Why were politics so extreme and crazy in the 2000s?

AllianceN7

Active member
I was a long time lurker on here and I remember back in the 2007-08 era seeing some extreme things being said on here. I remember a user who used "Sanfagsicko" to refer to San Francisco and saying that California would be "reintegrated" back into the union after the civil war.


Why were people so politically rabid and authoritarian in the 2000s?

I don't consider myself a Democrat although things like this did much to drive me away from conservatism.
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I now proudly call myself a non religious Will McAvoy Freddie Prinze Jr Republican!
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There are several factors influencing why the conservative ideology is gaining support, not only in the US. One factor is the globalization of the economy and the mainstream liberals support the reduction of the national state. The consequence of it is; a lot of jobs are moved toward low income countries. Most people don't like that. There are other reasons for why the conservatives are gaining support.

So you don't believe in absurdities (religion) anymore?
 
There are several factors influencing why the conservative ideology is gaining support, not only in the US. One factor is the globalization of the economy and the mainstream liberals support the reduction of the national state. The consequence of it is; a lot of jobs are moved toward low income countries. Most people don't like that. There are other reasons for why the conservatives are gaining support.

So you don't believe in absurdities (religion) anymore?


I am alienated from organized religion but the belief in an afterlife of some sorts brings me some comfort.
 
There are several factors influencing why the conservative ideology is gaining support, not only in the US. One factor is the globalization of the economy and the mainstream liberals support the reduction of the national state. The consequence of it is; a lot of jobs are moved toward low income countries. Most people don't like that. There are other reasons for why the conservatives are gaining support.

So you don't believe in absurdities (religion) anymore?

I honestly think that is a very minor driving force, I think the rise of extreme politics is being driven by a general disillusionment in politicians and the political system as a whole.
In the 30 years we have seen growing levels of inequality and poverty and this is drawing people to the extreme ends of the political spectrum as they are almost invariably the ones pointing out these issues and claiming to have the solutions.

Personally I think the world politically is in the same spot it was in the early to mid-1930s and for much the same reasons.
After all what is the difference between "Make [insert any country here] Great Again" and [insert country] Uber Alles?
 
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I honestly think that is a very minor driving force, I think the rise of extreme politics is being driven by a general disillusionment in politicians and the political system as a whole.
In the 30 years we have seen growing levels of inequality and poverty and this is drawing people to the extreme ends of the political spectrum as they are almost invariably the ones pointing out these issues and claiming to have the solutions.

Personally I think the world politically is in the same spot it was in the early to mid-1930s and for much the same reasons.
After all what is the difference between "Make [insert any country here] Great Again" and [insert country] Uber Alles?

I think the conservatism gets more support as a reaction to the globalization of the economy. People have lost their jobs because of it and some politicians utilize it to get support to bring the national state back as the main economic actor. The Europeans have grown more skepticism toward the EU and the feeling we get more of a European United States. Our history and traditions speak against it. I don't think people, even those with conservative sympathies view themselves as being supporters of extreme ideas. They want to keep the national state and reduce the amount of refugees. That is one major factor in Europe that increased the support for conservative ideas. The huge amount of refugees from Syria had a huge impact on peoples perceptions. The fear of terrorism play a vital part as well

Liberals have some good ideas, especially their thoughts about freedom of speech, texts, and religion, but they can be viewed as they care too much about others than their own citizens.
 
So you are more spiritual?

I don't believe in anything written by people from the bronze age.

I guess you could say that.


I would prefer to think that we live in a more sci fi like universe than spiritual.


I think things like demons and ghosts are childish.
 
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I think the conservatism gets more support as a reaction to the globalization of the economy. People have lost their jobs because of it and some politicians utilize it to get support to bring the national state back as the main economic actor. The Europeans have grown more skepticism toward the EU and the feeling we get more of a European United States. Our history and traditions speak against it. I don't think people, even those with conservative sympathies view themselves as being supporters of extreme ideas. They want to keep the national state and reduce the amount of refugees. That is one major factor in Europe that increased the support for conservative ideas. The huge amount of refugees from Syria had a huge impact on peoples perceptions. The fear of terrorism play a vital part as well

Liberals have some good ideas, especially their thoughts about freedom of speech, texts, and religion, but they can be viewed as they care too much about others than their own citizens.

To me nationalism and conservatism are the manifestation of an underlying problem which is a general dissatisfaction with the system as a whole which has polarised politics.
There is no middle ground any more, that died when then the middle class died.

One word I have all but given up on is liberal, it has no real meaning its definition now is less extreme than the person using the word.
 
I guess you could say that.


I would prefer to think that we live in a more sci fi like universe than spiritual.


I think things like demons and ghosts are childish.

I think we live in a scientific universe. I think it was pretty cool when we could the detect the collision of two black holes. I follow the search for exoplanets with a great interest , they have detected water in the atmosphere of one of them. It will be interesting when the James Webb telescope is in orbit, it is supposed to analyse atmospheres better than what Kepler and Tess do. I'm more interested in Earth sciences.

Ghost and demons work on movies, though. I liked the Conjuring movies. I haven't seen the Nun yet
 
To me nationalism and conservatism are the manifestation of an underlying problem which is a general dissatisfaction with the system as a whole which has polarised politics.
There is no middle ground any more, that died when then the middle class died.

One word I have all but given up on is liberal, it has no real meaning its definition now is less extreme than the person using the word.

The polarization is going to the extreme, but more so among politicians than among people. Politicians have a tendency to be more loyal to their ideology than to the political issues at hand. People see it and that influence how they view politicians. I personally don't have so much respect for politicians. I can amuse myself to be Machiavellian to them and see how they react.
 
The polarization is going to the extreme, but more so among politicians than among people. Politicians have a tendency to be more loyal to their ideology than to the political issues at hand. People see it and that influence how they view politicians. I personally don't have so much respect for politicians. I can amuse myself to be Machiavellian to them and see how they react.

I don't know the rise of fascism lite worries me, we are lucky that currently we have a bunch of Mussolini's and no Hitler's, more vain and thin skinned than agressive but it will only take one and I have a suspicion that France may provide that.
 
I don't know the rise of fascism lite worries me, we are lucky that currently we have a bunch of Mussolini's and no Hitler's, more vain and thin skinned than agressive but it will only take one and I have a suspicion that France may provide that.

The political right is gaining ground in Europe and how the established political parties react to them polarize the political environment. It's quite common to ignore the political right, which can be questionable from a democratic view point. The same political establishment doesn't have any problems to tolerate old communist parties, which share some of the political ideas from the right wing. Anyway, the exclusion of the right wing political parties increases the anger toward politicians.
 
It would seem so, not sure who wrote that speech but it was a little over dramatised.

It might even pushed people away from her message. It's not the first time a kid is in the general assembly and talking about the climate or other serious matter. Things like this polarize the world even farther. There are those alarmists about the climate and those denying we are responsible for the climate change. The majority in the middle sorting their waste and will not be happy about an increased carbon tax.

Greta got me to take a closer look at the deniers and the alarmists. The majority of the scientific fields (Earth sciences) don't agree with the alarmists, they are concerned. But an increase of 1,5 or 2 degrees isn't the end of the world. I also took a closer look at the thing that provide Earth with power, the Sun. The Sun has cycles lasting about 11 years, it seems the Sun is entering a period of low activity right now. I couldn't find anything about the Earth's orbit right now. I will be grateful if any can provide with reliable source about it. I'm not certain, but it seems the IPCC doesn't look at the orbit
 
It might even pushed people away from her message. It's not the first time a kid is in the general assembly and talking about the climate or other serious matter. Things like this polarize the world even farther. There are those alarmists about the climate and those denying we are responsible for the climate change. The majority in the middle sorting their waste and will not be happy about an increased carbon tax.

Greta got me to take a closer look at the deniers and the alarmists. The majority of the scientific fields (Earth sciences) don't agree with the alarmists, they are concerned. But an increase of 1,5 or 2 degrees isn't the end of the world. I also took a closer look at the thing that provide Earth with power, the Sun. The Sun has cycles lasting about 11 years, it seems the Sun is entering a period of low activity right now. I couldn't find anything about the Earth's orbit right now. I will be grateful if any can provide with reliable source about it. I'm not certain, but it seems the IPCC doesn't look at the orbit

As with most things you can't trust the fanatics on either side.
My opinion is that many things contribute to climate change many of them natural and cyclic and it is naive to assume human activity (specifically population) isn't one of them as well.

I personally think this is a fight humans can't win because we are too fragmented (and always will be), the right wants to ignore the issues and the left thinks it can tax the carbon down, the educated want smaller families the uneducated want to breed like flies, conservation activists want us to move back to the stone age, industry wants to strip mine the planet and the greenies want us eating grass while farmers want cattle by the billion.

On top of that climate change fanatics scream we are all going to die tomorrow while deniers drone on about natural cyclic events as hurricanes rage around them.

Neither side can accept that the reality lies between both factions.

My belief is that none of it matters, in one way or another we all accept the climate is changing whether it is man made or natural is irrelevant because we have to figure out ways to adapt to it.
 
The deniers (if we can call them that, the majority agree we have a climate change) tend to be conspiracy theorists, they can be quite fun to listen to. Anyway, they are speaking about the Rome Club, which consist of the richest people in the world. It was created by a Rockefeller, but now they speak more about George Soros. It sounds quite similar as those speaking about Illuminati, I assume they are the same as the Rome Club.

The polarization in the world can be entertaining and annoying at the same time. We have a problem right now, but it doesn't help to running down the streets screaming about the end of the world.

We have seen climate changes before. The Minoans experienced a warmer climate than we have now, but that ended pretty fast with the Santorini/Thera eruption and at least Europe got a much colder climate. The Romans experienced a warmer climate which ended in the early 13th Century and we got a time period which is called the little ice age lasting for about 500 years. The cause of the little ice age is debated, but it was most likely caused by volcanism. Especially when the ice age hit Russia and China as well, so these eruptions must be quite bigger than Tambora. Iceland can be where these eruptions occurred, or in the Southeast Asia.
 
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