> The authors of a 2017 study in the Journal of Politics revealed that the average Democrat believes that more than 40 percent of Republicans earn more than $250,000 per year.
Wow, really? I'm not your average Democrat.
How about this though: Do you believe that of people making more than $250,000 most are Republican?
And: Do you believe that among those that identify as LGBQT most are Democrat?
> Democrats’ understanding of Republicans actually gets worse with every additional degree they earn. This effect is so strong that Democrats without a high school diploma are three times more accurate than those with a postgraduate degree.
And also, the more news you read, the higher the perception gap.
The problematic effects of education don't surprise me at all though. I've felt for a while that more education seemed to make people somehow less intelligent in some strange, hard to define way.
I think it's partly that people's defences are down - they think "I have a PhD so I couldn't possibly be manipulated or misled, unlike the plebs who left school at 16".
It may also be due to people with higher education being more willing to uncritically accept anything said by 'experts' (i.e. their academic peers), without being willing to double check it against common sense or man-on-the-street reasoning. I've noticed that people with less education - we probably shouldn't call it worse education, given these findings - are much more willing to reject statements by academics if they're counterintuitive or seem to contradict lived experience. Whereas people with doctorates almost never do, regardless of how bizarre or absurd the claims being made are. Journalists likewise seem to be more likely to fall for bad science than they once were and I wonder if that's due to journalists always having degrees, these days.
This is perhaps one of the problems leading to the replication crisis.
It emerged with discussing collectivism vs. individualism. We know who lost (i.e. 1989). Some people want to forget and rehash this stupidity. It's not clear if they understand that these ideas mean "war." When I retire in ~15 years I just want to catch fish with barb-less hooks, but the lunatics are making that prospect unlikely.
No. The effects of reading news and getting more degrees are the same - your perception gets further from the ground truth established by surveys.
These surveys are called "ideological turing tests" by the way. They usually find that conservatives understand leftists much better than the other way around, which is an interesting finding by itself.
I wonder how well the questions distinguish between opinions about other voters’ opinions, and the actions of people that are elected.
For instance, with recent gerrymandering decisions from the Supreme Court, and Mitch McConnell’s blocking of bipartisan election security funding, it is easy to infer that a majority of Republican representatives in many elected bodies are against fair elections.
I doubt that many voters are against the right to have their votes counted fairly.
To balance that, add all dem congresscritters who blame Russia for election tampering but seem unable to pass laws about anything to prevent said tampering in the future. I think their voters would like a fix for those perceived problems.
The Russians utilized historically divisive issues on social media in order to interfere, and it is not clear congress can do anything WRT social media in order to minimize the Russians' ability to continue this activity. The social media companies can (and have) taken steps to mitigate. I have been advising my friends to stay away from platforms that have "real name" policies, and to my less educated friends/family (they are easily fooled) to stay away from social media all together.
I'm currently reading The Sword And The Shield The Mitrokhin Archive And The Secret History Of The KGB and they have been at this for over 100 years. It's ~700 pages, mostly dry, but completely revealing.
To the dead-reply to my comment, I will just say that MLK may have had collectivist leanings. He did not have the privilege to consider principles, and he was standing on the shoulders of giants, like Frederick Douglass.
Those promoting central-planning, "give D.C. power/ blame America first" crowd have no idea what they are promoting. In the 60s, it was still unclear if a soviet style system could remain solvent, even if they remained so through intellectual property theft (Ian Flemming was writing about a real problem). They couldn't, but they developed this soft-power technique to influence others via propaganda (e.g. "micro-influencers") during Lenin's time that still prevails to this day (it's what Huxley and Orwell were attempting to characterize).
Have you looked at primary sources (statements from McConnell, his office, or Congress) for more about why they blocked that funding? Your inference sounds like it’s based on one-sided reporting and the asymmetry described in the OP article. There may be another explanation that doesn’t assume the worst.
(I’ve been complaining about election security for twenty years, but this issue has become a political game since 2016.)
I honestly think this is mostly irrelevant. As a liberal, I don't really care about what Republicans claim to believe or what their demographics really look like. All that matters is who they vote for and what that does to the country. If Republican voters actually have a moderate view of immigration, that's great, but they voted for a guy who is putting migrants in cages. Therefore, they all support putting migrants in cages. They could fix that by changing who they vote for, but they haven't done so. I consider this policy to be reprehensible, so how can I not consider Republican voters to be reprehensible?
One of my favorite modern political quotes actually came from Joe Biden. He said, "Don't tell me your values. Show me your budget and I'll tell you your values."
This is a ridiculous assertion. In USA, you're typically given two choices realistically. If you agree with more points of what is important to you, you vote for them. By no means is who you vote for a complete representation of yourself.
That's not really true. We have primaries. Republican primary voters didn't have a great set of options, but they clearly chose the worst person in American politics in about 50 years. What conclusion am I supposed to draw from this?
If Republicans chose the worst person in 50 years of American politics to represent them, you've really got to wonder how the Democrats still managed to pick someone who would lose to him.
The DNC didn't want to listen to those of us in the party who were practically shouting at how unelectable Hillary Clinton was and the party got what it deserved, IMO.
> The DNC didn't want to listen to those of us in the party who were practically shouting at how unelectable Hillary Clinton was and the party got what it deserved, IMO.
And, many of us (I'm also a registered Democrat) that are watching things as they shape up in the DNC for 2020, are wondering if any lessons were taken to heart at all. It's frightening to me to sit here today and feel a genuine sense that Trump is going to win _again_ in 2020 because the DNC can't pull it's shit together and field an electable candidate.
This is just way, way off-topic. If you want to make it relevant, try asking why voters decided she was unelectable and ask yourself it had anything to do with policy. I think the crux of my entire complaint is that a huge swath of voters don't vote on policy at all. There could be 20 million Trump voters who wish he'd be softer on immigrants and take action on climate, but they really don't care because they just love his attitude or something. It's like declaring your intent to be a vegetarian but spending all your money on Big Macs because they're tasty. And then asking why Chipotle put tofu on the menu when you know everyone hates it.
Clinton received 3 million more votes. She, by any reasonable standard, won the election.
Add in third-party factors. Comey came out at the last minute with a statement he later retracted after the damage had been done that had a measureable effect on the election. The GOP works hard to disenfranchise voters. Probable Russian interference (in FB trolling and opinion influencing if nothing else). Biased media coverage that played into Trump's game.
The narrative that Clinton was a bad candidate is bs.
> What conclusion am I supposed to draw from this?
That they care much, much more about their own financial and economic conditions than pretty much any other issues? That's not a slam on them; you would too if you were living paycheck-to-paycheck.
Bill Clinton understood this ("It's the economy, stupid.") but the current crop of Democratic presidential candidates somehow do not, which is why they stand a depressingly good chance of failing to win the next presidency.
For many, it's probably not which party they agree with more points from, but which one they agree with on the one or two issues they care about the most, even if they disagree with everything else.
Stepping on a ledge and positing it's probably how a lot of people vote, if even unconsciously- but it's probably not a popular way of ascribing personal motive to the political act of voting which is a more conscious and deliberate action. Or at least, it's less convenient than simply associating the sum with the worst of its parts.
That bit in the article about 'motive attribution asymmetry'.
> If Republican voters actually have a moderate view of immigration, that's great, but they voted for a guy who is putting migrants in cages. Therefore, they all support putting migrants in cages.
They may not emotionally agree with it individually.
But they enabled the behavior.
These voters are suffering cognitive dissonance.
Their actions mean more than their self professed personal identity. That’s been true in social discourse forever.
Or should we let rapists go because they felt like they needed to rape and we should allow perpetrators their feelings over their victims real freedoms?
In the same way we jail rapists for their actions we can shame and demonize others for crap actions.
This cause effect loop is what we rely on to improve our society. So long as it doesn’t devolve into caging old white people, it’s not a big deal to me if they lose some political power given what the world looks like when they have it.
SCOTUS just confirmed the people are not owed objective representation. Their side just enabled the path for their own undoing.
Freedom of speech is not freedom from repercussions of that speech.
John Stuart Mill said the government should be prevented from punishing people for being drunks. But their neighbors were under no obligation to accept them for being a drunk.
This is well trodden philosophical territory that gets circular fast. Cause here you are calling someone else’s position unreasonable over their position that others are unreasonable and should be called such.
Subjective emotional positions is how humans view the world. It’s unreasonable to expect we all subscribe to the same take.
It's not really that unreasonable that a view like that exists.
The right wing, where ever you place that pin, has decided to play winner takes all politics for a long time in the west. The left loses when it compromises in most political spheres. The saying, the left always fight's itself first, didn't just pop out of thin air.
I think the left is becoming a little more hard nosed with fighting, and realizing that winning is winning is winning and it doesn't matter how you get there it's what you do once you are there. And I'd say this may be an effect of climate change and that we may be living in the last two decades where we can take meaningful action on climate change.
This thinking is equivalent to "oh the ship is sinking, others aren't bailing as many buckets of water as me therefore I should do less." Unless your goal is actually to sink, your rational is missing the objective.
This is rhetoric without substance. How much more should we be doing? The poorest among our country will suffer the most with the proposed austerity measure. If it's a global problem, more than one country has to address it (not just the one doing 15% of emissions; focus on the 80%, not 20%).
This is rather virulent. As a liberal, I do not agree with you. I am sure there are human beings on the other side, and dialogue will help. Baseline thinking is not always relevant. In fact, I believe it is through the moderates on the other side that you can find a reasonable middle ground.
I'm making what I believe to be an observation of reality and a logical inference from that observation. I honestly don't know what to do about it, but I would be willing to personally bake a chocolate cake for every person whose mind I could change. All I'm saying, is that we judge people on their actions, not their intent.
The belief I'd like to change is whatever belief leads them to seemingly vote agains their own interests. My point is that just because I find their actions reprehensible doesn't mean I support aggressive confrontation. I support whatever ethical approach will yield the best result.
The belief I'd like to change is whatever belief leads them to seemingly vote agains their own interests.
Voting against one's own perceived interests is indeed an interesting political act, but it is in no way relegated or unique to American citizens who vote Republican or even American citizens at all. Do you extend this same viewpoint of reprehension to members of other countries who vote against what you've decide are against their interests? Do you extend it to individuals in the US? Your neighbors?
> If Republican voters actually have a moderate view of immigration, that's great, but they voted for a guy who is putting migrants in cages. Therefore, they all support putting migrants in cages. They could fix that by changing who they vote for, but they haven't done so. I consider this policy to be reprehensible, so how can I not consider Republican voters to be reprehensible?
Except the previous President did the exact same. It's already long since come out that the people in cages photos that so enraged everyone last year were from 2014. Democrats voted for a guy who did that too then.
Nobody is in favor of putting kids in cages, but at the same time nobody can agree on who is at fault or how to stop it. I heard one person use the cages as support for the border wall, saying that if nobody could cross the border nobody would be caught by ICE. Almost everybody can agree on most of the same morals but as far as facts and deductions we might as well all be living in different universes.
I don't want to hear any of that. I want to hear OP reconcile his claim that the other side of his claimed side are all guilty of reprehensible behavior when it's factually correct that his did the same.
This isn't about blame or fixing it, it's about how dangerous it is when we broadly paint those we disagree with as "enemy" and ignore the facts, decency and reason that bind us together in society.
This is awful and as someone who generally supported Obama I consider this one of several shameful moments in his presidency. The issue with the Trump administration isn’t just about putting people in cages - that’s the sound bite, and one that should have been used with Obama - it’s how Trump’s zero tolerance policy puts so many people in cages, even if they’re seeking asylum.
How can anyone make this argument in good faith? The people being caged, the reasons they're being caged, the conditions they're kept in, the utter depravity of it all are on completely different scales. I don't recall simple asylum seekers or American citizens being caged under Obama.
Furthermore, one side is loudly advocating against it as a practice, now, because its horrible, not simply because it is Trump doing it. It was bad when Obama did it too. And yet, the other side is actively encouraging it and often outright cheering it.
Furthermore, and this highlights an ideology that I've rarely seen hold untrue, liberals are more than happy to openly, vocally criticize Obama. And yet, in this case, faced with abject horror all we hear from the right is "whatabout Obama".
In my opinion, this argument is completely disingenuous and is merely a gotcha-style deflection.
How can you? (Oh, that's why you made the throwaway. Maybe I could take your argument more seriously if you used your actual account.)
It's not like operating these centers doesn't cost money. Our party (I'm a registered Democrat, thanks) had to concede this point after letting the situation get as bad as it did by blocking funding for so long.
We have record rates of illegal immigration right now. The answer isn't simply to let everyone through -- there's largely bipartisan support for legal paths to immigration...and also under this presidency we also have (recent) record numbers of legal immigration as well.
How many Republicans do you actually know, because I haven't seen any of them (like in my family or in any of the media they consume) cheering and encouraging putting people in cages. They want deportations and to stop them at the border completely, turning them away.
I'd be interested to know where you live, because here where I live there was virtually no internal Obama criticism that I'm aware of. Even the 20% illegal Section 702 wiretaps and drone campaigns in places we weren't at war with got a pass.
You’ll care more about the argument itself if the person used an anonymous but long lived handle to post it with?
This seems to be a bit of a part of the issue. You’re focusing on the credibility of the messenger which can be obfuscated by your emotions and in the political realm by mainstream media.
You’re using a pretty reductionist set of tools for vetting a person is age of an anonymized web forum account.
It's like when a toddler has a hard fall and looks to the parent to see how to react. As a parent, if you look horrified and make a big deal about it, the child starts bawling. If you look normal and brush it off, the child has a minimal reaction. It's the same fall, but the network of people they take leadership cues from dictated the nature of their response.
It's the same with people (on both sides of the aisle), their social networks, and the press. People underestimate the power of the press and the influence it has on giving cues about when and what to be upset about.
It's not so much that the hypocrisy is reconciled, it's just ignored.
The migrant cage issue is really besides the point. I'm not trying to start a debate specifically about immigration. I could pick any topic, even something innocuous. My point is that if you claim to support a policy and then vote the other way, do you actually support it?
You're assuming that every voter voted for Trump for the positions he hold on the issues you care about. What if Trump was just the best candidate for the issues THEY care about? Also most of Republicans voted for Trump ergo all of them support all the policies by Trump is the same logic I can use to say most Americans voted for Trump therefore all Americans support all the policies by Trump. In reality, most Americans I've met are perfectly good and rational people, they just care about different issues, that's all.
That's a lot of hypotheticals, but I think that it was pretty obvious what kind of character they were voting for. And he has consistently held over 90% approval from Republicans during his term, so they are evidently satisfied with the results. When it comes to issues that I (and many liberals) feel strongly about, he was always very clearly a complete 180 from what I'd consider sensible policy. I've read that over 50% of Republicans now consider climate change to a major issue that should be addressed, but Trump repeatedly declared it a hoax. So, it stands to reason that at least tens of millions of people who claim to think climate change is a critical issues deliberately voted for someone who will expressly move the country backwards in its response.
I'm being somewhere reductive in my position and clearly people had some other incentives in how they voted, but I'm just saying that the premise of this article is meaningless. While Republican voters may not be as strident as they let on, they have placed an army of extremely strident representatives in power and haven't wavered in their support. That's what the country now has in hand and it wasn't by accident.
I see hypocrisy as commonly thought of as a logical fallacy.
Relativity and neuroscience plays a role in all of this: we all have emotional blinders given the messages and “facts” that have been emotionally reinforced the most over time. Especially from our childhood.
I’m under no obligation to reconcile what you see as hypocrisy.
Hating Trump for putting people in cages doesn’t mean anyone forgives Obama for the same. That sort of reasoning is peddling a task you conjured up and is a contrived as a elementary arithmetic word problem. It proves nothing about how a person would act tomorrow.
Here’s how I reconcile it: society gives me a choice of shit sandwich and utter waste. I’ll vote for shit sandwich and loath my culture for being myopic.
Which is basically how we’ve always reconciled it and pretended we cared in public to keep up appearances.
Why stop there? President Barrack "Drone-Strikes-For-Freedom" Obama certainly has an interesting legacy on his hands and yet it seems to me that the entire world has given him a blanket pass on all of the atrocious things that went down under his terms.
> Therefore, they all support putting migrants in cages.
This is incredibly dangerous thinking. I don’t want to get involved in politics but I would hope a discussion on hacker news would hold higher standards than blanket statements like that.
> very naive and young. either way, you’re no liberal.
Likely, but about on par with other claimed liberals here in NY, given my experiences the last few years.
I considered myself to be extremely liberal, but the new left would view me as far right. I feel politically homeless and I hear a lot of the same sentiment from peers.
I was raised as liberal Republican (pro gay-mariiage in the 80s, marijuana legalization in the 90s, etc.), and it's been very disheartening to learn I have to call myself an American conservative because I strive toward the principle of individual freedom (i.e. liberty, from which the term 'liberal' is etymologically derived). I can tolerate anything but violence.
Thanks for assuming that all Republicans voted for Trump. Your hasty generalization shows you know us well.
I am a Republican and voted for Rubio in the primary and Gary Johnson in the election. I'm sticking with the GOP because despite the evangelicals and Tea Party--both are anti-intellectual movements that breed the Trump swamp--the party's core values of limited government and equal opportunity ring true in ways that the democrat party has never worked for me.
This is the thing that I don't get about the USA. The Democrats are center-right. If you ignore the Army, Police and various intelligence / paramilitary parts of the USG (the bigs the Republicans expand and the Dems just roll with) then the USG under the previous administration was pretty small and efficient.
They're also pretty big on equal opportunity - for all, no matter who their parents are or what colour their skin.
The problem is the lack of choice in your two party first-past-the-post system. You see the same thing in the UK. It's too easily abused by well-funded minorities to amplify their power.
The USA is unique from the rest of the world (the Old World) in that it is based on an idea, not genetics.
We are the first start-up country. We are comprised of the greatest minds in the world from all genetic backgrounds. Rep. Amash is of Palestinian and Syrian descent, and he is more American than most notorious politicians with whom I am familiar. America is based on an idea, and he embodies it.
Old World people from Europe and Asia have no idea what they're talking about WRT the USA. Classifying the USA in European terms (i.e. "center-right") makes no sense in this context, and we do not use such terms for a reason. Humanity deserves at least one country where individual freedom is a revered principle and people do not emphasize outcomes other than technical innovation. Not every country needs to operate in the same way (nor every US state).
One of the interesting points that the media neglects to report on is that the migrants are free to return to their country. They would be given a ride to the border for free and allowed to go their merry way.
Migrants in "cages" is only a perception that certain people have.
These fact checks are against a different claim, namely "detainees are free to walk out of detention centers" or "voluntary deportation is granted to everyone who requested it". The claim that nobody has made.
They are being detained because they claimed asylum (likely just to evade being deported) after illegally entering the country. They are being held while their claim is being evaluated. If they were to abandon that asylum claim there would not be any reason to hold them and the deportation would proceed. Voluntary deportation may not always be available since it's a privilege at discretion of immigration officers but forceful deportation is always there. The difference is that you get a ban on entering the US after being deported and voluntary deportation leaves your record clean.
Whose brother, who had no citizenship claims had apparently been deported as soon as he signed paperwork:
"After two days in detention, Marlon signed a voluntary deportation form."
If you need more information there are plenty immigration lawyers websites explaining the whole procedure and options for detainees.
Couldn't agree more but I think healthcare is an issue that illustrates this point much better. There is a clear divide. Republicans want to take it away and democrats want to expand it even more than they have expanded it in the previous administration. It's hard to argue against that when your health and life depend on which party wins. The other side is literally trying to kill you.
I think you should look at what happens to sick people when you legislatively prevent them from getting healthcare. They die. Plenty of other countries have figured out how to provide healthcare for all their citizens either through a government run plan or through private insurance. Are Americans that stupid they can't figure it out? Or are they just so cruel they'd rather let their own citizens die so a few people can get rich? Probably both.
Everybody dies. The only certainties in this world are death and taxes, as the saying goes. You are focused on outcomes instead of principles, to your detriment.
This shit is so cynical: We should sacrifice individual freedom to get an extra 5 years of existence where someone wipes our ass. Like that's dignified. Fascist garbage that will be met with equal force should you choose to pursue radical means to achieve it.
Yeah but when you die is of significance. I bet if you had a curable form of cancer or other illness, you'd want to be cured and live longer instead of dying six months from now. Your argument is nonsense. You'd do anything in your power to get healthcare if it was you. But of course, when it applies to other people, let them die prematurely. That's your idea of freedom? The freedom to die? That's some sick kind of thinking. Of course, as you imply, as long as it's not happening to you, you'd rather let others die even though it doesn't benefit you at all to let them die. Sure we could spend money to help others, but since it doesn't benefit you, this is fascist. I don't think you even understand what freedom is and likely have never experienced it, but you seem to think you will lose it if other people get healthcare. This is exactly the kind of stupid, disgusting, morbid thinking that keeps us from having proper healthcare in the US and exactly why so many people hate conservatives and Republicans in the US. We're tired of being told our lives are not worth saving or living by people who only want to profit off of our misery and death as you seem to advocate here. All in the name of "freedom" something Americans truly know nothing about outside of idiotic slogans, marketing, and propaganda they memorize and recite like broken records. A child could see through the farce that is "freedom" to Americans.
>A child could see through the farce that is "freedom" to Americans.
That's why all these command-and-control economies rely on innovation from America. It's not health care, it's health services where other people are doing this work. You fail to account for people doing work, and you twist the definitions of words to a vast degree. Other countries use their government to force pricing (it's not negotiation) on these innovators. One does not get to simultaneously demand these products (which come from innovation) and dictate their pricing. Back in 2008, I deemed FB's requirement of a "real name" too steep and I refused to participate.
As I've mentioned many times on HN, I would pay for your flight to Denver so you can say this stuff right to my face (per HN Guidelines), but none of you are willing to accept. I assure you I am quite civil, but I do not suffer fools.
You'd pay for my flight so you can call me names in person but not to help save someone's life. What's sad is that there are way too many people who think this way. They'd do anything except help another human being. It's practically built into the culture.
At this point, I doubt you are allowed into the USA. You are so cowardly, you are unwilling to visit even without a personal expense (I promised to pay). I have no words for you, and I wish you'd find a platform where you can espouse your unAmerican ideals. In America, we call that a wimp. I have no interest in name-calling, just confronting my accuser. I'm a proud member of the Navajo Nation, but I try not to wear it on my sleeve. We lost 66% of our land to the great nation of the USA, so I would appreciate if you step back. The trade-off was worth it.
I'd fear for my life if I took you up on your offer but thanks anyway. I'm not surprised others haven't taken you up on it. You advocate for citizens not to be let into the US due to their opinions and you call me unamerican (not to mention the threats in the other thread). Lol. I guess in your America, only people who share your beliefs are welcome. If that is what America is, then it is, as the current president called it, a shithole and the reason for that is people like you. You can call me a wimp or any other names while pretending not to call me names in two consecutive sentences. In my America, we have freedom of speech still, one of the few freedoms that still exist, so that's fine (not so much on hn, but that's another issue). I expect that from people with as much hate as you espouse here. But god forbid you help a person that's dying by supporting a proper healthcare system. That would be antithetical to everything you stand for, wouldn't it?
I learned that some of my family with Trump stickers are basically socialists, they just don’t realize it. When you start talking to them about the things they’re happy their local government does, it’s all safety net and arts.
>The authors of a 2017 study in the Journal of Politics revealed that the average Democrat believes that more than 40 percent of Republicans earn more than $250,000 per year. Meanwhile, Republicans believe that nearly 40 percent of Democrats are LGBTQ. How close are these estimates to reality? Not very. Just 2 percent of Republicans are doing that well financially, and just 6 percent of Democrats are LGBTQ.
I think the authors of the study and the author of this article are measuring something completely different than what they think they're measuring. Although the questions are geared towards measuring specific traits (wealthy repub, or LGBTQ dem), I think what the study participants are actually estimating are the support network "power" for those ideals. I would bet if you rephrased the questions to:
>"What percentage of Republicans would go along with wealthy Republican leadership decisions?"
and
>"What percentage of Democrats would go along with LGBTQ leadership decisions?"
...you would get similar percentages to the original questions. I would argue that the participants are naturally estimating the social power of the ideals in question, because it's a more useful metric, and I would make the argument that humans (on average) are really good at estimating that particular thing because it's what we've been optimizing for for the last few thousand years with investments, fashion, war, and innovation.
I agree that something is fishy, but I think it's not quite as simple as that. I'm pretty confident those questions would return way over 40% from the opposite parties.
I haven't read the study so I'm just going with a hunch: could it be that the people polled understood "Democrats" and "Republicans" to mean representatives and other politicians holding office?
I really wish people would stop associating themselves with parties and instead care more about issues. I see it quite often that somebody thinks an issue is good but as soon as “their” party comes out against it they are suddenly fiercely against it too. Party allegiance pretty much stops people from thinking about issues. Instead of doing the right thing it becomes all about winning and defeating the “other”.
I bet on a lot of issues it would be really easy to find large national agreements if the parties didn’t sabotage them for tactical reasons.
There are many people whose lives are such that they do not consider principles, only outcomes. This is "ends justify the means" thinking, and it is short-sighted and dangerous. There is a famous quotation from Gandhi to that effect, and he is probably the greatest human of the 20th century of notoriety.
> Party allegiance pretty much stops people from thinking about issues
I think you hit the nail on the head.
Unfortunately, explicitly not thinking seems to be the end goal for a lot of people, based on my own (potentially circumstantial) experience.
A large percentage of people don't seem to find joy in thinking or thinking about thinking. It seems to be viewed as work, which is to be avoided when possible.
Optimizing for the lest amount of mental work, basically, which your amygdala will graciously step in to provide emotional reactions that "feel right".
May at least explain why or how things seem to err in that direction.
Thinking is work, isn't it? The brain is an organ, it needs energy in order to work efficiently. It wouldn't surprise me at all if the brain had properties somewhat like a muscle, and deep reasoning for prolonged periods burned a lot of energy.
I'm not sure if there's any biological evidence to support what I just said, but I do get the strong impression that critical thinking is like exercise: some people do it more, and it gets easier for them, so they do it more, and so on. But for most people it's just a drag and they don't like it, they'd rather do other things.
WRT people changing their perspective because of party ... I suspect this is just a mental shortcut. The left and right exist because they summarise deeply held intuitions about human nature. The positions held by each side do follow logically from those intuitions, but sometimes it needs thought to see why, and it's of the rather subtle often semi-sub-conscious type of thinking that most would rather not do. So it may make perfect sense to change opinion if you learn your party has changed its opinion - if you think that your party of choice has got basically the right idea about the world in broad strokes, then it's a nice time-saving assumption that they thought more about any individual issue than you did, and you'd probably agree with them if you thought harder.
> The left and right exist because they summarise deeply held intuitions about human nature. The positions held by each side do follow logically from those intuitions
I really don't think so. For example (all of these apply to the supporters of the left/right, and not the people actually in power, because who know what they actually believe/support, vs. what is just political dealings), "how can you be against the death penalty, but pro-abortion" - but then, the opposite stance makes just as little sense. For another example, the US left used to be anti-globalization, but now they are banging the free-trade drum, while the US right is flirting with protectionism. Or compare LGBT support on the left today, with their persecution under most communist governments in the past. Then there is the Christian US right that mostly ignores Jesus' rather socialist teachings, while the mostly non-Christian left is in a hurry to bring them up. Unions used to be (still are?) anti-immigration, and kind of a left-wing thing?, while the left is pro-immigration. Environmentalism and animal welfare were right-wing positions in Nazi Germany (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Animal_welfare_in_Nazi_Germany), while now they're left-wing ones, and the right tends to ignore/oppose them.
If I knew more about politics in Asia, Africa, or South America, I bet I could come up with lots of other examples where the positions of their local left/right differ from those in the US/Europe.
Point is, the positions are driven group affiliation, not logic - historically, it was far more important to be in the right group, than to be correct.
> "how can you be against the death penalty, but pro-abortion"
I personally don't see an inconsistency with this original belief either, when you include the belief that a soul/conciousness is only created later on, e.g. during birth.
Like I said, it can take some thought and analysis to discern the underlying logic. Still, I tend to think that even though of course not everything is 100% logical in politics, it's more logical than it may first appear.
"how can you be against the death penalty, but pro-abortion"
People who are pro-abortion don't consider it to be murder, but rather just a normal medical operation done for the benefit of the mother. Whereas the death penalty - or really any harsh punishments at all - is perceived as being "nasty", brutish, uncivilised etc.
compare LGBT support on the left today, with their persecution under most communist governments in the past
Putting my flame-retardant suit on for a moment, the reality is that if you scratch the surface, the left hasn't changed at all in this regard.
A key tenant of leftist intuition is that the world can be perceived through the lens of identity group oppressions. It's always been this way since Marx: he was obsessed with the perceived bourgeoisie oppression of the proletariat (capitalists vs the working class). Hence communists being so frequently anti-semitic, as Marx perceived Jews as being intrinsically bourgeoisie.
Now LGBT oppression wasn't a communist thing - all societies considered homosexuality to be taboo up until incredibly recently, it's been one of societies most stable taboos - most likely due to higher STD rates amongst homosexuals, and inability to create a family. That was a much bigger deal in times before state pensions, when children were the primary way to be supported in old age.
The switch then is simple enough - the modern left is obsessed with the perceived oppression of LGBT by white middle aged men. The important thing is not exactly which group is being oppressed by which other group; the important thing is that oppression is happening and must be stopped. The fall of the USSR and rise of Chinese manufacturing did huge damage to the idea of capitalists vs the working class being the fundamental division in society. The disappearance of the taboo against homosexuality as STD rates fell and social security rose, caused the old division to be seamlessly replaced with "white men vs women and minorities". Same old, same old.
the Christian US right that mostly ignores Jesus' rather socialist teachings, while the mostly non-Christian left is in a hurry to bring them up
Interesting example. I've not thought of Jesus as a socialist before. If you mean "love thy neighbour", that's not socialism, that's old fashioned charity - and conservatives generally give more to charity, if I recall studies correctly. Or which things said by Jesus do you mean?
Unions used to be (still are?) anti-immigration, and kind of a left-wing thing?, while the left is pro-immigration
Unions represent the 'old left' and must do structurally, because their goal is to represent the financial interests of their members: blue collar labour, mostly. But this doesn't always hold true. Unions in the UK financially support Labour, which is stuffed with pro-EU MPs and which just came out in favour of a second referendum (i.e. trying to cancel Brexit). Given the choice, they preferred to support mass immigration of low wage workers, than be ideologically disloyal.
The idea of immigration as inherently positive is a somewhat recent development. Marx had nothing to say on the topic and actual communist states only ever had problems stopping people leaving, not arriving. However we can see that it's plenty logical from a perspective of moral reasoning without regard to costs - poor people live in poor countries where wages are low. We don't know how to make wages rise in those countries but if they come here their wages/standard of living will go up a lot automatically. So it's immoral to stop people coming here and benefiting that way.
Environmentalism and animal welfare were right-wing positions in Nazi...
I try hard to put partisan differences aside and vote for candidates that I feel will vote for solid principles and resist partisanship. As a result, my ballot is often a mix of Democrats, Republicans, and third parties.
However, I feel like I'm in the minority. Apparently ~30% of people on each side stick with their party, and even more tend to prefer a specific party. I feel like a lot of people don't even really understand the key issues and vote more based on habit/loyalty than anything else.
Aside from referring people to political quizzes like isidewith, I'm really not sure what I can do. I personally thought it was interesting that my results put candidates from 3 different parties in the top 5 matches, and none of them were either of the two major candidates in 2016.
> Motive attribution asymmetry makes us unwilling to cooperate. When we hate our neighbors, we lower our defenses against the virtual invaders who detest the United States’ pluralist and classically liberal values.
Mentioning motive attribution asymmetry, and committing it in the very next sentence - hilarious. I dare say those people don't detest 'classically liberal values', but US foreign policy and influence (such as imposing seed patent law on invaded countries).
Of course this policy isn't driven by the US people as a whole, but by a handful of special interests. But it is very convenient for them to use the US as a shield, and remain discreet themselves.
That said, I can't really disagree with the rest of the article.
It's strange watching American politics as an outsider. Trump was basically elected by the flyover states because he acknowledged that blue-collar America's economic situation was sub-par. And while he probably hasn't helped out their plight as much as hoped, the US economy overall certainly isn't hurting. Yet the democrats seem completely oblivious to the reasons Trump came to power in the first place, and somehow are poised to completely blow the next election despite the media machine railing against Trump and his supposed unpopularity.
All the talk about Trump's racism, Nazi immigration officials, etc..., just makes the democrats look desperate considering his policies aren't much different than Clinton's in the 90's. His economic policies would have been considered orthodox in the 70's and 80's. The Democrats wasted years trying to come up with some sort of Russian link which they haven't proven and which frankly, I don't think anyone cares about.
And it's all quite ridiculous considering Obama continued most of Bush's policies. He extended the Patriot Act, didn't shut down Guantanamo, killed people abroad with drones, detained and deported migrants. The absurd angle the democrats are taking with Trump is going to lead them to another defeat, as they're diluting their message by being so extreme. Trump makes everything about himself, the Democrats reinforce it, and it's impossible to see anyone from the Dem side challenging him.
I don't agree with all of this but I am absolutely flabbergasted that Democrats seem to be falling into the exact same trap as they did during the previous election...
I'm an American living abroad and was as shocked as anyone when Trump was elected. The racism/xenophobia and pseudo-intellectual far-right rhetoric is more vocal than it has ever been before and that does have a lot to do with Trump. It should be making it painfully easy to get Trump out of office in the coming election and yet somehow the Democrats seem to think we should continue down the weird neoliberal path of the past. Just start speaking in a language that blue collar workers can understand... that's it. Nothing fancy. But for some reason it's just not happening.
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[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 164 ms ] threadThat twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards the 2020 presidential election?
I'm 100% certain that they suck. I don't even need to listen to them or read their documents. It's just axiomatic.
People have too much of a sense of dignity to admit this lol.
But isn't maturing just a matter of losing all sense of dignity lol.
Wow, really? I'm not your average Democrat.
How about this though: Do you believe that of people making more than $250,000 most are Republican?
And: Do you believe that among those that identify as LGBQT most are Democrat?
For income, you have this graph, partitioned into <$20,000/y, $39,000-$62,000/y, and >$102,000/y.
https://www.npr.org/news/graphics/2012/09/pm-repsndems/gr-pm...
For LGB you have: https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/10/25/lesbian-gay...
Neither one lines up exactly with the parent's questions but this should give you an idea.
Wow.
The problematic effects of education don't surprise me at all though. I've felt for a while that more education seemed to make people somehow less intelligent in some strange, hard to define way.
I think it's partly that people's defences are down - they think "I have a PhD so I couldn't possibly be manipulated or misled, unlike the plebs who left school at 16".
It may also be due to people with higher education being more willing to uncritically accept anything said by 'experts' (i.e. their academic peers), without being willing to double check it against common sense or man-on-the-street reasoning. I've noticed that people with less education - we probably shouldn't call it worse education, given these findings - are much more willing to reject statements by academics if they're counterintuitive or seem to contradict lived experience. Whereas people with doctorates almost never do, regardless of how bizarre or absurd the claims being made are. Journalists likewise seem to be more likely to fall for bad science than they once were and I wonder if that's due to journalists always having degrees, these days.
This is perhaps one of the problems leading to the replication crisis.
If readers are educated, isn't then that news are shit?
-scare headlines in huge print, often of minor news
- lavish use of pictures, or imaginary drawings
-use of faked interviews, misleading headlines, pseudoscience, and a parade of false learning from so-called experts
-emphasis on full-color Sunday supplements, usually with comic strips
-dramatic sympathy with the "underdog" against the system.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellow_journalism
It emerged with discussing collectivism vs. individualism. We know who lost (i.e. 1989). Some people want to forget and rehash this stupidity. It's not clear if they understand that these ideas mean "war." When I retire in ~15 years I just want to catch fish with barb-less hooks, but the lunatics are making that prospect unlikely.
These surveys are called "ideological turing tests" by the way. They usually find that conservatives understand leftists much better than the other way around, which is an interesting finding by itself.
For instance, with recent gerrymandering decisions from the Supreme Court, and Mitch McConnell’s blocking of bipartisan election security funding, it is easy to infer that a majority of Republican representatives in many elected bodies are against fair elections.
I doubt that many voters are against the right to have their votes counted fairly.
I'm currently reading The Sword And The Shield The Mitrokhin Archive And The Secret History Of The KGB and they have been at this for over 100 years. It's ~700 pages, mostly dry, but completely revealing.
There is a greater context to the Mitrokhin Archive, you know.
Those promoting central-planning, "give D.C. power/ blame America first" crowd have no idea what they are promoting. In the 60s, it was still unclear if a soviet style system could remain solvent, even if they remained so through intellectual property theft (Ian Flemming was writing about a real problem). They couldn't, but they developed this soft-power technique to influence others via propaganda (e.g. "micro-influencers") during Lenin's time that still prevails to this day (it's what Huxley and Orwell were attempting to characterize).
(I’ve been complaining about election security for twenty years, but this issue has become a political game since 2016.)
Or longer. For me, personally, it was the "hanging chads" in 2000 that forced me to consider how insecure our elections are.
One of my favorite modern political quotes actually came from Joe Biden. He said, "Don't tell me your values. Show me your budget and I'll tell you your values."
But who you voted for indicates your least-bad preference of the options available.
The DNC didn't want to listen to those of us in the party who were practically shouting at how unelectable Hillary Clinton was and the party got what it deserved, IMO.
And, many of us (I'm also a registered Democrat) that are watching things as they shape up in the DNC for 2020, are wondering if any lessons were taken to heart at all. It's frightening to me to sit here today and feel a genuine sense that Trump is going to win _again_ in 2020 because the DNC can't pull it's shit together and field an electable candidate.
Add in third-party factors. Comey came out at the last minute with a statement he later retracted after the damage had been done that had a measureable effect on the election. The GOP works hard to disenfranchise voters. Probable Russian interference (in FB trolling and opinion influencing if nothing else). Biased media coverage that played into Trump's game.
The narrative that Clinton was a bad candidate is bs.
That they care much, much more about their own financial and economic conditions than pretty much any other issues? That's not a slam on them; you would too if you were living paycheck-to-paycheck.
Bill Clinton understood this ("It's the economy, stupid.") but the current crop of Democratic presidential candidates somehow do not, which is why they stand a depressingly good chance of failing to win the next presidency.
That bit in the article about 'motive attribution asymmetry'.
This is unreasonable.
But they enabled the behavior.
These voters are suffering cognitive dissonance.
Their actions mean more than their self professed personal identity. That’s been true in social discourse forever.
Or should we let rapists go because they felt like they needed to rape and we should allow perpetrators their feelings over their victims real freedoms?
In the same way we jail rapists for their actions we can shame and demonize others for crap actions.
This cause effect loop is what we rely on to improve our society. So long as it doesn’t devolve into caging old white people, it’s not a big deal to me if they lose some political power given what the world looks like when they have it.
SCOTUS just confirmed the people are not owed objective representation. Their side just enabled the path for their own undoing.
Freedom of speech is not freedom from repercussions of that speech.
John Stuart Mill said the government should be prevented from punishing people for being drunks. But their neighbors were under no obligation to accept them for being a drunk.
This is well trodden philosophical territory that gets circular fast. Cause here you are calling someone else’s position unreasonable over their position that others are unreasonable and should be called such.
Subjective emotional positions is how humans view the world. It’s unreasonable to expect we all subscribe to the same take.
The right wing, where ever you place that pin, has decided to play winner takes all politics for a long time in the west. The left loses when it compromises in most political spheres. The saying, the left always fight's itself first, didn't just pop out of thin air.
I think the left is becoming a little more hard nosed with fighting, and realizing that winning is winning is winning and it doesn't matter how you get there it's what you do once you are there. And I'd say this may be an effect of climate change and that we may be living in the last two decades where we can take meaningful action on climate change.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareto_distribution
I would be willing to personally bake a chocolate cake for every person whose mind I could change.
These statements you've offered today seem in conflict with each other. Change my mind? I'll help you eat the cake if you succeed.
Voting against one's own perceived interests is indeed an interesting political act, but it is in no way relegated or unique to American citizens who vote Republican or even American citizens at all. Do you extend this same viewpoint of reprehension to members of other countries who vote against what you've decide are against their interests? Do you extend it to individuals in the US? Your neighbors?
Except the previous President did the exact same. It's already long since come out that the people in cages photos that so enraged everyone last year were from 2014. Democrats voted for a guy who did that too then.
How do you reconcile this hypocrisy?
This isn't about blame or fixing it, it's about how dangerous it is when we broadly paint those we disagree with as "enemy" and ignore the facts, decency and reason that bind us together in society.
Grow up. It’s a public web forum and no one is obliged to sooth your sensibilities.
Americans, right? All so tough but all shouting like a bunch of babies when someone else doesn’t fully sooth them.
This country needs to learn how to self sooth instead of expecting a quick fix to their problems be handed to them.
A sure fire sign of a society on decline: looking for everyone else to fix me cause I’m too clueless about myself to fix myself
Furthermore, one side is loudly advocating against it as a practice, now, because its horrible, not simply because it is Trump doing it. It was bad when Obama did it too. And yet, the other side is actively encouraging it and often outright cheering it.
Furthermore, and this highlights an ideology that I've rarely seen hold untrue, liberals are more than happy to openly, vocally criticize Obama. And yet, in this case, faced with abject horror all we hear from the right is "whatabout Obama".
In my opinion, this argument is completely disingenuous and is merely a gotcha-style deflection.
It's not like operating these centers doesn't cost money. Our party (I'm a registered Democrat, thanks) had to concede this point after letting the situation get as bad as it did by blocking funding for so long.
We have record rates of illegal immigration right now. The answer isn't simply to let everyone through -- there's largely bipartisan support for legal paths to immigration...and also under this presidency we also have (recent) record numbers of legal immigration as well.
How many Republicans do you actually know, because I haven't seen any of them (like in my family or in any of the media they consume) cheering and encouraging putting people in cages. They want deportations and to stop them at the border completely, turning them away.
I'd be interested to know where you live, because here where I live there was virtually no internal Obama criticism that I'm aware of. Even the 20% illegal Section 702 wiretaps and drone campaigns in places we weren't at war with got a pass.
This seems to be a bit of a part of the issue. You’re focusing on the credibility of the messenger which can be obfuscated by your emotions and in the political realm by mainstream media.
You’re using a pretty reductionist set of tools for vetting a person is age of an anonymized web forum account.
It's like when a toddler has a hard fall and looks to the parent to see how to react. As a parent, if you look horrified and make a big deal about it, the child starts bawling. If you look normal and brush it off, the child has a minimal reaction. It's the same fall, but the network of people they take leadership cues from dictated the nature of their response.
It's the same with people (on both sides of the aisle), their social networks, and the press. People underestimate the power of the press and the influence it has on giving cues about when and what to be upset about.
It's not so much that the hypocrisy is reconciled, it's just ignored.
I'm being somewhere reductive in my position and clearly people had some other incentives in how they voted, but I'm just saying that the premise of this article is meaningless. While Republican voters may not be as strident as they let on, they have placed an army of extremely strident representatives in power and haven't wavered in their support. That's what the country now has in hand and it wasn't by accident.
Relativity and neuroscience plays a role in all of this: we all have emotional blinders given the messages and “facts” that have been emotionally reinforced the most over time. Especially from our childhood.
I’m under no obligation to reconcile what you see as hypocrisy.
Hating Trump for putting people in cages doesn’t mean anyone forgives Obama for the same. That sort of reasoning is peddling a task you conjured up and is a contrived as a elementary arithmetic word problem. It proves nothing about how a person would act tomorrow.
Here’s how I reconcile it: society gives me a choice of shit sandwich and utter waste. I’ll vote for shit sandwich and loath my culture for being myopic.
Which is basically how we’ve always reconciled it and pretended we cared in public to keep up appearances.
Why stop there? President Barrack "Drone-Strikes-For-Freedom" Obama certainly has an interesting legacy on his hands and yet it seems to me that the entire world has given him a blanket pass on all of the atrocious things that went down under his terms.
This is incredibly dangerous thinking. I don’t want to get involved in politics but I would hope a discussion on hacker news would hold higher standards than blanket statements like that.
The funny thing about your comment is it applies to Trump and Obama voters:
https://apnews.com/a98f26f7c9424b44b7fa927ea1acd4d4
To me it looks like they're actually extremely pro-immigration - despite the awful actions of ICE, it's continuing at a near-record pace of over 1 million per year: https://www.dhs.gov/immigration-statistics/yearbook/2017/tab...
parody account or very naive and young. either way, you’re no liberal.
Likely, but about on par with other claimed liberals here in NY, given my experiences the last few years.
I considered myself to be extremely liberal, but the new left would view me as far right. I feel politically homeless and I hear a lot of the same sentiment from peers.
I am a Republican and voted for Rubio in the primary and Gary Johnson in the election. I'm sticking with the GOP because despite the evangelicals and Tea Party--both are anti-intellectual movements that breed the Trump swamp--the party's core values of limited government and equal opportunity ring true in ways that the democrat party has never worked for me.
They're also pretty big on equal opportunity - for all, no matter who their parents are or what colour their skin.
The problem is the lack of choice in your two party first-past-the-post system. You see the same thing in the UK. It's too easily abused by well-funded minorities to amplify their power.
We are the first start-up country. We are comprised of the greatest minds in the world from all genetic backgrounds. Rep. Amash is of Palestinian and Syrian descent, and he is more American than most notorious politicians with whom I am familiar. America is based on an idea, and he embodies it.
Old World people from Europe and Asia have no idea what they're talking about WRT the USA. Classifying the USA in European terms (i.e. "center-right") makes no sense in this context, and we do not use such terms for a reason. Humanity deserves at least one country where individual freedom is a revered principle and people do not emphasize outcomes other than technical innovation. Not every country needs to operate in the same way (nor every US state).
Migrants in "cages" is only a perception that certain people have.
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/immigrants-free-leave-dete...
https://www.politifact.com/facebook-fact-checks/statements/2...
They are being detained because they claimed asylum (likely just to evade being deported) after illegally entering the country. They are being held while their claim is being evaluated. If they were to abandon that asylum claim there would not be any reason to hold them and the deportation would proceed. Voluntary deportation may not always be available since it's a privilege at discretion of immigration officers but forceful deportation is always there. The difference is that you get a ban on entering the US after being deported and voluntary deportation leaves your record clean.
E.g. the most recent case of a 18 y.o. held in detention: https://www.dallasnews.com/news/immigration/2019/07/22/dalla...
Whose brother, who had no citizenship claims had apparently been deported as soon as he signed paperwork: "After two days in detention, Marlon signed a voluntary deportation form."
If you need more information there are plenty immigration lawyers websites explaining the whole procedure and options for detainees.
https://www.digitalbrew.com/quality-speed-price-unattainable...
This shit is so cynical: We should sacrifice individual freedom to get an extra 5 years of existence where someone wipes our ass. Like that's dignified. Fascist garbage that will be met with equal force should you choose to pursue radical means to achieve it.
That's why all these command-and-control economies rely on innovation from America. It's not health care, it's health services where other people are doing this work. You fail to account for people doing work, and you twist the definitions of words to a vast degree. Other countries use their government to force pricing (it's not negotiation) on these innovators. One does not get to simultaneously demand these products (which come from innovation) and dictate their pricing. Back in 2008, I deemed FB's requirement of a "real name" too steep and I refused to participate.
As I've mentioned many times on HN, I would pay for your flight to Denver so you can say this stuff right to my face (per HN Guidelines), but none of you are willing to accept. I assure you I am quite civil, but I do not suffer fools.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
I think the authors of the study and the author of this article are measuring something completely different than what they think they're measuring. Although the questions are geared towards measuring specific traits (wealthy repub, or LGBTQ dem), I think what the study participants are actually estimating are the support network "power" for those ideals. I would bet if you rephrased the questions to:
>"What percentage of Republicans would go along with wealthy Republican leadership decisions?"
and
>"What percentage of Democrats would go along with LGBTQ leadership decisions?"
...you would get similar percentages to the original questions. I would argue that the participants are naturally estimating the social power of the ideals in question, because it's a more useful metric, and I would make the argument that humans (on average) are really good at estimating that particular thing because it's what we've been optimizing for for the last few thousand years with investments, fashion, war, and innovation.
I bet on a lot of issues it would be really easy to find large national agreements if the parties didn’t sabotage them for tactical reasons.
I think you hit the nail on the head. Unfortunately, explicitly not thinking seems to be the end goal for a lot of people, based on my own (potentially circumstantial) experience. A large percentage of people don't seem to find joy in thinking or thinking about thinking. It seems to be viewed as work, which is to be avoided when possible. Optimizing for the lest amount of mental work, basically, which your amygdala will graciously step in to provide emotional reactions that "feel right".
May at least explain why or how things seem to err in that direction.
I'm not sure if there's any biological evidence to support what I just said, but I do get the strong impression that critical thinking is like exercise: some people do it more, and it gets easier for them, so they do it more, and so on. But for most people it's just a drag and they don't like it, they'd rather do other things.
WRT people changing their perspective because of party ... I suspect this is just a mental shortcut. The left and right exist because they summarise deeply held intuitions about human nature. The positions held by each side do follow logically from those intuitions, but sometimes it needs thought to see why, and it's of the rather subtle often semi-sub-conscious type of thinking that most would rather not do. So it may make perfect sense to change opinion if you learn your party has changed its opinion - if you think that your party of choice has got basically the right idea about the world in broad strokes, then it's a nice time-saving assumption that they thought more about any individual issue than you did, and you'd probably agree with them if you thought harder.
I really don't think so. For example (all of these apply to the supporters of the left/right, and not the people actually in power, because who know what they actually believe/support, vs. what is just political dealings), "how can you be against the death penalty, but pro-abortion" - but then, the opposite stance makes just as little sense. For another example, the US left used to be anti-globalization, but now they are banging the free-trade drum, while the US right is flirting with protectionism. Or compare LGBT support on the left today, with their persecution under most communist governments in the past. Then there is the Christian US right that mostly ignores Jesus' rather socialist teachings, while the mostly non-Christian left is in a hurry to bring them up. Unions used to be (still are?) anti-immigration, and kind of a left-wing thing?, while the left is pro-immigration. Environmentalism and animal welfare were right-wing positions in Nazi Germany (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Animal_welfare_in_Nazi_Germany), while now they're left-wing ones, and the right tends to ignore/oppose them.
If I knew more about politics in Asia, Africa, or South America, I bet I could come up with lots of other examples where the positions of their local left/right differ from those in the US/Europe.
Point is, the positions are driven group affiliation, not logic - historically, it was far more important to be in the right group, than to be correct.
Where's the inconsistency in the opposite stance, supporting death for murderers and opposing it for the innocent unborn?
That's not my personal position but it seems perfectly reasonable to treat those two groups differently.
I personally don't see an inconsistency with this original belief either, when you include the belief that a soul/conciousness is only created later on, e.g. during birth.
"how can you be against the death penalty, but pro-abortion"
People who are pro-abortion don't consider it to be murder, but rather just a normal medical operation done for the benefit of the mother. Whereas the death penalty - or really any harsh punishments at all - is perceived as being "nasty", brutish, uncivilised etc.
compare LGBT support on the left today, with their persecution under most communist governments in the past
Putting my flame-retardant suit on for a moment, the reality is that if you scratch the surface, the left hasn't changed at all in this regard.
A key tenant of leftist intuition is that the world can be perceived through the lens of identity group oppressions. It's always been this way since Marx: he was obsessed with the perceived bourgeoisie oppression of the proletariat (capitalists vs the working class). Hence communists being so frequently anti-semitic, as Marx perceived Jews as being intrinsically bourgeoisie.
Now LGBT oppression wasn't a communist thing - all societies considered homosexuality to be taboo up until incredibly recently, it's been one of societies most stable taboos - most likely due to higher STD rates amongst homosexuals, and inability to create a family. That was a much bigger deal in times before state pensions, when children were the primary way to be supported in old age.
The switch then is simple enough - the modern left is obsessed with the perceived oppression of LGBT by white middle aged men. The important thing is not exactly which group is being oppressed by which other group; the important thing is that oppression is happening and must be stopped. The fall of the USSR and rise of Chinese manufacturing did huge damage to the idea of capitalists vs the working class being the fundamental division in society. The disappearance of the taboo against homosexuality as STD rates fell and social security rose, caused the old division to be seamlessly replaced with "white men vs women and minorities". Same old, same old.
the Christian US right that mostly ignores Jesus' rather socialist teachings, while the mostly non-Christian left is in a hurry to bring them up
Interesting example. I've not thought of Jesus as a socialist before. If you mean "love thy neighbour", that's not socialism, that's old fashioned charity - and conservatives generally give more to charity, if I recall studies correctly. Or which things said by Jesus do you mean?
Unions used to be (still are?) anti-immigration, and kind of a left-wing thing?, while the left is pro-immigration
Unions represent the 'old left' and must do structurally, because their goal is to represent the financial interests of their members: blue collar labour, mostly. But this doesn't always hold true. Unions in the UK financially support Labour, which is stuffed with pro-EU MPs and which just came out in favour of a second referendum (i.e. trying to cancel Brexit). Given the choice, they preferred to support mass immigration of low wage workers, than be ideologically disloyal.
The idea of immigration as inherently positive is a somewhat recent development. Marx had nothing to say on the topic and actual communist states only ever had problems stopping people leaving, not arriving. However we can see that it's plenty logical from a perspective of moral reasoning without regard to costs - poor people live in poor countries where wages are low. We don't know how to make wages rise in those countries but if they come here their wages/standard of living will go up a lot automatically. So it's immoral to stop people coming here and benefiting that way.
Environmentalism and animal welfare were right-wing positions in Nazi...
However, I feel like I'm in the minority. Apparently ~30% of people on each side stick with their party, and even more tend to prefer a specific party. I feel like a lot of people don't even really understand the key issues and vote more based on habit/loyalty than anything else.
Aside from referring people to political quizzes like isidewith, I'm really not sure what I can do. I personally thought it was interesting that my results put candidates from 3 different parties in the top 5 matches, and none of them were either of the two major candidates in 2016.
Mentioning motive attribution asymmetry, and committing it in the very next sentence - hilarious. I dare say those people don't detest 'classically liberal values', but US foreign policy and influence (such as imposing seed patent law on invaded countries).
Of course this policy isn't driven by the US people as a whole, but by a handful of special interests. But it is very convenient for them to use the US as a shield, and remain discreet themselves.
That said, I can't really disagree with the rest of the article.
All the talk about Trump's racism, Nazi immigration officials, etc..., just makes the democrats look desperate considering his policies aren't much different than Clinton's in the 90's. His economic policies would have been considered orthodox in the 70's and 80's. The Democrats wasted years trying to come up with some sort of Russian link which they haven't proven and which frankly, I don't think anyone cares about.
And it's all quite ridiculous considering Obama continued most of Bush's policies. He extended the Patriot Act, didn't shut down Guantanamo, killed people abroad with drones, detained and deported migrants. The absurd angle the democrats are taking with Trump is going to lead them to another defeat, as they're diluting their message by being so extreme. Trump makes everything about himself, the Democrats reinforce it, and it's impossible to see anyone from the Dem side challenging him.
I'm an American living abroad and was as shocked as anyone when Trump was elected. The racism/xenophobia and pseudo-intellectual far-right rhetoric is more vocal than it has ever been before and that does have a lot to do with Trump. It should be making it painfully easy to get Trump out of office in the coming election and yet somehow the Democrats seem to think we should continue down the weird neoliberal path of the past. Just start speaking in a language that blue collar workers can understand... that's it. Nothing fancy. But for some reason it's just not happening.