Civility in America

The Rise and Fall of 20th Century American Civility
Why Civility Declined, while Animosity, and Polarity Increased

The Rise and Fall of 20tyh Century Civility

Adolph Ochs bought the NYT in 1898.
He responded to his many Yellow Journalism competitors with
"All The News That's Fit To Print"
Result was more congenial media for about 60 years.
Index
1. Did Supreme Court Cause the Fall?
2. Has Political Control Affected Civility?
3. Did the Federal Policy Contribute?
4. The Telecommunication Act of 1986
5. Citizens United v. FEC
6. Sports Trash Talking Went Public
7. Banning Earmarks in 2011

1. Did Supreme Court Increase Polarity?
Court Allowed State Redistricting Plans, Schools Integration/busing/housing, and abortion
Trouble began when federal efforts went much beyond stopping Jim Crow Laws.

2. Has Political Control Affected Civility?
Political Parties Began to polarize when FDR kept control
of the Democratic Party by excluded many poor southerners from New Deal.
Northern Democrats began catering to blacks.
LBJ sealed the change with the 1966 Civil Rights Act.
Roe v. Wade added fuel to the fire.
South became Republican, Coasts became Democratic.
Reagan personality sealed the breach and political polarity intensified.

Single Party Control Monopolizes State Management
In most states this is problematic because the minority party,
with about 40% of voters, gets little representation.
This is especially true when state primaries give success to a single winner.
Increasing Cavil Rights, Abortion, and Gun Control began the movement of
conservatives into the Republican Party and liberal into the Democratic Party.

State Management Differs With Single Party Control

3. Did the Federal Policy Contribute?

The 1987 Communication Industry Fairness Doctrine was eliminated.
Radio Stations were no longer required to present contrasting views.
Rush Limbaugh, who had popularized conservative talk radio, now had fewer restrictions.
Talk Radio and Identity Politics Flourished.
Conservative and Liberal Polarization Proliferate

4. Telecommunications Act of 1996
allowed multi-station company ownership and national network developed.
As of 2011, Clear Channel Communications
(now iHeart Media ) owned over 800 US radio stations and
Rush Limbaugh wealth eventually climbed to $400 million. ^[3]

5. Citizens United v. FEC
Allowed Increased Political Contributions
Campaign funding increased and sponsorship diversified,
which supported both intended and unintended Fake News.

6. Sports Trash Talking Went Public
Mohamed Ali practically invented this 1960's genre
as a boastfully Cassius Clay.
Athlete had been formal, cordial, and boring.
Ali changed everything with his elite out-of-ring bantering
which was only rivaled by his in-ring dominance.
Larry Bird and others soon followed.

7. Banning Earmarks in 2011
increased polarization as political cooperating to
“bring home the bacon” ended.

Low US Civility Began With the Founders

Federalists painted Jefferson "a crafty, fanatical, “contemptible hypocrite.”
and attacked his moral character, alleging he was an atheist and
a coward during the revolution.

"Callender...a political hack." exposed Hamilton's
affair with married Maria Reynolds
whose husband colluded in the seduction.
Blackmail and rumors of financial improprieties led some lawmakers to investigate but
Congressman William Branch Gail of Virginia eventually excluded that the President fire Hamilton
but even this leaser resolution did not pass.
Federalist felt this was a partisan attack.
Hamilton was privately frustrate and felt the House was made-up of ...
"1 bank directors 2. Holders of bank stock 3. Stock jobbers 4. Blind devotees
5. ignorant persons who did not comprehend [the resolutions]
6. Lazy and Good-humored persons...." p286

Anxiety Caused Populism

Americans are at each other’s throats. Here is one way out.
Inspired by this Amanda Ripley Washington Post Opinion 12/20/19

High conflict is irresolvable and will continue even when the associated problems are solvable.
Social Psychologist Peter T. Coleman's book, “The Five Percent, states that about 1 in every 20 conflicts are this way.
“Once we are drawn in, they take control,” They enrage, trap frustrate, drain our energy/critical resources, and will never go away.

A 2017 survey of 1,000 Americans found 40 percent of both Republicans and Democrats thought the other party was downright evil.
Five to 15 percent of both parties would support some level of violence against their political opponents.
A minority of ‘... haters’ can have more influence than a majority of non-haters Halperin writes in his book “Emotions in Conflict.”

In high conflict, our brains behave differently. Fear, anger and hatred rule.
Sometimes anger can be useful. It can support reconciliation, taking risks in peace talks...
Hatred assumes the enemy is unchangeable, irredeemable, and unimprovable. They must be annihilate.

We can get the minority of haters to stop hating because a peace message lowers Americas’ support for political violence.
After Trump tweeted condemnation for the Charlottesville racist violence, violence support dropped for partisan voters.
Joe Biden's similar peace message condemning an Antifa attack on a conservative journalist also lowered support for such violence.

How to Reset a Mind Set
An ingrained negativity bias leads to a perpetual sense of crisis,
a feeling that things are getting worse—even when things are getting better. Source: The Wall Street Journal

Epilog
I recently began adding political economy studies to Quick Notes Economics.
Studied were U.S. history and presidential politics.
Then came biographies of influential presidents.
Today I am studying the 4th populist-terrorist episode to the post WW 1 United States.

Anxiety increased when blacks increased their economic and political power.
They received more of our economic pie.
Then Asians got more pie followed in close proximity by women.
Fear from 9/11 amplified our anxiety.

White Christian middle class men and women were no longer the center of society.

Educators had long been acting as if the normal curve did not apply to academic education.
It would be the great equalizer and solve most issues.
They were wrong. This failure added to our anxiety.

Then the Great Recession created many hardships in rural areas and the Rust Belt.
Government efforts helped few-mainly ambitious individual who had move to urban areas.

Equal educational opportunities were not enough.
More Education spending was not the answer.
Unbiased observers knew that nature and nurture were not equally distributed.
Education Change was needed.

Special blame goes to the politicians, economists and other professionals.
Economic success and political stability from 1980-2000 fostered technocrats control.
Too often technocrats provided inadequate, bias Information that was not applicable to a particular issue.
There failures are the real Fake News.
It is more dangerous than the fake news coming from lies,
once called Yellow Journalism and Propaganda.

The Great Society created a time bomb.
The explosion was delayed by the Reagan Revolution and then by fifteen years of economic prosperity.
Then the dot com bubble ended prosperity and 9/11 lit the fuse.
Then Gay Rights put a psychological hurt on many middle class white Christians.
Finally a black President’s health care plan took many back to the beginning,
to their Great Society/ Roe v Wade animosity.
Trump's election signified a new Populism.
It is much like our other 20th Century Populism episodes.

Democracy is supposed to be troublesome. Those most unhappy raise Cain.
Oligarchs run the show and maximize their wealth from our ever growing economic pie.
Populism caused the Civil War, the Revolutionary War and the King Phillips War.
By accepting more responsibility, Oligarchs could avert a forth devastating event.
Baby Boomers are leaving populist issues to Millennials
who may take control during what some consider a Fourth Turning.
source.

See Can We Talk or is Civil Discourse Dead

See Avoiding Effects Of Groupthink

Many Affected

U.S. Supreme Court Job Approval Ties Record Low

Trend: Do you approve or disapprove of the way the Supreme Court is handling its job?

It's Political

Trend: Supreme Court Job Approval, by Political Party

But
Individual Behavior Norms Are Expanding

	Legality of Behavior Norms Also Up
	But Attitude Toward Abortion Unchanged
	It's About Relegion
It's a Personal Liberty and Relegious Liberty There is a substantial partisan and ideological divide on abortion, with Democrats much more likely than Republicans to say it should be legal in all or most cases. This gap is even larger between liberal Democrats and conservative Republicans: Nearly nine-in-ten liberal Democrats (88%) say abortion should be legal in all or most cases, compared with only about three-in-ten self-described conservatives in the GOP (27%)

Some Feel

Roe v. Wade Poisoned Our Politics

Michael Barone

New York Post

Today’s “partisan chaos” is a direct result of Roe v. Wade, said Michael Barone. The all-out war over Brett Kavanaugh’s appointment to the Supreme Court would not be so heated if people on both sides didn’t think Roe might be at stake.

In 1973, 16 states with 41 percent of the nation’s population had already liberalized their abortion laws, and America would have had different laws in different regions, depending on the democratic process. But then seven justices delivered “an unusually sweeping” ruling that made abortion legal in almost all circumstances—and the country’s defining wedge issue.

While public opinion on cultural issues like same-sex marriage has shifted markedly this century, “opinion on abortion has scarcely budged.”

It’s hard to win converts on such a fundamentally moral issue about “the way people live their lives”: Pro-choicers, who are largely secular, think their “personal autonomy” is at stake, whereas pro-lifers, who are mostly religious, believe abortion amounts to “extinguishing human lives.”

Rather than settle the abortion debate, Roe inflamed it because neither side believes it can afford any compromise. As a direct result, every Supreme Court nominee battle has literally become a matter of life and death.

October 5, 2018 THE WEEK

But

Engagement with “Fake News” on Facebook is Declining
The National Bureau of Economic Resources measured the diffusion of fake news stories on Facebook and Twitter between 1/15 and 7/18.
False content rose steadily on both Facebook and Twitter through the end of 2016 but dropped by measurably from Facebook but not for twitter.

Populism and Polarity in America