~MichelMephit

The first American election I witnessed was when Ronald Reagan become president in 1980. Even up until 2016, election campaigns had been civil and generally free from hatred and violence. That changed on 15 January 2021 and seems to be getting worse. I was deeply disturbed by this past election. Never have I seen such vitriol and hatred to that extent

I have never seen so many "Fuck Joe Biden" quotes and even some "Fuck Trump" quotes. Civility has gone out the window. Whatever happened to the notion that people can "agree to disagree" instead of threatening to punch someone for not agreeing with you? If you want no better example of civility between opposing views, you need not look any further than former presidents George W. Bush and Bill Clinton: a Republican and a Democrat and they are friends!

This past election was without precedent. I have never witnessed a political party turn against its sitting president just because he did poorly during a debate (I understand he was still recovering from COVID) or have two assassination attempts against an opposing candidate. There were also other acts of violence as well (i.e. the attack on Nancy Pelosi's husband and threats against election workers). I do not recall ever seeing such negative vilifying of opposing candidates. And the presidential debates have become a pathetic joke and a disgrace.

I think one big reason for the current political atmosphere is social media. Originally created with the intent of bringing people together, it has had the unintended opposite effect. When I talk with someone who has opposing political views from my own, they seem to live in a completely separate reality. If any of you who have access to Netflix have not seen this, I highly recommend watching "The Social Dilemma" which first aired in 2020. It was a real eye opener.

It brought to my attention that podcasts, twitter posts, news media sites, etc. can be politically very biased. If you are right-leaning, you probably enjoy watching Fox News. If you are left-leaning, your favorite news source is probably MSNBC. These and other similar sources of information cater to their respective audiences and will continue to feed them what they want to hear without giving them a fresh perspective. What they broadcast is also often outright false or misleading.

It is why I've learned to avoid such sources of information. I did find a few websites that report on the level of news bias and reliability, such as https://adfontesmedia.com/ and I'm quite sure there are more such websites. It helped me find the most reliable, least bias sources of information that look at an issue from all sides.

I am pessimistic about the political stability of this country in the years to come. Unless people catch on that they are being blinkered into narrow political views that vilify any who do not agree with them, things are going to get worse. One must learn to fact-check whatever one reads and not accept everything at face value.