It's because every election the political parties figure out how to up the stakes to get people to care about voting. Now if someone gets voted it's "literally life or death" (it super isn't). Everyone could use a dose of "no treason" by Lysander spooner. Then maybe we can care little enough to have actual conversations.
If it really was population density, it would be easy to discuss politics in urban NYC and very difficult/ rare in rural Wyoming. I don’t think that’s really the case.
I suspect politics are more discussed in forums where there is more “psychological safety” where the consequence of saying a thing that others disagree with doesn’t cause a rift in the relationship (as evidenced by the “it’s hard enough for a parent to make friends” statement).
The reason we can’t discuss politics is because we don’t practice. The widespread saying “don’t discuss politics or religion [in X context]” means that we have fewer places to discuss it, so we get less practice to do it. We are less practiced so it is brittle. If we practiced more, we would be more resilient.
Discussions about politics and religion are rife with conflation of opinion with fact, true fact with false fact, claim with evidence.
Most good faith differences on politics boil down to differing values and priorities. Having a discussion about those directly, rather than through the lens of the broken US political parties / election system is usually more productive in avoiding the screaming / emotions.
Then again, you could argue that the premise is flawed and we talk about politics too much…
Practice is important. And being able to say, "I disagree, and discussing it further won't change my mind" is important.
But many of the current political topics are life or death for parts of the community. Like, I know plenty of trans sysadmins for whom politics isn't just "well, one party advances ideas I support and the other less so". For them it's "One party will make my every waking moment a nightmare".
I understand why, even with practice, some political positions are simply intolerable for them. (And to me, this feels different than, say, "I have opinions about which rate I should be taxed" though I admit tax rates could be life or death for some people.)
And this is precisely why people, not just Americans, can't disagree about politics over time. Politics always turns into someone having the perspective "civil disagreement cannot be tolerated because the stakes are too high for my side" which is anethema to reason and concord regardless of whether it's actually true or not.
Catastrophizing is always incentivized in the immediate term because it forces any interlocutor(a) to address it at the expense of any other topic and then the catastrophizer can accuse them of apathy and marginialization if they don't show the requisite enthusiasm and deference.
It's a no-win situation for anyone attempting to deescalate and many just check-out rather than deal with the litany of accusations, which I guess is another kind of victory for the catastrophizers.
This. I've had conversations with PhD folks who are genuinely afraid Trump getting elected will mean their naturalized citizenships will be reversed and they'll be deported. I've had conversations with gay Americans who asked me if they should consider moving to Canada because Trump may remove recognition for gay marriages. Both of these positions are so far out of the likelihood of things that may happen that there is no reason to think about them at all, and yet they do. There is little point in discussion at that point.
But what's special about Americans and politics? If I told my coworkers I think the Earth is flat, they'd think I was an idiot and shrug and then continue to work with me. But somehow knowing how I vote is a shortcut to assuming I've drunk the party koolaid and believe in everything the party does and then we can't work together? The extreme sides of both parties are just that, extremes, and don't represent my beliefs on any number of issues, but it's a two party system so you have to go with one or the other, or throw your vote away. Elsewhere, people can work together just fine knowing their coworkers voted for the wrong party.
Why not just throw your vote away anyway? Whats the point unless you live in a swing state? Also why give the government any ammunition to legitimize their existence in the first place.
>Whats the point unless you live in a swing state?
The game theory strategy in the electoral college is to register and vote as the non-dominant party in any election. If enough people follow this strategy, the locality becomes a swing state and the party platform and candidates will reflect their interests.
>Also why give the government any ammunition to legitimize their existence in the first place.
Until the government collapses, they still control the monopoly on violence. Unless you're a radical pacifist and willing to be the sacrificial lamb, there is a pretty clear need to participate to the extent that the wolf of government doesn't eat you. The punishment which the wise suffer who refuse to take part in the government is to live under the government of worse men.
>I’m not sure what’s turned the tide for me, but I now believe there are limits to free speech. It turns out that some ideas are toxic, as in, people get sucked into them, are too stubborn/whatever to admit they were wrong, and become rabid believers of nonsense.
>Witness the adherents to the flat earth society or those that stringently don’t believe we landed on the moon, never the Googler’s sexist manifesto. Anti-semitic screeds like “the Jews run the banks and this is why you’re poor!” frequently leak into open comment sections of your local news’ website, or YouTube comments.
It's not just Americans. The worst offenders tend to be those that believe that they are immune to it.
And this is massively more true in the current environment than it has been in the past, due to the degree to which one side of the political divide actually wants to kill, severely curtail the rights of, or erase the identities of people on the other side.
The interesting thing is, it is hard to tell which side you are talking about here. I've heard exactly the same thing from both the left and the right.
I think a lot of people genuinely believe that transwomen are grooming and raping children en masse, or at least trying to get into women's sport so they can win medals. The fact that this is both wrong and stupid and has no real non-circumstantial evidence does not stop them.
At some point people have to talk to each other, right? And that's where you have a discussion about how you don't think kids should go to the Folsom Street Fair either, but that you also don't think it's fair for a 39 year old transwoman not to be allowed onto the division F basketball team with her friends, and maybe you and your interlocutor both discover that the other side is a little more tolerable than you thought.
Edit: I didn't really explain that very well. What I mean is that neither extreme finds the opinions of the other extreme tolerable, and that this is the result of paying too much attention to the long tail extremes instead of the middle of the bell curve.
The topics of housing and drugs and energy and monetary policy and don't get more airtime because we spend time discussing gender and abortion. This is by design.
> being able to say, "I disagree, and discussing it further won't change my mind" is important
Though, I would argue, unnecessary. If you faithfully believe, challenge shouldn’t be burdensome. If you’re open to revision, maybe they have a point. I’m not Epictetus, but unless your conversation partner is an idiot or a bore, there is usually something redeeming there.
It has an opportunity cost. It's not burdensome to be challenged, per se, it's burdensome to repeat that, "Yes, I think trans people are humans with complex interior lives who mostly want to be left alone. No, they are not coming into bathrooms en masse to molest you. Yes, they deserve to just get on with their lives. No, we shouldn't mock them for who they are" etc. etc.
It takes someone 3-5 seconds to "just asking questions" and it takes me much more than that to respond. There's an obvious imbalance there that leads to:
a) It's a lot more exhausting to respond than to ask
b) It's vulnerable to malicious askers abusing my good faith answering time
So while, with close friends, I'm happy to answer questions. Or with well meaning allies who genuinely want to learn and just don't understand. But like, random folks? On an internet forum? Nah. They can ask and I can say, "Sorry, let's just not engage."
> unless your conversation partner is an idiot or a bore, there is usually something redeeming there.
My recent experience is that even intelligent and thoughtful people start sounding like idiots when they decide to talk politics, and the conversations quickly turn into a huge bore. All I can do is roll my eyes.
I think this is however kind of lopsided. For example, trans people are a hotly debated subject but are only 1% of the population or whatever. An individual trans person might have to engage in this debate daily, but a non-trans person might only engage online voluntarily because they have never met a trans person IRL and the concept of one is a fun thought experiment. In that sense being able to say "discussing this topic further won't change my mind" may be an important part of simply letting politicized minorities go about living life.
> And being able to say, "I disagree, and discussing it further won't change my mind" is important.
'Agree to disagree' is just an opt out. At that point there usually isn't any agreement upon what is disagreed upon in the first place. It is a debate evasion.
It is usually more honest to say 'I don't want you to convince me or the audiance otherwise'.
But ye there is some endurance limit the discussion need to respect. My point is that 'agree to disagree' is way overused.
> It is usually more honest to say 'I don't want you to convince me or the audiance otherwise'
i’m not trying to be mean but this is just wild. i’ve walked away from “debates” with people many times, not because i “don’t want to be convinced” it’s because too often i just genuinely don’t care what the person thinks about $ISSUE.
i mean, most of us went to university and many of us took those classes, many of us have been online for long enough to have seen every argument and every sophist angle countless times. i learned quick enough that many of these issues have no ‘correct’ answer, they’re personal beliefs with deep foundations.
we also learned early on that debates are silly unless there are actual subject experts (like recognized-by-their-peers-experts), strict moderators, and rules in place. randoms “debating” incredibly complex nuanced topics without actual experts is just… i mean…
…without those things it’s just rhetoric and sophistry. for the debateBros it’s about “winning” rather than coming closer to a truth. other than a few loud debateBros most people discovered these things in like sophomore year.
even more important, and this is just a personal opinion, but i find debateBros super weird and not in the good way. far too often their antisocialness just kills conversations. if someone is a grown adult and can’t tell the difference between a conversation and a debate they almost universally just end up making the entire atmosphere awkward. i learned pretty quickly when out with friends to spot randoms shifting into "debate mode" and we drag the conversation in a totally different direction to stave it off.
unless i know someone irl and enjoy them on a personal level theres almost unlimited things id rather do than spend my time "debating" with them. it boggles my mind how they just repeatedly fail to understand that adversarial debate is not at all normal conversation.
while i absolutely do enjoy passionate discussions of politics with a few family members (cousins, aunts, etc…) and a few friends, but with randoms? almost never. randoms "debating" outside of actual experts? nah, not a chance.
and it’s super important to understand that most of the current divisive topics don’t have “one” correct answer. often they don’t even have a correct answer at all, but rather many valid ways to approach and from multiple foundational beliefs.
Well, nothing like a lengthy meta debate about lengthy debates.
I think I was quite clear that I accept the 'endurance excuse'.
I was trying to make the point that the 'endurance excuse' is used as as an escape hatch way too often to silence the debate by people often with the consenus opinion that don't want to risk losing a debate.
The problem with this position is that politics in the current situation are not just about minor details of tax policy or whether to build a bridge here or five miles away there. They are an existential matter for too many people.
When the issue at hand is something like "I think black people deserve the same rights as white people," no, no one is ever going to convince me of the opposite. There is literally no point to me listening to someone who has that as their position (and you're damn right I don't want them convincing the audience either). Same with a number of other prominent issues at stake today.
So if someone comes at me with one of those positions, and doesn't seem, from the outset, to be already seriously on the fence, or to be presenting extremely easily debunked misinformation, yeah, I'm going to nope out of there. It's not worth raising my stress level to argue with that type of person, with or without an audience.
> But many of the current political topics are life or death for parts of the community.
This is just hyperbole intended to stop debate and discussion. It’s not life and death to stop biological men from competing in women’s sports for example.
There is no party that will make “every waking moment a nightmare" for the LGBTQIAP+. That’s the same thing we heard in 2016, and nothing came of it then. And in fact between 2020 and 2024 there is definitely an argument that can be made that even under the “preferred” party things got worse. Ironically, that exact rhetoric has led to multiple terror attacks on innocent people.
To be clear, I believe both parties are anti-trans. Malcom X was spot on with the Fox and the Wolf -- they both want to eat the lamb, the wolf is just a lot more honest about it.
I regularly argue that Biden has been specifically and materially awful to the trans community. Do not mistake me saying that Republicans want to do worse as somehow saying the Dems are good.
But anti-trans legislation, particularly at the state level, is rising dramatically. (With almost 700 bills introduced this year, compared to merely 10-20 10 years ago.)
The follow states passed anti-trans bills last year: Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Iowa, Idaho, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Missouri, Mississippi, Montana, North Carolina, North Dakota, Nebraska, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Wisconsin, West Virginia, Wyoming
I think, looking at that list, it's pretty clearly predominantly right-leaning states who are actually enacting legislation to make access to education, healthcare, mental health support, services, name changes, etc. more difficult. Like, I don't think that's even subjective. 87 bills passed in those states, and those states are the only ones who passed anti-trans bills.
> To be clear, I believe both parties are anti-trans
This is IMHO the most toxic and divisive topic not just in politics, but in society too, it touches upon a universal long and cultural fabric of sex division. What you may consider anti-trans to someone else is updating legislation to cover something they never thought it would need to.
Republicans or conservatives in general, may be opposed to same-sex marriage, but it doesn't specifically make them anti-gay.
For context, I'm not a conservative, I just try and be polite, respectful and understanding to those with opposite opinions, as long as they treat me the same.
I’m guessing you aren’t trans or know anyone that is.
Trans people were kicked out of the military under trump. Some republican governments are making it difficult to near impossible for trans people to get transition related medical care. Republican governments are making it difficult to even get identification documents that match your identity. Republican governments are trying to make certain identities to be considered profane and excluded from general society.
“ In August 2017, the White House put out the actual policy behind those tweets. According to the administration, Trump would effectively return to the pre-2016 era in which trans troops could not serve openly. It would also ban the military from paying for gender-affirming surgeries, with some exceptions to “protect the health” of someone who had already begun transitioning. The guidance also allowed the secretary of defense, after consulting with the secretary of homeland security, some wiggle room to decide what to do with already serving trans service members — and it let them advise the president on reversing the ban.”
Really ?
People have to be killed to take their concerns seriously/ qualify as a a nightmare for affected people.
That's a very high-bar for changing discriminating shit.
Also you've been living under a rock if you've not seen any fatal hate-crimes against trans people in the news.
> Incidents include [...] 320+ acts of vandalism, 200+ bomb & mass shooting threats, 130+ assaults, and 45+ cases of arson, resulting in 161 injuries and 21 deaths.
The fact that OP did absolutely zero research and pretended like the rhetoric used by the left to uh.. support trans rights, somehow, I guess, created terrorism that far eclipsed the violence actually perpetrated against trans people is exactly why I assumed the comment was satire.
Yep, there’s definitely a reason we can’t as a society talk about politics.
This is ridiculously reductionist and honestly a bad faith argument. I know that you know it is and if you don't, please listen to some trans people and the violence that the put up with.
I don't think it is. I think this person might genuinely believe that there aren't trans lives at risk. Which is unfortunate. Maybe they'll use this as an opportunity to learn, but my money is on them responding angrily to me elsewhere after their post gets flagged.
Two issues that are probably rare but not worth the risk
1. political stance is not a protected status. if I find out (or vice versa) that some manager has opposite stances of me, things get awkward at best or dangerous at worst. Rather not be fired that easily, especially since a lot of work is from home with little opportunity for small talk.
2. there are just crazies out in my area, and US is only getting more violent. I ain't risking that just to make some small talk in public. Most people are far from good faith and a few have enough short fuses that I'd rather not take that risk.
For what it's worth I am in the most gun toting state and we do talk politics. I do not claim to be one of theirs and do not always say nice things about their guy. I try to focus on areas that I know we have common ground and that I think they will find interesting. It usually works out to be a fun conversation. In fairness I would not try this in a bar where peoples inhibitions are taking a break but I do not drink so that's fine. I think my saving grace is that I distrust all politicians equally and I know some bits of the deep state they were unaware of so they get something out of it. At the end of the day we are all still part of a community and still help each other out.
> it would be easy to discuss politics in urban NYC and very difficult/ rare in rural Wyoming. I don’t think that’s really the case
I live in both! It’s easy to discuss if you’re respectful. Even with someone who will take offence to any opinion but their own. You can label them zealots. But they’re also passionate about something, and even if the what is banal the why is usually incredibly beautiful.
> If it really was population density, it would be easy to discuss politics in urban NYC and very difficult/ rare in rural Wyoming.
This assumes that the effects of population density are continuously distributed, but what if the national discourse is affected by population density in a way that shows up across the entire country?
> rather than through the lens of the broken US political parties / election system
This is key, in my observation as an immigrant from Europe who's lived here ~10 years. Europe for the most part has multi-party democracies meaning that for every pet cause you might have there is a party that focuses on your cause. Larger causes get parties that might even get elected into parliament.
Those larger parties still have to work together with other parties to form a coalition/anti-coalition. Those coalitions then end up running the country.
In practice this means that when you're discussing politics with friends, you don't bifurcate into right/wrong, you discuss differences on specific causes. You and your friend might disagree about UBI, or trans rights, or whatever, but you both understand that you more or less agree on the other 9/10 issues. You are more alike than you are different and that makes debating your differences easier.
Contrast that with american politics where it's all or nothing. If you like abortion and low taxes, there is no way for you to vote.
Additionally americans have this weird thing where they worship politicians instead of treating them as disposable public servants who exist at the mercy of your vote. People actually treat whom they vote for as a part of their identity. That always felt weird to me. It means any discussion of politics becomes a triggering assault on your ego.
edit to share an example:
In college I signed a thing to support The Pirate Party. The most they've ever achieved is like 1 or 2 seats in parliament. But this means that every law that gets discussed has a voice or two talking about its impact on copyleft, opensource, net neutrality, etc. This is great! And it doesn't mean anyone has to abandon the bigger more important issues to get this representation.
> Contrast that with american politics where it's all or nothing. If you like abortion and low taxes, there is no way for you to vote.
I'm European. The most influential topic in voting behaviour is immigration, as any study (or recent European election result) would tell you. In the wealthier countries, climate policy is also in the top 5. If I want to vote for progressive climate policy and being tough on immigration, there isn't a single party that I can vote for. And there hasn't been, for decades.
Agree, the forced two-party system is very limiting and the identity tied to politics is emblematic of modern US. In EU, as I believe in India from the anecdotes in the article, a lot of the identity is tied to the place you are from and the social strata the family occupies. Those are somewhat immutable things (where you were born and what family you are from), so deciding to break off communication with that community is “expensive” socially because there is no other community that will readily accept you as their own. Whereas in US, it’s quite normal to change social circles at will. Density/proximity makes it much more obvious, but the semi-fixed social circles I believe have a lot to do with it. Many US expats report loneliness when moving abroad for similar reasons - it’s hard to find a new inner circle in societies built around other identities.
> Those larger parties still have to work together with other parties to form a coalition/anti-coalition. Those coalitions then end up running the country.
Although I think there might be some benefits to this style of government, I also think people over-index on it. One way or another these groups end up forming coalitions and making compromises in order to govern. In one case it happens before the election, and mostly behind the scenes with some influence from the primary process. In the other case, it happens after the election when the parties are figure out how to form a majority after the representatives have been selected. One advantage to the former is that at least you know who what other policies your special interest are going to align you with ahead of time, rather than finding out after the fact that your vote brought along more baggage than you bargained for.
> You and your friend might disagree about UBI, or trans rights, or whatever, but you both understand that you more or less agree on the other 9/10 issues.
But if one the people in that discussion is trans, and the other person doesn't believe that trans people are real, have a right to exist, deserve health care, etc. then it doesn't matter if they agree on 9/10 other issues. Same with abortion. If one person in a discussion believes in the value of rational evidence based decision making, and the other believes in woke 5g space lasers, there's simply no foundation on which to build a shared understanding upon which to base a conversation.
Many of the central arguments that are causing polarization in politics today are due to fundamental incompatibilities in values- the kind that no amount of agreement on other matters of policy
> Contrast that with american politics where it's all or nothing. If you like abortion and low taxes, there is no way for you to vote.
There absolutely is. There's no perfect candidate, but there's still going to be a better choice. You pick what matters most to you, and how many things you are willing to compromise for those things, make the best choice available, and work to push the discussion of one party or the other closer toward your views in the areas you don't like.
> But if one the people in that discussion is trans, and the other person doesn't believe that trans people are real ...
Why tho? Just because we might disagree on the details of gender doesn't mean we can't discuss NIMBYism. I don't see what gender has to do with housing.
It's possible I'm the weirdo here because the American obsession with identity never quite clicked for me. We once did a "What are your identities" team building exercise and the question felt so nonsensical that I couldn't complete the exercise.
(for the record I am pro-trans, at worst indifferent and think it's none of my business)
> Why tho? Just because we might disagree on the details of gender doesn't mean we can't discuss NIMBYism. I don't see what gender has to do with housing.
Imagine you have cancer, and thankfully there’s a medication that you can take that keeps your cancer in remission. You’ve been taking it for 15 years, and you’ve been living a pretty good life. Lately though, a bunch of people have been claiming cancer doesn’t exist, and if it does, your form of cancer definitely doesn’t. They’ve already made it illegal for kids to get treated for this cancer in several states, and as you’d expect a lot of kids are dying. Some states are trying to make it illegal for anyone to get treated for their cancer. Companies that used to sell merchandise to raise awareness during cancer awareness month. Oh, and you can’t get a drivers license anymore because your cancer suddenly means that you are “biologically dead”. A major political organization has a policy platform that would make it illegal for anyone with cancer to go into public, because they claim it’s contagious and kids might catch it, and later in that same document they say anyone who risks kids catching a disease should be put to death. One of the major political parties has essentially adopted this platform, and several states have started rolling out parts of the plan.
Now, your neighbor just wants to talk to you about the rules for how far back new houses should be set from the curb, but every other sentence is about how sick those people are who think they have cancer, and how great party is with all of the policies that would basically ensure you die.
Can you really have a polite with them? If so, then I guess we are just of very different dispositions, because I absolutely could not.
> Now, your neighbor just wants to talk to you about the rules for how far back new houses should be set from the curb, but every other sentence is about how sick those people are who think they have cancer, and how great party is with all of the policies that would basically ensure you die.
See that's what I mean. There is (from what I remember) less of this in Europe because the kill-cancer-kids party is different than the curb-setbacks-party. You can even vote for saving kids and curb setbacks!
So basically the cancer thing doesn't come up while you're discussing curb setbacks. Because they're separate issues whose venn diagrams don't overlap. You could even go decades without ever realizing your neighbor doesn't believe in cancer.
My (probably somewhat incorrect) understanding of most European governments was that you might end up in a situation where you vote in the curb setbacks party and then afterwards they decide to form a coalition with the kill cancer kids party because they see it as the most expedient means to get a majority that can increase curb setbacks. Now you have a real problem because maybe you really do care about curb setbacks but not to the point of wanting kids killed.
My understanding is that’s more or less what recently happened in France.
It might make it easier to talk to your neighbor, who can more plausibly say “don’t look at me, I just voted for curb setbacks”, but it does come with some substantial downsides too, and in the end you still have broad multi-interest umbrella coalitions.
Yep that does happen and ultimately the goal of all this is that some sort of concensus is reached.
The benefit is that you get a few seats representing curb setbacks and a few seats representing cancer kids and they both have to work together to make anything happen. As opposed to USA where voting for curb setbacks means the cancer kids get no seats.
I think an important feature is that (as far as I understand) politicians in EU vote based on their issue whereas politicians in USA vote based on their party regardless of issue. And in Europe there's lots of referendums for when the politicians can't agree on something. The big stuff is often decided via direct instead of representative democracy.
So in your example of cancer kids, the party would probably make a big ruckus, then run a few polls to force a referendum, then a few months later everyone would directly have to vote yes/no on the issue. Obviously the parties would run voter campaigns to convince you to vote the way they'd like, but at least they don't get to just decide these things based on whom 50.5% of the country voted for a few years ago.
It's also, I think, a lot easier in [most of?] Europe to refresh the government. I can't even remember the last time a parliament in my home country managed to last a full 4 years without someone forcing an election. The UK in 2022 famously had a prime minister that lasted just 44 days.
We change our politicians like underwear. They're there to do a job not to build empires.
> americans have this weird thing where they worship politicians instead of treating them as disposable public servants who exist at the mercy of your vote
As a British person I also find this weird. There was a tiny amount of it with Boris Johnson and that was mirrored in the very small cult of personality that rose up around Jeremy Corbyn. But for the most part politicians of all stripes are considered with mild disdain and actual membership of a political party is seen as probably a bit weird.
In America... rallies! Thousands of people actually pay to go and listen to this self-aggrandising nonsense. It's very odd.
In the UK I usually voted for the liberal democrats or the greens because each appealed to my views in different ways. Occasionally held my nose and voted Labour when "get the conservatives out" seemed the most important thing. Here in Aus, when I get citizenship, I will feel even more free to vote for smaller parties because we have preference voting. I can (and do) discuss politics with friends who have different views, though as my friends mostly skew liberal (ironically) this means none of them will be voting for the Liberal Party...
That last part is called "identity politics". It's partly due to different politicians and parties trying to directly pander to specific demographics. It doesn't always work - like Trump saying you can't be Jewish and vote for Harris is laughable. But in rural areas it's hard to be a Democrat and be out and proud about it; in urban areas, it's hard to be a Republican in the sea of Democrats. And much of that has to do with how heated politics has gotten around issues like abortion, trans rights, DEI, immigration. Politicians on both sides have leaned into the "culture war" - Democrats arguing the rich should pay their fair share, Republicans with their "stop woke".
It's really unfortunate that quick sound bytes work so much better than real policy discussion.
I think lack of good practice is a big part of it, and I also would add that a lot of the "practice" input our brains get comes from online debate culture and/or watching politicians and surrogates acting in bad faith. That means there's a lot of baggage and bad habits lying around that folks can easily and reflexively fall back, on and it really increases the burden on someone trying to have a good discussion.
Yeah, this reminds me that “politics” is easily confused with tribalism.
Politics at its core is about the organization of who/what gets the government’s attention and resources. It has completely enveloped tribalism, becoming something much closer to a sport/entertainment, especially when people passively consume it rather than actively investigate.
Many years ago my then girlfriend now wife and I were finishing the trip through France. We wound up in the port city of Rouen up north, with the plan to drop off the car near train station, rent a room for a night and take the train to Paris. Unbeknown to us there was some sort of student strike and ALL hotel rooms everywhere were sold out. We found some sort of skanky hostel in a really iffy part of town, not at all the place where we'd usually stay. After dinner near lovely Rouen cathedral memorialized by Monet we got lost on the way back to that iffy area of town. We hailed a young woman walking right ahead of us who was first a bit startled but then helped us find a way in excellent english. We complimented her on her language skills and she said she learned it in America, she was quite proud of it. We asked - where did she go in America? She says - Wyoming! - with a large beaming smile. Why Wyoming of all things we asked (a reasonable question, mind you, considering other more exciting places we have in USA). Her response - "NO PEOPLE!" - and gestured around, alluding that in Europe you are surrounded by people or places the people have been for millenia. She spent a year working on a dude ranch herding cattle there. Definitely if you don't want people you shall find it somewhere in Wyoming.
For a lot of people in the US, politics has become very personal. I believe that some policy decisions have become a direct threat to my health and I can try to discuss those policies calmly but I'm not good at covering my aggravation.
I'd say that everyone has gotten increasingly disdainful of the 'other side'. I know I have - I'm not proud of it but I'm also not a good actor. I was in a message group recently and someone said something that (in my opinion) was so stupid and ill-informed that it was all I could do to sit on my fingers. If we'd been speaking in person, I'm not sure what I would have done but I certainly wouldn't have managed a polite response.
Pregnant women are dying because they are not getting appropriate medical care.
Doctors are unwilling to give pregnant women appropriate care because they may face criminal charges.
This is happening directly because of legislation that has been pushed forward exclusively by one political party in this country.
So I find it hard to understand how someone can care about women's health and support these policies. I'm flabbergasted that I know parents of daughters who support these policies.
In absolute numbers, your statement is true. But the deaths are not equivalent because of agency.
Road deaths are "random". Obviously each one has a specific cause, but we're all equally at risk. We're all in agreement that they should be avoided, and we have significant legislation to improve safety (no one is advocating for drunk driving.)
The issue either abortions is not the death part, but the agency part. Those lives -could- be saved, but aren't, because the law provides reasons for not saving them.
To make things worse, only one half of the population is subject to this risk. So it can feel kinda targeted.
Fundamentally death is not an issue. We have plenty of people. We could lower the speed limit, we could ban alcohol, or guns. All that would drive up life expectancy. We don't do that because there would be consequences and effects from those changes. And life expectancy is not the primary metric.
Abortion is a complex topic, with some people holding very strong opinions. The pendulum has swung to the point where simple medical interventions to save lives are being denied. That's what makes the topic newsworthy.
It's not the death part that matters, it's the preventable part.
Since the pandemic, enforcement of traffic laws has fallen off a cliff, with a corresponding increase in traffic deaths. That is the result of a specific policy choice. Women who get pregnant experience potentially fatal complications somewhat randomly, just like victims of driving accidents are killed somewhat randomly. You probably can’t eliminate either category of death entirely with policy, but it is clear that there are policy levers that could reduce deaths in both categories. They actually seem almost exactly equivalent.
> Abortion is a complex topic, with some people holding very strong opinions.
It is not a complex topic. A woman’s body is her body, and decisions about her body are between her doctor and her. And a doctor should never be doubting their decision in split second decisions because they think they might get prosecuted.
> Road deaths are "random". Obviously each one has a specific cause, but we're all equally at risk. We're all in agreement that they should be avoided, and we have significant legislation to improve safety (no one is advocating for drunk driving.
This is not true at all. Auto accidents are not random and we have significant policy levers that we could pull to drastically reduce them but it's politically controversial to do so.
Simple example would regulating the height of the nose of trucks so that F-150 drivers can see pedestrians easier and make impacts less deadly. Obviously policy, politically impossible.
The cause of an accident is not random. There are lots of causes and we have lots if regulations around that.
The victim if an accident is the random I'm referring to. There's no reason an F-150 driver hits one pedestrian over another.
Naturally there are lots more regulations we could add - but that progresses slowly, and with regard to the parties involved (manufacturers, owners, cities etc.)
By contrast anti-abortion legislation has been enacted quickly, without much (if any) consultation with the electorate or medical fraternity. This has resulted in poorly thought out laws in some cases.
If the government announced tomorrow they will pick 5 people a year at random to be executed for no reason, it would also be at the top of all the news, despite being many fewer deaths than vehicle related injuries.
It’s at the top of the news because it is easily preventable, yet some choose to let people die anyway.
With the abortion thing, it’s not pick people completely at random - It’s arbitrarily pick x number of women, of child bearing age, at random and make them die or suffer grievously.
I don’t think the predominantly male lawmakers in those states would have made the same choices had it been men not women who would be affected.
This is a common way to try to shut down discussion of genuinely important topics: "Why are you complaining? This isn't as bad as $OTHER_ISSUE!"
The issues are independent. We can try to deal with each in their own way. If we were only ever trying to reduce the primary cause of death, and paying no attention to anything else, we would have all kinds of terrible problems running rampant.
Furthermore, the problem with abortions is not just preventable deaths. It's the massive emotional and psychological toll unwanted pregnancies take, and the women left with chronic health issues for the rest of their lives, either because of the pregnancy itself and complications thereof or a failed DIY abortion, and the doctors who are put in prison or who lose their medical licenses for trying to save a woman's life even if the fetus is already guaranteed not to survive.
Ultimately, it's about treating women as whole and complete human beings who have agency over their bodies the same way men do, and not as walking incubators who have less bodily autonomy than a corpse.
> So I find it hard to understand how someone can care about women's health and support these policies. I'm flabbergasted that I know parents of daughters who support these policies.
Do you really not know the reason? They believe fetuses are humans and that killing them is akin to murder, just as killing a baby would. It's as simple as that.
I suppose if would depend on whether you believe that inaction leading to more death is more ethical then actively choosing to murder one life to save the other.
Let's look at the same problem but swap out the actors. Say you have one man with a mortal wound to his heart, and another man with a mortal wound to his lungs. Both will probably die, both men have families, and neither wants to die. Is it ethical to murder one man without his consent and harvest the deceased's organs to save the other?
Technically, "not aborting" may always cause the mother to die since childbirth always carries some risk. But if you mean a case where the fetus is already dead, I doubt many people would oppose the abortion? What are their arguments? I genuinely can't think of any. Maybe this is just a case of the law being ambiguously written and doctors erring on the safer side?
I’d be curious (although you don’t have to answer and we can leave it rhetorical if you prefer) - how much is your health really directly at risk here? Are you a woman in a red state planning to have children soon? Or are you in a blue state, and perhaps have already had children? Even if you were in a red state - would you have the means, and would, travel to a blue state if you had an issue? And if not, really, what’s the magnitude of the likelihood this would ever impact you personally?
My point here is that I find one of the reasons political disagreement is so bad in the US is the amplification of the media with respect to policies that don’t directly impact you to the degree that some people make it seem like, based on their emotional response. One tends to get more emotional when their safety is directly at risk, as you yourself stated it could harm your safety. But the people I have personally seen express this viewpoint in my life are almost exclusively blue state residing liberal women, many of whom are not going to have more children. Of course, one can feel bad for those that might end up directly affected by these policies and generally decide to support pro abortion candidates, but I think it would perhaps be easier for people to discuss and disagree on the merits of policies if people did not always believe it was a truly personal material policy to them — for example, would you feel the same emotional response debating a Polish person about Polish abortion policies?
I also find that many people disagree poorly because they don’t acknowledge that there are pros and cons to almost all policies. You state good reasons to support liberal positions on abortion policies, and I agree with you on those and would prefer the same policies that you do. However, I can understand the following can lead someone to a different view:
1. If you truly believe life begins at conception, then one must weigh the harms to the fetus. Many liberals don’t, and that’s fine, but it’s intellectually dishonest to act like a conservative doesn’t care about pregnant woman and their safety just because they weight the fetus’ life more than you do.
2. The overturn of Roe v Wade was primarily about letting the states decide. Why is that a bad thing? Where do you live? If you have liberal views on this, live in a liberal state. The ones at risk would generally be in the red states, and activists can focus on shifting public opinion in the red states so that local legislatures change their local laws. Enforcing policies across the entire US is also an aspect leading to political division, as people don’t want to do the hard work of changing people’s views and local laws. If you want to argue that Roe v Wade was the right way to advance abortion rights in the US — how would you feel if a Republican court in 4 years made abortion illegal country wide?
I hardly know what to make of this. If I was a wealthy woman in a blue state than it is wrong of me to give a damn about what happens to poor women in red states? That is a unique POV.
I can't imagine how a hypothetical Polish person got into this. I cannot cast a vote in Poland so their politics are outside of my control.
> they weight the fetus’ life more than ....
They weight the fetus's life more than its mothers life.
> The overturn of Roe v Wade was primarily about letting the states decide.
I'm paraphrasing something I read somewhere else, but I don't think it could be put better
- Why leave it up to the federal government and not the state?
- Why leave it up to the state and not the counties?
- Why leave it up to the counties and not the cities?
- Why leave it up to the cities and not the neighborhood?
- Why not just leave it up to the women herself?
I think it nicely reduces it down to the absurdity of the whole. Why exactly is it up to my neighbors whether or not I can get an abortion?
I didn’t say it’s wrong for you to give a damn - I said the opposite, that you can certainly give a damn and support pro abortion policies. But you said it was a direct threat to YOUR health — is it really? Are you a poor woman in a red state? If not, while you can give a damn, my point was that people are unable to disagree these days because they make everything so personal - as if you are in direct serious threat - when perhaps that is an exaggeration that is being caused by our media.
The Poland example: sure, you have no vote there. But do you feel the same DIRECT THREAT? Are you any more likely to need an abortion in Alabama than Poland? While perhaps you have more of an ability to impact Alabama policies by voting, is it really more of a threat? And how much does your vote even matter; are you talking about a national election and live in a non swing state? If so, your money and activism could probably be spent just as well influencing Alabama or Polish views.
On the weighting of the fetus’ life - let’s say it had equal weight (and ignore the question of when life starts)? Wouldn’t the abortion certainly kill the fetus and only possibly kill the mother? Isn’t it the therefore liberals who weight the mother’s life more?
On your last point, it’s up to your neighbors whether you get an abortion because that’s how government works. If, solely for the sake of argument, you concede that a fetus is a real life the same as a baby, can you not see why a government should have a say over abortion? There are two competing lives at stake.
There are obviously two sides to the abortion question, and we're not going to "solve" it here, but I think at least discussing it is healthy.
The pendulum has swung a lot in the last couple years, and I'd argue it has swung a bit too far. All laws have unintended consequences, and we're seeing the out-working of some of that now.
Right now the law is dictating to medicine - laws written by activists and politicians, not doctors. Placing legal liability on doctors as to who they can help, and when. That seems to me to be too far.
Equally the pendulum has swung to a point which is not the viewpoint of the majority. Not even in red states. When on the ballot pro-abortion positions are consistently winning. IVF is under threat (not by accident.)
Moving the law back to the states is a cop out. It creates inequality among citizens of the same country. Which in turn creates a divisive discourse between people who are now forced into one or other position.
Pro choice is not the same as Pro abortion. It moves the choice to the patients and doctors involved. Personally, for reasons, I'm not a fan of abortion. But I can see there are cases every it is appropriate. I support the notion that the right people to make that choice are the people involved.
Lots of people feel differently to me. Perhaps they're in the 50% who will never have to make that choice. Perhaps they are in the 99.99% who will not experience a loved one dying in a preventable way.
Some of us care about harms to our fellow citizens, too? Just because a law might not impact me personally[1] doesn't stop me from going "no, this law is a bad law because it tramples on people's civil liberties."
The Golden Rule.
> it’s intellectually dishonest to act like a conservative doesn’t care about pregnant woman
No, it isn't. Several states have passed total abortion bans that have included, or end up effectively including, abortions for complications in which the pregnancy isn't viable, at all. This ends up harming the mother, for nothing. Cf. [2], [3].
> Why is that a bad thing? Where do you live? If you have liberal views on this, live in a liberal state.
Because fundamental human rights should be secured for all citizens, not just citizens of some states here or there. People should not be forced out of their home, uprooted for their families, just to secure basic rights, or worse, to simply remain alive.
> people don’t want to do the hard work of changing people’s views
The majority of Americans favor abortion.
> If you want to argue that Roe v Wade was the right way to advance abortion rights in the US — how would you feel if a Republican court in 4 years made abortion illegal country wide
Flipping judicial decisions is something that should be inherently done rarely and only with the utmost consideration — when we're certain the precedent is wrong. Otherwise, how can you argue that the system is just?
(The majority of Americans also disagree with Dobbs.)
[1]: They do impact me personally, but I do not think that is a requirement for people to engage in debate. Certainly, more people have a vote than are impacted by some policies, so it practically behooves me to engage them in debate, since their vote will indirectly determine whether such policies pass.
> If not, while you can give a damn, my point was that people are unable to disagree these days because they make everything so personal - as if you are in direct serious threat - when perhaps that is an exaggeration that is being caused by our media.
Which rather strikes me as finding it inappropriate to vociferously speak on an issue that doesn't directly affect them.
Again, I wasn’t suggesting that one needs to be personally or directly affected to speak out about an issue. I was suggesting that it’s harder to have a reasoned debate on an issue when you are directly affected — emotions just run too high. So, my theory for why Americans are so divided and unable to have political disagreements these days is in part because the media is highjacking people’s emotions by making EVERY issue feel that way.
I always support people being passionate and vocal about what they believe in if it’s productive. If you want to go campaign or be an activist and support changes to abortion laws, great! But if you are unable to have a discussion or disagreement with your friend or neighbor, who is not making policy or effecting anything, without potentially getting so heated that you blow up the relationship, and doing that for every single political issue, then perhaps something is wrong in America and it’s worth examining what that is.
I wish we could disagree about policies. Instead we literally have elected leaders screaming that the one party is controlling the weather to destroy another party.
How do you engage and have any kind of civil discourse with that?
Yeah, but perhaps one might find common ground with them on which football team one supports, or on the subject of the weather. Once the interaction is done, one can write B2B SaaS while the other goes to kill all the Jews and gay people (and perhaps the Communists and Trade Unionists as well if Niemoller is to be believed), both doubtlessly performing acts of equal moral value. In this way, America might be healed and people with different political opinions might get along.
That's the problem though right? I think that there are people who are so completely and utterly wrong that I don't know what to do with them. They also think that I am so completely and utterly wrong that they don't know what to do with me.
Exactly. To one side, the other side includes (or defends) people who were "trying to dismantle democracy [over] unsubstantiated claims of fraud". To the other side, these rioters were "peaceful protesters" (I guess they never watched the videos) who did nothing wrong.
In a nutshell, the two sides simply can't even agree on basic reality. If you can't agree on the basic facts of something, it is not possible to have a fruitful discussion about it.
I'm sorry, but I just don't see any kind of workable solution to this issue.
A few people claiming something contrary to readily-available evidence could be explained by lying, but when a significant part of the population does so, it has to be something else.
I am less hopeful. As I see it, there are a startling amount of people willing to trash the democratic process and dismantle trust in our institutions to accomplish their goals.
Sure, but if you look at the stuff they say on that side, they too think that "democracy is in danger" and that only their savior can protect it. It just seems like a case of mass delusion to me, but I'm guessing that in their echo chambers they've come up with some kind of weird logic to explain this.
Maybe one of them here could explain it; after all, there are a fair number of these people lurking about on HN.
I'm just a rando but here's my unprompted solution: treat your fellow citizens as fallible epistemic machines instead of unified, rational members acting freely within a social contract. The solution to flat earthers (to pick a slightly less divisive topic) is not to engage them in logical debate, but rather help fix the systemic and personal issues that have lead them to develop such an obviously false belief.
This obviously calls for some long-term sociopolitical changes to education and journalism (a deadly paradox of chickens and eggs...), but in the context of this specific conversation, I think it would call for finding common ground with your adversaries and working up from there via the Socratic method. You'll never convince someone who's not completely tuned-out to change their stance on an upcoming presidential election in a single conversation, but I think there's more room for agreement than is assumed. We all want to be healthy, wealthy, and wise, and we all intuitively agree that evidence is the basis of belief -- even something as cartoonishly evil as belief in racial supremacy is based in benign intentions corrupted by unclear/dishonestly-presented evidence, if you dig down deep enough.
Practically, besides the Socratic method (framing the conversation as collaborative investigation rather than adversarial interpretation), this might mean asking some different questions than the burning ones we'd like to phrase. Beating around the bush, if you will. It's an incredibly frustrating task to be sure, but anyone who's worked with children knows that it's sometimes necessary. Perhaps;
"Why do you think the election was stolen?" --> "I love Democracy, too, I just haven't seen any evidence of fraud that I've found convincing, yet; can we talk about specific pieces of evidence convinced you, and find where our disagreements begin? Maybe even quantify our levels of relative uncertainty on each?"
"Why do you think immigrants are dangerous?" --> "I'm sure we're both proud of the Statue of Liberty and the freedom of action and belief it represents, and we would have never been large enough of an economy to meaningfully effect WWII with just the 13 colonies and their descendants. What are some policies you think could bring us back to that ideal? Are there any non-Americans in the world that you would welcome as compatriots today, and if not, what specifically do you think has changed?"
Etc. This is admittedly just smuggling philosophy back into our discourse, so a lot of acquaintances or strangers will react with a gruff "shut up!" or "nuh uh, that's confusing", but I've found success employing it on family members. Again, people are trained to assume that they're continuous, unified, rational beings[1] so they'll resist any sudden shifts, but a path exists, even if it's a somewhat treacherous one.
Sorry for the rant, this has been a central belief of mine ever since I was exposed to it by an incredible undergrad philosophy professor -- definitely check her work out if you found any of this intriguing: https://digitalcommons.lib.uconn.edu/dissertations/1875/
All of this is sadly moot for people who have been convinced that evidence isn't required because they have a personal infallible connection to a divine force that secretly controls the world. I, too, have no idea what to with those people!
Speaking as an Indian, what's really going on is that everyone in India has lost hope in their political decisions actually impacting their lives in ways that they wish. So politics is a pretty low-stakes discussion in India, like sports teams.
In America we haven't quite lost hope yet.
edit: to be clear, politics does impact lives in India, but it does so in ways that are quite disconnected from individuals' political actions.
I think Americans have lost hope as well. I think in America it isn't hope for a better tomorrow that is driving politics anymore, it is fear for a worse tomorrow.
I don't know how things are in India, but I imagine people have lost hope that politics will actually impact their lives in ways they wish, but they probably aren't as fear-driven as Americans (yet). And this explains why you can discuss politics with someone you disagree with - because you aren't scared of what the party of someone with opposing views will do (yet).
> And this explains why you can discuss politics with someone you disagree with - because you aren't scared of what the party of someone with opposing views will do (yet).
You cannot grow up in India without realizing there are many opinions you cannot voice at just any random person without inciting a riot. As much as Americans are polarized, they will not burn down cities, houses, etc. over what people said. Even the Indian government has started bulldozing entire homes and even gullies to try to punish people who riot because it's such a problem (and yes it's an idiotic solution to an idiotic problem).
I don't feel as if politics is a low stakes discussion in India, especially the religious end of political discussion. There are so many incidents of full blown riots and violence and killings over what people say about this and that religion or how you portray or don't portray this and that figure.
That’s because it’s an identity thing. And it’s not just religion, it’s also different groups (right?) who have different opinions about what territory belongs to those groups. Is that something which frequently comes up as a subject of debate at table stakes political discussions? I don’t know how common it is for those conflicting parties to interact, but something tells me they don’t discuss politics about it calmly together.
The ability to discuss politics in a group is likely correlated with social capital. Research indicates that modern populations in urban areas have realized a reduction in social capital from prior generations. My grandparents knew a vast amount of people in their neighborhood, in which most attended the same church. Today, in the same neighborhood, anyone is lucky if they know a few neighbors. Often, that isn't the case and virtually no original families remain. Other research implies that the regions with most social capital highly correlate to sparsely populated metros and regions, but not all sparsely populated regions. Rat research indicates that increased population density leads to dysfunctional social behavior.
My personal observation is twofold. First, spontaneous political discussion in the West is considered to be impolite in conversation for valid reasons. The first is the fact that social reactions are unpredictable and, in a casual social situation, rightly the emphasis should be on maintenance of the situation for everyone. To prioritize one's impulse to need to have a political conversation is impolite because it risks the group as well as potentially infringes on the right of others to not be regularly subject to spontaneous (or not) conversations that people frequently get emotional over. Group harmony as well as the individual's right to peace in public are prioritized.
Second, lifelong exposure to propaganda has trained individuals to have highly emotional reactions to those who disagree with them. The political environment in the West is not psychologically designed for casual public political conversation. Everyone knows multiple individuals who simply cannot abide, at least for long, anyone on the other side of the isle. Propaganda's long time goal has been to encourage mental illness to be viral, and it has widely succeeded.
An acceptable public political conversation looks more like one over methods to reach a pre-agreed upon goal. These still happen, however often low value. But many people who need to have a political conversation want the other type: a cross-isle argument over objectives. Which are even more low value, and much more likely to end poorly.
>To prioritize one's impulse to need to have a political conversation is impolite because it risks the group as well as potentially infringes on the right of others to not be regularly subject to spontaneous (or not) conversations that people frequently get emotional over.
How does this transfer to any other situation involving group communication? Do the people on this board have a right not to see emotional conversations? Not rocking the boat has a place in professional settings, but I don't think people have a right, in general, to not see emotion.
I agree that, to a certain extent, it can be socially unpleasant. But saying it's a right is too much.
Not just the US though. It is also true in the UK (maybe not as bad - yet) but we have the polarisation. The hatred of the other side is more on-sided here - its more a characteristic of the "left": you hear "I hate Tories" rather than "I hate Labour voters" or even "I hate socialists" (nor did you even before socialism died). It seems to be the same in other Anglophone countries.
There has also been a shift in the focus of politics away from economic policy and the running of government services (as was very much the case in the UK up to the 1980s) to social issues as a result of a centrist consensus on what were important issues - disagreement about them is now purely theoretical and off the table in terms of what might actually change.
It think the problem has also been inadvertently illustrated by people in the comments discussing specific American culture war issues with a great deal of anger.
An aspect of this is the lack of willingness to compromise. Take abortion. It is much less of an issue in most of Europe because it is allowed, but with short term limits. It means many of the arguments for it are not relevant, but it also undermines many of the arguments against it because of lack of functioning brain tissue, or the state of development comparable to a premature baby. Anglophone countries are much more all or nothing - long term limits or not allow at all.
We also do not (even in the UK) have the American alignment of party politics with social issues. Can you imagine the Republicans being the party that allowed same sex marriage?
I think the moving of discussion online has primed people to be more aggressive about their views in general. I was thinking the other day about the people I know IRL who have blocked me on FB: my ex, a friend of hers, one of my ex's sisters (emigrated to the US and is a stereotype Trump supporter, stolen election theory etc.), a creationist (also my ex's sister, a nice person who keeps in touch with me, but does not like my comments on her FB posts), and a remainer/rejoiner.
I think the american to party system is the problem, which happens to also be used in the uk. You can not make assumptions of the entire west about political matters based on something happening in two countries when they differ so much from other western countries in it's political system.
I’m an immigrant from Eastern Europe who moved to the US decades ago. Eastern Europeans are direct - you speak your mind, so there are no assumptions or miss-understandings. Families live close to where they were born in sparser areas and relationships matter, but there is also forgiveness.
I have friends who come from Welsh and Swiss backgrounds and would have layers of internal inhibition before saying something out of fear of embarrassment or multitude of other concerns. A lot of time that leads to them assuming and assumptions can be wrong. They do a lot less verbal or video contact with family members, almost intentionally so, but would still get together in person (broader context i suspect). A lot of relationships on that side degrade quickly when contact is not made for a while - assumptions upon assumptions of offense or who knows what seems to erode the relationship. So when you meet again it’s almost like you have to earn the friendship again.
Politics in this country involves those two mixes of people and waaaay more. The cultural spread, the political spectrum spread, forms a matrix too big to navigate in 99.9 % of conversations The in-person interactions are not long enough to peel all layers of the political onion and the relationship trust onion before you get to the core that you both agree on. Instead there are often unsaid assumptions, experiences, trauma that won’t fit in a tweet and if they do, nobody has time to read it. The more complicated things get and the lower the attention span, the harder it is to invest time and get a favorable relationship outcome if you discuss politics, so you’re better off not even trying.
It's enough to think for a couple of seconds to realize it has nothing to do with population density, otherwise you could freely discuss politics in less populated areas of the States.
The real reason is that politics, and especially the two party system in most Western countries, is based on polarization, e.g. blaming the other party for all the evil of the world.
It's not some abstract "politics". For left-leaning, it's about freedom for women to decide about their own body, about respect towards minorities and people coming from other countries, just to name a few. For right-leaning, it's about protecting families, cultivating the tradition, prosperity of the country, the right to defend oneself etc. Politics became almost a new religion.
Pretty sure Europe is mostly multi-party systems where coalitions are the norm, so including North America the only two western countries where dual-party is the norm is the United Kingdom and United States (both use first-past-the-post which encourages dual-party systems).
That said, I agree on two party systems promoting toxicity, the Brexit debate in the UK which was a near-perfect 50/50 split was an extremely toxic period in UK politics and heavily influenced the 2019 election. It has got somewhat better in the last couple of years though.
“In my hometown in India, everyone talks about politics all the time. And most of us don’t agree with one another. But that’s okay. I can even tease other people about our political disagreements and it doesn’t get in the way of friendships. Why isn’t that the case here in the US?”
Because when you're in a homogenous in-group you can discuss politics and get annoyed, or heated, and shake hands and go home.
When you're not in an in-group, one side is discussing non-ideal solutions, and the other side wants to destroy you. And then you have to figure out how to convince a friend that their political ideology might kill you.
Read the rest of the post. Indian politics are not somehow lower stakes than ours, the Indian subcontinent is not less diverse, and the author's friend included a specific example of people getting literally killed over their politics.
I'm still puzzled over the article frankly. In India there's political violence and people are getting killed - but they still are happy to discuss politics with their friends and neighbors? There's a disconnect there that I'm not getting. Why are they talking to everyone about their political views if it might get them killed?
That's the question that the Indian person is asking.
Here in the US we'll refuse to interact with someone if we find out that they're part of the wrong tribe, but our political violence is pretty low on the scale of what's possible.
There, they have a lot of political violence and from what I understand quite divisive political issues that put people's lives and livelihoods at stake, but apparently they don't have the culture of avoiding talking about it altogether that we do and they don't attempt to avoid associating with anyone who disagrees with them.
I don't refuse to interact with people of the wrong "tribe", I make sure to ask for their political positions on, e.g., "should interracial marriage be allowed? Should we allow trans people to change their birth certificates?"
If someone is like, "Nah, those things are bad" then I'm happy to not associate with them because I find their beliefs abhorrent. It has nothing to do with tribal affiliation and everything to do with policy.
I'm sensing some sort of neurotypical/neurodiverse divide here.
I don't think it's unreasonable to live a morally comprehensive life. For example, I probably couldn't be friends with a white-supremacist even if they were kind, gentle, supportive, and caring. Some folks are able to look past those things and more power to them. I, however, couldn't sleep at night.
This is what I find as strange. Why couldn't you sleep at night?
In my mind, the moral, healthy, productive, and pro-social thing would be to continue friendship.
I dont think shunning people builds bridges or helps anyone.
Then again, my generation grew up with stories like black activists who befriended KKK members and slowly converted them with compassion and challenging their preconceived notions.
There's definitely some things that warrant distancing. But I try to appreciate the good, even if there is bad. Moral purity is a luxury and self-righteousness can be ugly (sorry).
Not only is it a luxury, it's sheer arrogance to pretend it exists at all.
None of us get through life without complicated trade-offs, and in most cases when you disagree with ~50% of a country's population it's because you have different values of what good thing matters most.
In fact it's a privilege to not have to worry about moral purity. Being able to look past views without personal consequences is life free of that burden. Some people don't have that option.
I'm with you. There are hard lines. But I also have hard lines in who you support. Like, if you vote for a politician who supports, e.g., the eradication of trans people, then even if you say, "I don't believe in that" you've furthered that cause by issuing your vote. I can't abide someone who is willing to compromise on some things.
When reading an article like this, I think westerners get guilt tripped. We must be wrong, just look at all the troubles we have. Maybe if we talked more things would be better.
But maybe the real take way here is that people in Indian should talk less about politics!
Maybe they'd have less political violence if they didn't associate with people who disagree with them. I'm not sure I'm convinced that dying for your political views is a fair price to pay for conversations with your neighbors.
I'm not convinced that the two are correlated. We did just fine associating with people of different political perspectives and discussing politics with them all the way up through 2008 at least, ~~without the violence~~. [Scratching this part out because it's drawing plenty of justified criticism. I stand by the rest, and this part was generally true—with small exceptions—from at least 1990-2008.]
The complete refusal to interact with someone who disagrees with you is a relatively new phenomenon that seems to have risen alongside social media.
> We did just fine associating with people of different political perspectives...
We most certainly did not. Point to an era where there wasn't political violence in the US.
Jim Crow? Civil rights era? WTO Protests? Vietnam war protests? Rodney King? Stonewall? Like... this country has been violent about politics since this country was a country.
Growing up I was afraid to be even remotely "non-manly" because I was so worried I'd be dragged behind someone's truck.
> We did just fine associating with people of different political perspectives and discussing politics with them all the way up through 2008 at least, without the violence.
No, we didn't. Look up what happened in the 1960s. And even that was mild compared to what went on in election campaigns in the 19th century in the US.
>We did just fine associating with people of different political perspectives and discussing politics with them all the way up through 2008 at least, without the violence.
You must have forgotten the US Civil War, plus all the turbulence of the 1960s.
The big difference there was that, for the most part, the two sides were geographically separated from each other.
>The complete refusal to interact with someone who disagrees with you is a relatively new phenomenon that seems to have risen alongside social media.
If you're thinking of the early-to-mid 20th century, things have changed. America has become much more diverse, and co-mingled (in the past, immigrant and other minority groups tended to keep to themselves and not socially interact so much with other groups). White European-descended people are no longer the overwhelming majority (remember, immigrants in the past mostly came from Europe), religion has lost much of its power and many of its believers, homosexuality has become far more accepted, basically one side feels existentially threatened, and the other side oppressed.
There’s literally no way the nation of India is more diverse than the United States- we have the biggest spread of racial, and religious diversity on the planet, by far.
With all due respect, please do some research on India before asserting something like this.
We're taking about a country with ~4x the population of the US where no single language has the majority of native speakers (the closest is Hindi at 26% [0]). 12 different languages are spoken natively by >1% of the population. India has diversity that someone born in the US can't even begin to comprehend.
I think it's hard for Westerners to understand because we view diversity through such a skin color and organized religion lens. 'Everyone' in India is dark-skinned and most are Hindu, so that means they're not diverse, right?
The trouble is that that's a very Western perspective on both ethnicity and on religion, one that doesn't carry over at all.
Actually there's a very easy empirical way to test this claim: look at the amount of subsampling pollsters do. In the US samples are typically weighted after the raw data is collected, by:
gender
age
white college, white non-college, Black, Latino/Hispanic, Asian
party registration
For 1000 samples you get the standard MoE of 3ish percent.
In India you start by dividing up the electorate into hundreds of strata, sample independently from each stratum, then piece it together. This results in Indian polling sample sizes being over 100k for the same 3% MoE.
This is pretty objective evidence of India's diversity.
(I am curious though if 2024 is going to cause pollsters to re-examine polling basics in the US. There are several major warning signs this year that polling is broken, even if it produces the right result in the end.)
The conclusion of this viewpoint is that you either turn everyone into the in-group or one group comes out on top of the others. Either way, diversity won't survive long under that.
Diversity has historically been used to keep populations divided allowing a smaller group to rule over them. Plenty of historical examples (Italy, Ottoman Empire, etc) as well as literature. I think this is described in Machiavelli’s “The Prince”.
And both current US candidates are pushing for immigration/diversity (albeit from different groups, but the end result is the same). The real reason we can’t discuss politics is because our elites want us divided, and they have the means to accomplish that.
I don't often discuss politics with my niece; we've actually had physical altercations before. But I mustered some courage and brought this up to her, and she had the following to say:
"The two party system forces people who advocate for issue X to also have to advocate for Y and Z, when they may really only care about X. Another factor; the decay of respect of and audiences for traiditional mass media, and the rise of personal "bubble" media such as social media has also forced mass communications to be more personal if one wants to reach people, and various political forces are adapting to the new landscape."
I'm not sure if population density has any effect on political discussions more than discussions in general.
i think your niece is on to something. I'd like to develop it further.
I think the problem is that when you talk politics, the subject or your position are irrelevant. You can even extend that to what the parties themselves do and say (the american uniparty has been a common complaint for many voters).
Why ? At the core, the issue are the ideas that each party represents, and how those ideas label you immediately with your peers, regardless of what you actually advocate, or what the party line is on a given subject.
Take a statue. The republican position is to not build it. The democrat is to build it. Just having a conversation about the merits of the statue automatically puts you on a spectrum.
If you are against the statue, you must be an uncaring republican.
If you are for the statue, you must love doing charity with other people's money.
And so on.
This is in spite of direct evidence that both parties don't seem to care about americans, and the unrestrained use of their tax dollars.
Politics in the USA earns you a label, for free, that is not even accurate or deserved.
I've found that a way to side-step this is to NOT talk about solutions; because solutions are always political; but to talk about problems - and not even the causes of the problems, but the problems themselves. Discuss the problems, and "what would you do" kind of hypotheticals, and you can find common ground with almost anyone.
First, you need to come to common ground about the diagnosis of the issue. Only then can you start to talk about a prescription. If interlocutors skip the first step, there is no hope of agreeing on the second.
"mimetic violence," explains it. an ironic result of the success of the melting pot, whereby in a culture where people were sufficiently different and their identities distant, one's success didn't come at the expense of another's. there is no resolution to that today. the conflict is so fierce because the stakes are so small, and it's because we've been told we are the same, homogenous and undifferentiated, with nothing left but a power struggle.
we don't discuss politics because there isn't much left to discuss.
I take some responsibility for it because I thought being tolerant of (and silent about) views i disagreed with was part of a social contract around respect for boundaries and reciprocity, but that worldview isn't equipped to deal with people who are actuated by malice and malevolence. Now, I listen to some people talk politics, but mainly I'm just finding some enjoyment in what we will look back on as "the good old days," appreciating some peace where i can find it, and hoping it all goes another way before we're all drawn-in to the terrible work being set out for us.
American politics is extremely wrapped up in identity and always has been. That means that having an opinion which someone disagrees with isn’t just an opinion they disagree with; in their mind it may be perceived as an opinion about who and what they or their loved ones are, and what should be done to or about them. Maybe I’m presuming here, but something tells me it’s not really like that in the gentleman’s hometown from the article. In America, people who disagree about politics feel like (or are) actual enemies, not fellow countrymen. We also do often place a lot of value on few precious friendships that we’re willing to mutually set aside the fighting and defensiveness for, and for the sake of getting along. I’m not sure that’s hard to explain or understand, and I’m not sure it has so much to do with density.
This part of American culture is probably because of religious pluralism. At work, you don't want workers arguing over religion. You also don't want members of your church being converted to other religious sects at work. Then that gets applied to politics as well, which is useful to keep workers from talking about political things which might lead to discussions of unionization (and similar to guidelines from employers not to talk about salaries).
I’ve long maintained that what the USA really needs is a good opponent again.
Everyone wants to be on a winning team, and with the lack of a good opponent it’s turned into Republicans vs Democrats with no common ground.
At least up until the 1990s there was always a common opponent (the English, the Spanish, the Prussians/Germans, the Soviets). So while Americans had different views, they could at least focus on defeating the enemy together.
Now there is no more enemy, and they turn on each other. I guess old habit are hard to break.
It isn't population density, since we used to discuss politics all the time until 2016. Family get togethers, work events, just friend hangouts, all of them would have active discussions and arguments surrounding politics. The Trump era changed all that. I don't know about India, but I think social media is what changed everything, and how it changed everything is more complex than many people think.
There are so many factors to it. The non-stop nature, the echo chamber effect, how it allows you to hear the thoughts of people you never would have heard before, but also, and maybe this is a big difference with India, that insane effort from Russia and China (and others) to maliciously engage with our social media with the sole goal of disruption of our culture and nation.
I'm in my 50s, and there was plenty of political discussion before 2016, much like the person from India in the OP describes. We used to have a close friend in our friend group and we would regularly tease each other over political issues, but also listen, and he was a staunt Obama-hater and subscribed to birther conspiracies. Two years into Trump and we stopped being friends, and I haven't talked to him since 2018.
I know I have superiors that I know disagree with me politically. Nothing good can come from them knowing that I disagree with them on fundamental assumptions about the universe.
Vilification of ideas is the reason why people can’t discuss politics in the United States.
Reality is that if you have normal common religious beliefs in this country, people on the left will quickly paint you as some sort of evil intolerant person, when most religious people are nice decent people.
Just because they disagree with your lifestyle doesn't make them evil. Why people can’t tolerate basic disagreement is beyond me.
> I think that in America, political beliefs and violence are more closely entwined than in other parts of the world. I’d be a bit worried about getting punched if I got too deep into politics with someone who disagreed with me
Jamie, pull up that clip of Taiwanese legislators getting into a fist fight in Congress.
The easier your life becomes, the more you live in the world of ideas and abstractions. When you and most people around you need to toil daily to stay afloat, it puts things in perspective. There's also a shared bond of work and survival which can smooth things over.
Politics being prominent in your life is a luxury. Even if the stakes are high for you personally, most people worldwide don't have the time and energy to dwell on that.
I think the answer is “don’t generalize based on your sample size of 8 people”. I talk about politics at work all the time. It’s totally fine. I actually disagree with the majority view but we talk about it rationally and make jokes.
If the author knew a little more about India he might have questioned whether Vinay’s political discussions in India are easy and open when Vinay converses with Sikhs and Muslims, or to what extent Vijay can do that at all.
Isn't this better explained by the US's atrocious two-party system that has over the years hyper-polarized politics (multiplied 10x further by social media?)? I can remember 10 years ago it was much easier to discuss controversial politics with a stranger in person that you disagreed with. What I am saying is the situation right now in India insofar as discussing politics with anyone comfortably used to exist in America a decade ago.
India doesn't have a 2 party system (I don't think?). If you look at the seats in parliament there is much more of a rainbow which suggests it is more democratic than the US. Maybe it will eventually evolve into a 2 party equilibrium as more people vote only for bigger parties they think stand a chance, rather than for ones they actually believe in (practically mathematically guaranteed to happen if India's political system has no defence against the spoiler effect). But that shift will take time. If I am right India will eventually be hyper-polarized like the US after it "2-party-crystallizes."
If there were only 2 viable political parties in India right now where votes were split near 50-50 each election cycle and each party viewed the other as a huge threat and amplified how terrible the other is on social media 24/7 I think we'd see cultural norms shift in India and people would start to become more quiet on politics. Population density I don't think would be that key a factor.
Likewise, if the US had multiple political parties all represented in parliament and there just wouldn't be as much political hyper-polarization and without 2 parties tribalistically fighting winner-takes-all style it is much easier to have cultural norms that you can talk controversial political stuff
I've spent the last two years working for a global company with people from all corners of the globe. I've spent many hours talking to them, sometimes on the subject of politics and religion. I must say, it's been so refreshing, especially after coming from Google. I particularly enjoy talking to individuals from communist or post-communist countries, which have been demonized in the U.S., to say the least. Not that I'm pro-communist by any means, but just listening to people's stories from these countries really drives home the point of how similar we all are.
The best part is that the company culture seems to promote these open discussions. I'm not deathly afraid to voice an opinion for fear of HR hunting me down. I wish U.S. companies were like this.
(Note) I'm not suggesting I spend much of my time on this activity. It mainly occurs at meetups or scheduled coffee chats.
It doesn't seem to me that people can't, rather they won't. One invoked reason is they want to avoid conflict but what about "not caring"?.
Yeah yeah, politics affects all and we should be involved but reality is your vote makes little difference in choosing one party or the other. And the other even more nasty problem is that either party you choose you end up with the same politics. Ever increasing taxes, ever increasing debt, ever increasing benefits for the politicians.
Learned helplessness is a thing. How much of it is behind "people don't discuss politics"?
For me it's been fear of impacting friendships. I have some friends who have very different political views than myself, although I consider myself a centrist.
Some of my friends are no longer on speaking terms with each other because there identity is not just wrapped up in their political beliefs but also in opposition of the other side.
It's a sad state of affairs and a fairly recent one, in my opinion.
I don't remember political disagreements being such a big deal before the rise of Trump.
During the Trump Clinton election he changed the game and politics became more about insulting and denigrating your opposition.
No, it's because most Americans know nothing about actual issues and treat politics as a team sport. So there's as much point in talking about it with other people as there is talking about the Mets vs the Yankees or whatever.
I. This is a well written, engaging article, thanks for sharing. I absolutely agree that the thesis is true to an extent, though I would phrase it more broadly (perhaps "American culture is unusually individualistic" or "American local social communities are being replaced by online parasocial ones"). I don't see any reason to suspect that politics is taboo in Mongolia, or frequently debated in China!
II. A huge part of this is just "the instigator is discussing relationships largely not based in work". You can't be fired from your apartment building or your family for being a little rude, but you can and will be fired from your job for causing even slight unrest. Applies to work friends across the world, I would imagine, and I'm guessing a recent immigrant has a higher ratio of those in his new home than his old one.
III. The belief that politics are "abstract" is, itself, a controversial political stance. Imagine for the sake of argument that a small group of people start controlling huge portions of the economy and using it to knowingly and intentionally harm others for fleeting personal gains.
Perhaps you could think of the villains in Don't Look Up letting the apocalypse happen over pride, or, for the conservatives among us, the villains in Atlas Shrugged who cultivate poverty and inequity as a lever for maintaining their power. Hopefully we can all agree that those situations wouldn't be ones of polite disagreement? To make it even more stark, imagine what you would say if one of your friends or family came out as an open Nazi -- it would be immoral to laugh off engagement in literal genocide as a personality quirk, IMO.
IV. "In which a parent pretends he has time to write" is downright adorable and extremely relatable, even for someone who will likely never have children. Godspeed George, may you have many only-slightly-stilted team dinners in Austin ahead of you
I don't discuss politics with coworkers because I have to work with them and I want to be friendly. I can't be friends with someone that questions the basic human rights of my existence as a gay person, so I'd rather not know.
I think it’s part of the reason, but not the sole or main reason.
I blame American exceptionalism, and the idea of hyper individualism and excessive consumerism. Insulting any part of that “individualism” (ie, guns, housing, transportation, clothing choices, and even the car you drive) and suddenly you are persona non grata to that person.
Population density may be a factor but I don't think it's dominant.
Right now, as I see it, the biggest problem in American politics is that the American right has been taken over by a personality cult. This has in turn sparked a broader anti-cult movement that is left dominant but open to everyone. Somehow these two forces have almost equal valence within our electoral system but it feels almost impossible to talk across the divide. Unfortunately I think the anti-cult movement almost paradoxically strengthens the cult and the result is both sides digging deeper and deeper in.
The undecideds generally don't pay much attention and think that both sides are a little nutty and that elections should be about policy. They are frustrated that they are being forced to choose between two seemingly bad options. They also know that they will be harshly criticized for their choice by many no matter which they make. This is an extremely toxic dynamic and it is leading to increased radicalization on both sides but the scale of radicalization is significantly higher on the right.
Like any cult, the crazier the claims made by the leader, the stronger the hold they have on its members who have already sacrificed intellectual autonomy to the movement. To admit that they've been duped is psychologically devastating and could lead to the loss of community that they've made through the movement. So they get defensive and closed off to reason. And, of course, as a defense mechanism they must project their experience onto their opponents whom they assume must also be delusional. This is exacerbated by the fact that any large group of people will contain the full range of character types: crazy and sane, cruel and kind, smart and dumb, etc. But once you have a strong bias (which is encouraged by the cult leader), you will start seeing all the negative things almost exclusively in the other side and all the positive things in your camp.
It is almost impossible to reason with someone who is not open to an opposing viewpoint (even if they are otherwise intelligent) and it can be dangerous if there is a reasonable probability that the discussion can turn hostile. So many if not most people avoid those challenging conversations out of a reasonable sense of self-preservation. I would certainly not try and talk politics with anyone with a "FUCK $DEMOCRATIC_POLITICIAN" flag flying in their yard and, honestly, it's not really that hard to tell from a few minutes conversation if they might lean that way.
I want to be clear that I'm not saying that I am immune to cult like thinking. I certainly have been indoctrinated into problematic belief systems and still have some erroneously biased thought patterns.
People are complicated and they can be quite rational in one domain and irrational in another. Unfortunately, we seem far past the point of rationality in our political system. Nevertheless I have hope that we can get through this difficult period with a minimum of damage but that hope is irrational on my part.
Kurt Lewin is viewed by many as the father of social psychology [1], who made a name for himself particularly with studying the social dynamics that allowed the HOlocaust to happen, the psychology of obedience. What allowed otherwise ordinary people to go along with such horrors has been studied ever since.
I believe MAGA will be studied in similar terms for similar reasons for decades to come as researchers will seek to understand the mass psychosis and cognitive dissonance that made this possible.
What we have now goes beyond simple politics. We have a significant group in our society who is openly calling for inflicting violence on millions of people, be they immigrants, trans people, Muslims or whoever. I don't say this as hyperbole or as an intended political rant. These statements are objectively factual. If, say, you want to deport millions of people, that's a massive act of state violence, one where the logistics should be discussed but aren't. Why? Because it would involve internment camps (concentration camps, if you will) for millions of people. Is that not ringing any alarm bells for anyone?
The Holocaust isn't the only example where legitimate grievances were directed at a minority with horrific consequences. Even in the last century we've had the Killing Fields of Cambodia, the Rape of Nanjing, Rwanda, Sudan, Ethiopia, Aremenia, Yemen and even the Cultural Revolution, to name just a few.
There is no compromise position when it comes to industrialized violence against millions of people. We're not discussing how healthcare should be provided or how shchools should be funded or how we pay for the roads and bridges. Those things you should be able to discuss, But we're so far beyond that now.
Disagreements can be healthy. But everything you say somehow ends up getting used against you in a formal way. Somebody at work can misinterpret what you say and it can cost you your job. You have a political idea that some nutty Republican shares? Well you're basically Hitler now. Good luck with your career.
I'm obviously exaggerating, but it's related to our political discourse in society at large. Open up reddit, read some of the political commentary, and try not to vomit in your mouth. People don't engage with ideas, or each other. I can't tell you how often I see people respond with things they assume the other person thinks instead of just talking about what was said. People in this thread have mentioned how difficult it is to untangle beliefs, assumptions, etc and that's true. No, politics isn't about ideas, it's about group identity. A consequence of this is that the conversation can quickly become reactive and emotional. It's easy to get othered (and this can have severe consequences) and we're apparently very aware of how the other necessarily impacts our life in a negative way (via social media and the major news outlets).
Part of the problem is that we've normalized this degree of sensitivity. I also wouldn't be surprised if our news feeds were incentivized to spread divisive beliefs.
Difficult to read even though you mentioned Broken Democracy with capitols. Was not typing it out again twice really more effective communication? The overhead for replacing two other uses in a single context didn't warrant the creation of a new acronym, let alone one so short.
The acronym was about focus, not about overhead. There's always been foreign influence, and sweeping it under the rug is standard practice. Democracy broke when we went from "influenced" to "pwned." Unbreaking it will require more than just wishing the problem away.
It's because every election the political parties figure out how to up the stakes to get people to care about voting. Now if someone gets voted it's "literally life or death" (it super isn't). Everyone could use a dose of "no treason" by Lysander spooner. Then maybe we can care little enough to have actual conversations.
If it really was population density, it would be easy to discuss politics in urban NYC and very difficult/ rare in rural Wyoming. I don’t think that’s really the case.
I suspect politics are more discussed in forums where there is more “psychological safety” where the consequence of saying a thing that others disagree with doesn’t cause a rift in the relationship (as evidenced by the “it’s hard enough for a parent to make friends” statement).
The reason we can’t discuss politics is because we don’t practice. The widespread saying “don’t discuss politics or religion [in X context]” means that we have fewer places to discuss it, so we get less practice to do it. We are less practiced so it is brittle. If we practiced more, we would be more resilient.
Discussions about politics and religion are rife with conflation of opinion with fact, true fact with false fact, claim with evidence.
Most good faith differences on politics boil down to differing values and priorities. Having a discussion about those directly, rather than through the lens of the broken US political parties / election system is usually more productive in avoiding the screaming / emotions.
Then again, you could argue that the premise is flawed and we talk about politics too much…
Practice is important. And being able to say, "I disagree, and discussing it further won't change my mind" is important.
But many of the current political topics are life or death for parts of the community. Like, I know plenty of trans sysadmins for whom politics isn't just "well, one party advances ideas I support and the other less so". For them it's "One party will make my every waking moment a nightmare".
I understand why, even with practice, some political positions are simply intolerable for them. (And to me, this feels different than, say, "I have opinions about which rate I should be taxed" though I admit tax rates could be life or death for some people.)
And this is precisely why people, not just Americans, can't disagree about politics over time. Politics always turns into someone having the perspective "civil disagreement cannot be tolerated because the stakes are too high for my side" which is anethema to reason and concord regardless of whether it's actually true or not.
Catastrophizing is always incentivized in the immediate term because it forces any interlocutor(a) to address it at the expense of any other topic and then the catastrophizer can accuse them of apathy and marginialization if they don't show the requisite enthusiasm and deference.
It's a no-win situation for anyone attempting to deescalate and many just check-out rather than deal with the litany of accusations, which I guess is another kind of victory for the catastrophizers.
This. I've had conversations with PhD folks who are genuinely afraid Trump getting elected will mean their naturalized citizenships will be reversed and they'll be deported. I've had conversations with gay Americans who asked me if they should consider moving to Canada because Trump may remove recognition for gay marriages. Both of these positions are so far out of the likelihood of things that may happen that there is no reason to think about them at all, and yet they do. There is little point in discussion at that point.
But what's special about Americans and politics? If I told my coworkers I think the Earth is flat, they'd think I was an idiot and shrug and then continue to work with me. But somehow knowing how I vote is a shortcut to assuming I've drunk the party koolaid and believe in everything the party does and then we can't work together? The extreme sides of both parties are just that, extremes, and don't represent my beliefs on any number of issues, but it's a two party system so you have to go with one or the other, or throw your vote away. Elsewhere, people can work together just fine knowing their coworkers voted for the wrong party.
Why not just throw your vote away anyway? Whats the point unless you live in a swing state? Also why give the government any ammunition to legitimize their existence in the first place.
>Whats the point unless you live in a swing state?
The game theory strategy in the electoral college is to register and vote as the non-dominant party in any election. If enough people follow this strategy, the locality becomes a swing state and the party platform and candidates will reflect their interests.
>Also why give the government any ammunition to legitimize their existence in the first place.
Until the government collapses, they still control the monopoly on violence. Unless you're a radical pacifist and willing to be the sacrificial lamb, there is a pretty clear need to participate to the extent that the wolf of government doesn't eat you. The punishment which the wise suffer who refuse to take part in the government is to live under the government of worse men.
fragmede, 2017:
>I’m not sure what’s turned the tide for me, but I now believe there are limits to free speech. It turns out that some ideas are toxic, as in, people get sucked into them, are too stubborn/whatever to admit they were wrong, and become rabid believers of nonsense.
>Witness the adherents to the flat earth society or those that stringently don’t believe we landed on the moon, never the Googler’s sexist manifesto. Anti-semitic screeds like “the Jews run the banks and this is why you’re poor!” frequently leak into open comment sections of your local news’ website, or YouTube comments.
It's not just Americans. The worst offenders tend to be those that believe that they are immune to it.
And this is massively more true in the current environment than it has been in the past, due to the degree to which one side of the political divide actually wants to kill, severely curtail the rights of, or erase the identities of people on the other side.
The interesting thing is, it is hard to tell which side you are talking about here. I've heard exactly the same thing from both the left and the right.
I'm going to check out now.
I think a lot of people genuinely believe that transwomen are grooming and raping children en masse, or at least trying to get into women's sport so they can win medals. The fact that this is both wrong and stupid and has no real non-circumstantial evidence does not stop them.
At some point people have to talk to each other, right? And that's where you have a discussion about how you don't think kids should go to the Folsom Street Fair either, but that you also don't think it's fair for a 39 year old transwoman not to be allowed onto the division F basketball team with her friends, and maybe you and your interlocutor both discover that the other side is a little more tolerable than you thought.
Edit: I didn't really explain that very well. What I mean is that neither extreme finds the opinions of the other extreme tolerable, and that this is the result of paying too much attention to the long tail extremes instead of the middle of the bell curve.
The topics of housing and drugs and energy and monetary policy and don't get more airtime because we spend time discussing gender and abortion. This is by design.
> being able to say, "I disagree, and discussing it further won't change my mind" is important
Though, I would argue, unnecessary. If you faithfully believe, challenge shouldn’t be burdensome. If you’re open to revision, maybe they have a point. I’m not Epictetus, but unless your conversation partner is an idiot or a bore, there is usually something redeeming there.
It has an opportunity cost. It's not burdensome to be challenged, per se, it's burdensome to repeat that, "Yes, I think trans people are humans with complex interior lives who mostly want to be left alone. No, they are not coming into bathrooms en masse to molest you. Yes, they deserve to just get on with their lives. No, we shouldn't mock them for who they are" etc. etc.
It takes someone 3-5 seconds to "just asking questions" and it takes me much more than that to respond. There's an obvious imbalance there that leads to:
a) It's a lot more exhausting to respond than to ask
b) It's vulnerable to malicious askers abusing my good faith answering time
So while, with close friends, I'm happy to answer questions. Or with well meaning allies who genuinely want to learn and just don't understand. But like, random folks? On an internet forum? Nah. They can ask and I can say, "Sorry, let's just not engage."
> it's burdensome to repeat that, "Yes, I think trans people are humans with complex interior lives who mostly want to be left alone
So…don’t. Listen to why they think that. The point is it’s fine to walk away still disagreeing but understanding why a little better.
> On an internet forum?
Oh hell no, I’m talking about in person.
Challenge response has a higher cost than challenging.
For example, would you debate with every flat earther you see? It's simply not worth the time spent. Maybe they fall into the idiot category though.
> unless your conversation partner is an idiot or a bore, there is usually something redeeming there.
My recent experience is that even intelligent and thoughtful people start sounding like idiots when they decide to talk politics, and the conversations quickly turn into a huge bore. All I can do is roll my eyes.
We only have a finite amount of time on this planet.
I think this is however kind of lopsided. For example, trans people are a hotly debated subject but are only 1% of the population or whatever. An individual trans person might have to engage in this debate daily, but a non-trans person might only engage online voluntarily because they have never met a trans person IRL and the concept of one is a fun thought experiment. In that sense being able to say "discussing this topic further won't change my mind" may be an important part of simply letting politicized minorities go about living life.
> And being able to say, "I disagree, and discussing it further won't change my mind" is important.
'Agree to disagree' is just an opt out. At that point there usually isn't any agreement upon what is disagreed upon in the first place. It is a debate evasion.
It is usually more honest to say 'I don't want you to convince me or the audiance otherwise'.
But ye there is some endurance limit the discussion need to respect. My point is that 'agree to disagree' is way overused.
> …It is a debate evasion.
> It is usually more honest to say 'I don't want you to convince me or the audiance otherwise'
i’m not trying to be mean but this is just wild. i’ve walked away from “debates” with people many times, not because i “don’t want to be convinced” it’s because too often i just genuinely don’t care what the person thinks about $ISSUE.
i mean, most of us went to university and many of us took those classes, many of us have been online for long enough to have seen every argument and every sophist angle countless times. i learned quick enough that many of these issues have no ‘correct’ answer, they’re personal beliefs with deep foundations.
we also learned early on that debates are silly unless there are actual subject experts (like recognized-by-their-peers-experts), strict moderators, and rules in place. randoms “debating” incredibly complex nuanced topics without actual experts is just… i mean…
…without those things it’s just rhetoric and sophistry. for the debateBros it’s about “winning” rather than coming closer to a truth. other than a few loud debateBros most people discovered these things in like sophomore year.
even more important, and this is just a personal opinion, but i find debateBros super weird and not in the good way. far too often their antisocialness just kills conversations. if someone is a grown adult and can’t tell the difference between a conversation and a debate they almost universally just end up making the entire atmosphere awkward. i learned pretty quickly when out with friends to spot randoms shifting into "debate mode" and we drag the conversation in a totally different direction to stave it off.
unless i know someone irl and enjoy them on a personal level theres almost unlimited things id rather do than spend my time "debating" with them. it boggles my mind how they just repeatedly fail to understand that adversarial debate is not at all normal conversation.
while i absolutely do enjoy passionate discussions of politics with a few family members (cousins, aunts, etc…) and a few friends, but with randoms? almost never. randoms "debating" outside of actual experts? nah, not a chance.
and it’s super important to understand that most of the current divisive topics don’t have “one” correct answer. often they don’t even have a correct answer at all, but rather many valid ways to approach and from multiple foundational beliefs.
Well, nothing like a lengthy meta debate about lengthy debates.
I think I was quite clear that I accept the 'endurance excuse'.
I was trying to make the point that the 'endurance excuse' is used as as an escape hatch way too often to silence the debate by people often with the consenus opinion that don't want to risk losing a debate.
In general I agree with you points.
i hope i didn’t come across as if im “debating” something, apologies if it did.
The problem with this position is that politics in the current situation are not just about minor details of tax policy or whether to build a bridge here or five miles away there. They are an existential matter for too many people.
When the issue at hand is something like "I think black people deserve the same rights as white people," no, no one is ever going to convince me of the opposite. There is literally no point to me listening to someone who has that as their position (and you're damn right I don't want them convincing the audience either). Same with a number of other prominent issues at stake today.
So if someone comes at me with one of those positions, and doesn't seem, from the outset, to be already seriously on the fence, or to be presenting extremely easily debunked misinformation, yeah, I'm going to nope out of there. It's not worth raising my stress level to argue with that type of person, with or without an audience.
What are some other, modern, issues that instantly cause you to lose interest?
> But many of the current political topics are life or death for parts of the community.
This is just hyperbole intended to stop debate and discussion. It’s not life and death to stop biological men from competing in women’s sports for example.
There is no party that will make “every waking moment a nightmare" for the LGBTQIAP+. That’s the same thing we heard in 2016, and nothing came of it then. And in fact between 2020 and 2024 there is definitely an argument that can be made that even under the “preferred” party things got worse. Ironically, that exact rhetoric has led to multiple terror attacks on innocent people.
To be clear, I believe both parties are anti-trans. Malcom X was spot on with the Fox and the Wolf -- they both want to eat the lamb, the wolf is just a lot more honest about it.
I regularly argue that Biden has been specifically and materially awful to the trans community. Do not mistake me saying that Republicans want to do worse as somehow saying the Dems are good.
But anti-trans legislation, particularly at the state level, is rising dramatically. (With almost 700 bills introduced this year, compared to merely 10-20 10 years ago.)
The follow states passed anti-trans bills last year: Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Iowa, Idaho, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Missouri, Mississippi, Montana, North Carolina, North Dakota, Nebraska, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Wisconsin, West Virginia, Wyoming
I think, looking at that list, it's pretty clearly predominantly right-leaning states who are actually enacting legislation to make access to education, healthcare, mental health support, services, name changes, etc. more difficult. Like, I don't think that's even subjective. 87 bills passed in those states, and those states are the only ones who passed anti-trans bills.
> To be clear, I believe both parties are anti-trans
This is IMHO the most toxic and divisive topic not just in politics, but in society too, it touches upon a universal long and cultural fabric of sex division. What you may consider anti-trans to someone else is updating legislation to cover something they never thought it would need to.
Republicans or conservatives in general, may be opposed to same-sex marriage, but it doesn't specifically make them anti-gay.
For context, I'm not a conservative, I just try and be polite, respectful and understanding to those with opposite opinions, as long as they treat me the same.
Pro-women and pro-safeguarding, actually. That's the actual intent of this legislation.
>nothing came of it
I’m guessing you aren’t trans or know anyone that is.
Trans people were kicked out of the military under trump. Some republican governments are making it difficult to near impossible for trans people to get transition related medical care. Republican governments are making it difficult to even get identification documents that match your identity. Republican governments are trying to make certain identities to be considered profane and excluded from general society.
“ In August 2017, the White House put out the actual policy behind those tweets. According to the administration, Trump would effectively return to the pre-2016 era in which trans troops could not serve openly. It would also ban the military from paying for gender-affirming surgeries, with some exceptions to “protect the health” of someone who had already begun transitioning. The guidance also allowed the secretary of defense, after consulting with the secretary of homeland security, some wiggle room to decide what to do with already serving trans service members — and it let them advise the president on reversing the ban.”
https://www.vox.com/identities/2017/7/26/16034366/trump-tran...
There are also no reliable numbers of any trans people who were kicked out of the military (if any). Many continued to serve that were already in.
[flagged]
I can’t tell if this is satire.
I’m not sure you know what satire is.
Ooook you’re being serious. Thanks for clarifying. You actually believe this
Anyways here’s reality:
https://www.aclu.org/legislative-attacks-on-lgbtq-rights-202...
https://abcnews.go.com/US/threats-lgbtqia-community-intensif...
[flagged]
Really ? People have to be killed to take their concerns seriously/ qualify as a a nightmare for affected people. That's a very high-bar for changing discriminating shit.
Also you've been living under a rock if you've not seen any fatal hate-crimes against trans people in the news.
> Incidents include [...] 320+ acts of vandalism, 200+ bomb & mass shooting threats, 130+ assaults, and 45+ cases of arson, resulting in 161 injuries and 21 deaths.
https://glaad.org/releases/glaad-releases-data-on-anti-lgbtq...
https://www.justice.gov/hatecrimes/hate-crime-statistics
The fact that OP did absolutely zero research and pretended like the rhetoric used by the left to uh.. support trans rights, somehow, I guess, created terrorism that far eclipsed the violence actually perpetrated against trans people is exactly why I assumed the comment was satire.
Yep, there’s definitely a reason we can’t as a society talk about politics.
[flagged]
This is ridiculously reductionist and honestly a bad faith argument. I know that you know it is and if you don't, please listen to some trans people and the violence that the put up with.
[flagged]
I don't think it is. I think this person might genuinely believe that there aren't trans lives at risk. Which is unfortunate. Maybe they'll use this as an opportunity to learn, but my money is on them responding angrily to me elsewhere after their post gets flagged.
[dead]
Two issues that are probably rare but not worth the risk
1. political stance is not a protected status. if I find out (or vice versa) that some manager has opposite stances of me, things get awkward at best or dangerous at worst. Rather not be fired that easily, especially since a lot of work is from home with little opportunity for small talk.
2. there are just crazies out in my area, and US is only getting more violent. I ain't risking that just to make some small talk in public. Most people are far from good faith and a few have enough short fuses that I'd rather not take that risk.
Don't forget that a lot of the crazies are carrying guns, thanks to America's obsession with "gun freedom".
For what it's worth I am in the most gun toting state and we do talk politics. I do not claim to be one of theirs and do not always say nice things about their guy. I try to focus on areas that I know we have common ground and that I think they will find interesting. It usually works out to be a fun conversation. In fairness I would not try this in a bar where peoples inhibitions are taking a break but I do not drink so that's fine. I think my saving grace is that I distrust all politicians equally and I know some bits of the deep state they were unaware of so they get something out of it. At the end of the day we are all still part of a community and still help each other out.
> it would be easy to discuss politics in urban NYC and very difficult/ rare in rural Wyoming. I don’t think that’s really the case
I live in both! It’s easy to discuss if you’re respectful. Even with someone who will take offence to any opinion but their own. You can label them zealots. But they’re also passionate about something, and even if the what is banal the why is usually incredibly beautiful.
> If it really was population density, it would be easy to discuss politics in urban NYC and very difficult/ rare in rural Wyoming.
This assumes that the effects of population density are continuously distributed, but what if the national discourse is affected by population density in a way that shows up across the entire country?
It turns out that population density is highly correlated with Democrat / Republican voting behavior.
But I was pointing out that the article/title is easily refuted. It’s not as simple as that heuristic.
Psychological safety is another way of saying 'anonymous, cowardly trolls'.
People say things they shouldn't when they believe they are anonymous. It's to our detriment.
> rather than through the lens of the broken US political parties / election system
This is key, in my observation as an immigrant from Europe who's lived here ~10 years. Europe for the most part has multi-party democracies meaning that for every pet cause you might have there is a party that focuses on your cause. Larger causes get parties that might even get elected into parliament.
Those larger parties still have to work together with other parties to form a coalition/anti-coalition. Those coalitions then end up running the country.
In practice this means that when you're discussing politics with friends, you don't bifurcate into right/wrong, you discuss differences on specific causes. You and your friend might disagree about UBI, or trans rights, or whatever, but you both understand that you more or less agree on the other 9/10 issues. You are more alike than you are different and that makes debating your differences easier.
Contrast that with american politics where it's all or nothing. If you like abortion and low taxes, there is no way for you to vote.
Additionally americans have this weird thing where they worship politicians instead of treating them as disposable public servants who exist at the mercy of your vote. People actually treat whom they vote for as a part of their identity. That always felt weird to me. It means any discussion of politics becomes a triggering assault on your ego.
edit to share an example:
In college I signed a thing to support The Pirate Party. The most they've ever achieved is like 1 or 2 seats in parliament. But this means that every law that gets discussed has a voice or two talking about its impact on copyleft, opensource, net neutrality, etc. This is great! And it doesn't mean anyone has to abandon the bigger more important issues to get this representation.
> Contrast that with american politics where it's all or nothing. If you like abortion and low taxes, there is no way for you to vote.
I'm European. The most influential topic in voting behaviour is immigration, as any study (or recent European election result) would tell you. In the wealthier countries, climate policy is also in the top 5. If I want to vote for progressive climate policy and being tough on immigration, there isn't a single party that I can vote for. And there hasn't been, for decades.
It's hardly better in Europe.
Agree, the forced two-party system is very limiting and the identity tied to politics is emblematic of modern US. In EU, as I believe in India from the anecdotes in the article, a lot of the identity is tied to the place you are from and the social strata the family occupies. Those are somewhat immutable things (where you were born and what family you are from), so deciding to break off communication with that community is “expensive” socially because there is no other community that will readily accept you as their own. Whereas in US, it’s quite normal to change social circles at will. Density/proximity makes it much more obvious, but the semi-fixed social circles I believe have a lot to do with it. Many US expats report loneliness when moving abroad for similar reasons - it’s hard to find a new inner circle in societies built around other identities.
> Those larger parties still have to work together with other parties to form a coalition/anti-coalition. Those coalitions then end up running the country.
Although I think there might be some benefits to this style of government, I also think people over-index on it. One way or another these groups end up forming coalitions and making compromises in order to govern. In one case it happens before the election, and mostly behind the scenes with some influence from the primary process. In the other case, it happens after the election when the parties are figure out how to form a majority after the representatives have been selected. One advantage to the former is that at least you know who what other policies your special interest are going to align you with ahead of time, rather than finding out after the fact that your vote brought along more baggage than you bargained for.
> You and your friend might disagree about UBI, or trans rights, or whatever, but you both understand that you more or less agree on the other 9/10 issues.
But if one the people in that discussion is trans, and the other person doesn't believe that trans people are real, have a right to exist, deserve health care, etc. then it doesn't matter if they agree on 9/10 other issues. Same with abortion. If one person in a discussion believes in the value of rational evidence based decision making, and the other believes in woke 5g space lasers, there's simply no foundation on which to build a shared understanding upon which to base a conversation.
Many of the central arguments that are causing polarization in politics today are due to fundamental incompatibilities in values- the kind that no amount of agreement on other matters of policy
> Contrast that with american politics where it's all or nothing. If you like abortion and low taxes, there is no way for you to vote.
There absolutely is. There's no perfect candidate, but there's still going to be a better choice. You pick what matters most to you, and how many things you are willing to compromise for those things, make the best choice available, and work to push the discussion of one party or the other closer toward your views in the areas you don't like.
I don’t think God is real but it doesn’t stop me from talking to Christians about other topics.
Do those Christians advocate burning unbelievers at the stake?
Luckily, these days, you'd have a very, very hard time finding any Christian who publicly advocates this, but centuries ago it was rather common.
> But if one the people in that discussion is trans, and the other person doesn't believe that trans people are real ...
Why tho? Just because we might disagree on the details of gender doesn't mean we can't discuss NIMBYism. I don't see what gender has to do with housing.
It's possible I'm the weirdo here because the American obsession with identity never quite clicked for me. We once did a "What are your identities" team building exercise and the question felt so nonsensical that I couldn't complete the exercise.
(for the record I am pro-trans, at worst indifferent and think it's none of my business)
> Why tho? Just because we might disagree on the details of gender doesn't mean we can't discuss NIMBYism. I don't see what gender has to do with housing.
Imagine you have cancer, and thankfully there’s a medication that you can take that keeps your cancer in remission. You’ve been taking it for 15 years, and you’ve been living a pretty good life. Lately though, a bunch of people have been claiming cancer doesn’t exist, and if it does, your form of cancer definitely doesn’t. They’ve already made it illegal for kids to get treated for this cancer in several states, and as you’d expect a lot of kids are dying. Some states are trying to make it illegal for anyone to get treated for their cancer. Companies that used to sell merchandise to raise awareness during cancer awareness month. Oh, and you can’t get a drivers license anymore because your cancer suddenly means that you are “biologically dead”. A major political organization has a policy platform that would make it illegal for anyone with cancer to go into public, because they claim it’s contagious and kids might catch it, and later in that same document they say anyone who risks kids catching a disease should be put to death. One of the major political parties has essentially adopted this platform, and several states have started rolling out parts of the plan.
Now, your neighbor just wants to talk to you about the rules for how far back new houses should be set from the curb, but every other sentence is about how sick those people are who think they have cancer, and how great party is with all of the policies that would basically ensure you die.
Can you really have a polite with them? If so, then I guess we are just of very different dispositions, because I absolutely could not.
> Now, your neighbor just wants to talk to you about the rules for how far back new houses should be set from the curb, but every other sentence is about how sick those people are who think they have cancer, and how great party is with all of the policies that would basically ensure you die.
See that's what I mean. There is (from what I remember) less of this in Europe because the kill-cancer-kids party is different than the curb-setbacks-party. You can even vote for saving kids and curb setbacks!
So basically the cancer thing doesn't come up while you're discussing curb setbacks. Because they're separate issues whose venn diagrams don't overlap. You could even go decades without ever realizing your neighbor doesn't believe in cancer.
My (probably somewhat incorrect) understanding of most European governments was that you might end up in a situation where you vote in the curb setbacks party and then afterwards they decide to form a coalition with the kill cancer kids party because they see it as the most expedient means to get a majority that can increase curb setbacks. Now you have a real problem because maybe you really do care about curb setbacks but not to the point of wanting kids killed.
My understanding is that’s more or less what recently happened in France.
It might make it easier to talk to your neighbor, who can more plausibly say “don’t look at me, I just voted for curb setbacks”, but it does come with some substantial downsides too, and in the end you still have broad multi-interest umbrella coalitions.
Yep that does happen and ultimately the goal of all this is that some sort of concensus is reached.
The benefit is that you get a few seats representing curb setbacks and a few seats representing cancer kids and they both have to work together to make anything happen. As opposed to USA where voting for curb setbacks means the cancer kids get no seats.
I think an important feature is that (as far as I understand) politicians in EU vote based on their issue whereas politicians in USA vote based on their party regardless of issue. And in Europe there's lots of referendums for when the politicians can't agree on something. The big stuff is often decided via direct instead of representative democracy.
So in your example of cancer kids, the party would probably make a big ruckus, then run a few polls to force a referendum, then a few months later everyone would directly have to vote yes/no on the issue. Obviously the parties would run voter campaigns to convince you to vote the way they'd like, but at least they don't get to just decide these things based on whom 50.5% of the country voted for a few years ago.
It's also, I think, a lot easier in [most of?] Europe to refresh the government. I can't even remember the last time a parliament in my home country managed to last a full 4 years without someone forcing an election. The UK in 2022 famously had a prime minister that lasted just 44 days.
We change our politicians like underwear. They're there to do a job not to build empires.
Very well put. I think it’s this tribalism, us vs them mentality that is the issue
> americans have this weird thing where they worship politicians instead of treating them as disposable public servants who exist at the mercy of your vote
As a British person I also find this weird. There was a tiny amount of it with Boris Johnson and that was mirrored in the very small cult of personality that rose up around Jeremy Corbyn. But for the most part politicians of all stripes are considered with mild disdain and actual membership of a political party is seen as probably a bit weird.
In America... rallies! Thousands of people actually pay to go and listen to this self-aggrandising nonsense. It's very odd.
In the UK I usually voted for the liberal democrats or the greens because each appealed to my views in different ways. Occasionally held my nose and voted Labour when "get the conservatives out" seemed the most important thing. Here in Aus, when I get citizenship, I will feel even more free to vote for smaller parties because we have preference voting. I can (and do) discuss politics with friends who have different views, though as my friends mostly skew liberal (ironically) this means none of them will be voting for the Liberal Party...
> Thousands of people actually pay to go and listen to this self-aggrandising nonsense. It's very odd.
I’m pretty sure they’re free. They are nevertheless odd.
That last part is called "identity politics". It's partly due to different politicians and parties trying to directly pander to specific demographics. It doesn't always work - like Trump saying you can't be Jewish and vote for Harris is laughable. But in rural areas it's hard to be a Democrat and be out and proud about it; in urban areas, it's hard to be a Republican in the sea of Democrats. And much of that has to do with how heated politics has gotten around issues like abortion, trans rights, DEI, immigration. Politicians on both sides have leaned into the "culture war" - Democrats arguing the rich should pay their fair share, Republicans with their "stop woke".
It's really unfortunate that quick sound bytes work so much better than real policy discussion.
I think lack of good practice is a big part of it, and I also would add that a lot of the "practice" input our brains get comes from online debate culture and/or watching politicians and surrogates acting in bad faith. That means there's a lot of baggage and bad habits lying around that folks can easily and reflexively fall back, on and it really increases the burden on someone trying to have a good discussion.
Yeah, this reminds me that “politics” is easily confused with tribalism.
Politics at its core is about the organization of who/what gets the government’s attention and resources. It has completely enveloped tribalism, becoming something much closer to a sport/entertainment, especially when people passively consume it rather than actively investigate.
Many years ago my then girlfriend now wife and I were finishing the trip through France. We wound up in the port city of Rouen up north, with the plan to drop off the car near train station, rent a room for a night and take the train to Paris. Unbeknown to us there was some sort of student strike and ALL hotel rooms everywhere were sold out. We found some sort of skanky hostel in a really iffy part of town, not at all the place where we'd usually stay. After dinner near lovely Rouen cathedral memorialized by Monet we got lost on the way back to that iffy area of town. We hailed a young woman walking right ahead of us who was first a bit startled but then helped us find a way in excellent english. We complimented her on her language skills and she said she learned it in America, she was quite proud of it. We asked - where did she go in America? She says - Wyoming! - with a large beaming smile. Why Wyoming of all things we asked (a reasonable question, mind you, considering other more exciting places we have in USA). Her response - "NO PEOPLE!" - and gestured around, alluding that in Europe you are surrounded by people or places the people have been for millenia. She spent a year working on a dude ranch herding cattle there. Definitely if you don't want people you shall find it somewhere in Wyoming.
For a lot of people in the US, politics has become very personal. I believe that some policy decisions have become a direct threat to my health and I can try to discuss those policies calmly but I'm not good at covering my aggravation.
I'd say that everyone has gotten increasingly disdainful of the 'other side'. I know I have - I'm not proud of it but I'm also not a good actor. I was in a message group recently and someone said something that (in my opinion) was so stupid and ill-informed that it was all I could do to sit on my fingers. If we'd been speaking in person, I'm not sure what I would have done but I certainly wouldn't have managed a polite response.
Want some practice? What policies?
Pregnant women are dying because they are not getting appropriate medical care.
Doctors are unwilling to give pregnant women appropriate care because they may face criminal charges.
This is happening directly because of legislation that has been pushed forward exclusively by one political party in this country.
So I find it hard to understand how someone can care about women's health and support these policies. I'm flabbergasted that I know parents of daughters who support these policies.
More women will die today from vehicle related injuries than will die all year from prevented abortions.
But one topic is at the top of all the news, the other is ignored, because it's so common.
In absolute numbers, your statement is true. But the deaths are not equivalent because of agency.
Road deaths are "random". Obviously each one has a specific cause, but we're all equally at risk. We're all in agreement that they should be avoided, and we have significant legislation to improve safety (no one is advocating for drunk driving.)
The issue either abortions is not the death part, but the agency part. Those lives -could- be saved, but aren't, because the law provides reasons for not saving them.
To make things worse, only one half of the population is subject to this risk. So it can feel kinda targeted.
Fundamentally death is not an issue. We have plenty of people. We could lower the speed limit, we could ban alcohol, or guns. All that would drive up life expectancy. We don't do that because there would be consequences and effects from those changes. And life expectancy is not the primary metric.
Abortion is a complex topic, with some people holding very strong opinions. The pendulum has swung to the point where simple medical interventions to save lives are being denied. That's what makes the topic newsworthy.
It's not the death part that matters, it's the preventable part.
Since the pandemic, enforcement of traffic laws has fallen off a cliff, with a corresponding increase in traffic deaths. That is the result of a specific policy choice. Women who get pregnant experience potentially fatal complications somewhat randomly, just like victims of driving accidents are killed somewhat randomly. You probably can’t eliminate either category of death entirely with policy, but it is clear that there are policy levers that could reduce deaths in both categories. They actually seem almost exactly equivalent.
> but the agency part.
Yes, the agency of a woman and her doctor to do what they feel is necessary for the woman.
> Those lives -could- be saved
No, they cannot be saved.
https://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2019/04/raw-data-abor...
> So it can feel kinda targeted.
Because it is.
> Abortion is a complex topic, with some people holding very strong opinions.
It is not a complex topic. A woman’s body is her body, and decisions about her body are between her doctor and her. And a doctor should never be doubting their decision in split second decisions because they think they might get prosecuted.
> Road deaths are "random". Obviously each one has a specific cause, but we're all equally at risk. We're all in agreement that they should be avoided, and we have significant legislation to improve safety (no one is advocating for drunk driving.
This is not true at all. Auto accidents are not random and we have significant policy levers that we could pull to drastically reduce them but it's politically controversial to do so.
Simple example would regulating the height of the nose of trucks so that F-150 drivers can see pedestrians easier and make impacts less deadly. Obviously policy, politically impossible.
The cause of an accident is not random. There are lots of causes and we have lots if regulations around that.
The victim if an accident is the random I'm referring to. There's no reason an F-150 driver hits one pedestrian over another.
Naturally there are lots more regulations we could add - but that progresses slowly, and with regard to the parties involved (manufacturers, owners, cities etc.)
By contrast anti-abortion legislation has been enacted quickly, without much (if any) consultation with the electorate or medical fraternity. This has resulted in poorly thought out laws in some cases.
This is not good logic.
If the government announced tomorrow they will pick 5 people a year at random to be executed for no reason, it would also be at the top of all the news, despite being many fewer deaths than vehicle related injuries.
It’s at the top of the news because it is easily preventable, yet some choose to let people die anyway.
> If the government announced tomorrow they will pick 5 people a year at random to be executed for no reason
This is basically the police execution - sorry, "officer involved shooting" policy.
With the abortion thing, it’s not pick people completely at random - It’s arbitrarily pick x number of women, of child bearing age, at random and make them die or suffer grievously.
I don’t think the predominantly male lawmakers in those states would have made the same choices had it been men not women who would be affected.
It's not ignored. Democrats have been pushing automobile safety since the 1970's, uphill the entire time against republican opponents.
Weirdly, one of the key people, the author of Unsafe at any speed, ended up as a crank accelerationist third-party presidential candidate.
I think it is a quite common fate for these 'see ignored problems clearly' types to go insane.
This is a common way to try to shut down discussion of genuinely important topics: "Why are you complaining? This isn't as bad as $OTHER_ISSUE!"
The issues are independent. We can try to deal with each in their own way. If we were only ever trying to reduce the primary cause of death, and paying no attention to anything else, we would have all kinds of terrible problems running rampant.
Furthermore, the problem with abortions is not just preventable deaths. It's the massive emotional and psychological toll unwanted pregnancies take, and the women left with chronic health issues for the rest of their lives, either because of the pregnancy itself and complications thereof or a failed DIY abortion, and the doctors who are put in prison or who lose their medical licenses for trying to save a woman's life even if the fetus is already guaranteed not to survive.
Ultimately, it's about treating women as whole and complete human beings who have agency over their bodies the same way men do, and not as walking incubators who have less bodily autonomy than a corpse.
> So I find it hard to understand how someone can care about women's health and support these policies. I'm flabbergasted that I know parents of daughters who support these policies.
Do you really not know the reason? They believe fetuses are humans and that killing them is akin to murder, just as killing a baby would. It's as simple as that.
> They believe fetuses are humans and that killing them is akin to murder,
Unlike the woman carrying the fetus.
In my state, abortion is illegal even if not aborting may cause the mother to die.
This is pro life.
That's the thing- Imagine you think killing fetuses is akin to murder. What response would you give to your own point?
There is a huge list of counteragents someone could make if they start from that basis, and your counterpoint does nothing to impact them.
Everyone is talking past each other with arguments which make sense to them, but are largely off target for the other person.
… really? Let's say, for sake of argument, that a fetus is a life, equal in rights to that of a human.
What counterpoint is there to support the argument that 2 dead is better than 1 dead?
If you were faced with the choice of strangling a 2 year old or someone would kill you both, what would you choose?
There are lots of ethical frameworks where it is better to both die than murder the child.
That said, the situation posed by the OP was the the mother may die (e.g. there are risks).
What percent shared risk of death do you think would justify strangling a 2 year old child?
personally, Im pretty middle of the road on abortion and can understand where each side is coming from.
strawman
direct answer to the question asked, with no abstraction whatsoever.
I suppose if would depend on whether you believe that inaction leading to more death is more ethical then actively choosing to murder one life to save the other.
Let's look at the same problem but swap out the actors. Say you have one man with a mortal wound to his heart, and another man with a mortal wound to his lungs. Both will probably die, both men have families, and neither wants to die. Is it ethical to murder one man without his consent and harvest the deceased's organs to save the other?
I would say no. Most religious moral systems would say no, as well as Kantian ethics.
The only moral framework I know that would accept that is the strongest form of utilitarianism.
Technically, "not aborting" may always cause the mother to die since childbirth always carries some risk. But if you mean a case where the fetus is already dead, I doubt many people would oppose the abortion? What are their arguments? I genuinely can't think of any. Maybe this is just a case of the law being ambiguously written and doctors erring on the safer side?
Have you read "the only moral abortion is my abortion"?
https://joycearthur.com/abortion/the-only-moral-abortion-is-...
Interesting, no I hadn't. It's a bit like how criminals find ways to justify their crimes. Some people have very flexible morality.
Do you have a source for your claims? I’d like to use them in future, in person, conversations.
"source for your claims" sounds pretty hand-wavey. So far as I can tell, neither side disputes this.
Will a supreme court opinion do?
https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/23pdf/23-726_6jgm.pdf
I’d be curious (although you don’t have to answer and we can leave it rhetorical if you prefer) - how much is your health really directly at risk here? Are you a woman in a red state planning to have children soon? Or are you in a blue state, and perhaps have already had children? Even if you were in a red state - would you have the means, and would, travel to a blue state if you had an issue? And if not, really, what’s the magnitude of the likelihood this would ever impact you personally?
My point here is that I find one of the reasons political disagreement is so bad in the US is the amplification of the media with respect to policies that don’t directly impact you to the degree that some people make it seem like, based on their emotional response. One tends to get more emotional when their safety is directly at risk, as you yourself stated it could harm your safety. But the people I have personally seen express this viewpoint in my life are almost exclusively blue state residing liberal women, many of whom are not going to have more children. Of course, one can feel bad for those that might end up directly affected by these policies and generally decide to support pro abortion candidates, but I think it would perhaps be easier for people to discuss and disagree on the merits of policies if people did not always believe it was a truly personal material policy to them — for example, would you feel the same emotional response debating a Polish person about Polish abortion policies?
I also find that many people disagree poorly because they don’t acknowledge that there are pros and cons to almost all policies. You state good reasons to support liberal positions on abortion policies, and I agree with you on those and would prefer the same policies that you do. However, I can understand the following can lead someone to a different view:
1. If you truly believe life begins at conception, then one must weigh the harms to the fetus. Many liberals don’t, and that’s fine, but it’s intellectually dishonest to act like a conservative doesn’t care about pregnant woman and their safety just because they weight the fetus’ life more than you do.
2. The overturn of Roe v Wade was primarily about letting the states decide. Why is that a bad thing? Where do you live? If you have liberal views on this, live in a liberal state. The ones at risk would generally be in the red states, and activists can focus on shifting public opinion in the red states so that local legislatures change their local laws. Enforcing policies across the entire US is also an aspect leading to political division, as people don’t want to do the hard work of changing people’s views and local laws. If you want to argue that Roe v Wade was the right way to advance abortion rights in the US — how would you feel if a Republican court in 4 years made abortion illegal country wide?
I hardly know what to make of this. If I was a wealthy woman in a blue state than it is wrong of me to give a damn about what happens to poor women in red states? That is a unique POV.
I can't imagine how a hypothetical Polish person got into this. I cannot cast a vote in Poland so their politics are outside of my control.
> they weight the fetus’ life more than ....
They weight the fetus's life more than its mothers life.
> The overturn of Roe v Wade was primarily about letting the states decide.
I'm paraphrasing something I read somewhere else, but I don't think it could be put better
- Why leave it up to the federal government and not the state? - Why leave it up to the state and not the counties? - Why leave it up to the counties and not the cities? - Why leave it up to the cities and not the neighborhood? - Why not just leave it up to the women herself?
I think it nicely reduces it down to the absurdity of the whole. Why exactly is it up to my neighbors whether or not I can get an abortion?
I didn’t say it’s wrong for you to give a damn - I said the opposite, that you can certainly give a damn and support pro abortion policies. But you said it was a direct threat to YOUR health — is it really? Are you a poor woman in a red state? If not, while you can give a damn, my point was that people are unable to disagree these days because they make everything so personal - as if you are in direct serious threat - when perhaps that is an exaggeration that is being caused by our media.
The Poland example: sure, you have no vote there. But do you feel the same DIRECT THREAT? Are you any more likely to need an abortion in Alabama than Poland? While perhaps you have more of an ability to impact Alabama policies by voting, is it really more of a threat? And how much does your vote even matter; are you talking about a national election and live in a non swing state? If so, your money and activism could probably be spent just as well influencing Alabama or Polish views.
On the weighting of the fetus’ life - let’s say it had equal weight (and ignore the question of when life starts)? Wouldn’t the abortion certainly kill the fetus and only possibly kill the mother? Isn’t it the therefore liberals who weight the mother’s life more?
On your last point, it’s up to your neighbors whether you get an abortion because that’s how government works. If, solely for the sake of argument, you concede that a fetus is a real life the same as a baby, can you not see why a government should have a say over abortion? There are two competing lives at stake.
There are obviously two sides to the abortion question, and we're not going to "solve" it here, but I think at least discussing it is healthy.
The pendulum has swung a lot in the last couple years, and I'd argue it has swung a bit too far. All laws have unintended consequences, and we're seeing the out-working of some of that now.
Right now the law is dictating to medicine - laws written by activists and politicians, not doctors. Placing legal liability on doctors as to who they can help, and when. That seems to me to be too far.
Equally the pendulum has swung to a point which is not the viewpoint of the majority. Not even in red states. When on the ballot pro-abortion positions are consistently winning. IVF is under threat (not by accident.)
Moving the law back to the states is a cop out. It creates inequality among citizens of the same country. Which in turn creates a divisive discourse between people who are now forced into one or other position.
Pro choice is not the same as Pro abortion. It moves the choice to the patients and doctors involved. Personally, for reasons, I'm not a fan of abortion. But I can see there are cases every it is appropriate. I support the notion that the right people to make that choice are the people involved.
Lots of people feel differently to me. Perhaps they're in the 50% who will never have to make that choice. Perhaps they are in the 99.99% who will not experience a loved one dying in a preventable way.
Some of us care about harms to our fellow citizens, too? Just because a law might not impact me personally[1] doesn't stop me from going "no, this law is a bad law because it tramples on people's civil liberties."
The Golden Rule.
> it’s intellectually dishonest to act like a conservative doesn’t care about pregnant woman
No, it isn't. Several states have passed total abortion bans that have included, or end up effectively including, abortions for complications in which the pregnancy isn't viable, at all. This ends up harming the mother, for nothing. Cf. [2], [3].
> Why is that a bad thing? Where do you live? If you have liberal views on this, live in a liberal state.
Because fundamental human rights should be secured for all citizens, not just citizens of some states here or there. People should not be forced out of their home, uprooted for their families, just to secure basic rights, or worse, to simply remain alive.
> people don’t want to do the hard work of changing people’s views
The majority of Americans favor abortion.
> If you want to argue that Roe v Wade was the right way to advance abortion rights in the US — how would you feel if a Republican court in 4 years made abortion illegal country wide
Flipping judicial decisions is something that should be inherently done rarely and only with the utmost consideration — when we're certain the precedent is wrong. Otherwise, how can you argue that the system is just?
(The majority of Americans also disagree with Dobbs.)
[1]: They do impact me personally, but I do not think that is a requirement for people to engage in debate. Certainly, more people have a vote than are impacted by some policies, so it practically behooves me to engage them in debate, since their vote will indirectly determine whether such policies pass.
[2]: https://www.ajog.org/article/S0002-9378(22)00536-1/fulltext
[3]: https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2022/12/29/1143823...
> They do impact me personally, but I do not think that is a requirement for people to engage in debate.
To emphasize this point:
First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a socialist.
Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a trade unionist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.
[A famous quote by a German after the Holocaust, lamenting his inaction during the Nazi regime.]
I think it is incredibly crass and craven to assert that one needs to be personally affected by an issue to speak out on it.
>one needs to be personally affected by an issue to speak out on it.
I don't think the poster is making that point. Did you see the response?
Look: https://news.ycombinator.com/reply?id=41805263&goto=item%3Fi...
The reply said:
> If not, while you can give a damn, my point was that people are unable to disagree these days because they make everything so personal - as if you are in direct serious threat - when perhaps that is an exaggeration that is being caused by our media.
Which rather strikes me as finding it inappropriate to vociferously speak on an issue that doesn't directly affect them.
Again, I wasn’t suggesting that one needs to be personally or directly affected to speak out about an issue. I was suggesting that it’s harder to have a reasoned debate on an issue when you are directly affected — emotions just run too high. So, my theory for why Americans are so divided and unable to have political disagreements these days is in part because the media is highjacking people’s emotions by making EVERY issue feel that way.
I always support people being passionate and vocal about what they believe in if it’s productive. If you want to go campaign or be an activist and support changes to abortion laws, great! But if you are unable to have a discussion or disagreement with your friend or neighbor, who is not making policy or effecting anything, without potentially getting so heated that you blow up the relationship, and doing that for every single political issue, then perhaps something is wrong in America and it’s worth examining what that is.
I wish we could disagree about policies. Instead we literally have elected leaders screaming that the one party is controlling the weather to destroy another party.
How do you engage and have any kind of civil discourse with that?
[flagged]
Didn’t take too long for Godwin’s law
>Who’s the intolerant one?
It's still the white supremacist fascist who wants to kill all the Jews and gay people.
Yeah, but perhaps one might find common ground with them on which football team one supports, or on the subject of the weather. Once the interaction is done, one can write B2B SaaS while the other goes to kill all the Jews and gay people (and perhaps the Communists and Trade Unionists as well if Niemoller is to be believed), both doubtlessly performing acts of equal moral value. In this way, America might be healed and people with different political opinions might get along.
[flagged]
That's the problem though right? I think that there are people who are so completely and utterly wrong that I don't know what to do with them. They also think that I am so completely and utterly wrong that they don't know what to do with me.
So we don't talk about it.
Exactly. To one side, the other side includes (or defends) people who were "trying to dismantle democracy [over] unsubstantiated claims of fraud". To the other side, these rioters were "peaceful protesters" (I guess they never watched the videos) who did nothing wrong.
In a nutshell, the two sides simply can't even agree on basic reality. If you can't agree on the basic facts of something, it is not possible to have a fruitful discussion about it.
I'm sorry, but I just don't see any kind of workable solution to this issue.
> To the other side, these rioters were "peaceful protesters" (I guess they never watched the videos) who did nothing wrong.
I assume anyone claiming this is lying.
A few people claiming something contrary to readily-available evidence could be explained by lying, but when a significant part of the population does so, it has to be something else.
So the emperor is wearing clothes?
I am less hopeful. As I see it, there are a startling amount of people willing to trash the democratic process and dismantle trust in our institutions to accomplish their goals.
Sure, but if you look at the stuff they say on that side, they too think that "democracy is in danger" and that only their savior can protect it. It just seems like a case of mass delusion to me, but I'm guessing that in their echo chambers they've come up with some kind of weird logic to explain this.
Maybe one of them here could explain it; after all, there are a fair number of these people lurking about on HN.
I'm just a rando but here's my unprompted solution: treat your fellow citizens as fallible epistemic machines instead of unified, rational members acting freely within a social contract. The solution to flat earthers (to pick a slightly less divisive topic) is not to engage them in logical debate, but rather help fix the systemic and personal issues that have lead them to develop such an obviously false belief.
This obviously calls for some long-term sociopolitical changes to education and journalism (a deadly paradox of chickens and eggs...), but in the context of this specific conversation, I think it would call for finding common ground with your adversaries and working up from there via the Socratic method. You'll never convince someone who's not completely tuned-out to change their stance on an upcoming presidential election in a single conversation, but I think there's more room for agreement than is assumed. We all want to be healthy, wealthy, and wise, and we all intuitively agree that evidence is the basis of belief -- even something as cartoonishly evil as belief in racial supremacy is based in benign intentions corrupted by unclear/dishonestly-presented evidence, if you dig down deep enough.
Practically, besides the Socratic method (framing the conversation as collaborative investigation rather than adversarial interpretation), this might mean asking some different questions than the burning ones we'd like to phrase. Beating around the bush, if you will. It's an incredibly frustrating task to be sure, but anyone who's worked with children knows that it's sometimes necessary. Perhaps;
"Why do you think the election was stolen?" --> "I love Democracy, too, I just haven't seen any evidence of fraud that I've found convincing, yet; can we talk about specific pieces of evidence convinced you, and find where our disagreements begin? Maybe even quantify our levels of relative uncertainty on each?"
"Why do you think immigrants are dangerous?" --> "I'm sure we're both proud of the Statue of Liberty and the freedom of action and belief it represents, and we would have never been large enough of an economy to meaningfully effect WWII with just the 13 colonies and their descendants. What are some policies you think could bring us back to that ideal? Are there any non-Americans in the world that you would welcome as compatriots today, and if not, what specifically do you think has changed?"
Etc. This is admittedly just smuggling philosophy back into our discourse, so a lot of acquaintances or strangers will react with a gruff "shut up!" or "nuh uh, that's confusing", but I've found success employing it on family members. Again, people are trained to assume that they're continuous, unified, rational beings[1] so they'll resist any sudden shifts, but a path exists, even if it's a somewhat treacherous one.
Sorry for the rant, this has been a central belief of mine ever since I was exposed to it by an incredible undergrad philosophy professor -- definitely check her work out if you found any of this intriguing: https://digitalcommons.lib.uconn.edu/dissertations/1875/
All of this is sadly moot for people who have been convinced that evidence isn't required because they have a personal infallible connection to a divine force that secretly controls the world. I, too, have no idea what to with those people!
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critique_of_Pure_Reason#The_pa...
Speaking as an Indian, what's really going on is that everyone in India has lost hope in their political decisions actually impacting their lives in ways that they wish. So politics is a pretty low-stakes discussion in India, like sports teams.
In America we haven't quite lost hope yet.
edit: to be clear, politics does impact lives in India, but it does so in ways that are quite disconnected from individuals' political actions.
I think Americans have lost hope as well. I think in America it isn't hope for a better tomorrow that is driving politics anymore, it is fear for a worse tomorrow.
I don't know how things are in India, but I imagine people have lost hope that politics will actually impact their lives in ways they wish, but they probably aren't as fear-driven as Americans (yet). And this explains why you can discuss politics with someone you disagree with - because you aren't scared of what the party of someone with opposing views will do (yet).
There is also an element of vindictiveness and revenge. e.g. you harmed me, so I am willing to suffer costs to inflict harm an you.
Secret band of robbers and murderers
> And this explains why you can discuss politics with someone you disagree with - because you aren't scared of what the party of someone with opposing views will do (yet).
You cannot grow up in India without realizing there are many opinions you cannot voice at just any random person without inciting a riot. As much as Americans are polarized, they will not burn down cities, houses, etc. over what people said. Even the Indian government has started bulldozing entire homes and even gullies to try to punish people who riot because it's such a problem (and yes it's an idiotic solution to an idiotic problem).
Part of it is that all political parties in the USA have given up "conversion/conversation" or trying to get this "hypothetical middle" to budge.
Instead, they're both entirely geared up to get "their base out to vote" which you do by riling them up in all possible ways.
That’s clearly not true, just look at both T and H backpedaling on their policies to move them towards the center.
That sounds plausible.
I don't feel as if politics is a low stakes discussion in India, especially the religious end of political discussion. There are so many incidents of full blown riots and violence and killings over what people say about this and that religion or how you portray or don't portray this and that figure.
That’s because it’s an identity thing. And it’s not just religion, it’s also different groups (right?) who have different opinions about what territory belongs to those groups. Is that something which frequently comes up as a subject of debate at table stakes political discussions? I don’t know how common it is for those conflicting parties to interact, but something tells me they don’t discuss politics about it calmly together.
Religion absolutely is very high stakes. But there is a very deep seated cynicism about electoral politics in much of the country.
The ability to discuss politics in a group is likely correlated with social capital. Research indicates that modern populations in urban areas have realized a reduction in social capital from prior generations. My grandparents knew a vast amount of people in their neighborhood, in which most attended the same church. Today, in the same neighborhood, anyone is lucky if they know a few neighbors. Often, that isn't the case and virtually no original families remain. Other research implies that the regions with most social capital highly correlate to sparsely populated metros and regions, but not all sparsely populated regions. Rat research indicates that increased population density leads to dysfunctional social behavior.
My personal observation is twofold. First, spontaneous political discussion in the West is considered to be impolite in conversation for valid reasons. The first is the fact that social reactions are unpredictable and, in a casual social situation, rightly the emphasis should be on maintenance of the situation for everyone. To prioritize one's impulse to need to have a political conversation is impolite because it risks the group as well as potentially infringes on the right of others to not be regularly subject to spontaneous (or not) conversations that people frequently get emotional over. Group harmony as well as the individual's right to peace in public are prioritized.
Second, lifelong exposure to propaganda has trained individuals to have highly emotional reactions to those who disagree with them. The political environment in the West is not psychologically designed for casual public political conversation. Everyone knows multiple individuals who simply cannot abide, at least for long, anyone on the other side of the isle. Propaganda's long time goal has been to encourage mental illness to be viral, and it has widely succeeded.
An acceptable public political conversation looks more like one over methods to reach a pre-agreed upon goal. These still happen, however often low value. But many people who need to have a political conversation want the other type: a cross-isle argument over objectives. Which are even more low value, and much more likely to end poorly.
>To prioritize one's impulse to need to have a political conversation is impolite because it risks the group as well as potentially infringes on the right of others to not be regularly subject to spontaneous (or not) conversations that people frequently get emotional over.
How does this transfer to any other situation involving group communication? Do the people on this board have a right not to see emotional conversations? Not rocking the boat has a place in professional settings, but I don't think people have a right, in general, to not see emotion.
I agree that, to a certain extent, it can be socially unpleasant. But saying it's a right is too much.
It’s not “the West”. The USA is quite different to many OECD nations in this regard (and others).
Not just the US though. It is also true in the UK (maybe not as bad - yet) but we have the polarisation. The hatred of the other side is more on-sided here - its more a characteristic of the "left": you hear "I hate Tories" rather than "I hate Labour voters" or even "I hate socialists" (nor did you even before socialism died). It seems to be the same in other Anglophone countries.
There has also been a shift in the focus of politics away from economic policy and the running of government services (as was very much the case in the UK up to the 1980s) to social issues as a result of a centrist consensus on what were important issues - disagreement about them is now purely theoretical and off the table in terms of what might actually change.
It think the problem has also been inadvertently illustrated by people in the comments discussing specific American culture war issues with a great deal of anger.
An aspect of this is the lack of willingness to compromise. Take abortion. It is much less of an issue in most of Europe because it is allowed, but with short term limits. It means many of the arguments for it are not relevant, but it also undermines many of the arguments against it because of lack of functioning brain tissue, or the state of development comparable to a premature baby. Anglophone countries are much more all or nothing - long term limits or not allow at all.
We also do not (even in the UK) have the American alignment of party politics with social issues. Can you imagine the Republicans being the party that allowed same sex marriage?
I think the moving of discussion online has primed people to be more aggressive about their views in general. I was thinking the other day about the people I know IRL who have blocked me on FB: my ex, a friend of hers, one of my ex's sisters (emigrated to the US and is a stereotype Trump supporter, stolen election theory etc.), a creationist (also my ex's sister, a nice person who keeps in touch with me, but does not like my comments on her FB posts), and a remainer/rejoiner.
I think the american to party system is the problem, which happens to also be used in the uk. You can not make assumptions of the entire west about political matters based on something happening in two countries when they differ so much from other western countries in it's political system.
I did not say its the entire west, I said its not just the US, and I specifically highlighted Anglophone countries.
The American party system is not that similar to the UK's. They are both FPTP but the UK is nothing like as two party as the US. Compare this:
https://pressgallery.house.gov/member-data/party-breakdown
to this:
https://members.parliament.uk/parties/Commons
I’m an immigrant from Eastern Europe who moved to the US decades ago. Eastern Europeans are direct - you speak your mind, so there are no assumptions or miss-understandings. Families live close to where they were born in sparser areas and relationships matter, but there is also forgiveness.
I have friends who come from Welsh and Swiss backgrounds and would have layers of internal inhibition before saying something out of fear of embarrassment or multitude of other concerns. A lot of time that leads to them assuming and assumptions can be wrong. They do a lot less verbal or video contact with family members, almost intentionally so, but would still get together in person (broader context i suspect). A lot of relationships on that side degrade quickly when contact is not made for a while - assumptions upon assumptions of offense or who knows what seems to erode the relationship. So when you meet again it’s almost like you have to earn the friendship again.
Politics in this country involves those two mixes of people and waaaay more. The cultural spread, the political spectrum spread, forms a matrix too big to navigate in 99.9 % of conversations The in-person interactions are not long enough to peel all layers of the political onion and the relationship trust onion before you get to the core that you both agree on. Instead there are often unsaid assumptions, experiences, trauma that won’t fit in a tweet and if they do, nobody has time to read it. The more complicated things get and the lower the attention span, the harder it is to invest time and get a favorable relationship outcome if you discuss politics, so you’re better off not even trying.
It's enough to think for a couple of seconds to realize it has nothing to do with population density, otherwise you could freely discuss politics in less populated areas of the States.
The real reason is that politics, and especially the two party system in most Western countries, is based on polarization, e.g. blaming the other party for all the evil of the world.
It's not some abstract "politics". For left-leaning, it's about freedom for women to decide about their own body, about respect towards minorities and people coming from other countries, just to name a few. For right-leaning, it's about protecting families, cultivating the tradition, prosperity of the country, the right to defend oneself etc. Politics became almost a new religion.
> the two party system in most Western countries
Pretty sure Europe is mostly multi-party systems where coalitions are the norm, so including North America the only two western countries where dual-party is the norm is the United Kingdom and United States (both use first-past-the-post which encourages dual-party systems).
That said, I agree on two party systems promoting toxicity, the Brexit debate in the UK which was a near-perfect 50/50 split was an extremely toxic period in UK politics and heavily influenced the 2019 election. It has got somewhat better in the last couple of years though.
Do you actually believe that most western countries use a two party system?
Do you use a different definition of two party system than I do, when I say 2 party system I mean "first past the post"-systems, see:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First-past-the-post_voting
and for which countries use that system: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First-past-the-post_voting#/me...
This is silly:
“In my hometown in India, everyone talks about politics all the time. And most of us don’t agree with one another. But that’s okay. I can even tease other people about our political disagreements and it doesn’t get in the way of friendships. Why isn’t that the case here in the US?”
Because when you're in a homogenous in-group you can discuss politics and get annoyed, or heated, and shake hands and go home.
When you're not in an in-group, one side is discussing non-ideal solutions, and the other side wants to destroy you. And then you have to figure out how to convince a friend that their political ideology might kill you.
Read the rest of the post. Indian politics are not somehow lower stakes than ours, the Indian subcontinent is not less diverse, and the author's friend included a specific example of people getting literally killed over their politics.
I'm still puzzled over the article frankly. In India there's political violence and people are getting killed - but they still are happy to discuss politics with their friends and neighbors? There's a disconnect there that I'm not getting. Why are they talking to everyone about their political views if it might get them killed?
That's the question that the Indian person is asking.
Here in the US we'll refuse to interact with someone if we find out that they're part of the wrong tribe, but our political violence is pretty low on the scale of what's possible.
There, they have a lot of political violence and from what I understand quite divisive political issues that put people's lives and livelihoods at stake, but apparently they don't have the culture of avoiding talking about it altogether that we do and they don't attempt to avoid associating with anyone who disagrees with them.
I don't refuse to interact with people of the wrong "tribe", I make sure to ask for their political positions on, e.g., "should interracial marriage be allowed? Should we allow trans people to change their birth certificates?"
If someone is like, "Nah, those things are bad" then I'm happy to not associate with them because I find their beliefs abhorrent. It has nothing to do with tribal affiliation and everything to do with policy.
>It has nothing to do with tribal affiliation and everything to do with policy.
This is absolutely not how a lot of people operate.
I'm sensing some sort of neurotypical/neurodiverse divide here.
I don't think it's unreasonable to live a morally comprehensive life. For example, I probably couldn't be friends with a white-supremacist even if they were kind, gentle, supportive, and caring. Some folks are able to look past those things and more power to them. I, however, couldn't sleep at night.
This is what I find as strange. Why couldn't you sleep at night?
In my mind, the moral, healthy, productive, and pro-social thing would be to continue friendship.
I dont think shunning people builds bridges or helps anyone.
Then again, my generation grew up with stories like black activists who befriended KKK members and slowly converted them with compassion and challenging their preconceived notions.
I couldn't sleep at night because it would cause cognitive dissonance. I don't think I'm capable of intellectualizing my way out of it.
More power to the people who can do it. It's just not within my ability.
im curious what the dissonance is. what is the it in "out of _it_"
is it just cultural instinct and expectation?
There's definitely some things that warrant distancing. But I try to appreciate the good, even if there is bad. Moral purity is a luxury and self-righteousness can be ugly (sorry).
Not only is it a luxury, it's sheer arrogance to pretend it exists at all.
None of us get through life without complicated trade-offs, and in most cases when you disagree with ~50% of a country's population it's because you have different values of what good thing matters most.
In fact it's a privilege to not have to worry about moral purity. Being able to look past views without personal consequences is life free of that burden. Some people don't have that option.
I'm with you. There are hard lines. But I also have hard lines in who you support. Like, if you vote for a politician who supports, e.g., the eradication of trans people, then even if you say, "I don't believe in that" you've furthered that cause by issuing your vote. I can't abide someone who is willing to compromise on some things.
When reading an article like this, I think westerners get guilt tripped. We must be wrong, just look at all the troubles we have. Maybe if we talked more things would be better.
But maybe the real take way here is that people in Indian should talk less about politics!
Maybe they'd have less political violence if they didn't associate with people who disagree with them. I'm not sure I'm convinced that dying for your political views is a fair price to pay for conversations with your neighbors.
I'm not convinced that the two are correlated. We did just fine associating with people of different political perspectives and discussing politics with them all the way up through 2008 at least, ~~without the violence~~. [Scratching this part out because it's drawing plenty of justified criticism. I stand by the rest, and this part was generally true—with small exceptions—from at least 1990-2008.]
The complete refusal to interact with someone who disagrees with you is a relatively new phenomenon that seems to have risen alongside social media.
> We did just fine associating with people of different political perspectives...
We most certainly did not. Point to an era where there wasn't political violence in the US.
Jim Crow? Civil rights era? WTO Protests? Vietnam war protests? Rodney King? Stonewall? Like... this country has been violent about politics since this country was a country.
Growing up I was afraid to be even remotely "non-manly" because I was so worried I'd be dragged behind someone's truck.
> We did just fine associating with people of different political perspectives and discussing politics with them all the way up through 2008 at least, without the violence.
No, we didn't. Look up what happened in the 1960s. And even that was mild compared to what went on in election campaigns in the 19th century in the US.
>We did just fine associating with people of different political perspectives and discussing politics with them all the way up through 2008 at least, without the violence.
You must have forgotten the US Civil War, plus all the turbulence of the 1960s.
The big difference there was that, for the most part, the two sides were geographically separated from each other.
>The complete refusal to interact with someone who disagrees with you is a relatively new phenomenon that seems to have risen alongside social media.
If you're thinking of the early-to-mid 20th century, things have changed. America has become much more diverse, and co-mingled (in the past, immigrant and other minority groups tended to keep to themselves and not socially interact so much with other groups). White European-descended people are no longer the overwhelming majority (remember, immigrants in the past mostly came from Europe), religion has lost much of its power and many of its believers, homosexuality has become far more accepted, basically one side feels existentially threatened, and the other side oppressed.
Disagrees with you on what, exactly? Be specific.
[dead]
There’s literally no way the nation of India is more diverse than the United States- we have the biggest spread of racial, and religious diversity on the planet, by far.
With all due respect, please do some research on India before asserting something like this.
We're taking about a country with ~4x the population of the US where no single language has the majority of native speakers (the closest is Hindi at 26% [0]). 12 different languages are spoken natively by >1% of the population. India has diversity that someone born in the US can't even begin to comprehend.
I think it's hard for Westerners to understand because we view diversity through such a skin color and organized religion lens. 'Everyone' in India is dark-skinned and most are Hindu, so that means they're not diverse, right?
The trouble is that that's a very Western perspective on both ethnicity and on religion, one that doesn't carry over at all.
[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_languages_by_number_...
Actually there's a very easy empirical way to test this claim: look at the amount of subsampling pollsters do. In the US samples are typically weighted after the raw data is collected, by:
gender
age
white college, white non-college, Black, Latino/Hispanic, Asian
party registration
For 1000 samples you get the standard MoE of 3ish percent.
In India you start by dividing up the electorate into hundreds of strata, sample independently from each stratum, then piece it together. This results in Indian polling sample sizes being over 100k for the same 3% MoE.
This is pretty objective evidence of India's diversity.
(I am curious though if 2024 is going to cause pollsters to re-examine polling basics in the US. There are several major warning signs this year that polling is broken, even if it produces the right result in the end.)
India has 450 languages, 5x the US population, all religions, and plenty of different races.
I think you need to spend some time learning about India. The US is FAR more of a monoculture than India is.
Not from any statistics I can tell you don't.
They’ve had a little more time to work on it.
The conclusion of this viewpoint is that you either turn everyone into the in-group or one group comes out on top of the others. Either way, diversity won't survive long under that.
That’s how it’s worked for nearly all of history. A decent read is this book (which was on obamas summer reading list one year): https://www.amazon.com/Great-Experiment-Diverse-Democracies-.... Diversity has never really worked before.
Diversity has historically been used to keep populations divided allowing a smaller group to rule over them. Plenty of historical examples (Italy, Ottoman Empire, etc) as well as literature. I think this is described in Machiavelli’s “The Prince”.
And both current US candidates are pushing for immigration/diversity (albeit from different groups, but the end result is the same). The real reason we can’t discuss politics is because our elites want us divided, and they have the means to accomplish that.
What US political ideology are you worried will kill you?
I think this guy misses something pretty significant.
Many Americans have professional business relationships with people whom they vehemently oppose politically.
Politics is simply bad for business.
[flagged]
I don't often discuss politics with my niece; we've actually had physical altercations before. But I mustered some courage and brought this up to her, and she had the following to say:
"The two party system forces people who advocate for issue X to also have to advocate for Y and Z, when they may really only care about X. Another factor; the decay of respect of and audiences for traiditional mass media, and the rise of personal "bubble" media such as social media has also forced mass communications to be more personal if one wants to reach people, and various political forces are adapting to the new landscape."
I'm not sure if population density has any effect on political discussions more than discussions in general.
i think your niece is on to something. I'd like to develop it further.
I think the problem is that when you talk politics, the subject or your position are irrelevant. You can even extend that to what the parties themselves do and say (the american uniparty has been a common complaint for many voters).
Why ? At the core, the issue are the ideas that each party represents, and how those ideas label you immediately with your peers, regardless of what you actually advocate, or what the party line is on a given subject.
Take a statue. The republican position is to not build it. The democrat is to build it. Just having a conversation about the merits of the statue automatically puts you on a spectrum.
If you are against the statue, you must be an uncaring republican. If you are for the statue, you must love doing charity with other people's money.
And so on.
This is in spite of direct evidence that both parties don't seem to care about americans, and the unrestrained use of their tax dollars.
Politics in the USA earns you a label, for free, that is not even accurate or deserved.
I've found that a way to side-step this is to NOT talk about solutions; because solutions are always political; but to talk about problems - and not even the causes of the problems, but the problems themselves. Discuss the problems, and "what would you do" kind of hypotheticals, and you can find common ground with almost anyone.
I do something similar.
First, you need to come to common ground about the diagnosis of the issue. Only then can you start to talk about a prescription. If interlocutors skip the first step, there is no hope of agreeing on the second.
Silly me, here I thought the whole point of politics was to solve problems, when really it's just to endlessly whine about them at teatime.
I think that your niece is absolutely right about this.
"mimetic violence," explains it. an ironic result of the success of the melting pot, whereby in a culture where people were sufficiently different and their identities distant, one's success didn't come at the expense of another's. there is no resolution to that today. the conflict is so fierce because the stakes are so small, and it's because we've been told we are the same, homogenous and undifferentiated, with nothing left but a power struggle.
we don't discuss politics because there isn't much left to discuss. I take some responsibility for it because I thought being tolerant of (and silent about) views i disagreed with was part of a social contract around respect for boundaries and reciprocity, but that worldview isn't equipped to deal with people who are actuated by malice and malevolence. Now, I listen to some people talk politics, but mainly I'm just finding some enjoyment in what we will look back on as "the good old days," appreciating some peace where i can find it, and hoping it all goes another way before we're all drawn-in to the terrible work being set out for us.
American politics is extremely wrapped up in identity and always has been. That means that having an opinion which someone disagrees with isn’t just an opinion they disagree with; in their mind it may be perceived as an opinion about who and what they or their loved ones are, and what should be done to or about them. Maybe I’m presuming here, but something tells me it’s not really like that in the gentleman’s hometown from the article. In America, people who disagree about politics feel like (or are) actual enemies, not fellow countrymen. We also do often place a lot of value on few precious friendships that we’re willing to mutually set aside the fighting and defensiveness for, and for the sake of getting along. I’m not sure that’s hard to explain or understand, and I’m not sure it has so much to do with density.
This part of American culture is probably because of religious pluralism. At work, you don't want workers arguing over religion. You also don't want members of your church being converted to other religious sects at work. Then that gets applied to politics as well, which is useful to keep workers from talking about political things which might lead to discussions of unionization (and similar to guidelines from employers not to talk about salaries).
I’ve long maintained that what the USA really needs is a good opponent again.
Everyone wants to be on a winning team, and with the lack of a good opponent it’s turned into Republicans vs Democrats with no common ground.
At least up until the 1990s there was always a common opponent (the English, the Spanish, the Prussians/Germans, the Soviets). So while Americans had different views, they could at least focus on defeating the enemy together.
Now there is no more enemy, and they turn on each other. I guess old habit are hard to break.
It isn't population density, since we used to discuss politics all the time until 2016. Family get togethers, work events, just friend hangouts, all of them would have active discussions and arguments surrounding politics. The Trump era changed all that. I don't know about India, but I think social media is what changed everything, and how it changed everything is more complex than many people think.
There are so many factors to it. The non-stop nature, the echo chamber effect, how it allows you to hear the thoughts of people you never would have heard before, but also, and maybe this is a big difference with India, that insane effort from Russia and China (and others) to maliciously engage with our social media with the sole goal of disruption of our culture and nation.
I'm in my 50s, and there was plenty of political discussion before 2016, much like the person from India in the OP describes. We used to have a close friend in our friend group and we would regularly tease each other over political issues, but also listen, and he was a staunt Obama-hater and subscribed to birther conspiracies. Two years into Trump and we stopped being friends, and I haven't talked to him since 2018.
In the US at least, parties started sorting their policies on certain issues in the 1960s:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_strategy
Ezra Klein goes into the (US) history of this in his book:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Why_We%27re_Polarized
It also has a few chapters on how humans seem to have built-in tribe/clan mechanism (us/them, in/out-group).
I know I have superiors that I know disagree with me politically. Nothing good can come from them knowing that I disagree with them on fundamental assumptions about the universe.
Vilification of ideas is the reason why people can’t discuss politics in the United States.
Reality is that if you have normal common religious beliefs in this country, people on the left will quickly paint you as some sort of evil intolerant person, when most religious people are nice decent people.
Just because they disagree with your lifestyle doesn't make them evil. Why people can’t tolerate basic disagreement is beyond me.
> I think that in America, political beliefs and violence are more closely entwined than in other parts of the world. I’d be a bit worried about getting punched if I got too deep into politics with someone who disagreed with me
Jamie, pull up that clip of Taiwanese legislators getting into a fist fight in Congress.
I think it's wealth and well-being.
The easier your life becomes, the more you live in the world of ideas and abstractions. When you and most people around you need to toil daily to stay afloat, it puts things in perspective. There's also a shared bond of work and survival which can smooth things over.
Politics being prominent in your life is a luxury. Even if the stakes are high for you personally, most people worldwide don't have the time and energy to dwell on that.
This is it - watch people in a disaster; suddenly what needs to be done in the next minute, hour, day is clear, and politics doesn't matter.
It's like what they say about the fights in academia - they're so vicious because the stakes are so small.
Of course, nobody wants to admit this about politics (but look at the vast amount of what happens year in and year out that doesn't change at all).
I think the answer is “don’t generalize based on your sample size of 8 people”. I talk about politics at work all the time. It’s totally fine. I actually disagree with the majority view but we talk about it rationally and make jokes.
Fragility of human relationships, not population density.
If the author knew a little more about India he might have questioned whether Vinay’s political discussions in India are easy and open when Vinay converses with Sikhs and Muslims, or to what extent Vijay can do that at all.
Isn't this better explained by the US's atrocious two-party system that has over the years hyper-polarized politics (multiplied 10x further by social media?)? I can remember 10 years ago it was much easier to discuss controversial politics with a stranger in person that you disagreed with. What I am saying is the situation right now in India insofar as discussing politics with anyone comfortably used to exist in America a decade ago.
India doesn't have a 2 party system (I don't think?). If you look at the seats in parliament there is much more of a rainbow which suggests it is more democratic than the US. Maybe it will eventually evolve into a 2 party equilibrium as more people vote only for bigger parties they think stand a chance, rather than for ones they actually believe in (practically mathematically guaranteed to happen if India's political system has no defence against the spoiler effect). But that shift will take time. If I am right India will eventually be hyper-polarized like the US after it "2-party-crystallizes."
If there were only 2 viable political parties in India right now where votes were split near 50-50 each election cycle and each party viewed the other as a huge threat and amplified how terrible the other is on social media 24/7 I think we'd see cultural norms shift in India and people would start to become more quiet on politics. Population density I don't think would be that key a factor.
Likewise, if the US had multiple political parties all represented in parliament and there just wouldn't be as much political hyper-polarization and without 2 parties tribalistically fighting winner-takes-all style it is much easier to have cultural norms that you can talk controversial political stuff
I've spent the last two years working for a global company with people from all corners of the globe. I've spent many hours talking to them, sometimes on the subject of politics and religion. I must say, it's been so refreshing, especially after coming from Google. I particularly enjoy talking to individuals from communist or post-communist countries, which have been demonized in the U.S., to say the least. Not that I'm pro-communist by any means, but just listening to people's stories from these countries really drives home the point of how similar we all are.
The best part is that the company culture seems to promote these open discussions. I'm not deathly afraid to voice an opinion for fear of HR hunting me down. I wish U.S. companies were like this.
(Note) I'm not suggesting I spend much of my time on this activity. It mainly occurs at meetups or scheduled coffee chats.
It doesn't seem to me that people can't, rather they won't. One invoked reason is they want to avoid conflict but what about "not caring"?.
Yeah yeah, politics affects all and we should be involved but reality is your vote makes little difference in choosing one party or the other. And the other even more nasty problem is that either party you choose you end up with the same politics. Ever increasing taxes, ever increasing debt, ever increasing benefits for the politicians.
Learned helplessness is a thing. How much of it is behind "people don't discuss politics"?
For me it's been fear of impacting friendships. I have some friends who have very different political views than myself, although I consider myself a centrist.
Some of my friends are no longer on speaking terms with each other because there identity is not just wrapped up in their political beliefs but also in opposition of the other side.
It's a sad state of affairs and a fairly recent one, in my opinion.
I don't remember political disagreements being such a big deal before the rise of Trump.
During the Trump Clinton election he changed the game and politics became more about insulting and denigrating your opposition.
No, it's because most Americans know nothing about actual issues and treat politics as a team sport. So there's as much point in talking about it with other people as there is talking about the Mets vs the Yankees or whatever.
I. This is a well written, engaging article, thanks for sharing. I absolutely agree that the thesis is true to an extent, though I would phrase it more broadly (perhaps "American culture is unusually individualistic" or "American local social communities are being replaced by online parasocial ones"). I don't see any reason to suspect that politics is taboo in Mongolia, or frequently debated in China!
II. A huge part of this is just "the instigator is discussing relationships largely not based in work". You can't be fired from your apartment building or your family for being a little rude, but you can and will be fired from your job for causing even slight unrest. Applies to work friends across the world, I would imagine, and I'm guessing a recent immigrant has a higher ratio of those in his new home than his old one.
III. The belief that politics are "abstract" is, itself, a controversial political stance. Imagine for the sake of argument that a small group of people start controlling huge portions of the economy and using it to knowingly and intentionally harm others for fleeting personal gains.
Perhaps you could think of the villains in Don't Look Up letting the apocalypse happen over pride, or, for the conservatives among us, the villains in Atlas Shrugged who cultivate poverty and inequity as a lever for maintaining their power. Hopefully we can all agree that those situations wouldn't be ones of polite disagreement? To make it even more stark, imagine what you would say if one of your friends or family came out as an open Nazi -- it would be immoral to laugh off engagement in literal genocide as a personality quirk, IMO.
IV. "In which a parent pretends he has time to write" is downright adorable and extremely relatable, even for someone who will likely never have children. Godspeed George, may you have many only-slightly-stilted team dinners in Austin ahead of you
> The belief that politics are "abstract"
Is obviously daft in a country where, by the person's own admission, people get killed for their political views.
I don't discuss politics with coworkers because I have to work with them and I want to be friendly. I can't be friends with someone that questions the basic human rights of my existence as a gay person, so I'd rather not know.
I think it’s part of the reason, but not the sole or main reason.
I blame American exceptionalism, and the idea of hyper individualism and excessive consumerism. Insulting any part of that “individualism” (ie, guns, housing, transportation, clothing choices, and even the car you drive) and suddenly you are persona non grata to that person.
Population density may be a factor but I don't think it's dominant.
Right now, as I see it, the biggest problem in American politics is that the American right has been taken over by a personality cult. This has in turn sparked a broader anti-cult movement that is left dominant but open to everyone. Somehow these two forces have almost equal valence within our electoral system but it feels almost impossible to talk across the divide. Unfortunately I think the anti-cult movement almost paradoxically strengthens the cult and the result is both sides digging deeper and deeper in.
The undecideds generally don't pay much attention and think that both sides are a little nutty and that elections should be about policy. They are frustrated that they are being forced to choose between two seemingly bad options. They also know that they will be harshly criticized for their choice by many no matter which they make. This is an extremely toxic dynamic and it is leading to increased radicalization on both sides but the scale of radicalization is significantly higher on the right.
Like any cult, the crazier the claims made by the leader, the stronger the hold they have on its members who have already sacrificed intellectual autonomy to the movement. To admit that they've been duped is psychologically devastating and could lead to the loss of community that they've made through the movement. So they get defensive and closed off to reason. And, of course, as a defense mechanism they must project their experience onto their opponents whom they assume must also be delusional. This is exacerbated by the fact that any large group of people will contain the full range of character types: crazy and sane, cruel and kind, smart and dumb, etc. But once you have a strong bias (which is encouraged by the cult leader), you will start seeing all the negative things almost exclusively in the other side and all the positive things in your camp.
It is almost impossible to reason with someone who is not open to an opposing viewpoint (even if they are otherwise intelligent) and it can be dangerous if there is a reasonable probability that the discussion can turn hostile. So many if not most people avoid those challenging conversations out of a reasonable sense of self-preservation. I would certainly not try and talk politics with anyone with a "FUCK $DEMOCRATIC_POLITICIAN" flag flying in their yard and, honestly, it's not really that hard to tell from a few minutes conversation if they might lean that way.
I want to be clear that I'm not saying that I am immune to cult like thinking. I certainly have been indoctrinated into problematic belief systems and still have some erroneously biased thought patterns.
People are complicated and they can be quite rational in one domain and irrational in another. Unfortunately, we seem far past the point of rationality in our political system. Nevertheless I have hope that we can get through this difficult period with a minimum of damage but that hope is irrational on my part.
No.
Kurt Lewin is viewed by many as the father of social psychology [1], who made a name for himself particularly with studying the social dynamics that allowed the HOlocaust to happen, the psychology of obedience. What allowed otherwise ordinary people to go along with such horrors has been studied ever since.
I believe MAGA will be studied in similar terms for similar reasons for decades to come as researchers will seek to understand the mass psychosis and cognitive dissonance that made this possible.
What we have now goes beyond simple politics. We have a significant group in our society who is openly calling for inflicting violence on millions of people, be they immigrants, trans people, Muslims or whoever. I don't say this as hyperbole or as an intended political rant. These statements are objectively factual. If, say, you want to deport millions of people, that's a massive act of state violence, one where the logistics should be discussed but aren't. Why? Because it would involve internment camps (concentration camps, if you will) for millions of people. Is that not ringing any alarm bells for anyone?
The Holocaust isn't the only example where legitimate grievances were directed at a minority with horrific consequences. Even in the last century we've had the Killing Fields of Cambodia, the Rape of Nanjing, Rwanda, Sudan, Ethiopia, Aremenia, Yemen and even the Cultural Revolution, to name just a few.
There is no compromise position when it comes to industrialized violence against millions of people. We're not discussing how healthcare should be provided or how shchools should be funded or how we pay for the roads and bridges. Those things you should be able to discuss, But we're so far beyond that now.
[1]: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/articles/4B9rmwvZwQN45rckdz...
Disagreements can be healthy. But everything you say somehow ends up getting used against you in a formal way. Somebody at work can misinterpret what you say and it can cost you your job. You have a political idea that some nutty Republican shares? Well you're basically Hitler now. Good luck with your career.
I'm obviously exaggerating, but it's related to our political discourse in society at large. Open up reddit, read some of the political commentary, and try not to vomit in your mouth. People don't engage with ideas, or each other. I can't tell you how often I see people respond with things they assume the other person thinks instead of just talking about what was said. People in this thread have mentioned how difficult it is to untangle beliefs, assumptions, etc and that's true. No, politics isn't about ideas, it's about group identity. A consequence of this is that the conversation can quickly become reactive and emotional. It's easy to get othered (and this can have severe consequences) and we're apparently very aware of how the other necessarily impacts our life in a negative way (via social media and the major news outlets).
Part of the problem is that we've normalized this degree of sensitivity. I also wouldn't be surprised if our news feeds were incentivized to spread divisive beliefs.
Betteridge’s law of headlines
The reason is that we can't talk about Broken Democracy.
Party 1 has been pwned by a foreign country. It doesn't want you to know about BD or you'll vote them out.
Party 2 doesn't want you to know about BD because it wants democracy to be salvaged.
Ergo, everyone pretends it isn't broken. It's just a flesh wound.
Difficult to read even though you mentioned Broken Democracy with capitols. Was not typing it out again twice really more effective communication? The overhead for replacing two other uses in a single context didn't warrant the creation of a new acronym, let alone one so short.
The acronym was about focus, not about overhead. There's always been foreign influence, and sweeping it under the rug is standard practice. Democracy broke when we went from "influenced" to "pwned." Unbreaking it will require more than just wishing the problem away.