What Politics Has Become

 

                            What Politics Has Become                  

These are very disturbing observations. How could people take these politicians so seriously? It must be that a country where government is not the be all and end all has changed.

A 2019 working paper by Sergio Pinto, Panka Bencsik, Tuugi Chuluun, and Carol Graham finds that the loss of well-being experienced by partisans when their party loses is significantly larger than any well-being gain experienced by the winners. And seeing one's side lose an election can have surprisingly devastating results. Immediately after their candidate lost the 2016 presidential election, the decline in life satisfaction experienced by Democrats was greater than the adverse effects of losing a job—a life event that has some of the worst documented effects on people's well-being. Estimates based on recent survey data suggest that roughly 94 million Americans believe that politics has caused them stress, 44 million believe that it has cost them sleep, and 28 million believe that it has harmed their physical health.

 ..research by University of Memphis political scientist Eric Groenendyk indicates that "partisans' identities are increasingly anchored to hatred of the outparty rather than affection for their inparty."

13 percent of Americans blocked friends on their social media accounts due to political disagreements. Sixteen percent stopped talking to a friend or family member because of politics; 13 percent ended a relationship with a friend or family member. Over a quarter of Americans limited their "interactions with certain friends or family members" as a result of politics. Nearly 30 percent of Americans consider it important to live where most people share their political opinions.

About 40 percent of Democrats and Republicans believe that members of the other party "are not just worse for politics—they are downright evil." Twenty percent of Democrats and 15 percent of Republicans agreed that "we'd be better off as a country if large numbers of" the opposing party "just died." 

A study by Vanderbilt University's James Martherus and others found that more than half of partisans rated members of the opposing party as less evolved than members of their own party—they located out-party members farther away from an image of a modern human on a scale showing the stages of human evolution.

18 percent of Democrats and 13 percent of Republicans "feel violence would be justified" if the other party wins the 2020 presidential election.