Leeza Kurtz0:00 When looking at the political state of the nation within the past 10 to 15 years, you can see a very sudden shift in the way that the two parties view each other and just the overall radicalization of the parties.0:18 And there's a lot of contributors to this.0:21 Um my question to you all is what do y'all think the biggest contributor is?0:27 Because obviously a lot of people will pin it on social media, which is extremely you know valid because it basically what it does is it listens and it observes what you already think and what you already think you know, and it uses that to its advantage to gain more views and more interactions for these apps to make more money for the apps, and it just basically keeps people in their own boxes of their political views, and it just makes them you know go deeper down the rabbit hole.1:01 And also there's other contributors like prominent political leaders, obviously one being um Donald Trump who has kind of started this new wave of uh political like hatred almost of the other parties, and that's kind of caused a lot of people on the right to really just like want to pin all of their problems on the left, and in turn the left is also kind of doing the same thing, and I'm sure there's people on the left who are also preaching for hatred of those on the right.1:35 But yeah, I want to know what y'all's thoughts and if there are any other contributors to this issue and if anyone thinks that there is some way that it can be stopped and that the parties can you know somewhat start to meet in the middle, or if there's no hope for that.
Thomas Freer0:00 Great video, Lisa, and I totally agree that between social media and politicians like Donald Trump, um, the country is more poor polarized than ever, and those things really exaggerated that polarization.0:13 But I like to point out that I think there are there are other factors too that contributed to this.0:20 One, I think the Democrats' response to Donald Trump, especially in the first election against Hillary Clinton, um, has definitely increased polarization in this country.0:33 I think that in the beginning they really weren't taking him seriously, labeling him as crazy or um unusual.0:40 He definitely was not a normal politician, and that ultimately just added fire to his campaign.0:48 I mean, anyone who felt that they'd been wronged by Washington or wanted something different could see Donald Trump as that light.0:57 And as the Democrats kept bashing him and saying that he was spewing nonsense and that he shouldn't even be taken seriously, and why is he even running for office?1:07 I think that just led to more support on his side, so he could keep saying the honestly sometimes mean things he was saying and get away with it because people were into it and they were being mean back to him, and it was working.1:24 It was driving his campaign.1:25 I think that in the election with Biden, um Biden and his campaign did a great job of of rising above and not falling into the game Trump likes to play, of going at each other, and then again in the election with Kamala, she fell into it sometimes.1:43 The Democrats overall fell into it sometimes.1:46 They would push back against him, and I think that's put us in the position we are today.