#political-polarization

#political-polarization

"I'm Hispanic and my father-in-law is a white MAGA male - who is also a veteran - who claims that he's OK with me because I'm 'one of the good ones.' Before the election, I used to try giving him only facts, and he kept saying how I was trying to sell him a liberal agenda. One time, I tried bringing the immigration issue up, and he belittled me, saying things like, 'How can you think he will come for you? He's only going after the worst of the worst. I'm disappointed that you have all this knowledge and still make outrageous claims like that.' Then, everyone else got uncomfortable and walked away from the conversation."

An estimated 7 million Americans turned out Saturday to peacefully protest against the breakdown of our checks-and-balances democracy into a Trump-driven autocracy, rife with grift but light on civil rights. Trump's response? An AI video of himself wearing a crown inside a fighter plane, dumping what appears to be feces on these very protesters. In a later interview, he called participants of the "No Kings" events "whacked out" and "not representative of this country."

Among the hundreds, maybe thousands, of people lining the main street of a small town in upstate New York on a perfect fall Saturday afternoon, this man and his words stuck with me. He was the sort of mild, ordinary-looking person you'd never notice in a crowd if not for his sign. And that was true of almost everyone. These were not the America-hating, Hamas-loving, paid street fighters that Republican leaders had dreamed up in the days before the countrywide "No Kings" rallies.

House speaker Mike Johnson called them Hate America rallies, a moniker that was quickly picked up by other Republicans, and described the No Kings protests as a crucible of potential riots, representing all the pro-Hamas wing and, you know, the antifa people. 'You're gonna bring together the Marxists, the socialists, the antifa advocates, the anarchists, and the pro-Hamas wing of the far-left Democrat party,' he said.

Emmanuel Macron sounded like a man in grief. Not angry, not defiant, just a little triste. Europe, he lamented, was suffering a degeneration of democracy. Many threats emanated from outside, from Russia, from China, from powerful US tech companies and social-media entrepreneurs, France's president said. But we should not be naive. On the inside we are turning on ourselves. We doubt our own democracy We see everywhere that something is happening to our democratic fabric.

In a year already defined by polarization and violence, the assassination of Charlie Kirk at Utah Valley University plunged higher education into crisis. The killing of one of the nation's most prominent conservative activists on a college campus has been weaponized by political factions, prompting administrative crackdowns and faculty firings. What were once familiar battles in the campus culture wars have escalated into something more dangerous: a struggle over the very conditions of inquiry, where violence, scandal and political pressure converge to erode academic freedom.

As far as government shutdowns go, this one has so far lacked the round-the-clock chaos of its predecessors. There have been no dramatic late-night clashes on the floors of Congress, no steep stock-market plunges driven by panicked investors, no prime-time presidential addresses from the Oval Office. Even the running clocks on cable-news chyrons have disappeared. But in the reality show that has replaced a properly functioning system of democratic governance,

My brother is almost 90, a Repub for years, and a committed Trumpie from the beginning. He knows he is looking at his sunset and will die a Trumpie. He dismisses, rationalizes, or denies every critical fact about Trump. No fact, no failure, nor any reversal of policy by any court causes him pause. He only watches FOX. He has successfully alienated his wife, two very adult children, siblings, relatives, and friends who are not Trumpies.

Liberals and conservatives both oppose censorship of children's literature - unless the writing offends their own ideology, new Cornell research finds. Studying a representative U.S. population, the scholars in literature, sociology and information science found competing cancel cultures in which widespread opposition to literary censorship masked offsetting disagreements between left- and right-wing values. Those attitudes highlight the polarization of an issue once governed by bipartisan consensus over the need to protect children from inappropriate violent or sexual content. Now, the researchers said, offensive political ideas are viewed as dangerous - threatening free speech as a core value.

A self-proclaimed "MAGA Dentist" is facing backlash after a video of her joking about turning down pain-relieving gas for liberal patients at her Santa Clarita clinic blew up online. Dr. Harleen Grewal of Skyline Smiles made this quip and other wisecracks about her distaste for left-leaning clients during a speech at the Republican Liberty Gala in 2021, comments that recently attracted mass attention after a video of the speech went viral on TikTok.

With the backing of a legislature his party dominated, Republican governor Doug Ducey created Arizona State University's School of Civic and Economic Thought and Leadership in 2016. Both SCETL and its founding director, Paul Carrese, are now understood as key leaders in a movement for civic schools and centers.

At Charlie Kirk's memorial service, his widow, Erika, stunned mourners and a deeply divided nation by publicly forgiving her husband's assassin. But the solemn moment was soon undercut when President Donald Trump, speaking at the same event, veered off script to joke that, unlike Kirk, he hates his opponents. The crowd laughed, but the remark underscored just how quickly grace can be drowned out by grievance.

In the queer enclave of West Hollywood, some residents were furious at the sight of a Pride flag and a transgender flag lowered to half-staff to mourn Charlie Kirk's assassination. In the city of Los Angeles, an internal Fire Department memo saying flags should stay raised sparked conservative anger at Mayor Karen Bass. And in Huntington Beach, where MAGA politics are warmly received, officials pledged to honor Kirk's memory by keeping flags lowered for an additional week past the mourning period set by President Trump.

The goal is to make buttons intuitive, easy to use, and - predictable. But is the disclosure, about participating in social media and expressing approval, full and revealing? I guess it all comes down to what you would define as a "positive experience". As I write this, two messed up, intertwined things are happening. Both can be directly linked to how the engagement dynamics of social media, driven by technology such as "like" buttons, has negatively impacted global politics.

The assassination of Charlie Kirk is widening the political divide in America-and some people who have made critical remarks about the conservative icon are finding their personal information being posted online, opening them up to harassment and threats. One site, called " Expose Charlie's Murderers," has been taken offline after posting the names of 41 people that it claimed were "supporting political violence online." The site reportedly said it was working on a backlog of over 20,000 submissions before it was taken down.

We are going to channel all of the anger that we have over the organised campaign that led to this assassination, to uproot and dismantle these terrorist networks, said Stephen Miller, the White House deputy chief of staff. Miller added that It will happen, and we will do it in Charlie's name.