumptions inherent in the book or passage, beyond perhaps their existence. This leads to people picking an authority, and then they follow it, and everything and everyone else in an anathema to their way of life. They will even make stuff up to fit the narrative. One person was telling me about how evil Bernie Sanders is, telling me how he said in an interview that there were too many kinds of deodorant (true), and that when asked who should decide which kinds of deodorant should stay (didn't happen), replied "Well I should of course" (false since the question was never asked).

Man, Nixon & Reagan were busy little beavers.

Is it really that simply? I don't think so.

Yeah, that's all well and good. But, like I say, I allow the possibility that there is a form of nature that could be misinterpreted as a deity. I suppose that's why I give agnosticism the benefit of the doubt, but I nonetheless realised I wasn't really ever saying "there might be a God", as in an omnipotent being.

Yes. I'm Frednostic.

You know as well as I do that there are people on both sides who try to play the "I'm an independent" card...right before they parrot the party line 100%

OK, the unskilled, uneducated ones can move in with you.

Nevertheless, I have never registered as a Democrat, but your side can't resist mislabeling me as such any more than @Diacanu can resist calling me an atheist. Which is why @El Chup's point is valid. Some Americans just need to put people in boxes to make it simpler for them to understand a complex situation.

Ever hear the term "pattern day trader"?

You're a pattern democrat.

So the NSA gave you access to my voting record? This is more serious than I thought...

This doesn't apply solely to Americans, but I think part of it is we like to be on the winning team. We're good people, so we're on the side of the good guys, right? I mean, there are bad people, but they're on the side of the bad guys. If you're in the middle and won't pick between the two teams, then you're clearly on the bad side, since a good person would choose the good side right away. This means you can now invalidate anyone's argument by knowing which side they're on, and the side that isn't your side must be the bad side (since you aren't a bad person), which means when the good side sends in the Army, it's a peacekeeping mission; When the bad team does it, it's an invasion. When the good team monitors all of its citizens it's for peace; When the bad team does it, it's to strip away our rights. Disagreement, even mild disagreement, is indication that someone who may have been good has turned bad, and their arguments can now be disregarded as lacking merit.

Teams make it so we don't have to think, because there's too much shit and too little time to think about little nuances. It's either good, or it's bad. Pick a side and let it ride.

We definitely like to be on the winning team. I sometimes think that is why we waited out the first part of two world wars.

Or policies on labor unions, perhaps?

If they're your opinions, fucking own that shit and quit whining about being "attacked." It's mostly your rabid tone people object to more than your views anyway.

That is because a lot of them are. It seems to be a problem with the media. We now have an election industry like we have never seen before in the past. This causes the media to be purchased and give only one viewpoint. This along with the dumbing down of education has caused a huge polarization problem. Less educated and less intelligent people often fall to the extremes because the nuances of the middle are beyond them. It actually frustrates them to have to think. For example welfare is a good/bad thing and no one gets into the actual programs to see that we could make some of them better, and that the best thing would be reform to use more modern tools that were not conceived when it was implemented. Instead they are either cut it or give it money. Neither of which actually fix any problems, and both of them create many more problems without reform. But it is so much easier to either throw money at it or get rid of it. Actually thinking and debating about what to do are not within the abilities of most people.

You also have to remember america would be more like the euro, and even then we have some big differences. To spread election media over an area like the UK would be easy by american standards. You get to a lot more people a lot more often. This would be a lot more like one of our state elections which often are not as polarized as the federal. A lot of the big money is out of the picture also. Except for the governor and some mayors state elections are normally much better. Also, because they are not the top they are less influenced than our federal, and probably your parlamentary elections. There is a big push to get money out of politics that is moving it's way through the state legislatures, but you do not see it because no one pays attention to them. It may help with a lot of this polarization.

I think we are heading towards another paradigm shift in the world. It is due to a lot of stupid people. I am being completely serious here. There are people who can keep up, and then there is a mass of simpleminded people who are really becoming a problem because they are too easily manipulated, and not able to make a proper vote. People want politicians to be more open about their plans instead of just saying what they think it will do, but if it were to happen the general public does not have the education or intelligence to discern bullshit from reality. This is why we have trickle down economics supported by many people despite violating basic economic principles of demand. The idea is completely upside down, but the stupid cannot see that.

A trump like character could probably make it over there. Trump has too much baggage to do so. The rabble likes loud and obnoxious, and pushy. The trump factor in your land is probably some of your royalty, though they have many more manners than he has. I am sure you have a few loud ones which wont go away.

Well, I will thank you for a well done argument.

I think this is what we can expect at this point given how our perspective on the world has changed, but we continue to carry stupid. This is why I do not believe in democracy. You cannot have an idiot make proper choices on important policy. Really, they are focussed on loud and shiny. There is a huge mass of them and that means you can manipulate democracy through it's own methods in you can manipulate the stupid. That is where the US is at right now. Trump is really a lot like Romney in that he doesn't care about the issues, he just wants to get elected and will say anything. It is just that Trump happens to entertain much better than Romney. It is now a full blown fact that Trump has maintained support from this group of people who really have no idea what he stands for.

Yes, it is fucked up. I think it will keep on getting worse until it either breaks and then gets reformed, or they reform it through the system. Our present way of doing things is broken and volatile, and the fire is lit so it will burn eventually. The only question is will we be repairing burn damage with the frame intact, or will we be rebuilding.

Oh, and fuck the simpletons and their short posts.

I can actually understand that.

Based on what? The UK voting public trends to the right, that's why the Tories are the most successful party in the history of Western democracies, and why Labour's most successful period was when they shifted away from the left.

The Scottish vote is more complex, Labour, as befitting most Left-leaning groups, are horribly centralising, which killed them off - Scottish Labour had become nothing more than an appendage of English Labour, which during the post-referendum period was always going to be toxic as Labour was now also seen as side-by-side with the Tories.

And don't confuse the SNP with an explicitly left-wing party, they have plenty of left-wing views, yes, mainly when Salmond returned to the fold, but they're primarily a Scotland-first party with policies revolving around that.

Blair was easy to vote for, which just amplified his success - however, had Labour not ejected most of their more left-wing they'd likely have still won, but with with a much reduced majority leaving the door open to the Tories at the next election.

The UK public were so enamoured of left-wing politics in action that the 5 years of Labour government in the 70's ensured that Labour had an uphill battle, even when they weren't busy shooting themselves in the feet by having internal struggles.

They are called nightmare on elm street, and 1 and 3 were actually very interesting for their fantasy ideas about dreams. The fourth one is still a bit serious, but not as good as 3. After that they become a bit goofy.

But really, are you not a horror fan?

I say agnostic because I feel there may be beings who go along the lines of the gods. I find some atheists to be as bothersome as some of the highly religious. Plus once someone tells me they are an atheist it is a non starter philosophy wise.

Cultural change is always extremely complex. Fox News would never have prospered in a resilient democracy, and binary partisanship draws on an electoral system that favours two party systems, and so on. But yes, what is unique about the US does seem to me to relate mostly to its most mainstream traditional mass media company poisoning its minds.