Originally posted by
Aragorn
You hit the nail on the head. However, this is not a new phenomenon. I already experienced this on Usenet many years ago. I don't frequent any political discussion groups ─ they are all technical discussion groups to do with GNU/Linux or UNIX in general ─ but on occasion, some right-wing (and invariably US American) bigot will post something political there. And if I then respond to it ─ which I know I shouldn't ─ then I am called "a Euro-commie". But then again, some of those people are so far to the right of the political spectrum that even Genghis Khan would have appeared a socialist in their eyes.
It is indeed a matter of blind radicalization, akin to football/soccer hooliganism. "Our club is the best, the elite, and everyone else is a <fill in a random expletive here>." And their club isn't even theirs, because they're just fans, not players.
One could posit that it's some kind of mental and intellectual regression, falling back onto some primeval tribal instincts. And there is some scientific evidence to support that too ─ both physiological/neurological and psychological. But I think there's a lot more involved than just that. I think society in and of itself is feeding into this tribalism, not in the very least because of the incompetence of the average politician and their disconnectedness from the people they are supposed to represent (or "lead"). And then there are the social media influencers ─ primarily via video hosting platforms such as YouTube. Before the advent of social media, newspaper and magazine columnists were already doing the same thing, even.
But it runs deeper still, and it ties in with the reason why we are now looking at a whole generation of daycare-raised kids who don't have any values and who know no respect, namely the fact that the financial-economically driven society model breeds opportunists and rewards arrogance and sociopathy. The whole western society model is very, very sick to the core.
But at the same time, the same kind of "us versus them" mentality is also found in the Middle East and in Africa ─ and specifically, among fanatic Islamist cultures, from Wahhabi Islam in Saudi-Arabia over to terrorist groups like ISIS, Al Qaeda and Boko Haram, where the "them" of the equation are of course the infidels. Hell, it even already existed among the ancient Jews, and it was certainly also present during the Roman-Catholic domination of the western world.
I don't know, maybe it's even a spiritual thing ─ some kind of global dumbing-down, as a kind of prelude to humanity's self-inflicted extinction, ordained by something from beyond our reality. At this point I don't even know what to make of it anymore, so anything's possible. I can only observe what I see in the (larger) world around me, and it's upsetting.
And it's everywhere. That's what boggles the mind. There seem to be no cultural or geographical boundaries. As if the whole world has simply decided to go insane. Which it probably has. :hmm: