Day: February 16, 2026

Political Polarization: Where Did It Begin?

I know in the past decade or so this subject has been examined by many…..but it is getting out of hand and deserves a closer look and often.

This is a report I read recently….it is a good look at what has been happening in this country for at least twenty years. (Personally I think it began way before their assertion)(I shall explain my disagreement later in this post)

This article posits that this polarization began in 2008 or the Obama years….

Forget Donald Trump. A new analysis suggests the U.S. public’s sharp lurch into polarization began in 2008, years before his first presidential campaign.

Researchers at the University of Cambridge’s Political Psychology Lab tracked shifts in Americans’ views across nearly four decades and found that divisions were broadly stable through the 1990s and early 2000s, before rising steadily from 2008 onward. Using more than 35,000 responses from the American National Election Studies between 1988 and 2024, they estimate that issue polarization has increased 64% since the late 1980s, with almost all of that change occurring after 2008.

The research uses a machine-learning approach to move beyond party labels and better understand what actually drives Americans’ political views. Instead of relying on whether respondents identify as Republican or Democrat, the team grouped people based on patterns in what they believe across a range of issues, from abortion and “traditional family values” to race, inequality, and health insurance. That distinction matters because in many countries politically opposite parties do not exist, says David Young, a psychology researcher at the University of Cambridge, U.K., and one of the study’s authors. “You might even want to study countries where there are no parties, like Saudi Arabia,” he says.

The paper challenges the idea that polarization is solely a Trump-era phenomenon. It points to 2008 as the “major turning point,” a year that also included the financial crisis, Barack Obama’s election, and the widespread adoption of the iPhone-era internet. “Our ability to nail down when it starts is slightly divided by the fact that we only have data points every four years,” Young says. Still, “we know that this increase starts from our 2008 data point,” he adds. “That’s our best guess at the starting point.”

https://www.fastcompany.com/91487819/political-polarization-started-a-lot-earlier-than-you-might-expect

Now my disagreement.

I say that the polarization began with the election of Reagan…..he weaponized the religious Right and emboldened every conspiracist that waddled out of the ether.

One could go back to the Goldwater years as the fodder that lit the flame of polarization.

We can say that conservatism is about free enterprise, smaller government, lower taxes, yada, yada…..but let’s be real in conservatism there is the privileged class and then us peasants…..we disguise it anyway we like but the simple fact is wealth knows best.

Thanks to Uncle Donny we see their true colors now….they no longer hide their distaste for the people.

This must be met with equal force by those that think that the people of this country are the important nay the only important issue.

Until then this slide will continue and god only knows where it will lead.

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

FLASH! You Are Screwed!

As soon as Donny wiggled his way into the WH and announced his dumb ass idea of tariffs I have been trying to get people to see that the only loser in them are the consumers.

After his election and the talk about tariffs I had to make my feelings known…

The Real Cost Of Trump Tariffs

Well all the analysis has proven my predictions too be spot on…..

Americans, not overseas sellers, are paying almost all of President Trump’s tariff increases, according to a new analysis from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. The report finds that roughly 90% of the cost of the administration’s import duties is falling on US consumers and businesses, undercutting Trump’s frequent claim that foreign exporters are footing the bill, Reuters reports. From January through August 2025, Americans absorbed 94% of the tariff burden, the Fed economists estimate; that share slipped to 92% in September and October and 86% in November, though it remained overwhelmingly domestic.

The findings align with a separate assessment from the Congressional Budget Office, which said higher tariffs raise the price of imported goods, thereby lifting costs for American households and companies. The CBO estimates that foreign exporters are covering only about 5% of the tariff tab. In the near term, it says, US businesses are likely to eat around 30% through lower profit margins, while passing the remaining 70% on to consumers through higher prices. A study released last month by a research institute in Germany produced similar findings, putting the share paid by US consumers and importers around 96%.

Tariffs have been a central element of Trump’s economic strategy, deployed to generate revenue, pressure trading partners, and encourage manufacturers to move production back to the US, per Reuters. The data shows that foreign suppliers sometimes cut prices in response to tariffs, per the New York Times, but that it’s a less common reaction. In an op-ed published in the Wall Street Journal on Jan. 30, Trump said, “the data shows that the burden, or ‘incidence,’ of the tariffs has fallen overwhelmingly on foreign producers and middlemen, including large corporations that are not from the US.”

I cannot understand the support these disasters have even today with all the rising prices…..it does not bother them only thing they seem to care about is that brown skin people are been attacked.

There is a name for that…..

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”