T. Greer sometimes complains that 21st century American political culture has been hijacked by hyper-partisan signaling:
It is easy to forget that this is not a new complaint. You can find political signaling spirals rearing their ugly head many times in humanity’s past — at the height of the antebellum republic’s Second Party system, during the intense debates of the Four Colors of Joseon Korea, and of course, in Early Modern England:
My worthy Friend Sir Roger, when we are talking of the Malice of Parties, very frequently tells us an Accident that happened to him when he was a School-boy, which was at a time when the Feuds ran high between the Round-heads and Cavaliers. This worthy Knight being then but a Stripling, had Occasion to enquire which was the Way to St. Ann’s Lane, upon which the Person whom he spoke to, instead of answering his Question, called him a young Popish Cur, and asked him who had made Ann a Saint? The Boy being in some Confusion, enquired of the next he met, which was the way to Ann’s Lane, but was called a Prick-eared Curr for his Pains, and instead of being shown the Way was told, that she had been a Saint before he was born, and would be one after he was hang’d. Upon this, says Sir Roger, I did not think fit to repeat the former Question, but going into every Lane of the Neighbourhood, asked what they called the Name of that Lane. By which ingenious Artifice he found out the Place he enquired after, without giving Offence to any Party. [1]
That is an excerpt from Joseph Addison’s essay, Spectator 145, published first in a Whig daily named the Spectator on the 14th of July, 1711.