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Comment by joenot443 | Hacker News Reader

This is in alignment with my past experiences too. After moving to America, I met a friend who told me she would never share a table with someone who voted Republican. I found this super surprising, but the rest of the group agreed. That was a hard rule for them. From what I've been able to gather, most privileged progressive white-collar circles in American cities tend to run almost exclusively Democrat. Has it always been this way? Have Americans always allowed voting habits to dictate their choice of friends?

Back in Canada, of my three closest friends, one voted LPC, another Green, and another CPC. This next election I imagine it will be different. The amount of tribalism Americans associate with their two parties has always been so fascinating to me.

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> Has it always been this way? Have Americans always allowed voting habits to dictate their choice of friends?

Not to the degree we see today. I think it's something that's really taken off in the last 8 to 10 years, and I remember seeing the first signs of it starting in maybe 2008. The Tea Party and Occupy Wallstreet movements seemed to be the leading indicators of a much more deepening divide.

It's not really surprising to me though. I think when you frame it as "allowing voting habits to dictate your choice of friends" it sounds superficial, but there are deep ethical and ideological divides. You're framing like people are saying "You voted for X and so we can't be friends", but I think a more accurate framing would be "X is an abhorrent belief and cannot in good conscience have a relationship with anyone who would support X or any politician who is in favor of X".

Believe it or not, this is _very different_ than it was maybe 20 years ago. I used to have good friends who were in the "other" party, and while we had pretty strong disagreements about policy, I never doubted that in the end we all wanted what was best for people, and our views of what the best outcomes would be were pretty aligned even if our ideas of how to get there were very different.

Today, that's not the case. There's almost no common ground to find.

Intolerance of the other's point of view seems to be increasing. And I do think that social media is fueling that intolerance. Its easy to be rude to someone online than it is in person. In short, its easier to be intolerant online than in person.

Also, seeing the world in Black and White requires less effort than viewing it in shades of grey. And the rational mind seeks certainty and clarity, which makes Black and White an attractive option compared to uncertainty of ambiguous shades of grey.

Single Vision, William Blake called it.

> From what I've been able to gather, most privileged progressive white-collar circles in American cities tend to run almost exclusively Democrat. Has it always been this way?

No and it's not always true. They just have different shibboleths and areas you'd see them. Rust Belt and Farm belt come to mind here.

> Have Americans always allowed voting habits to dictate their choice of friends?

At least in my lifetime, things started to polarize around the GWB vs Kerry election. Opinions on the war/etc caused some people at my college to change some friendships based on political affiliations... most people would just avoid talking politics though (touching on your previous question, someone in collage from a fairly well off family kinda got the wrong message from American dad, yet he just made sure to stop talking about how pretty Ann Coulter was in front of left wing people.)

The elections after that amplified the split however. Obama's second election was, in my head, less 'contentious' than the first... but by 2016 I think everything was in full swing.

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