Have Americans *really* become meaner and crueler?

[YoungDemCA]

Or is it that there is more awareness of things like racism, homophobia, bullying, sexism, etc.?

Maybe the 24/7 news media and the internet have highlighted our nastiest attributes.

What do fellow DU'ers think?

[amuse bouche]

1. I fully admit to being meaner

I used to tolerate the right...now I loathe..detest and despise them

[movonne]

2. I believe it has and I have been around a long time....or either

I wasn't paying much attention in my younger years and maybe there was..

[madaboutharry]

3. I think that Americans have always been this way,

we are just more aware of it.

[ChairmanAgnostic]

4. only tea baggers

i see many acts of kindness, often random.

[ProudProgressiveNow]

13. I think the Tea baggers madit it safe..

...for the closet racists to come out.

[Booster]

23. My best friend & I were at dinner the other night and sat down at the same time an elderly couple

sat down in the booth next to us (we are elderly also). We started talking to them and were laughing w/each other &just having a good time. After we all had finished eating, my friend whispered to me "I'm going to pickup their check" & I said that was a good idea. She paid their check after some friendly arguing about it and when they got up to leave the wife said softly to my friend "you have no idea how much that meant to both of us. My husband's battling lung cancer and they don't give him much time, so your gesture lifted his spirits tonight". After they left we both sat there with tears in our eyes. You just never know what's going on with people. We thought they didn't have a care in the world.

[chowder66]

25. What a wonderfully considerate act! Thank you for sharing. nt

[Booster]

31. You're welcome. It was a good feeling that I think both of us will be doing it more & more.

[still_one]

5. Yes, pushed by the msm

[temporary311]

6. I dont think so.

Or maybe Im missing all the lynchings still going on. You know, the ones some of our grandparents or parents likely attended? Used to be considered good wholesome family entertainment.

[ann---]

7. YES.

[melody]

8. I'm not a bigot - to suggest any one nationality is mean and cruel is bigotry

No group of people are inherently mean or cruel. We have a huge country with a larger number of mean and cruel people. We also have many good and decent people, too.

[Sekhmets Daughter]

9. Yes.

It's the fight for survival instinct that we all would like to think doesn't apply to us, but does. Think of it this way: If you put a one pound piece of steak in front of a hungry dog he will cheerfully devour it right away. Put that same piece of steak down before a pack of hungry dogs and before any dog eats the strongest will fight to prevent the weaker members from getting any. Since 1980 the share of steak (or pie) available to most Americans has been gradually but steadily shrinking. We have one political party (the GOP) which has been very good at exploiting that survival anxiety and another party (the Dems) who have tried to protect the poorest among us, but done very little to alleviate the anxiety of the middle and working classes. The minimum wage in Australia was recently raised to $15.51 an hour...think about that.

[yardwork]

10. I see more meanness and selfishness openly expressed.

In my lifetime the Republicans have always believed "I've got mine, Jack" but it's expressed more viciously now.

[Blecht]

19. I agree

I think it's mainly due to the emergence of Limbaugh and his ilk. There used to be a degree of shame involved when people were mean. Now they're encouraged to proudly revel in their meanness (and ignorance).

[NICO9000]

11. This definitely applies to a certain part of the population

Which is why we have to counter them by calling out their bullshit whenever it rears its ugly head.

[creon]

12. I doubt it

I think that with the internet ( GIGO) and pandering of the broadcast media, there is greater opportunity for it.

[PATRICK]

14. the people in charge

of everything are examples of an infectious pestilence. A society can be brutalized. We are less and more depending on what you are looking at. We are certainly fighting progress everyone actually yearns for.

[kestrel91316]

15. Both. I think we ARE meaner, but also I think that the internet makes our

meanness much harder to hide.

[liberal_at_heart]

16. I think there are ebbs and flows but humanity is basically the same

Look at the contrast of the Dark Ages and Renaissance. I think there is usually a tipping point where we get tired of seeing the cruelty and demand a change. But slowly and gradually without noticing we go back to our baser instincts of self interest, greed, and cruelty. I do think we are in for some real trouble in the future. I'm not sure how far in the future but with 8 billion people on the Earth wars over resources are bound to get worse.

[madrchsod]

17. the republicans turned over a rock and exposed the ugliness of these people

these people have always existed. the republican party encouraged and gave them a forum to speak and act out their hatred.

[YellowRubberDuckie]

18. People have no common courtesy anymore.

Really, to the point that we can't really even call it common any longer.

[Lone_Star_Dem]

20. I'm not sure. I think perhaps it's just those who are mean & cruel are more vocal now.

I've wondered about this before. I'm leaning toward the Teabaggers being given a legitimate stage has made others like them feel they have a license to spew their nastiness.

[Zorra]

21. IMO, the internet has put political and socio-economic issues under a huge surveillance microscope.

It has not only helped expose the prevalence of all the nasties, but has also led to mass examination and illustration of the root causes ans subtle manifestations of these nasties.

However, these nasties are the foundations of the individual and collective conservative consciousness.

When progressives expose the hypocrisy of their nasties to them, conservatives react, and get meaner, because we attack the very essences of the hate and bigotry that has been instilled in them and is at the core of their belief systems, instilled in them by what are, to them, the "divine truth of just the way things have always been" as set in stone by unchallengeable institutions.

When we expose the insanity and hypocrisy of their hatreds, bigotries, and self-centered greed, they react to our challenge to their "dearly held beliefs", get meaner, and hunker down to protect their programming.

If you want to really piss conservatives off, all you have to do is be different, or present them with facts.

They'll fear and hate you for this, and consequently become even meaner.



If you want to piss progressives off, all you have to do is deprive people of equality, and be mean to innocent people.

[Bluenorthwest]

22. Meaner and cruler in comparison to what? Or to when? Or to who?

The question itself is incomplete, and as such impossible to answer. Compared to Himmler? Mother Theresa? Chuck Barris?

[ladjf]

24. ... and more ignorant. nt

[mythology]

26. I think that we have made measurable progress on some things

For example, as somebody else mentioned, we no longer have public lynchings and women are more than chattel. So we've moved on some of the large issues.

But I think we've become very small as a species. We've lost the common courtesy, we've become lost in our own worlds forgetting that while others are fallible, so are we. We drive our cars like weapons, we use relative anonymous nature of the internet to call each other awful names.

But I think that losing the small things is dangerous. It leads to larger failures in my experience. For want of a nail a kingdom was lost as it were.

[Coyotl]

27. Yes. Droves of them in Montana are refusing to vote Romney because his saddle has no horn

I think it is just wrong to discriminate against prissy riders like that, it's just plain mean and cruel.
And as unbecoming of "real men" as riding in that saddle is

[seabeyond]

28. i absolutely believe that we have. i think it all feeds in each. can find people that reinforce

behavior on the net where you wouldnt have in real life. i think it is becoming more dominant in our media. that reinforces. and other social reason.

absolutely.

[Initech]

29. I think social media (Facebook, etc) has more to do with us becoming meaner than anything.

Look at all the violent bullying stories you read about - I think Facebook and things like that have escalated those situations - making them worse than ever before.

[Laura PourMeADrink]

30. yes..meaner and crueler

[ejbr]

32. Yes, you jerk!

[FarCenter]

33. Do you have any data? Like bar fights / 1000 people per annum?

[marions ghost]

34. yes

--as a society we have become more insular, more wary, more likely to think we have no time for others, less caring.

Lots of reasons for it.

One that comes to mind is that when you have a government/political leadership that doesn't really work for the people, but just cranks out manipulative lies, it makes its citizens bitter and resentful. Less likely to get along.

Makes me so that we are having to FIGHT for basic rights, basic benefits. Things that should be expected in a democracy that works. It is dysfunctional.