This comic summed it up rather well https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DHQGsnPUQAAfMgB.jpg:large
What are you willing to compromise when it comes to the right to exist? Only some get killed?
Its of course a hyperbole, but I think thats the mechanic that leads to ever increasing factions that are completely opposed with extreme positions. You always had issues you were not willing to compromise on, but you rarely came into contact with people holding the completely opposing position. Of course there was the city whack job, but he was just that. Some guy. The point of reference was on representatives of "the other side". Politicians and so on. Which had to press (ideally of course) for a position that was the middle ground of his constituency, which was generally not the most extreme one to not scare away more moderate voters. Real conflict here came from fundamentally opposing that consensus of a large group.
With the death of political parties and movements you dont have that representation of the found consensus of the other side anylonger. Everyone can get a platform on the internet and the most extreme positions get the biggest coverage. If you hear often enough about extremist whackjobs in some group, you will sooner or later look for a group opposing those whackjobs.
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2016/07/poll-americans-fear-e...
I think we can witness that for a while now. You dont think "your side is right", its just that the perceived alternative is absolute horror.
Instead of “five ways my team is awesome and five ways your team sucks”, you’re saying the average person is more like “Five ways your team sucks and no that guy is not my team true Scotsman true Scotsman”?
I could buy that.
I was thinking about this recently. I doubt that it’s primarily an inability to compromise (though that exists when the politics are tied to tribal sense of identity), but more that each of our personal Overton windows is defined by about as many binary bits as we have slots in our working memory — if you can write an article with the title “Five Time My Side Was Epic” or “Five Times The Other Side Was Evil” then you can be blind to the mistakes of your own and the goodness of the others.
Might even be less than working memory, because we sometimes double-count.