Is population density the reason Americans can't discuss politics?(georgesaines.com) |
Is population density the reason Americans can't discuss politics?(georgesaines.com) |
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
At this point, I only have the energy to gawk in horror at the unfolding situation: discussing the minutiae of policy feels almost comical when the very soul of the country is at stake. Never could I imagine how much blatantly obvious evil could be laundered through the intrinsic balance fallacy of a two-party system.
[1]: https://www.newsweek.com/donald-trump-says-project-2025-auth...
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.
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.
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"?
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'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.
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.
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.
[1]: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/articles/4B9rmwvZwQN45rckdz...
The law defines the process for legal immigration and many people have broken the law. Either intentionally or through incompetence the government has failed to effectively enforce immigration law. If the people of the USA wanted open borders then they should consent to it via the democratic process.
Illegal immigration is not a victimless crime. It strains local resources to accommodate the influx of people. Housing costs are driven up and labor costs down for the most vulnerable in society. Unvetted criminals or gang members entering pose a threat to public safety.
That being said I don't feel good about the mass deportation and the pain and suffering it would surely cause people who mostly mean no harm to anyone and are looking for a better life.
Consider the 10 stages of genocide [1]. The anti-immigration hysteria is probably at stage 6 at this point.
> The law defines the process for legal immigration and many people have broken the law.
There are many categories of so-called "undocumented" migrants and you have to consider each group. Anti-immigration rhetoric from the American right lumps up several groups of documented migrants into the "undocumented" category, including TPS recipients (such as the Haitians in Springfield, OH) and DACA recipients. It's worth considering who DACA recipients are. If someone was brought to the US at 5 months old, they clearly didn't choose to break the law. They likely have never been to their country of birth. They may not even speak the language. In most cases it's utterly inhumane and immoral to deport such a person and if you explain it to people, they will tend to agree.
> Illegal immigration is not a victimless crime.
This is where we get into right-wing propaganda.
> Housing costs are driven up
False [2].
> labor costs down for the most vulnerable in society
Actually undocumented migrants are largely doing jobs nobody else will do. If we snapped our fingers and tomorrow all the undocumented migrants were removed from the US, the agricultural industry would collapse. How do I know this? Because we have data to support it.
So if you really wanted to tackle undocumented migrants, who would you go after, the employee or the employer? Almost always they go after the employer. Undocumented migrants are openly employed in every state. Alabama tried this and it was a disaster [3]. So did Florida [4].
As for driving down wages, the best way to tackle this is to document them. We used to do this with temporary workers aka the Bracero program [5].
If you really want to see how exploitation of undocumented migrants and wage suppression works, look at the chicken producers. Pretty much everyone is undocumented and underpaid. What happens when they start to demand more wages? The chicken farms call in an ICE raid, pay a slap-on-the-wrist fine and rinse and repeat.
The wealthy love undocumented migrants because it keeps wages low and increases profits.
> It strains local resources
Undocumented migrants pay about $100 billion in taxes per year [6].
> Unvetted criminals or gang members entering pose a threat to public safety.
The "migrant crime" hysteria doesn't survive the simplest of Google searches. How many homicide convictions were there in 2023? 20,400. How many of them were committed by noncitizens (note: this includes documented migrants)? 29 [7].
Undocumented migrants are overwhelmingly people simply seeking safety and security. Perhaps we should stop destabilizing the countries they come from like Venezuela.
This is a completely manufactured non-problem based on objective lies.
[1]: https://www.hmd.org.uk/learn-about-the-holocaust-and-genocid...
[2]: https://www.msnbc.com/opinion/msnbc-opinion/housing-prices-f...
[3]: https://www.americanprogress.org/article/alabamas-immigratio...
[4]: https://civileats.com/2024/02/07/a-florida-immigration-law-i...
[5]: https://guides.loc.gov/latinx-civil-rights/bracero-program
[6]: https://itep.org/undocumented-immigrants-taxes-2024/
[7]: https://www.cbp.gov/newsroom/stats/cbp-enforcement-statistic...
- Reduce world oil production, boosting world prices and thus Russia's revenues.
- Create a migrant wave. This was the Western Hemisphere equivalent of the Syrian wave engineered by Assad, another goon. The waves are weaponized into anti-migrant hysteria by Putin's goons in countries that still have meaningful elections.
[1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/371876/gross-domestic-pr...
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…
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.
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.
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.
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...
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.
It's really unfortunate that quick sound bytes work so much better than real policy discussion.
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.
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.
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?
But I was pointing out that the article/title is easily refuted. It’s not as simple as that heuristic.
People say things they shouldn't when they believe they are anonymous. It's to our detriment.
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.)
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.
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.
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.
'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.
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.
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.
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.
How do you engage and have any kind of civil discourse with that?
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 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.
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.
It wasn't a near-perfect 50/50 split either. It was 52/48, which yielded a large margin of ~1.8M more votes to leave. Referendums in societies that only have them rarely will always be somewhere around the middle point, of course, as if there was already a clear majority in favour of one direction then it'd have been implemented already without the need for a referendum.
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...
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.
“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.
Many Americans have professional business relationships with people whom they vehemently oppose politically.
Politics is simply bad for business.
"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 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.
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.
* 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).
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.
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.
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).
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
Is obviously daft in a country where, by the person's own admission, people get killed for their political views.
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.
Jamie, pull up that clip of Taiwanese legislators getting into a fist fight in Congress.
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).
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).
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.
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.
If you think that you have a right to behave how you wish, be anyone's guest. Just don't complain when you don't get your expected result. As that's how etiquette works. Its enforced through social punishment, and often without saying a word.
There are good reasons for most basic rules of etiquette, especially in public conversation. Protecting those reasons is a strong incentive to enforce the etiquette.
You're over-simplifying what I said when you state that people don't have a right not to see emotion. This is specifically in regard to politics, and the greater consequences of spontaneous political conversations including but also beyond being uncomfortable. What I was implying is that said emotion, in regard to politics, too often frequently leads to group tumult. Which is one aspect of why the etiquette exists.
I'm sure you can find people who will go out of there way to argue with you. But to expect random common people in their few precious leisure hours to not avoid you is asking too much, should your preferred topic of conversation be politics.
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.
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’m pretty sure they’re free. They are nevertheless odd.
Pictures of Corbyn in front of huge crowds at rallies:
https://labourlist.org/2019/08/corbyn-encourages-labour-mps-...
https://www.counterfire.org/article/letter-left-corbyn-labou...
https://socialistworker.co.uk/news/thousands-rally-for-jerem...
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.
"The only problem politics can solve is generally preventing competing tribes from killing themselves in physical war.
Politics itself is incapable of solving any other problem, but could be used as a tool to solve your or your tribe's local problems if interference with other tribes is an issue. Solution duration will typically be very linearly dependent upon its amount of energy, motivation, and resources."
I don't agree with the above view, it has a fatalistic view of humanity that I emotionally can't accept, according to my religion anyway (which currently helps me out with food). I think that politics can definitely solve issues, and it solves issues for actual people and not corporations every day. It's just a matter of being a good citizen and contributing when you can.
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.
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)
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.
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.
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:
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_...
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.)
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."
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.
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.
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.
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.
You could change black and white to Palestinian and Israeli and suddenly most of these 'I would never' would have a very nuanced view on the matter.
But, as I agreed, there is a limit on stamina to discuss with the outmost fringe people.
And yes, the issue of Palestinian rights in Israel, in particular, is extremely thorny, which I presume is why you picked it. There are extremes on both sides—both of which are very real positions that very real people are taking today, neither of which is supportable—and there are shades of gray in the middle, and if I had an answer to that question that didn't raise 100 more, I'd probably have already won the Nobel Peace Prize.
But there are plenty of people in the US who would genuinely try to argue that black people don't deserve the same rights as white people, and unless you are one of them, I think you're likely to agree that that is not a thorny issue: there's a very clear right and wrong answer. It's not conceptually analogous to the situation in the Middle East, even though the words sound similar.
The existence of hard moral questions without easy answers does not negate the existence of moral questions with very obvious answers that a large number of people are nonetheless very obviously on the wrong side of.
> 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.
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 was trying to clarify the scope of your comment "infringes on the right of others to not be regularly subject to spontaneous (or not) conversations that people frequently get emotional over."
I've been living in the United States for over 20 years and I genuinely have never experienced/felt such a strong standard for public conversation, even amongst groups of people from different generations. It doesn't represent my experience at all. In fact, there are cultural memes involving older generations who absolutely do not follow this standard. It really paints the group that you're describing as extremely fragile, and I think that's also an implication of the article.
"If you think that you have a right to behave how you wish" No, I don't think I said that, actually.
Given that, I feel like you complaining that it made you feel as if you are "walking on eggshells" is meant to be manipulative toward getting me to concede your desires for the culture.
Good luck with that, anywhere. Believe what I say or not, I couldn't care less care how you feel in regard to my good faith sincerity. For Pete's sake. This is a stranger on the internet. I'm not your mother.
You're more than welcome to ignore what I say. I am not invested in you believing me, and this is not whatsoever a debate. I'm informing you of the reality on the ground as I know it to be. You seem to think that you are debating with the culture through me, somehow. My word.
As for the rest: I wrote a long response and then deleted it because of how crazy your response is on multiple assertions. From the reversal of your prior core complaint (to what, try to marginalize the common etiquette by now saying that you never come across it when it was the subject of your prior complaint?), to the hostile label, to the supposed and pointless correction of my phrasing that requires ignoring that it was in the context of your initial complaint. You are being argumentative just to be so, predicated on a false premise to boot. Your post isn't worth responding to more specifically. It's not hard at all to see why you might have some cultural trouble. Though, given what I now see, perhaps it isn't cultural trouble exactly. Perhaps it has more to due with your specific personality. As I have known many more perfectly polite and conversationally skilled foreigners than not.
If this quality of response is typical of your conversational skill, and refraining from it is "walking on eggshells", then I'd suggest you get used to that in order to get by.
Or maybe taking a communication class would help. A lot of people have stumbling blocks of various types, and not only with the specific issue under discussion. Even those who were born here. Conversation is an artform.
Good luck with the rest of your polite and skilled conversations where you accuse other people of being manipulative and crazy.
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.
But maybe the real take way here is that people in Indian should talk less about politics!
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.
This is absolutely not how a lot of people operate.
The complete refusal to interact with someone who disagrees with you is a relatively new phenomenon that seems to have risen alongside social media.
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.
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.
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.
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.
It absolutely does make them anti-gay. "Gay people should have fewer rights than we do" is fundamentally an anti-gay stance.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 people.
>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 [sic] 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.
>When Twitter pretends to be powerless to do anything about death/rape threats to women journalists, the light of civilization is dimmed, ever so slightly. When entire classes of people disengage from mainstream discourse because they are being threatened by bodily harm, maybe it is possible that it is disingenuous to pre-conclude that anything possibly resembling censorship will result in a dystopian police state where African Americans are still denied the right to vote.
Would you honestly be willing to work or discuss politely with someone that endorsed the ideas behind James Damore's memo? Your writing (at least as of 2017) suggests not.
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.
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.
More power to the people who can do it. It's just not within my ability.
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.
is it just cultural instinct and expectation?
When I think about why I'm uncomfortable with the idea, it stems from feeling like a lack the ability to push back against bigotry with tact. While some people have this skill, I do not. The consequence of this is either not engaging with bigots, or not speaking up when something bigoted is said.
I believe that not speaking up against bigoted beliefs implicitly normalizes their acceptability. What I mean by this is that I personally and deeply value tolerance and non-judgementalness with the exception of bigotry[1].
Faced with an inability to tactfully push back, I feel left with not engaging with folks who are overtly bigoted. Saying, "well you should not do that or feel that way," doesn't change the emotional response I have to that situation, it only pushes the intellectual part of me farther way from the emotional side creating a wider gap between feeling and intellect - effectively sowing greater cognitive dissonance.
More power to the people who have the skills to tactfully engage with bigots, but that's not me right now. Maybe someday.
Most people are full of contradictions and often carry beliefs that might be seen as controversial (perhaps in hindsight). Maybe it's not appropriate to lump all controversial beliefs into one, but I think a small part of the problem is that we identify ourselves as being morally pure as a way to avoid having hard conversations.
There is a human instinct resolve ambiguity, and barring that, heuristically paper over it.
The more emotionally engaging a topic is, the more galling the uncertainty and cognitive dissonance is. The more distressing the uncertainty, the more people want a simple solution, even if it isnt true.
I think questions like if someone can be a racist AND a good person are complex. They are uncomfortable. This makes a simple answer of "NO" all the more attractive. It makes life a lot easier than if the answer is "sometimes, but it depends on 1,000 other things".
Applying purity tests to others provides an easy way to go through life while minimizing the thought and consideration given to those people.
Contact info in bio.
So, in some sense it is a "privilege" to not have such a rare and extreme problem.
But, mostly the privilege is in the other direction, and the people with the privilege are the ones who dont have other serious problems in their life that they can afford to spend all their time and effort focusing on something that they have little ability to effect or change and aren't directly related to their immediate problems.
Most the people with material problems are the ones with the less privilege here, even though, yes in some rare cases the inability to avoid focusing on things that are irrelevant to ones day to day and immediate problems can be an issue.
> is life free of that burden.
Quite the opposite. People with actual burdens don't have the time, effort, or luxury to focus on things that are outside of their immediate issues.
They have things to do and problems to solve that are hurting them seriously in the material world.
Its the rich and wealthy, and undiscriminated that have the privilege to be morally pure all the time.
But one topic is at the top of all the news, the other is ignored, because it's so common.
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.
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.
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.
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.
This is basically the police execution - sorry, "officer involved shooting" policy.
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.
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.
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.
https://joycearthur.com/abortion/the-only-moral-abortion-is-...
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.
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.
Will a supreme court opinion do?
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 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?
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.
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...
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.
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.
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.
Well, going back to the original hypothetical that was brought up about making friends with racists.
Befriending the racists can actually be a pretty effective way of getting the racists to stop assaulting you at school every day.
If that example is too extreme, you can go with "making friends with people to work together on homework so you can graduate".
And, you are what you pretend to be sometimes, and eventually that stuff can turn into real friendships.
I would never judge someone for doing that.
But you seem to think that making moral "compromises" must mean that one's life is free from burdens.
By all means, do what you need to do in your life.
But, it is extraordinarily insulting that you are calling people privileged for having the "luxury" of not being morally pure, and not being able to pick and choose perfect friends.
This is a great example of how communication between people with different outlooks breaks down. We'll eventually get frustrated, call it quits, and never speak again. It's the exact pattern played out in miniature.
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...
> 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.
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.
What counterpoint is there to support the argument that 2 dead is better than 1 dead?
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.
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?
The only moral framework I know that would accept that is the strongest form of utilitarianism.
I'd say it's perfectly ethical to kill the man with the mortal heart wound and take his lungs.
The example you gave with having to make friends to get a good grade, I'm unsure how that relates to compromising your morals. Is that an experience you personally went through? What was that like for you?
I will repeat and rephase the answer which you may have misunderstood:
Circumstances, like someone preventing one's self from being assaulted every day by racists or racial supremacists, seems like a pretty clear cut example of someone who has less privilege.
Maybe those other people were talking about a friend? Maybe they were just talking about things in general and had no specific situation in mind.
I was just giving some possible situations or hypotheticals that would justify their arguments that they made.
But I am glad you were able to basically agree with me here that their arguments were justified in certain circumstances.
