[internaut]

I see you deleted your initial response (I have cached replies that enables me to see posts that were deleted), which is fine, but I wanted to respond to three of your queries. To respect your deletion I won't quote from it.

1. Here I am using the colloquial meaning of the word propaganda, which is ideologically biased information, usually it takes the truth but then stretches it to breaking point and beyond.

2. I do not possess a Facebook account. I don't even have a mobile phone. I don't watch Fox News in case you were curious. I hardly watch any television at all since I don't have one. Many readers of Hacker News do not have them, it's a common demographic in geek circles.

3. Class warfare is a real thing. It is not an extreme concept, it's a descriptor. Europeans like me frequently complain that Americans don't grok class or that Americans conflate 'race' with 'class'. You don't have to agree of course. Perhaps America is the one nation on the planet that didn't gradually evolve a class system as it matured ;-)

Humour aside, I do think this (gradually evolve a class system as it matured) is one of the major reasons why many American intellectuals are increasingly interested in old European ideas and books from the 18/19th centuries. Their resonance is much deeper than it used to be.

[hiou]

I just deleted it because honestly, it's not like I'm going to get a real answer anyway. You continue to group people into baskets. Now it's "Americans" and "Fox News", race and class. I was just trying to understand where that comes from. Someday I truly hope to get some better insight as to where the general extremism is coming from. The reality is it's not going to happen in this thread so I was better off just deleting it as opposed to cluttering the discussion for no real benefit.

[internaut]

I think the answer you seek is in front of you. Look at it this way hiou.

There are the Lumpers (everything is the same) and the Splitters (everything is different). If you remember the book Sophie's World (which was full of great insights into this), then it is like the genres of reductionism and holism in philosophy.

The real answer is that people's brains work differently.

If you want some consolation, it is that we cannot live without either group, Lumper or Splitter. Each group has failure modes which can be corrected by the other tribe. I am convinced that is why the left and right exist in all cultures and times. It's a very important human algorithm.