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Politics : View from the Center and Left -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: ManyMoose who wrote (78321)	8/6/2008 12:49:08 PM
From: TimF	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 541851

I don't think politics is really more vicious than it has been through most of America's history. It may be more vicious than you can remember, but after WWII, politics was often less vicious than normal in the US for quite awhile. Partially this might be because of a greater effort for civility, partially because most people didn't have as much frequent exposure to the political debate (and when they did the format it was presented in was different, more newspapers, and sober sounding news programs, less screaming "talking heads" debate shows on cable, less political talk radio, less internet debate), but the main reason in my opinion was that on many important issues there was simply less disagreement. The Democrats where busy with expanding the government and the Republicans largely agreed, only sometimes wanting to slow down a bit. There isn't as much to be vicious about in such circumstances. But when there where real disagreements, they often cut across party lines, you had more liberal or "country club" Republicans, and more fairly conservative Democrats. When there was real serious disagreement (whether it was Democrats vs. Republicans, or something that some in both parties where on both sides of), you did get some viciousness. Look at the the civil rights fights, the ugliest parts of the controversy about Vietnam, for big issues, and there are plenty of smaller more isolated issues, or adds, or statements that where or where dealt with in nasty ways)