[TrentCrimmIndependent]

The difference between now and before is then people used their brains since they had to cause they weren't spoon fed information from their devices and were more socialized for the same reasons. You had to go out and interact face to face with people of all walks of life. Also people's parents/grandparents who lived through war times were still alive and talked/knocked sense into their kids on good virtues and not taking their way of life for granted.

Now people of earlier generations that had real world wisdom have mostly passed away and people have become progressively dumber through social media brain rot and less incentivized to fact check what their newsfeeds tell them, not to mention less socialized and more isolated (COVID/WFH). Those factors have contributed to the left and right putting up walls, and personalized algorithms have strengthened and polarized people's views. They can #### talk people who disagree with them through the internet and don't have to practice social etiquette like one must when interacting face to face. So those discussion get less and less civil with more scathing generalizations of other groups.

But the buffer against stupidity on both sides that we've lost is no longer having your WW2 lived veteran family members there to remind people why we don't entertain figures with Hitler-esque ideals and why that and upholding democracy overrides the petty quarrels of the left/right.

And the difference there is those used to be intellectual debates more than emotional debates where people's very identities feel threatened (a result of our social isolation). Back then every one recognized that we were all trying to achieve many of the same goals at the end of the day. And saying you're liberal or conservative out loud did not evoke the kind of reactions it does now. It was just a footnote, not a make or break factor socially. It's pretty insane where we've come to.