https://phys.org/news/2021-03-country.html
According to polling data, Americans don't like the incivility that has become standard practice in the public square and regard it as a serious erosion of values. Both parties want a president to focus on the needs of the people, even if that means disappointing supporters. "I think that political polarization is the driving problem of the 21st century because we can't mobilize resources to solve things like climate change and deal with a pandemic with just 49% or 51% support," says Mark Schroeder, professor of philosophy and founder of the Conceptual Foundations of Conflict Project at the USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences.
Which party was the one being so intransigent, and who called the others cheats?
Rini's first tip for those wishing to improve the national dialog? Delete social media apps from your phone and force yourself to use social media in a web browser instead. At the very least, turn off notifications from news and social media apps. This can help prevent knee-jerk, emotional reactions to news stories, comments and posts, she says. The effort of simply having to remember your password each time you want to engage may prevent you from picking another fight with that cousin you disagree with on Facebook. When you do debate online, Rini recommends one mental heuristic: "Imagine you're having this conversation in front of a 10-year-old and they are learning how to behave from you. If the other person you're debating is behaving terribly, model how you want a 10-year-old to see someone respond to a terrible person. This might not mean just acceding or saying, "Oh, that's fine, you can say horrible things about me." It might mean walking away."
Doesn't help when you have someone exhibiting the behaviour of a naughty 10-year-old as president.
https://www.webershandwick.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/Civility_2010_SocialMediaImplications.pdf
Yes this is exactly the sort of dynamic I had in mind in post 25. The trouble is that an exhortation from this person for people to change their behaviour is most unlikely to have any impact.
This is partly because, as Murdoch astutely realised a few decades ago, people quite like to see their politics as entertainment: a show in which custard pies are exchanged, to roars of nasty laughter. And having an angry argument, in which someone can be made to look a fool, or in which you can (anonymously) be as rude as you like, quite appeals to a lot of people. It's like the Roman circuses or gladiatorial arena: nothing is so much fun as to watch someone being wounded or destroyed.
There is this disconnect between seeing politics as a game show and politics as something vital that affects all our lives. People are aware at some level that politics matters, but the game show element tends to dominate their reactions, day to day. In the old days of newspapers and broadcast media, that was fine, because all people did was have their rude and incoherent arguments in the pub, while reading and hearing a more grown-up version of the issues every day in the news. So when they came to vote, they did have at least some decent information, and maybe a rationale from some newspaper editor, to go on. But now, as Trump has realised, these grown-up sources of information can be bypassed entirely, and many people ge
t all their political information from self-reinforcing groups, or from angry on-line debates.....or from tasty looking soundbites from politicians trying to stir things up.