[ExI] Pew survey

[Keith Henson]

Pew survey finds sharp erosion of center as partisan animosity has
‘gotten more personal’

snip

"Viewed broadly, the results of the Pew survey suggest that the two
political parties are increasingly becoming two entirely different
nations — and warring nations at that. Politics has become personal,
and vice versa. Common ground in either of those spheres looks like a
quaint relic of the past."

I don't know if the the majority of readers on this list are from the USA.

But what this shows is consistent with a population under stress.
It's nothing as bad as the stress that tore Syria into waring camps,
but it's the typical memetic response to a society getting ready to
engage in fratricide.

In the stone age virtually every time populations were stressed it was
the result of overpopulation.  Getting worked up and killing the
neighbors always solved the problem.  We are, for better or worse
(mostly worse) wired up by evolution to have this response to economic
stress.  If the economy gets better, then we could back down from the
extremes like the IRA did in Northern Ireland.  Or we could eventually
reach the situation that led to vast bloodletting such as happened in
Cambodia or Rwanda.

Keith

PS.  The economic improvement would need to reach the bulk of the
population.  More money to the upper 1% will not help.