> polarization started well before the personal computer showed up in the geological record.
What do you mean?
What do you mean?
"We find that despite short-term fluctuations, partisanship or non-cooperation in the U.S. Congress has been increasing exponentially for over 60 years with no sign of abating or reversing"
"Partisanship has been attributed to a number of causes, including the stratifying wealth distribution of Americans [2]; boundary redistricting [3]; activist activity at primary elections [4]; changes in Congressional procedural rules [5]; political realignment in the American South [6]; the shift from electing moderate members to electing partisan members [7] movement by existing members towards ideological poles [8]; and an increasing political, pervasive media [9]."
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal...
The Internet does give ordinary people the opportunity to be mean to each other on a daily basis rather than having wars. I'm genuinely not sure that's an improvement, since at least people would think twice before going into combat. The level of desiring to harass each other seems roughly constant.