(no subject)

[peterbirks]

     Pew Research reports that in the US it's become a land of alien tribes.

The downside of the splinterization of information provision is that:

"They can't stand the other side's viewpoint - and because hyper-partisan news and social media enables them to live in ideological isolation - they don't even have to try to understand it."

It's going to go the same way in the UK. Most partisan people I know gravitate towards social media friends who think the same way and media outlets that reinforce their own point of view. There will be no dialogue and no compromise, because it will be easy to find posts which make you think that your own view is the "norm". Everyone you work with will be within your political spectrum; you will never meet those on the other side and they will become cartoon characters with cartoon names.

It's a grim prospect for a country that was once a home of dialogue but that has now become, on both sides, one of caricature.

You think that the "other side" is more different than it was, say, 60 years or 100 years ago, but nothing could be further from the truth. Neither Corbyn nor Cameron is the devil incarnate; neither is going to bring about the end of civilization as we know it, and the suffering of either the taxed or the underprivileged is as nothing to how it was in the decades gone by. Our period isn't "special" and your opponents aren't unique. Everyone is just trying to achieve their own vision of "fair and just", and if you refuse to see that, it's because you only mix with people on your own side.

Comments

[art_vandelay]

Already happened.

The species you refer to is called "The Guardian Reader".

[art_vandelay]

To be clear, it takes a Guardian reader to talk about tribalism in such a detached manner whilst not noticing the ridiculousness of what they say because they themselves are part of a tribe.

A tribe that belittles and despises that which is not like them.

Your blog is full of hatred of those who are not like you; people who live outside London, people who get too close to you on the bus, the working class that you came from and now dispise so that you can fit in with your Guardianista friends.

Res Ipsa Loquitur

[(Anonymous)]

"There will be no dialogue and no compromise."

Indeed.

Yrs, With Admiration,
Aardvark