I think you might be glamorizing it a bit. Talking about politics was until “recently” considered very rude and taboo. There’s been a big culture shift in talking about politics in the past maybe 15-20 years or so. I don’t have any hard data and this is just my view, but I think a major turning point was when a lot of the country realized how fucked up the wars in the Middle East were. This put people squarely into two pretty emotional camps, pro-war and anti-war. Everyone* had an opinion. Everyone* was open about sharing that opinion. Over those few years 2003-2008 was probably the biggest shift in openly talking about politics among regular people. And since being open about politics was now in, here came the wave of loud and proud racism from “centrists” and conservatives once Obama was elected and it hasn’t died down since.
So, yeah, it’s real easy for discussions to get “hot” when one side is openly calling for all the -isms in the book and people on the other side finally realizing what’s happening.
I think you might be glamorizing it a bit. Talking about politics was until “recently” considered very rude and taboo. There’s been a big culture shift in talking about politics in the past maybe 15-20 years or so. I don’t have any hard data and this is just my view, but I think a major turning point was when a lot of the country realized how fucked up the wars in the Middle East were. This put people squarely into two pretty emotional camps, pro-war and anti-war. Everyone* had an opinion. Everyone* was open about sharing that opinion. Over those few years 2003-2008 was probably the biggest shift in openly talking about politics among regular people. And since being open about politics was now in, here came the wave of loud and proud racism from “centrists” and conservatives once Obama was elected and it hasn’t died down since.
So, yeah, it’s real easy for discussions to get “hot” when one side is openly calling for all the -isms in the book and people on the other side finally realizing what’s happening.