When polarization in the US became poisonous

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It seems to me there was a general point in history at which people on the Right went beyond strenuously disagreeing with the Left and began to sincerely believe that the Left, or at least its leadership, were actual criminals and should be put in prison. In reaction, people on the Left saw this happening and became afraid there were people who wanted to see them imprisoned for their beliefs, and prepared to vote for lawmakers who would take action to bring that about. I think this happened some time during the Clinton administration, however the distractions of the 2000s due to 9/11 and the "patriotic" response made the general public less aware, which is why it only became a topic of public discussion fairly recently.

I think it was when the Tea Party got started.

I think it started during the drafting of the US constitution.

Maybe soon after the invention of the internet.

Now, we can outraged 24/7 in our homes.

Which one?: before or after the American revolution...

It has always been a feature of US politics. Look up the Know Nothings and see if you can detect parallels. The modern incarnation of this movement came back with Reagan.

I was referring to the one Palin started shortly after Obama took office.

It was a joke.

BTW, Palin is not a founding member. The Tea Party is a loosely bound group of local and national groups.

It's been brewing for a long time but these events in particular come to mind:

- The Red Scares of the 20's and 50's, which forced capitalist consensus on US politics and made social issues a greater focus of debate.
- The Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts, which caused southern conservatives to resent the Democrats, and the GOP's Southern Strategy which absorbed them into the Republican base.
- The Reagan presidency and the end of the Cold War, which capitalists saw as giving them total vindication. This also elevated Reagan to conservative paragon, and seemingly led many of them to decide that if you're further left than Reagan then you hate America.
- The militia movement gaining steam during the Clinton years with the spread of conspiracy theories--especially those to do with the government handling of the Wako and Ruby Ridge incidents.
- The growth of the internet and radical political forums
- Cable news in general (outrage for ratings) and Fox News specifically, and the decline of more moderate regional news sources.
- The War on Terror, which led to aggressive jingoism and islamophobia.
- Obama being elected president, which led to widespread panic on the right wing, and a massive push to expand their ranks, especially among law enforcement. This was also the beginning of the GOP civil war between the Old Guard and the radical Tea Party.
- The failure of the center to address or prevent the Great Recession. The disillusioned left began to flirt with socialism, the disillusioned right began to flirt with fascism.
- Trump's defeat in 2020 and the refusal of 25% of the country to believe it.

And all of this on top of over a hundred years of right-wing socio-cultural defeats. They couldn't keep the blacks from voting. They couldn't stop abortion. They couldn't stop the gays. They worry they won't be able to stop the next defeat either and they are getting more and more desperate.

This concerns me. So often media tries to pretend the threat from right-wing extremism is no greater than the threat from the left but the right has always been more willing to embrace violence and several far-right blocs have become increasingly more vocal in their support for insurrectionary violence.

At some point the desperation and violent rhetoric will lead to an increase in violence from those portions of the political spectrum.

We never really got over the divisions of the 60s. They went to the background at times not because they were solved but due to distractions and exhaustion. Back then Nixon supporters were Fascists or by working 9 to 5 enablers of the Military-Industrial Complex killing machine. Anti War people were spoiled brat communist traitors. Sound familiar?

Then you had actual conspiracies of Vietnam of Watergate in which the people the young conservatives looked up to were proven to be involved in. IMHO this the root of conspiracy theory thinking so prevalent on the right from the 90s on.

Back in that era at the government level, politicians bashed each other during the day, at night got sloshed and made deals, and SCOTUS nominees were automatically approved sans not being qualified or corrupt. The rejection of Robert Bork on purely ideological grounds ended all of that. The election and reelection of Clinton an ex anti-war hippie was the conservatives' worst nightmare, combine that with alternative conservative talk radio and there we went.

It seems to me that the closer political parties are, the more dirt they feel they need to throw to establish difference, in order to justify belief in their superiority.

Where you have clear choices between parties that are way apart, there are obvious, real policy differences to debate. So there's less need to desperately make stuff up just to grab attention.

Interestingly there is a possibility that the GOP could splinter into two. If the Trump wing goes more right-wing, as seems likely, the remainder might go slightly to the left, which would force the Democrats further left than that (i.e. more towards centrist parties in Europe).

The danger there is the indoctrination that's led most Americans to believe things like Unionism and universal healthcare are tantamount to communism. There's a lot of deliberate control of the American political narrative to keep Americans ignorant and unaware of the real choices available. Debate is limited from the outset - there's an awful lot that's off the radar in the States that would be openly and rationally debated elsewhere. That is a form of censorship and it's deeply ironic in the "land of the free".

So ultimately if the GOP splits the biggest losers could be the Democrats, in the short term. Whether moderate or extreme Republicanism would win out is a trickier one to call. What would be interesting is seeing a temporary easement in Democrat vs. Trumpist hostilities, as I suspect both outer parties would be busier trying to establish difference with the middle one.

Vietnam was another big catalyst.
Vietnam supporters supported a war that, if they were not victims of wishful thinking, they would have realized was not winnable for the US and South Vietnam. Unless you wanted the US to spend billions more on the war and commit enough war crimes to make Stalin blush, the North Vietnamese were not going to surrender. Best case scenario you get a temporary armistice a la Korea--which was what was already in place after the French-Indochina War.

They supported the war because of a belief in propaganda that the US was militarily invincible and morally infallible, and that those things meant US foreign policy was justified no matter what. They couldn't handle acknowledging that the war was doomed from the start, so they obsessively blame the hippies and Jane Fonda, because, again, despite their worship of the military, they have shown time and again that they have no idea how to assess whether a war is worth fighting or possible to win (cf: Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia).

They think that they can win anything if they spend enough money, spill enough American blood, and commit enough war crimes. Anyone who says otherwise is a bleeding heart, and it's really their fault the politicians "wouldn't let them win".

It's interesting how the Vietnam lost cause narrative meshed with the existing Civil War lost cause narrative.

It was a match made in heaven: neo-confederates and vietnam supporters both hated those damn bleeding hearts with their pacifism and commitment to civil rights.
The far right really swelled their ranks with the military-worshippers who think the libs and queers have made america go soft.

Where else have I heard this stabbed in the back narrative before?

Ahh, the good old Dolchstoßlegende. This is another symptom of the far-right's aversion to reality.
Have you ever known a right-winger to think that it was their side's fault that they lost a war?
"It's not Germany's fault we lost WWI, it was the Jews and the socialists!"
"It's not the Whites' fault they lost the Russian Civil War, it was the Jews and Muslims and Caucasians!"
"It's not the South's fault we lost the civil war, it was because the North fought dishonorably!"
"It's not America's fault we lost in Vietnam, it was the bleeding hearts and their pinko politicians!"
"It's not America's fault we lost in Iraq and Afghanistan, it was because of the Democrats and those ungrateful Muslim civilians!"