E Pluribus Duo

 

This is a “hot take” from scanning my Facebook newsfeed: We are headed for serious meltdown nationally. I don’t know how this plays out but the nation is experiencing different realities. This isn’t the normal “everybody sees what they want to see” fracturing of reality. That is normal. It’s what fuels everyday life. What I am talking about is the aggregation of shared realities into roughly two different and conflicting camps. The type that sees one reality as “true” and the other as “false” with severe consequences for the triumph of one reality over the other.

For as long as polling has been around, it has been a technique for measuring how many contending realities there are and which realities were ascendant. “Push polling” was a technique developed to nudge realities in one direction or the other. Social media is a persistent and constant push poll for conflicting realities. Depending on which social media you choose and the “friends” you accept, that is the reality you will see and be “pushed” into. I happen to have a lot of “friends” on my Facebook account who are connected via a specific hobby. That hobby attracts people from across the political spectrum. So when they post or “share” political content rather than hobby content it reveals the chasm between the contending realities.

And they are getting sharper and more defined. E pluribus duo.

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  1. David Foster Member
    David Foster
    @DavidFoster

    Very true, unfortunately.  And much political ‘dialogue’ consists of viciously insulting the other side, which is generally not a good strategy for persuasion (though it can be a good strategy for getting people to shut up)

    The “progressives” are much more extreme at this, but there’s a fair amount of it on the conservative side as well.

    • #1
  2. Susan Quinn Contributor
    Susan Quinn
    @SusanQuinn

    The “push polling” appears to have become “shove” or “drag them along” polling. We see extremes that have no space for a difference of ideas; people who disagree should be destroyed. It’s quite frightening, and it will become even worse. Thanks, rodin.

    • #2
  3. MarciN Member
    MarciN
    @MarciN

    Rodin: This is a “hot take” from scanning my Facebook newsfeed: We are headed for serious meltdown nationally.

    I agree completely. I have an old Yahoo! e-mail account that I check a couple of times a day for various reasons. The “news” that I see on the Yahoo! news feed scares me because it is so wildly from the other side of this divide. 

    The other day, I decided to check out the DNC’s 2020 platform. If you go there, hold your hat. You won’t believe what you are reading. 

    For those of us who saw a divided nation in 2016 that resembled the divided nation that existed in 1860, it’s looking more divided today than it was in 2016. 

    There are two completely different sets of facts. Is our Constitution strong enough to stay standing in its place as the only wall between these two warring factions? I don’t know. 

    For my children’s sake, I hope so. 

    • #3
  4. CarolJoy, Above Top Secret Coolidge
    CarolJoy, Above Top Secret
    @CarolJoy

    MarciN (View Comment):

    Rodin: This is a “hot take” from scanning my Facebook newsfeed: We are headed for serious meltdown nationally.

    I agree completely. I have an old Yahoo! e-mail account that I check a couple of times a day for various reasons. The “news” that I see on the Yahoo! news feed scares me because it is so wildly from the other side of this divide.

    The other day, I decided to check out the DNC’s 2020 platform. If you go there, hold your hat. You won’t believe what you are reading.

    For those of us who saw a divided nation in 2016 that resembled the divided nation that existed in 1860, it’s looking more divided today than it was in 2016.

    There are two completely different sets of facts. Is our Constitution strong enough to stay standing in its place as the only wall between these two warring factions? I don’t know.

    For my children’s sake, I hope so.

    It truly is a more divided nation now than back in October 2016.

    Any possibility of the two sides being able to sort themselves out and meet somewhere in the Center has been swept away by the raising tide of the COVID panic.

    For all intents and purposes, the Constitution has been suspended until the “national COVID emergency” is declared over for good.

     

    • #4
  5. Bob Thompson Member
    Bob Thompson
    @BobThompson

    CarolJoy, Above Top Secret (View Comment):

    MarciN (View Comment):

    Rodin: This is a “hot take” from scanning my Facebook newsfeed: We are headed for serious meltdown nationally.

    I agree completely. I have an old Yahoo! e-mail account that I check a couple of times a day for various reasons. The “news” that I see on the Yahoo! news feed scares me because it is so wildly from the other side of this divide.

    The other day, I decided to check out the DNC’s 2020 platform. If you go there, hold your hat. You won’t believe what you are reading.

    For those of us who saw a divided nation in 2016 that resembled the divided nation that existed in 1860, it’s looking more divided today than it was in 2016.

    There are two completely different sets of facts. Is our Constitution strong enough to stay standing in its place as the only wall between these two warring factions? I don’t know.

    For my children’s sake, I hope so.

    It truly is a more divided nation now than back in October 2016.

    Any possibility of the two sides being able to sort themselves out and meet somewhere in the Center has been swept away by the raising tide of the COVID panic.

    For all intents and purposes, the Constitution has been suspended until the “national COVID emergency” is declared over for good.

     

    I’m thinking that the election campaign period we are in now, election day, and the period following (which may very well not be a transition period at all), are all going to make the 2016/2017 comparable period look like child’s play. But there is no way I can possibly describe what it will look like, my imagination is just too limited.

    • #5
  6. philo Member
    philo
    @philo

    Rodin: E pluribus duo

    Witness our delusional neighbor here who downloads his every thought straight from MSNBC talking points…and then tries to pass that juvenile pap off to the rest of us as anything but the dead dogma it is.

    • #6
  7. CarolJoy, Above Top Secret Coolidge
    CarolJoy, Above Top Secret
    @CarolJoy

    philo (View Comment):

    Rodin: E pluribus duo.

    Witness our delusional neighbor here who downloads his every thought straight from MSNBC talking points…and then tries to pass that juvenile pap off to the rest of us as anything but the dead dogma it is.

    Unfortunately for the rest of us, some 37% or so of Americans don’t see the dead dogma as anything less than a living religion. And it is to this new religion that they devote their every single waking moment, regardless of how many convoluted turns of policies and threads of logic they must pretzel their way through.

    • #7
  8. Bob Thompson Member
    Bob Thompson
    @BobThompson

    MarciN (View Comment):

    The other day, I decided to check out the DNC’s 2020 platform. If you go there, hold your hat. You won’t believe what you are reading. 

     

    I respond counter to most  statements in that document. The Democrat Party might find that many traditional Democrat voters see it that way as well. I hope the Democrat Party message is widely publicized so the voters can see that it is basically a communist movement approach with the government in charge of all lives. The Democrat controlled states have done a good job of previewing this form of government during the pandemic. Let’s just pray that Americans can see their way to value individual liberty more than ‘government protection’.

    • #8
  9. Stina Inactive
    Stina
    @CM

    This is a consequence to the separate and segregated information sourcing.

    Social media has exacerbated it by censoring information sources from one side of the political spectrum.

    What you end up with is people getting information from different sources, constantly isolated from eachother on social media AND in real life, never getting cross pollination.

    Well, the right gets cross pollination… because the left media for some reason is entrenched and established (which is why FCC licensing shouldn’t be a once and forever kinda deal, but up for periodic renewals).

    • #9
  10. Jules PA Inactive
    Jules PA
    @JulesPA

    MarciN (View Comment):
    The “news” that I see on the Yahoo! news feed scares me because it is so wildly from the other side of this divide. 

    @marcin turn off Yahoo news. 

    I used to have a feed, and i had to turn it off. It just always seemed not quite right.

    • #10
  11. Jules PA Inactive
    Jules PA
    @JulesPA

    CarolJoy, Above Top Secret (View Comment):
    Unfortunately for the rest of us, some 37% or so of Americans don’t see the dead dogma as anything less than a living religion.

    Well, 37% is less than a quota to win an election. So, if that 37% number is real, maybe we have a chance to survive. 

    Maybe what we have now is the wind through the barn, separating the wheat from the chaffe?

    • #11
  12. Eridemus Coolidge
    Eridemus
    @Eridemus

    One time someone on Ricochet said that there is nothing that will get at the left like ridicule, since they are so sensitive and geared to social approval (reminding me of the crowd-following stage some adolescents go through but lefty adults never recovered from). Anyway maybe a few younger people will have the courage to start a much-needed trend! https://youtu.be/Ph7Tzru3qnA

    • #12
  13. Mark Camp Member
    Mark Camp
    @MarkCamp

    CarolJoy, Above Top Secret (View Comment):
    For all intents and purposes, the Constitution has been suspended until the “national COVID emergency” is declared over for good.

    The Constitution hasn’t just been suspended until the facts about COVID change.

    Government has assumed new constitutional powers in principle.  Its particular orders from day to day and place to place are merely instances of those powers, according to the changing facts and scientific assumptions.

    How would the end of this epidemic have any effect on that principle?

    You are confusing abstract principles with concrete facts.

    • #13
  14. Bob Thompson Member
    Bob Thompson
    @BobThompson

    Mark Camp (View Comment):
    You are confusing abstract principles with concrete facts.

    Well, yes. To confirm this read the Democrat platform document:

    MarciN (View Comment):
    check out the DNC’s 2020 platform

     

    • #14
  15. Bob Thompson Member
    Bob Thompson
    @BobThompson

    CarolJoy, Above Top Secret (View Comment):

    For all intents and purposes, the Constitution has been suspended until the “national COVID emergency” is declared over for good.

     

    Actually the ‘state-by-state COVID emergency’ gave Americans an exhibition of what Democrat Party rule looks like. And what makes you think that is not their normal?

    • #15
  16. Richard Fulmer Inactive
    Richard Fulmer
    @RichardFulmer

    Rodin: “Push polling” was a technique developed to nudge realities in one direction or the other.

    Why are people on the <left | right> human scum?
    A. They want people who disagree with them to die painful deaths
    B. They want minorities to <rule America | live in abject poverty>
    C. They voted <against | for> Trump
    D. They want America to become a <secular | Christian> theocracy
    E. They want to <socialize | restrict> healthcare

    • #16
  17. Bob Thompson Member
    Bob Thompson
    @BobThompson

    The campaign should provide the greatest visibility to Governor Cuomo begging the rich former New York residents to come back and California legislators preparing legislation to tax rich Californians who leave for other states to be taxed on their wealth for ten years.

    • #17
  18. Barfly Member
    Barfly
    @Barfly

    Perhaps it’ll settle down eventually. I try to keep in mind that everyone who now appears to be broken and insane … has always been broken and insane. 

    • #18
  19. DonG (skeptic) Coolidge
    DonG (skeptic)
    @DonG

    Rodin: “Push polling” was a technique developed to nudge realities in one direction

    Google also does the same thing.  Search results are skewed to push one side.

    • #19
  20. Jules PA Inactive
    Jules PA
    @JulesPA

    Eridemus (View Comment):

    One time someone on Ricochet said that there is nothing that will get at the left like ridicule, since they are so sensitive and geared to social approval (reminding me of the crowd-following stage some adolescents go through but lefty adults never recovered from). Anyway maybe a few younger people will have the courage to start a much-needed trend! https://youtu.be/Ph7Tzru3qnA

    “Pop culture Isis.” That is fantastic.

    • #20
  21. Jules PA Inactive
    Jules PA
    @JulesPA

    Bob Thompson (View Comment):
    California legislators preparing legislation to tax rich Californians who leave for other states to be taxed on their wealth for ten years.

    Oh, brother. 

    • #21
  22. Weeping Inactive
    Weeping
    @Weeping

    For many years I’ve been convinced that if things continue as they have been in the last few years, there will eventually be two or more countries occupying the area we currently call the United States of America. Unless something changes and makes us willing to work together and tolerate – genuinely tolerate – differences of opinion again, I honestly don’t see how we can remain together. The pressures are just too great. How violent and explosive will that rupture be? I don’t know. When will it occur? I don’t know. But I can’t envision it not happening at some point – probably sooner rather than later, unfortunately.

    • #22
  23. Eridemus Coolidge
    Eridemus
    @Eridemus

    I don’t know if that California tax idea would be constitutional, but who would they entice to enforce it? Surely no escape-to state would cooperate. It’s probably just an attempt to scare people into not leaving. 

    • #23
  24. Bob Thompson Member
    Bob Thompson
    @BobThompson

    Eridemus (View Comment):

    I don’t know if that California tax idea would be constitutional, but who would they entice to enforce it? Surely no escape-to state would cooperate. It’s probably just an attempt to scare people into not leaving.

    Unless the party being taxed has assets within California.

    • #24
  25. philo Member
    philo
    @philo

    Eridemus (View Comment): I don’t know if that California tax idea would be constitutional…

    That part made me giggle. You know, the Roberts Court ans all.

    • #25
  26. Jon1979 Inactive
    Jon1979
    @Jon1979

    Bob Thompson (View Comment):

    CarolJoy, Above Top Secret (View Comment):

    The other day, I decided to check out the DNC’s 2020 platform. If you go there, hold your hat. You won’t believe what you are reading.

    For those of us who saw a divided nation in 2016 that resembled the divided nation that existed in 1860, it’s looking more divided today than it was in 2016.

    There are two completely different sets of facts. Is our Constitution strong enough to stay standing in its place as the only wall between these two warring factions? I don’t know.

    For my children’s sake, I hope so.

    It truly is a more divided nation now than back in October 2016.

    Any possibility of the two sides being able to sort themselves out and meet somewhere in the Center has been swept away by the raising tide of the COVID panic.

    For all intents and purposes, the Constitution has been suspended until the “national COVID emergency” is declared over for good.

     

    I’m thinking that the election campaign period we are in now, election day, and the period following (which may very well not be a transition period at all), are all going to make the 2016/2017 comparable period look like child’s play. But there is no way I can possibly describe what it will look like, my imagination is just too limited.

    As bad as the past several months have been, we still haven’t reached the levels of carnage and destruction of the late 1960s and early 70s, where the general public’s reaction was the ’72 election results that produced Nixon’s landslide win. We’ll see if 2020 voters recoil in the same way as the voters of 48 years ago did and opt against rewarding the people supportive of much of the rioting and violence of the time period by putting their guy in the White House (something the Dems seem aware of, which is why they apparently are going to keep not just Joe but Kamala hidden as much as possible).

    • #26
  27. cdor Member
    cdor
    @cdor

    So you are a knitter too @rodin?

    • #27
  28. Rodin Member
    Rodin
    @Rodin

    cdor (View Comment):

    So you are a knitter too @rodin?

    LOL. Yes I know the knitting community is having a FB meltdown but that isn’t the hobby to which I was referring. Mrs Rodin, as it happens, is knitting next to me as I write. But, I am no Rosey Grier much to Mrs Rodin’s dismay.

    • #28
  29. Bob Thompson Member
    Bob Thompson
    @BobThompson

    Eridemus (View Comment):

    I don’t know if that California tax idea would be constitutional, but who would they entice to enforce it? Surely no escape-to state would cooperate. It’s probably just an attempt to scare people into not leaving.

    I can recall that Rush Limbaugh said that he avoids going to New York City like the plague because if he does they will income tax him for any days there and even if he were ok with that, they would likely try to claim he was there more  and then they would be in a legal dispute over his taxes. This must happen to other celebrities who can’t refuse as easily.

    • #29
  30. Jerry Giordano (Arizona Patrio… Member
    Jerry Giordano (Arizona Patrio…
    @ArizonaPatriot

    Interesting post, Rodin.

    I have an alternative formulation, though. Perhaps it is not E pluribus duo.  Perhaps it is E unum pluribus.

    We used to have a dominant common culture, probably through the 1980s. This is no longer the case. We are fractured culturally.

    We are not fractured in two. The traditional Christian conservative core remains as probably the largest single group, but is now almost exclusively Republican. There is a serious divide between this group and the secular Right, which tends toward libertarianism.

    The Left is fractured into a growing number of splinter groups – increasingly bizarre groups – and they are starting to turn on each other even before their hypothetical victory.

    I do not think that technology matters much. The disagreements are real and profound.

    If you think the dislike is a new thing, look up Tom Lehrer’s National Brotherhood Week.

    I do agree that it’s become worse.

     

    • #30
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