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Polarization

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In your opinion, political polarisation is
A good thing 6%  6%  [ 1 ]
A neurtal thing 19%  19%  [ 3 ]
A bad thing 63%  63%  [ 10 ]
I don't know / other 13%  13%  [ 2 ]
Total votes : 16

Fnord
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28 Jul 2020, 10:18 am

blazingstar wrote:
... my sense of when this all started in the US was with the rise of the Tea Party...
It started long before this country was even a country.  Back in the Colonial days, when this place was known as "The English Colonies in America", the schism was largely between the Imperialists (those who believed in their Divine Right of Conquest) and the New Worlders (those who were looking for better places to live).

The Imperialists saw America as a source of cheap goods, and sent colonists there as cheap labor.  The New Worlders saw America as a land of opportunity, where anyone willing to emigrate could get away from Imperialist oppression and start a better life far, far away from royalty, nobility, and feudal society.

Of course, both groups largely saw the indigenous populations as obstacles to their plans, and therefore were to be either assimilated or eliminated ... mostly eliminated.

America was founded on the precepts of slavery, subjugation, and appropriation of land and resources by genocide.



magz
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28 Jul 2020, 10:40 am

I understand polarization similarily to Blazingstar, as movements towards extremes fighting each other, leaving no resources in the middle.
I don't think having factions and parties of different points of view is an issue. In my opinion, the issue of polarization begins when confrontations between the groups become regularily prefered over negotiations.


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28 Jul 2020, 10:48 am

magz wrote:
I understand polarization similarily to Blazingstar, as movements towards extremes fighting each other, leaving no resources in the middle.  I don't think having factions and parties of different points of view is an issue. In my opinion, the issue of polarization begins when confrontations between the groups become regularily prefered over negotiations.
But polarization is what drives factions and parties of opposing points of view (especially extreme points of view) to fight each other.  Once there exists an "Us vs. Them" mentality, it is inevitable that fighting (verbal, physical, or both) will erupt.



Last edited by Fnord on 28 Jul 2020, 12:19 pm, edited 1 time in total.

magz
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28 Jul 2020, 10:50 am

Yes, to my experience, "Us vs. Them" mentality might not be the root of all the evil, but it's present in roots of quite a lot of it.


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28 Jul 2020, 6:03 pm

I actually think political polarization is a very necessary thing today.
For a Generation, there has been neoliberal consensus - globalization is good, privatisation is good, taxes are bad, and to attract business, you need to lower taxes and wages and worker security, because after all, you're no longer competing with other states within your country, or the neighbouring country, but with India for who's got the lowest wages and the cayman islands for who's got the lowest taxes.
There hasn't been an opposite pole to that anywhere.

Now there's a few- you can finally have a discussion again about what a state should be for, who it should be for. And it's high time we had this discussion, because the world is heating, vovered in plastic and individuals have the private wealth of small nations. The good sense centrist position (also known as "I don't want to care about what people actually do with my tax money"-position) has become untenable.

We need this discussion, ASAP. And we need to pick sides on a bunch of very urgent issues.


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magz
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29 Jul 2020, 4:52 am

shlaifu wrote:
I actually think political polarization is a very necessary thing today.
For a Generation, there has been neoliberal consensus - globalization is good, privatisation is good, taxes are bad, and to attract business, you need to lower taxes and wages and worker security, because after all, you're no longer competing with other states within your country, or the neighbouring country, but with India for who's got the lowest wages and the cayman islands for who's got the lowest taxes.
There hasn't been an opposite pole to that anywhere.

Now there's a few- you can finally have a discussion again about what a state should be for, who it should be for. And it's high time we had this discussion, because the world is heating, vovered in plastic and individuals have the private wealth of small nations. The good sense centrist position (also known as "I don't want to care about what people actually do with my tax money"-position) has become untenable.

We need this discussion, ASAP. And we need to pick sides on a bunch of very urgent issues.

Hmmm... I'm definitely not living in a "neoliberal consensus" state. Actually, the current "consensus" in Europe is social democracy.
I agree that we should have a discussion about the very purpose of states and be aware of quickly changing global and technological situation that may require significant adaptations on this level.


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30 Jul 2020, 6:25 pm

magz wrote:
shlaifu wrote:
I actually think political polarization is a very necessary thing today.
For a Generation, there has been neoliberal consensus - globalization is good, privatisation is good, taxes are bad, and to attract business, you need to lower taxes and wages and worker security, because after all, you're no longer competing with other states within your country, or the neighbouring country, but with India for who's got the lowest wages and the cayman islands for who's got the lowest taxes.
There hasn't been an opposite pole to that anywhere.

Now there's a few- you can finally have a discussion again about what a state should be for, who it should be for. And it's high time we had this discussion, because the world is heating, vovered in plastic and individuals have the private wealth of small nations. The good sense centrist position (also known as "I don't want to care about what people actually do with my tax money"-position) has become untenable.

We need this discussion, ASAP. And we need to pick sides on a bunch of very urgent issues.

Hmmm... I'm definitely not living in a "neoliberal consensus" state. Actually, the current "consensus" in Europe is social democracy.
I agree that we should have a discussion about the very purpose of states and be aware of quickly changing global and technological situation that may require significant adaptations on this level.


We both live the EU, which is a neoliberal superstructure designed to make national governments incapable of making major economic decisions on their own.

Don't get me wrong, I think the EU as a pan-European peace project is great.
But its economic orientation is not neoliberal. Only in the last few years, nationals parties that disagree with that economic order have gotten traction, sometimes by merely pretending to be against the neoliberal order (like the German AFD).
But of vourse, national pokitics have very little
Relevance when the laws are made in Brussels.


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30 Jul 2020, 6:40 pm

Polarization?Is it something to do with sending politicians to the north or the south pole? Won't they freeze?


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magz
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31 Jul 2020, 2:16 am

shlaifu wrote:
magz wrote:
shlaifu wrote:
I actually think political polarization is a very necessary thing today.
For a Generation, there has been neoliberal consensus - globalization is good, privatisation is good, taxes are bad, and to attract business, you need to lower taxes and wages and worker security, because after all, you're no longer competing with other states within your country, or the neighbouring country, but with India for who's got the lowest wages and the cayman islands for who's got the lowest taxes.
There hasn't been an opposite pole to that anywhere.

Now there's a few- you can finally have a discussion again about what a state should be for, who it should be for. And it's high time we had this discussion, because the world is heating, vovered in plastic and individuals have the private wealth of small nations. The good sense centrist position (also known as "I don't want to care about what people actually do with my tax money"-position) has become untenable.

We need this discussion, ASAP. And we need to pick sides on a bunch of very urgent issues.

Hmmm... I'm definitely not living in a "neoliberal consensus" state. Actually, the current "consensus" in Europe is social democracy.
I agree that we should have a discussion about the very purpose of states and be aware of quickly changing global and technological situation that may require significant adaptations on this level.


We both live the EU, which is a neoliberal superstructure designed to make national governments incapable of making major economic decisions on their own.

Don't get me wrong, I think the EU as a pan-European peace project is great.
But its economic orientation is not neoliberal. Only in the last few years, nationals parties that disagree with that economic order have gotten traction, sometimes by merely pretending to be against the neoliberal order (like the German AFD).
But of vourse, national pokitics have very little
Relevance when the laws are made in Brussels.

I don't see where neoliberal "low taxes" and "low worker security" would be issues of EU... I'd rather see it the opposite: taxes are high and worker security laws can be hard to meet and create a lot of space for grey zone of junk contracts - and drive the production out to Myanmar.
I agree that EU as a peace project has some real value. I prefer the fight for European hegemony to happen at, or even under, tables in Brussels - instead of trenches in Carpathian Mountains.


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