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comment by johnnyFive
johnnyFive  ·  1985 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: The Rich White Civil War

As always, the important question is: qui bono? Once Republicans proved in the early 1990s that mobilizing the most rabid of your supporters was an effective political strategy, it became a race to the extremes (even if Democrats were slower to pick up on this lesson). It's not just this, of course: mass communication means it's that much harder to stand out from the background noise, so it's a race to maximum volume as well (and yelling means you can't say as much).

    I don’t know what the next political paradigm will look like, but I bet it will be based on abundance, not deficits; gifts, not fear; hope, not hatred.

He's much more optimistic than I am.