50 Times People Exposed Their Poor Economic Knowledge And This Community Took The Chance To Mock Them

The world was probably never this divided over politics in recent decades. And nowhere is that divide as stark as in the United States. As a 2024 Gallup poll shows, the percentage of moderate voters in America has reached historical lows. Only 34% of Americans describe themselves as moderates, while 37% say they're Republicans and only 25% identify as liberals.

Although those who say they are liberal or very liberal are in the minority, it's still the highest percentage in a long time. In 1992, only 17% of Americans said they were liberals. The percentage of Americans identifying as conservatives has been steady since 1992, when it was 36%.

Still, both conservatives' and liberals' ideologies are at their most extreme in 30 years. 24% of Republicans claim they are 'very conservative,' and 18% of Democrats say they are 'very liberal.'

This extreme divide bleeds out into people's relationships. Some even go as far as to cut contact with relatives or friends who are on the different side of the political ideology spectrum. A 2020 Pew survey showed that Americans had very few friends who supported another presidential candidate.

Republicans and Democrats are really at each other's throats by making assumptions as well. A 2020 study showed that 8 in 10 Republicans believe that the Democratic Party has been taken over by socialists. In turn, 8 in 10 Democrats believe that the Republican Party has been seized by racists.

But experts say that people are most often wrong and tend to see the members of the opposite party as more extreme than they actually are. "We're flattening people out in terms of our view of them," Tania Israel, author of Beyond Your Bubble: How to Connect Across the Political Divide, Skills and Strategies for Conversations That Work, told NPR. "And we're not really seeing the full complexity of people on the other side."

But 'tis the nature of socialization online. And nowadays, most of us do get our news and express our political opinions on social media. Most of us know that political discussions online are usually pointless and only cause our blood pressure to rise. But that toxic environment doesn't come out of nowhere; it's created by people. And some researchers suggest that netizens who choose to participate in political discussions online might already be uncivil.

Researchers Michalis Mamakos and Eli Finkel studied politically engaged users' behavior on Reddit. They found that those who facilitate a toxic environment on non-partisan subreddits do the same thing on political ones.

"Our findings suggest that online political discourse is uncivil largely because the people who opt into it are generally uncivil," Mamakos said. "Such individuals undermine the democratic values that should be present in the public sphere."

The "[Stuff] Statists Say" subreddit is the place for netizens with slightly anarchistic views. Yet we have to be exact here: anarchism and anti-statism are two different things. Anarchists are usually against establishments of any kind, believing that all governments are (or are destined to become) evil. Anti-statists tend to be more moderate, believing in the minimization of state and its power.