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0 pointsgaldosdi2y ago0 comments

You must be rather young or only started listening to the news recently after a lifetime of ignoring it.

The news only started sounding like that very recently.

You can check this for yourself, go look at some archived newspapers from the early 1990s.

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3 comments · 2 top-level

drewcoo2y ago· 1 in thread

The 90s were a constant Clinton sex scandal from the time he started running for office through his impeachment and people still talk about it. Simultaneously, there was the Harken energy scandal, featuring influence peddling by not-yet-President G.W. Bush. Etc.

Vox claims "the most important election ever" started in 2000 and has continued since, but I think that has more to do with when the author became politically aware than anything else.

https://www.vox.com/21504729/most-important-election-bush-go...

Consider Johnson's TV spot from the 60s, tacitly telling Americans that the election was a contest between L.B.J. and nuclear apocalypse:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=riDypP1KfOU

I encourage anyone to look back further for more extreme elections.

The peaks of the unrest seem to happen near times when there's a shift in "Party System." We're currently in the US's Sixth (or is it Seventh?) Party System:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sixth_Party_System#Campaign_fi...

galdosdiOP2y ago

> The 90s were a constant Clinton sex scandal

Yes, I know, I lived through it. If you did too then you'll recall that the difference is that it wasn't considered important by average people, nothing like today anyhow. We paid plenty of attention to it, but it was like rubbernecking at a carwreck -- very interesting in the moment, but not earth shattering. It was important in an "oooh, fascinating hahaha" way, not in an "oh no, how anxiety inducing" kind of way, and that summarizes the difference between the 90s and the 20s.

Kye2y ago

The post-Fox News polarization of cable news (small but influential like Twitter was), consolidation of local TV news, and collapse of local newspapers happened so fast we're still reeling from it and just starting to notice the effects.

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