Trump and his cronies has created mistrust in our elections
In a poll from last spring, the Advocate reported that,
They got one thing right, is our gender is fixed at birth but it is not always what it was assigned at birth.
This throws a spotlight on education, we need to educate the public about us and the Republicans want to block us from teaching the truth. The Republicans has sowed the seeds of mistrust and fear and we must make sure that they do not germinate.
What do you think? Who do you think is responsible for the mistrust?Poll finds support for exploring alternatives to democracy, using violence to stop opponents
The Hill
By Lauren Irwin
October 18, 2023A new poll found that American voters have a mutual mistrust of the other side and are open to exploring alternatives to democracy, and that a share of both Democrat and Republican voters believe it is acceptable to use violence to stop the opposing party from achieving its goals.
A majority of voters that support President Biden or former President Trump believe that electing officials from the opposing party in 2024 would create lasting harm in the United States, according to poll results released Wednesday by the University of Virginia Center for Politics.
Fifty-two percent of Biden supporters say individuals who support the Republican party are a threat to American life, and 47 percent of Trump supporters say the same about Democrats.
Forty-one percent of Biden supporters say they believe people who support the Republican party and its ideologies have become “so extreme in what they want that it is acceptable to use violence to stop them from achieving their goals.” Likewise, 38 percent of Trump supporters say it is OK to use violence to stop Democrats from achieving their goals.
In a poll from last spring, the Advocate reported that,
A majority of Americans believe a person’s gender is determined at birth and support some restrictions on gender-affirming care for young people — but they also oppose discrimination against transgender people, according to a new poll.
But the political debate around these issues, with Republicans pushing anti-trans legislation, has made some Americans more conservative, reports The Washington Post, which conducted the poll along with KFF, formerly known as the Kaiser Family Foundation.
“You have a big swath of the American public still trying to make sense of this issue,” Patrick Egan, a scholar of American politics and public opinion at New York University, told the Post. “This is a battle and a debate that is unfolding in real time before our eyes, and we don’t know how it’s going to turn out.”
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Other polls have seen an increase in respondents saying gender is fixed at birth. In one conducted last year by the Pew Research Center, 60 percent gave that response, up from 54 percent in 2017. “Even among young adults, who are the most accepting of trans identity, about half said in the Post-KFF poll that a person’s gender is determined by their sex at birth,” the Post reports.
This throws a spotlight on education, we need to educate the public about us and the Republicans want to block us from teaching the truth. The Republicans has sowed the seeds of mistrust and fear and we must make sure that they do not germinate.
In another poll they found similar results.
NPRBy Ashley LopezOctober 25, 2023Tensions are high among American voters ahead of presidential contests next year, according to a new national survey released Wednesday by the Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI) in partnership with the Brookings Institution.Researchers found that an overwhelming majority of Americans believe democracy is 'at risk' in the upcoming presidential election — and about a quarter of those surveyed said they think "American patriots may have to resort to violence to save the country.""I think we're in for a pretty challenging election season between now and the presidential election in 2024," said Robert Jones, the CEO and founder of the PRRI — a nonpartisan group that conducts research on the intersection of politics, culture and religion.According to the PRRI study, 75% of Americans surveyed said they agree that the "future of American democracy is at risk in the 2024 presidential election." Democrats were more likely to hold this view with 84% support, but supermajorities of Republicans and independent voters said they also agreed with that statement.[...]In a statement, PRRI researchers say they have asked about this in "eight separate surveys since March 2021." They said that "this is the first time support for political violence has peaked above 20%" in their survey results.
The question is why? Why do people think that violence is the answer?
Jones says he thinks these views are a symptom of continued polarization in the country's politics. He also blamed a spillover effect created by the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol."I think the temperature is high and people feel the sense that the guardrails are down," Jones explained. "We did have the first non-peaceful transfer of power in the last election and I think that still is resonating across the years and into this new election cycle."
And the majority of the candidates for Speakers are “Election Deniers!”
It is becoming common place all the mistrust, all the unrest, and all the frustration. It is not just the elections but also mistrust in government and the regulatory agencies.
The way is see it is a battle between those who want to take us back to the politics of the ol’ south of the Jim Crow laws, discrimination and oppression of LGBTQ+ peoples against those who want inclusion.Polarization, Democracy, and Political Violence in the United States: What the Research Says
Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
By Rachel Kleinfeld
September 5, 2023
SummaryThe United States feels roiled by polarization, and the philanthropic world is seized with debates about what to do. Some scholars claim that Americans are so polarized they are on the brink of civil war. Other polls suggest that voters agree on plenty of policies and that polarization is an illusion. Some philanthropists call for pluralism and civility, while others lean into activism, believing polarization is a byproduct of change toward a more just world. So, is the United States polarized or not? If it is, what is causing the polarization and what are its consequences? Should polarization be solved or tolerated?
Five Facts About Polarization in the United States
1. American voters are less ideologically polarized than they think they are, and that misperception is greatest for the most politically engaged people. Americans across parties share many policy preferences. There is some overlap even on hot-button issues, such as abortion and guns, and more overlap on how to teach American history. It is important not to make too much of this overlap, however. For instance, a majority of Democrats as well as four in ten Republicans support banning high-capacity ammunition magazines and creating a federal database to track gun sales; nearly as many Republicans support banning assault-style weapons. But only 18 percent of Republicans and Republican-leaners feel gun violence is a major problem (versus 73 percent of Democrats and Democratic-leaners). So despite the significant policy overlap, only one side is motivated to put the issue on the agenda. Democrats have moved to the left on racial issues and some social issues over the last decade, and Republicans have moved to the right on immigration under Joe Biden’s administration, though there remains overlap on these issues as well. In some cases, Republicans appear to be slowly adopting more progressive views on some social issues, resulting in what looks like polarization but is perhaps better characterized as faster moves by the left.
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2. American politicians are highly ideologically polarized. In other words, they believe in and vote for different sets of policies, with little overlap. This trend has grown in a steady, unpunctuated manner for decades. One reason that the most highly politically engaged Americans may misunderstand the other side is that they correctly estimate the extreme ideological polarization among politicians.
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3. Even though Americans are not as ideologically polarized as they believe themselves to be, they are emotionally polarized (known as “affective polarization”). In other words, they do not like members of the other party. Americans harbor strong dislike for members of the other party (though they also dislike their own parties, as well). While social media is often blamed for this phenomenon, affective polarization started growing before the internet: its onset more closely correlates with the rise of cable news and radio talk shows. It is also growing most swiftly among Americans over sixty-five years old, a demographic that uses the internet less, but watches television and listens to talk radio far more, than younger age groups who are less polarized. These findings and other studies about the effects of social media suggest that all media, not just social media, may be playing a role.
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4. Affective polarization is unlikely to be causing democratic backsliding or political violence on its own. The problem is not polarized emotions alone but how those feelings interact with voting systems, candidate incentives, and personal relationships.
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5. Similarly, affective polarization is not causing political violence directly. It is probably contributing to an environment that allows politicians and opinion leaders to increase violence targeted at politicians, election officials, women, and many types of minorities. Affective polarization in the United States has been rising for decades, while political violence only increased sharply in 2016.20 Affective polarization is also quite symmetrical across parties, while political violence is overwhelmingly from the right. [My emphasis.] This suggests that emotional feelings of hatred toward members of the other party are not a primary cause of political violence. In fact, some scholars have found that affective polarization is not even correlated with political violence or justifications of such violence (though other surveys have found correlation between “strong Republicans” or “Make America Great Again (MAGA) Republicans” and support for violence, while the same does not hold true for “strong Democrats”).
The conservatives feel backed into the corner, the world is changing around them and they fear change. Change is destroying their way of life. They see people freeing their churches, they seee Blacks are being treated as equals, and they see people who they despise are getting their rights and getting married*. They fear change, they want to sit on their front porch sipping mint juleps watching their white neighbors walk by… but now there are Blacks in the neighborhood, and a gay couple living next door and they feel threatened. Their way of life is being challenged!
They don’t want Gay Straight Alliances in their school, they don’t want books about Black history on the library shelves, they don’t want books about us on the library shelves, they don’t want sex education classes because they fear that their children will know the truth and will not grow up not hating people who are different.
They fear change.
*I remember the current belief fifty years ago was that gays were nothing more than a rutting stallion just from one bed to another. They believed that dikes were just women who wanted to be men. That if they would be allowed to marry in a week they would get divorce and jump in another bed. That belief was challenged once marriage became a reality, all of sudden lesbians and gays came out of the shadows after having been together for 20… 30 years.
On the tenth anniversary of marriage equality at a party for them at Real Art Ways there were an awful lot of ten year old rug rats there.
So much for the belief that LGBTQ+ people couldn’t have a long tern relationship.
I appreciate your perspective here. When it comes to violence, I always ask to what end? What comes after the violence? I talk about these kinds of things on my Outrage Overload podcast with scientists and other experts.
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