Is there any way to tell if today's culture war is unusually fierce compared to last culture wars?
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In principle, yes, but the data would be hard to gather, harder to parse, and overwhelmingly subject to ideological tampering.
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There were hundreds of bombings a year in the US in the early '70s by left-wing terrorists. I would vote less fierce.
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What we have is situation that seems worse than ever as social media throws it in our faces. But there were periods in 50s, 60s that were as bad or worse, not to mention pre and post civil war era. Imagine a senator being beaten near to death with a cane of floor of senate now.
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I'm a big fan of Peter Green, a legendary blues guitarist from London who was big in the late 60s/70s. I was reading an article where he was quoted saying that in those days he was being accused of stealing black culture by playing the blues guitar...
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Yes: you can look at freelance killings, bombings, and whether local governments literally ban proponents of opposing beliefs.
We’re nowhere near the reformation and I don’t think we’re even at days of rage levels yet.
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there's polling on whether people think the world would be a better place if their ideological opponents died
think it's been going up, up to ~15% 'yes' in 2016 if I recall correctly
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Compared to the early ‘70s, probably less fierce. We don’t see daily bombings. Here’s just one page of events from March 1970:
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Well, we are not torturing and publicly beheading each other, so its better than in 95 percent of earlier days.
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