Why have we as a society become so entrenched in our views, and beliefs these days?

I don’t honestly think this is anything new, here or elsewhere. What might have been new was seeming to be somewhat more tolerant for a little while.

Because people think they are insightful, open minded and experienced when they are not 90% of the time. Most people are insecure and emotional creatures who will see evidence that is contrary to their world-view as a personal attack. Just look all of the blanket right wing bashing on this site for no other reason than it’s “not what I’m about” regardless of the issue. Most people simply can’t go the opposite way the herd is going.

I blame TV, the media, the jet age, and the willingness to move far away from family.

Now, we are more aware of difference than ever before, and people who felt safe in their communities now feel threatened. Threatened their way of life will be squashed. I think this happens on and off throughout time depending where you live, but now we are more aware of it happening, even when it’s happening outside of our immediate area. Because of this awareness it feels constant.

That’s my take anyway.

I think we have always been a nation divided—it’s just the Internet and social media have opened up a Pandora’s box allowing more people to easily express their views and, sadly too often, verbally abuse those of others.

Most of the media is owned/funded by multi-billion-dollar corporate conglomerates. The media make a profit and pays for their existence from selling advertising to other multi-billion-dollar corporate conglomerates. The agenda of the media is to focus on tit-for-tat politics, horse-races, sound bites, fear mongering, sensationalism, etc. They do everything they can to distract from a meaningful discussion that could bring about real change to the status quo and upset the “corporate overlords.”

In some sense that’s a bit tinfoil-hat, but I know there are billions at stake for shitheads like the Koch brothers and they’ll do whatever they can to steer the media in the direction that leads to profits for them.

I agree with @Jeruba…the only thing different is people can now Tweet about their prejudices as loudly as they want and anonymously as well.

A lot of the polarization is not at all new, as @Jeruba and others note. However, the quality of discourse – and the average level of knowledge and awareness of how our constitutional government should work (and does work) – have decreased markedly in my lifetime. So when presidential candidates such as Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders can stand in front of huge constituencies who seem to believe that either of them can actually deliver on even a tiny percentage of what they promise (they cannot), or who can discount the nonsense they hear from their candidate “because the other side is worse”, and leave that as an acceptable argument in support of “their side”, then I fear for the future of the republic.

Listening to the arguments that I hear between, say, Trump and Sanders supporters is like listening to a drunken argument between Red Sox and Yankees’ fans in the grandstand at a baseball game – except the fans can usually muster somewhat more cogent arguments based on actual, verifiable statistics of the players and teams in question. Trump and Sanders supporters leave me wondering who reminds them to inhale and don’t forget to exhale, too! every day. Don’t think, based on that diatribe, that I have any love for Clinton or any of the other nominal Republicans, either.

For the most part, I’m simply appalled that though most people on both sides of any argument about most of our current problems in the USA agree that it’s the government at fault, everyone seems to think that the answer is “more government – just ‘my kind’ of government.”

Apparently, not many people can actually think any more, and even fewer want to. Present company mostly excluded.

@CWOTUS I think a large part of what is at play is most of the people chiming in for or against either Trump or Sanders is they have found themselves in totally unexpected territory and if you go as far back as last June, 99.9% of us had much different candidates and hopes in their minds and need some more time to make heads or tails as to what is going on in the primaries. I bet you can ask this question everyday until Super Tuesday and get different answers each time you do.

@Cruiser Interesting point about people maybe being a little off kilter, because they had been gearing up for different Presidential candidates to be leading. I think this is really obvious if you watch the news reports since the time Trump announced he was running. The media has been basically wrong all the way until finally a few weeks ago they are saying maybe he really has a shot.

I feel like for once they really couldn’t control or manipulate the public. I do think they are manipulating the public still, but regarding Trump they seemed to really miss the boat. What do wonder, and maybe you know, is was Fox News on board with Trump as a possibility from the start? Did they always take him seriously?

For me, politics, and people’s political positions, got really bad back in the Reagan years and continued to get worse. Maybe it just seems that way because those were the years I was becoming more aware, because of my age. This election just seems like more of the same to me.

@SQUEEKY2 I’m interested in you bringing up religion, because every Canadian I know is very open and accepting of other people’s religions. I always felt like Canada had a very inclusive feeling about it.

It could be a cultural thing. Some countries are more tolerant and others are not (I find), mostly, though, I think we have all had our opinions, but on the net they are more open for people to view, and comment.

Government is becoming a bigger and bigger part of our lives. It’s no longer an academic exercise. We used to believe that it really didn’t make much difference who was elected because things would plod along with little change to our daily lives. Now our daily lives are changing and not for the better. Everyone wants someone to blame for that and there is no shortage of people that will point at who to blame. The people want change and the two candidates offering the biggest change, Trump and Sanders, are leading the race. Historically neither of them would stand a snowball’s chance in hell of getting nominated. Desperate times call for desperate measures. I keep expecting the electorate to wake up but even if they do we’re looking at Clinton and Cruz. Not much of an improvement. Frustration and the sense of pending doom don’t improve the discourse. We’re heading into a storm and the captain is drunk.

There are 3 sides to everthing. His, hers and the truth is usually somewhere in the middle.
The world is the same way everybody has their view of what’s right, but the truth is probably somewhere in the middle.

For some reason we have decided that we no longer need to listen to opposing views because they are, frankly, wrong so why waste our time. I could blame it on a reaction of liberal thinkers to the intransigence of conservative world view and I am sure they could do the same; but overall, it is a refusal to entertain other ideas that make us uncomfortable.
I don’t know why it has gotten worse over the past few decades. If I had to guess I would say an overkill of agenda driven media.