I find it astonishing that anyone would ask this. The only time I've ever been asked this question has been by pollsters. In my social circle, anyway, the taboo on this question is very strong.
Well, in my group, there's no taboo on telling people your political opinions and voting behavior, only on asking (because it's nobody else's business unless you choose to make it so). So in practice, I know the political stances of most in my social circle.
In my friend group it's clear as day: either you voted to kill and deport other people in the friend group or you didn't. Pretty obvious the group would like to know if you're secretly interested in their demise.
But I guess for prioritizing the happiness of the friend group, some amount of ignorance is needed if someone in the group is ultimately going to model the world on "they kill and deport or they don't" given enough information to make that declaration, and eventually a person on the other side is encountered?
I understand that some things can be more important than just having fun though, down to personal values.
"To be ignorant" sounds like a moral failing on its face, but I feel it is increasingly becoming required in some circumstances with the explosive amount of information available to subscribe to nowadays.
I'm talking more about not bringing up politics to avoid giving too much information to people who will make up their own conclusions based on those facts and aren't amenable to change. And choosing not to bring up politics for the purpose of figuring out who out of the friend group is the selfish asshole.
If you’re sure you already know what other people think, I guess there’s not much point in asking them their opinions? You’re not going to listen to their answers anyway.
All you really want to know is what category to put them in.
> Voting for Donald Trump is unarguably an evil action in my book.
I'm not sure why I'm bothering, but I'll bite.
I didn't vote for the guy, don't like the guy, never have.
Trying to understand _why_ people _did_ vote for him is much more important than declaring half the country (really like 30-35% of the country, more people didn't vote than did vote for a specific candidate) evil.
If we need to assign blame, Biden should have dropped out long before he did so the democrats could have found their next Obama, or something.
Or maybe, just maybe, people were desperate for a change and they were manipulated into a false sense of illogical hope.
The question is, why did they need hope? What was so wrong, in their mind, that we all ended up here?
Or, just declare them evil and hold a useless sense of moral superiority. This solves nothing, but I suppose it makes you feel better.
I said it was an evil action, I didn't call them evil. This is the standard essentialism fallacy of morality. Doing an evil thing does not make your inherently evil. Holding slaves in 1800s is evil, but I don't think the people are inherently evil.
I have a pretty good understanding of why people didn't vote, the block I care about a lot more. The people that did vote for Trump specifically either are ride or die conservative, fell victim to misinformation, or are otherwise uneducated.
Trying to say that Biden and the DNC is "too blame" for someone picking a president that is happy sending citizens to an El Salvador prison is something. I expect a bit more from the electorate myself, and think they should take some accountability for their own mistakes.
This sort of morally superior "trying to get the last word" thing is childish.
You didn't acknowledge the distinction between calling a person evil, and calling a person's actions evil. There isn't a way to "restate your point" that voxl said something he didn't say which would make it any less of a straw man argument.
You're not talking past him--he responded directly to what you said--you're just incorrect.
And you don't even have to admit you were incorrect: you can just have a little red-faced moment alone by yourself in front of your computer and then move on with your life without posting a response. And that would be better than posting this posturing thing where you pretend that some restatement of the singular incorrect point you made would be more correct if only it weren't so exhausting being correct.
I'm a Trump hater. I'd vote for a jar of mayonnaise before voting for him. I think he'll be one of the most impactful presidents in US history for terrible reasons.
> The people that did vote for Trump specifically either are ride or die conservative, fell victim to misinformation, or are otherwise uneducated.
But this take is very dismissive of Trump voters, trying to find an easy way to avoid the conclusion that the majority of them are sane and rational people who liked what he was saying. Perhaps because it's an uncomfortable truth.
While I admittedly despise Trump, I'm under no illusions that I'm somehow meaningfully better or superior than those who support him.
If you're sane and rational and decided that you liked Trump's promises (with "rational" implying that you were actually listening to what he'd do, and not blindly accepting his nonsense about "I'll make everything perfect immediately!"), that leaves only the possibility that you're evil. Or a Russian operative, I suppose.
His promises on things he can actually do are exclusively for things that are wantonly destructive and incomprehensibly stupid (tariffs, mass layoffs), hateful and incomprehensibly evil (mass deportations without due process), or straight up treason (pardoning J6 insurrectionists, breaking alliances). If you voted for this person, you have to either be so stupid that you believe his obvious lies, or so evil that the things that aren't lies are things you like.
Many people who voted for tribe X voted for tribe Y a few years back. Have these people irredeemably changed in your eyes? Are they stupid for doing so? Is it possible for stupid, easily believing people to choose tribe X again? Does it make their stupidity disappear?
Does choosing a correct tribe increase intelligence and reduce gullibility?
One increasing view we hear today is of the "uneducated ignorant malleable masses". Should we think of our fellow tribe members this way?
The question being asked by people in tribes are "what to do with stupid/evil people" and history shows examples of tribes attempts to answer that.
I don't think you're disagreeing with me. The comment I responded to says that calling Trump voters ignoramuses was -
> trying to find an easy way to avoid the conclusion that the majority of them are sane and rational people who liked what he was saying.
My point is that to vote Republican in 2024 you must either be insane, irrational, or outright evil. It doesn't make you that way, it reveals that you already were.
> Many people who voted for tribe X voted for tribe Y a few years back. Have these people irredeemably changed in your eyes?
I think that Biden->Trump voters, or Obama->Trump voters, are incredibly stupid or short-sighted. There is no good reason to have done that. If you were a consistent Republican voter you might instead be a selfish racist piece of shit, but if you've switched from the Democrats in recent years the only option I have is to assume you're a gullible idiot.
And to be clear, yes, I think this is specific to the time we're in. I don't think I'd say this in 2000, for instance - it was pretty obvious that W was not going to be a good president, but he was not an incomprehensible choice, and you could imagine people who thought Gore's brand was tainted by association with Clinton's various forms of griminess. But Trump and his merry band of lunatics are not simply "the other tribe". They are an obvious and unprecedented threat no matter what your values are, unless your only value is breaking shit for the lulz.
One way perhaps is to think about the permanence of judgements.
Think about how many people would need to switch sides for the next election. Would their status as lunatics and gullible and idiots be instantly revoked and become mentally healthy, rational and intelligent after they are on the correct side?
Many politicians would say they would remain idiots even when they vote for them and that a cynic might say that politics is just about two tribes warring against each other on a battlefield where they seek to manipulate a group of idiots to their side.
I would suggest that thinking about one's allies as idiots isn't a good thing. (Maybe their status does change instantly - in that case the idiots have the potential to be intelligent which weakens the original judgement) However it's also a difficult thing to do as it would compromise one's own group identity. It makes the binary groups more fuzzy. It introduces an overlap in the venn diagram of us vs them. Thinking of an "other" as potentially one of "us" reduces the internal coherence of the "us" group - it opens the borders.
People in groups like to keep the group strong and the borders secure. To open the borders is a difficult and painful thing. It's understandable that the binary tribal politics remains strong as it benefits both tribes.
I’m not I the states and only see America through the media and social media like this.
You ask why did they need hope, do you have an answer why did they need hope? What’s so bad in America that people could be manipulated as you put it.
It feels a like a repeat of Brexit, where people vote against there own material gains to punish others because that’s the quickest high they can get https://youtu.be/GPgatTnVvVY
Brexit is a good example. I think many people just can't extrapolate/predict the results of their actions and understand the policy (assuming politicians are even honest about it in the first place). For most objective smart people Brexit seemed terrible (hey lemme reinforce my ego a little) but expecting your average person to be able to understand that is tough. Also there is a parallel universe somewhere where Brexit maybe has a positive outcome. These things aren't fully deterministic. Similarly people always seem to buy the immigration crime and jobs schtick. And it's also not false that if you open your borders to a stream of people it is likely to change what your country looks like. There's a reason most countries don't have completely open borders and give everyone citizenship the day they set their foot past the border.
What's so bad in America? You'll be surprised how many people have hard lives in America. A lot. And I think when it's bad there, it's really bad.
Okay, but I've known a lot of people in America who've had fucking terrible lives--with the same kinds of problems that Trump voters have--and didn't vote for Trump.
I mean what's your point here? Okay, so this guy I know had a terrible life and now he's a Trumper--you want me to say it's just okay that he wants to kill my trans friends in a very literal way (as in he's accumulating guns, touts the "kill your local pedophile" slogan, and openly states that trans people are pedophiles)? Sure, I can empathize with the guy having lost everything when he was younger, but empathy doesn't mean we have to ignore the danger he poses.
It's never ok to threaten or use violence against people. But there is a range of opinions on trans rights from should man who declare themselves to be female allowed to participate in woman's sports (why do we have woman's sports in the first place?) or use woman's change rooms, to whether the state should fund sex change operations, to questions around when minors can make decisions about their body vs. parents opinions vs. protection of children rights.
What you're describing is never right and should be dealt with by law enforcement. That's likely far from where many of Republican voters are on this topic.
> What you're describing is never right and should be dealt with by law enforcement. That's likely far from where many of Republican voters are on this topic.
I mean, sure, even the guy I mentioned doesn't directly say he wants to kill trans people.
But you remove all healthcare and social support for trans people, and they start committing suicide--as anyone would given those conditions. You remove all protections for trans people, and they start getting killed. Republican leadership can keep their hands clean--they just look away and let the fringe do the dirty work. And the same is true for a dozen other groups. For example, there's no real controversy about the homeless (most agree that homelessness is bad)--you just look away and do nothing and they die of homelessness.
All that adds up to that a vote for Republicans is a vote that results in these people dying. Whether your opinion is that those people should die or not, is sort of irrelevant, if your vote results in them dying.
You seem to be under the impression that if a Republican voter feels that trans people deserve to live in their head, that means they aren't voting for trans people to die, but that's simply not the case. If you believe in your head that trans people deserve to live, and then vote for a guy who does a bunch of stuff that kills trans people, you're voting to kill trans people, and your fuzzy kind feelings in your head are irrelevant.
And finally: what country do you live in where trans people can safely call law enforcement? Because it's not the US.
> But you remove all healthcare and social support for trans people
What does that even mean? Healthcare is a mess for everyone already. Social support? What does “social support” in the context of trans people actually entail? Spending enough time and resources to normalize the concept? Support what? How?
If you think somehow bigots will eventually change their tune, I have a bridge to sell you.
Or... Trump isn't evil, he loves America and is doing the things he said the President should do since the 1980s. People who blanket think Trump is evil are victims of propaganda. People who voted for him are the ones paying attention.
I'm not voxl, but I do want to point out that he didn't declare anyone evil. He declared an action evil (the action of voting for Donald Trump).
That's an important distinction to me because I believe people can change and start choosing better actions.
But, a whole lot of people haven't changed, still support Trump, and until that changes, those people are dangerous.
And sure, we can empathize with the reasons that got them to do that, but it doesn't follow that we should just pretend what they did was okay, especially is they continue to do harmful things.
Most Trump supporters are pretty explicit that making people like me feel bad is their primary goal. There's a lot who just want Mass Deportations Now, and a handful of hard single-issue voters on something or another, but the cruelty is the most common thread. The Republican party is right now selling official merchandise (https://shop.gop.com/products/liberal-tears-mug) celebrating the fact that they've successfully upset me.
Why should I believe that they're disguising some secret, more sympathetic motivation? I spent a long time hoping that was the case, because I don't want to believe that so many people favor inflicting harm for its own sake, but there's a point where trying to understand someone in terms I find reasonable becomes falsely putting my own ideas in their mouth.
On one hand, it feels like this question is a lot more relevant than ever. It's easier to ignore politics when each side doesn't see the other as an existential threat to their way of life.
Like it would be easy not to ask someone's religion when there isn't a 35% chance they're going to say "extremist martyr".
But I don't ask this question if I don't think I know the answer already, and I only ask it with people I think I can have a conversation with.
Yes, because it's literally not a thing that I see happen. It seems like a terribly intrusive question to ask, and I certainly wouldn't ever feel comfortable asking anyone.
> What your "social group" does is outside the norm.
Perhaps now, but myself and most of my social group are old enough that it absolutely was the norm when we were younger. I was unaware that this was a thing that had changed.
> They are using ignorance to maintain tribal unity
Certainly not, since most know each other's political stances through the ordinary course of interacting with each other over the years.
> My guess is that your actually not astonished at all.
You guess wrong, so your personal attack here is powerless.
> pretending you're unaware of how abnormally impartial your group is
I never claimed my social circle was impartial at all, let alone "abnormally impartial". You're reading things into my statements that aren't there.
> Saying you're pretending is not a personal attack.
Saying I'm pretending is the same thing as saying that I'm lying. But it doesn't really matter either way. Your claims about what's in my head are mistaken. You are, of course, free to think anything you like.
>Saying I'm pretending is the same thing as saying that I'm lying. But it doesn't really matter either way. Your claims about what's in my head are mistaken. You are, of course, free to think anything you like.
Correct, I think you're lying. But that's an extreme way to put it. You're more humble bragging.
Again, it wasn't an attack. Even if I say you're lying it's not an attack either. I'm just stating what I'm thinking.
Ordinarily, this is where I'd leave it (a real discussion is impossible if one side thinks the other isn't being honest), but I'm really curious...
You've used the term "humble bragging" twice now. What in my statements do you think counts as a brag? I was just saying what my personal experience is, and I can't think of what I've said that would be anything to brag about, humble or otherwise. My experience is just my experience, not some kind of superior one.
I think asking another person or a friend who they voted for is not really "astonishing". It felt like you were using that to sort of show off your position as someone who both would never do that and hangs out with people who don't do that. It's like the position established in the article was "obvious" because you're "superior". That was the slight tone I was sensing.
Well, your read couldn't possibly be more wrong. I don't think my situation is anything better than anyone else's, so there's nothing to "show off". Your mindreading machine is broken.
But you think I'm a liar, so there's no point in talking about this any further. Thanks for your response.
It's a good point but the flip side is not every point in time is 1932 Germany.
How do we keep a democracy where ideas we don't agree with can still be implemented if there's a majority (assuming minority rights are protected reasonably well) while at the same time ensuring we don't end up with democracy being used as a tool to get a totalitarian regime.
For a more recent example we can look maybe at Türkiye.
Preventing ideas that are still within the boundary of a democracy from being implemented is not democracy either.
The US e.g. has a Supreme Court and a constitution. Presumably as long as that court is functional and the constitution is applied then all is good?
Unfortunately I'm not familiar enough with Germany's fall into fascism and whether there was some sort of watershed moment where it was clear that something was broken and could still have been remediated.
> Unfortunately I'm not familiar enough with Germany's fall into fascism and whether there was some sort of watershed moment where it was clear that something was broken and could still have been remediated.
Fascism is an easy sell when it's immediately preceded by the Weimar Republic.
It's not that shocking. It makes a really good short hand question to find out where someone is politically. You could spend ten hours discussing what the perfect immigration system looks like or you could ask who they voted for and get a baseline to go off of. The question only removes nuance if you stop right after.
Isn't that increased polarization largely driven by, you know, certain political actions? I find it strange to argue that both sides are evil nowadays. I'd say one is evil and the other is hypocritical and self-serving. The choice is still pretty clear.
Tacking onto this I think the more important variable for ease of conversation is the extent to which someone's sense of identity is tied to their political beliefs.
E.g. I'm moderately left but I'll still engage in healthy conversation with right-leaning friends and acquaintances because I like to understand where they're coming from. However I have some friends who I love dearly but know that despite their intelligence and how much I enjoy their company, they've become very tribal in their politics, so I don't bother engaging in political discussions with them beyond basic diplomatic contributions. Or posing questions that offer new perspectives. I still trust them and value their friendship though.
But this is the difference between friends and acquaintances. My friends are more likely to share my views, but even if they didn’t talking about this stuff would not damage the friendship since it’s beyond ideology and more about shared sacrifice and loyalty.
Was going to comment the same thing. I try to avoid politics with co-workers and family because they are people that you are obligated, on some level, to interact with and have decent social cohesion. Friendships are entirely voluntary, so I can't begin to understand choosing to spend time with people that you can't honestly share your thoughts and feelings with, political or otherwise.
I think it's somewhat funny that two of the images in this blog post, the two signs, and the miner, are commonly used to mock faux intellectualism and a feeling of moral superiority.
I don't think it's a coincidence, but it also doesn't necessarily undermine their utility. In fact, I think a lot of images that are also used in a mocking context get there because they wind up being overused and over applied, in part because they're actually really good.
Another example of an illustration I like that is somewhat derided is the classic equity vs equality cartoon with the boxes[1]. I say this in spite of the fact that I generally find myself identifying more with equality as a baseline, and the simple reason is it's a good illustration of the potential pitfalls of overindexing on equality.
IMO It's all in how you use them. It's hard to avoid that useful metaphors/analogies often become overused and cliche.
I think it's ok to be hypocritical and have friends with different vastly political beliefs, in the end relationships; friendships, lovers, etc are not usually an outcome of rational behavior, so I don't mind having friends who are politically different because it's the unconscious connection that brought us together.
Politics aren’t the outcome of rational behavior either. The strongest belief systems that people have are instilled in them at a young age. Also, people can change.
Politics is more regional than any other single factor. Like religion.
You're highly unlikely to grow up Protestant in Israel just like you're highly unlikely to going to grow up with liberal views in Tennessee.
Second to geography is demographic. You're unlikely to support DEI if you're surrounded by 90% white people all the time, and you're unlikely to decry globalism after you've been exposed to large cities and dense population centers for a long time.
> you're highly unlikely to going to grow up with liberal views in Tennessee
Don't pretend like Nashville doesn't exist. It's very much rural very homogeneous areas versus more urban and diverse areas. It's much easier to label entire demographics as The Enemy and then vote to elect someone to attack The Enemy when you've literally never met The Enemy and just rely on what your news stations of choice tell you. Who The Enemy is changes. It's been women's suffrage and and civil rights. It's been "Mexicans" and Arabs and Gays and now Trans folk. But conservatives will literally always have The Enemy to rally against.
Growing up in more diverse areas means you're more likely to have met a Muslim who doesn't want to "kill or convert you" or a trans person who just wants to live a normal life in the best way they can, or a DACA recipient just trying to make a life in the only place they have ever known as home. Knowing these people builds empathy for outgroups. The key trait conservatives seem to lack. More they seem incapable of comprehending it. So "liberals" can't support "illegal immigrants" because they actually want the best outcome for people. That's a concept conservatives can't comprehend. So it must be that liberals support them for all the "illegal voting" that "illegal immigrants" are doing. Never mind that these people cannot vote. Never mind that if these people could vote, they are far more religious and far more likely to ascribe to the conservative social political agenda. It makes absolutely no sense that "liberals" support "illegal immigrants" to capture their votes. But that's a hard fact to conservatives.
One thing I definitely don't do anymore is discuss politics with any friends or family ONLINE.
It's just not worth it. Publish or tweet something if you have something to say and want to reach a lot of people. Talking to ONE person and risking your relationship has a lousy cost/benefit ratio.
How do you avoid the pain of someone expressing a particularly hurtful political opinion (i.e. entire class of ppl should die) if you don't filter relationships by political beliefs?
I generally keep people's political opinions at arms length, as some relationships are worth the pain or lack of depth. But it has caused unforseen pain at times, and hurts when relations from different spheres interact negatively.
By interacting with the positive aspects of the person and ignoring or disengaging from the political opinions I don't like. If they want to kill jews or whatever, they have the right to that opinion, doesn't bother me so long as I'm not obliged to partake. I might engage the view but if neither of us are benefitting from the conversation there is no point in continuing down that particular path.
There are opinions which should cause one to seriously consider ending their friendship. I would hope “wanting to kill Jews” is on pretty much everyone’s list.
It seems to me that the bad qualities of a person that would cause them to embrace genocide should be evident long before you get into a friendship that you would need to end.
F.ex. one of my most altruistic and charitable friends is a Trump supporter
She's run a Christmas time charity for 10 years, solely out of the goodness of her heart, to ensure that families in our community who are struggling get what they need for a happier holiday in tough times.
It's a non-trivial 6 months of work, between making prizes for donation-driving lotteries, attending events and promoting, and then finding the most cost-effective deals for the families.
So I choose to say "She's a better person than most I know, in some ways, and disagrees with me in others. Worth friendship."
What’s the endgame to this approach? Seems to me, folks with genocidal thoughts and feelings would find more positive reinforcement amongst themselves and less negative reinforcement everywhere else. Not great for the “genocide is bad” theory.
The negative reinforcement is supposed to be when they actually attempt to unlawfully kill others, a 9mm bullet goes through their head. Until then, they have the right to their opinion.
It's hard to imagine isolating them from counter points is going to mitigate their position.
I think there are ways a friend can be toxic without threatening death. This friend may encourage you to isolate from your jewish friends, or explicitly make your jewish friends feel unwelcome by saying slurs while in group settings. This friend is explicitly making you in the position where you have to isolate your own friend groups from each other to "keep the peace", i.e. you are forced to do the labor, instead of them, to handle the harm they are causing.
Like we all know a guy who we can't keep around because he keeps saying unhinged stuff, or creeps on any women, or whatever it is he does that ruins it for everyone else.
So I think it's more nuanced than just refusing to cut off heinous viewpoints. It's also how this person injects this view in your existing friend ecosystem.
This only works in so far as their actions are illegal.
But the premise here is these people have these beliefs and are working to make them legal. The idea isn’t that these people want to kill Jews, it’s that they want to make killing Jews the right thing to do.
Then, it becomes your problem. Particularly so if you are Jewish, but even if you are not.
This of course extrapolates to less extreme examples.
Hmm, sounds about right. I still feel like being around people when they express such radical beliefs reflects poorly on me and hurts me in some unexplainable way.
When challenging such beliefs I find some are hyperbole or a side effect of group-think. Rarely are they genuine, but when they are it's the most worrying. And that's usually when I stop engaging that line of thought.
Yeah PG sorta talks about this in his piece I reference, that for some reason he notices conservatives tend to do this less than their liberal counterparts
I thought this was a fair data point and sad it seems to be downvoted almost? I'm not super familiar with HN's voting system
Politics dictates so much of daily life, at every level, that it's important to be able to have conversations about it. It's frankly self-righteous to see yourself as the one person with nuanced opinions in a crowd of simpletons, and while I do think that politics in many liberal democracies has become more polarized, you'll never restore nuanced debate or good-faith disagreement in political discussions by just avoiding the topic.
I'm not advocating for politics being the only thing you talk about with your friends, but if you and your friends are able to have useful discussions about the impact of some policies over others, can have constructive disagreements over reasonable political discourse, and can identify larger problematic trends in politics, a lot of good can come of that.
Ideally, one should select friends that are respectful of other's opinions. Certainly, one shouldn't keep someone close who isn't.
But with family and acquaintances, it's not worth getting into. Except when someone isn't being respectful. Then I will certainly speak up and ask why they aren't respecting someone's right to think for themselves.
I don't have a problem with my dad's view that taxes should be low or that we should be responsible with the environment. I don't have a problem with his view that over-regulation is a danger. I don't have a problem with my dad's opinion that capitalism is great, even with my disagreement.
I have a problem with the fact that my dad votes for people who do not do those things, and then gets upset when people point that out to him.
He told me that "I think people just need to have more patience with each other and accept our differences" as a moral to a story he told about being a manager to trans and non-binary folks. IMO it's 100% the right take, and he holds no negative feelings for any trans people or nonbinary people.
Then he votes for the anti-trans candidate.
How do you square that circle?
The reality is that I know my dad's voting history (we have talked about politics) and my dad is not an idealist or a pragmatist or conservative or liberal.
Doesn't a lot of it come down to having to choose between only two parties?
It's unlikely that most people will agree with all the positions of a party, so they choose the one who most closely aligns with their highest priority issues.
Perhaps trans policy is just a lower priority issue for your dad. His voting may be illogical based on your priorities, but may be the rational choice based on his ranking of issues.
I don't know your dad, maybe he doesn't see that candidate as "anti-trans"?
If you think that some group has unfair benefits you can vouch for stripping those benefits without seeing yourself as "anti". Your drive is not hatred but fairness. You can be misguided but that's a different question.
If you think church must pay taxes, it doesn't make you anti-church. If you want to reduce police funding it doesn't make you anti-police. If you want stricter control of guns that doesn't make you anti-guns.
The whole "anti" split is indeed a sing of the tribalism which in US takes a binary form. You're either with us or against us.
I don't think I ever make the only-nuanced-opinion claim, the claim I'm making here is many people don't want to have useful discussions, they just want to proselytize
I actually say there are reasons to persevere and encourage debate if it's not just trying to "win":
"However, one reason to persevere is to find the 1% of people that also want to see the world as it is. Aka, finding your own community of anti-tribalists."
"Few things give me greater joy than a discovery-ridden conversation with smart friends, and this is only enhanced if I learn something I previously believed to be true is actually wrong. Seriously, come prove some core belief I have as wrong and you will quite literally make my week."
> Politics dictates so much of daily life, at every level,
That’s weird because you can live life of total ignorance of what’s happening in the news. Lobbying and marketing make you think things are important that aren’t.
> That’s weird because you can live life of total ignorance of what’s happening in the news.
Being unaware of politics, just like being unaware of biology or physics, doesn't reduce or disprove the degree to which it impacts your life, it just recuces your understanding.
Of course, but I think people tend to overestimate the amount politics, especially federal politics actually impact their lives.
Spending hours a day worrying and reading about cancer risk and fatalities increases your understanding, but it certainly isn't healthy or proportional.
Only if you believe PR and material published by NGOs is equivalent to political understanding.
It’s a nice thought. But it’s kind of like thinking you will become an athlete by watching ESPN talk shows. Or maybe even hoping to learn about physics by watching the Big Bang theory. You might pick up some new words, but It’s two levels removed from the real thing.
In my experience the (now ancient) Sequences are not of much use in learning how to change your mind. With only a cursory background in psychology, his advice tends to consist of generic platitudes. Not much practical application.
I’d recommend a short course in mindfulness instead, at whatever point in the spectrum between science and mysticism you’re comfortable with.
I'm 52. For me, there was a time when it was considered impolite to talk about sex, religion and politics. Then it became super fun when done with open/questioning/rational/critical minds, and a lot of progress in my own thinking was achieved from the usually non-threatening but lively debates and fights among friends and family for ideas. Then it shifted in the last ten or fifteen years. When social media started having friends of friends, the tribalism kicked in. It was explained very well in a talk between Maria Ressa and Jon Stewart. She is brilliant, and well worth listening to. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jsHoX9ZpA_M
Very much this. The world has changed. It used to be that assuming
other people have a low capacity for political reason was itself a
"political position" - namely elitism. Folks like Orwell come from a
long, long tradition of the educated and socially astute working
class. Social media turned the joy of everyday political banter,
rational scepticism, and good-natured disputation into a bourgeois
pissing contest with seemingly life-or-death stakes.
> Then it shifted in the last ten or fifteen years. When social media started having friends of friends, the tribalism kicked in. It was explained very well in a talk between Maria Ressa and Jon Stewart.
Everything is because of increasing wealth inequality, it is the root cause of almost every societal problem. It was easier to have non-threatening debates because everyone felt more secure. When people are stressed and afraid, the debates aren’t just intellectual exercises but things that could mean the loss of real opportunities in their lives. This is a trend that has been going on for a very long time, Pikkety showed mathematically that it’s easier to make money when you already have money and this runaway process is nearing an extreme.
I firmly believe that if wealth distribution today was the same as it was in the 70s-90s, the culture wars would be significantly dampened or non existent. If people could still buy homes, afford to have kids and healthcare, we would all be able to talk about religion, sex, and politics without this extreme tribalism. It’s happening because there are way more “losers” in the economic game now, it’s become a life or death issue, and people are looking for who to blame.
I largely agree. Recently I'm somewhat minded to think the issue is actually about the huge expansion of the rentier class. The problem began with the adoption of neoliberalism and the mainstreaming of the idea that you could reasonably "earn" money by simply having money. Prior classical and Keynesian thought railed against such rent seeking and sought to eliminate it as a parasitic drag on the economy.
Since the decision was made post GFC to bail out the banks and protect capital over the normal person that just wanted a house to live in, the position of the rentiers has been consolidated hugely. We have Rachel Reeves thinking we in the UK can build a growth strategy on the back of financial services (which generally means "rent-extraction services"). A rational system would separate the GDP from the real economy from the income from rent extraction, and seek to eliminate the latter.
To the common man, they see themselves working longer and harder than they used to and getting a smaller and smaller slice of the pie. It turns out when your real outputs have to support a sizeable portion of the population who have dedicated their lives to the art of rent extraction to live like kings, you don't see much of the gain.
I have many contemporaries that have gone into finance. A vast pool of intellectual capability, shuffling money around playing zero sum games, and ultimately protected from loss by the power of the state.
All of these can be more elastic. See: zoning reform and prices in blue cities vs red cities, single-payer healthcare in every developed country other than the US. Inequality is not the distinguishing factor.
> It was easier to have non-threatening debates because everyone felt more secure. When people are stressed and afraid, the debates aren’t just intellectual exercises but things that could mean the loss of real opportunities in their lives.
You’re right that people feel less secure, but that doesn’t mean that they are correct when they feel that.
By pretty much any measure, I believe that people in 2025 are far more secure than they were in 1975, 1985 or 1995.
> but lively debates and fights among friends and family for ideas
The missing ingredient is "intellectual honesty". It used to be the case that when you talked to people on the right they would
- refer to events that actually happened and true statements about the world
- accept them in the context of wider events (although there's always been a risk of making policy from one exeptional incident)
- make an argument that followed logically from those
This did end up in duelling statistics and arguments over what mattered, but that's a reasonable place for discussion. Nowadays it's much deeper into making wild arguments from conspiracy theories with no or highly questionable evidence. Pizzagate. Birtherism. And so on.
I'll provide an opposing viewpoint. In the last 10 years, I've lost friendships and family because people in my life have voted for candidates that stripped rights away from women, minorities, etc.
Having a vast difference between opinions is fine, but some of their decisions are fundamentally against my core beliefs and have done literal harm to many people I know.
For that reason, terminating family and friendships has been absolutely worth it for me.
Until we can live in a world where fundamental rights are protected and respected, we have no common ground, and it's pointless to tiptoe around these insanely harmful beliefs while maintaining a facade of friendship.
> The only people I have seen preaching moderation and apolitical discussion are those who voted for a particular candidate and either regret it and are too proud to admit it or are in peak cognitive dissonance.
Hello. I preach moderation and apolitical discussion. You were vague about what "particular candidate" you meant, but if you meant Trump I didn't vote for him. In fact I did not cast a vote for any presidential candidate this year because none of them was someone I wanted in office. So, you now have seen at least one person who does not match your description.
I preach moderation and apolitical discussion because the toxicity of political discussion is tearing our country in two. It is the single biggest threat our society faces today. If we cannot learn to resolve our differences (which starts with genuine attempts to reach each other even when others' actions seem reprehensible to us), this country will die. People do not, as a rule, choose evil. They are often mistaken about what is good, or disagree with each other on the best way to achieve good ends. But to round that off as "they are evil" is intellectually lazy and toxic to a civilized society.
> You cannot not discuss politics when the political scene that dictates your daily life is governed by objectively evil people and subjectively less evil people on the other side of the aisle.
If people were objectively evil, they would be considered evil by all. The fact that this has not happened is by itself proof that these people are not objectively evil, and that their evil is a matter of subjective views. If you wish to change others' views, the first step must be to recognize this so that you can formulate a plan of persuasion. Blasting people as "objectively evil" feels good, but accomplishes nothing.
> I preach moderation and apolitical discussion because the toxicity of political discussion is tearing our country in two. It is the single biggest threat our society faces today. If we cannot learn to resolve our differences
No, MAGA led by Trump, assisted by the Heritage Foundation and the tech billionaire Yarvin disciples are the biggest threat, because they have power and are in the process of implementing an autocratic takeover. It's crazy to me how many moderate, apolitical people don't see this. But I was that way a few months ago and started paying attention.
> They are often mistaken about what is good, or disagree with each other on the best way to achieve good ends.
I don't think there is any agreement to be had anymore. They don't care about the Constitution, they just want a king/CEO to force things through. What can you say about a president talking about a third term, making Canada a 51st state, claiming Greenland will 100% join the US, saying allies have been ripping us off, deporting people without due process because they had suspicious looking tattoos, calling for impeachment of judges because they ruled against Trump. Refusing to pay agencies what Congress already approved. Forcing big law agencies into making deals.
Rand Paul gave a speech tonight about how the president doesn't have the power to tax the American people, which is what tariffs are. MAGA is out to win the culture and political war. Permanently. Wake up.
Elsewhere in this thread I've said that you can have non-judgemental, solicitous conversations with anyone, just to learn how they feel or think about something.
But I agree with parent that it's perfectly justifiable to draw lines that limit potential relationships. You're not obligated to welcome everyone or tolerate views in others that have unbearable consequences for yourself. Vote with your feet.
I think essentially tolerating other peoples opinions and trying to understand where they are coming from is more useful than applying purity tests to your friends and family.
I’m pretty sure that they weren’t voting for those candidates for the express purpose of stripping away those rights and there were other policies and values that they were voting for.
I’ll be honest that I’m Jewish and certain posts about Palestine where friends or non Jewish family have specifically expressed values that I find anti-myself I have completely cut out of my life. (not all beliefs about pro Palestine are anti-semetic, but most are) But I believe that most views at the party level are just different priorities or different view points and tolerance is necessary, because they are not directly in conflict.
I totally get where you're coming from. But regardless of their reason for voting for a candidate, if the net effect is that 150m+ women lost rights and other horrible outcomes, it's the same as endorsing it.
Looking at exit pool demographics might help if you're struggling to have any empathy for a Trump voter. They are largely working class and undereducated and astonishingly diverse for a republican candidate in recent memory.
There's an amazing ability for people to not believe Trump is going to do the things he says. See Venezuelan immigrants getting screwed over or the recent tariffs.
Empathy is for people who did something for understandable reasons.
Trump hurt the poor the last time he was in office. Republicans literally WROTE DOWN ALL THEIR PLANS to hurt the poor and destroy the country well before the elections. Anyone who saw that and still voted for them gets no empathy.
> I’m pretty sure that they weren’t voting for those candidates for the express purpose of stripping away those rights and there were other policies and values that they were voting for.
Voting for a party explicitly demonstrates at least acceptance of if not outright support for its platform. You don't get to absolve yourself of support for kicking puppies because the FooBar party also includes a modest tax cut in its policy agenda that you really want.
It doesn't matter if the opposing party advocates for raising taxes or even eating kittens.
That's true even if realistically, there are no other parties capable of winning. You can support a third party, abstain out of protest, or even begin a grass-roots campaign to start yet another party. You can even try changing the FooBar party from within, so long as you don't vote for them until sufficient change has occurred.
Voting for a party explicitly demonstrates at least acceptance of if not outright support for its platform. You don't get to absolve yourself of support for kicking puppies because the FooBar party also includes a modest tax cut in its policy agenda that you really want.
Virtually no independent thinker is going to support either major party's platform, for the simple reason that both parties have a collection of inconsistent policies that are an incoherent ideological mishmash. Therefore you do not so much vote FOR a party as you instead hold your nose and vote AGAINST the other one.
Sure, but in the US, the choices right now are between a party that you might not fully agree with, and a party whose explicit platform is to strip fundamental rights away from women, LGBTQ people, and other minorities, all while dismantling the basic structures of democracy in order to guarantee their hold on power for as long as possible.
When you vote for a party, you may not fully agree with all their policies, but you are stating that the drawbacks are acceptable compromises. When you vote for FooBar, you might not want puppies to be kicked, but you consider it a tradeoff worth making if it gets you that tax cut.
If you are looking at the political landscape of the US as an independent thinker, and are questioning whether abandoning the principles of human rights and liberal democracy are a tradeoff worth making, then I really question whether your thoughts are really as independent as you would like to believe.
In a two party system, wouldn't any party, no matter how good, always be the second-worst party? Ranking parties in a two party system doesn't really give you much insight into their absolute "goodness level".
Yes that's sort of what I'm saying. There'll always be plenty of reasons to blame people for voting either party, because two parties is just not enough to expect any facsimile of moral flawlessness. It's too few samples, especially with median-voter.
> and a party whose explicit platform is to strip fundamental rights away from women, LGBTQ people, and other minorities, all while dismantling the basic structures of democracy in order to guarantee their hold on power for as long as possible.
This certainly might be what you believe their platform amounts to. But it is most certainly not their explicit platform. Accuse people of what they actually have done, not what you believe their actions to be logically equivalent to. Otherwise there can't actually be a reasonable discussion, because you're giving off heat rather than light.
Actions speaker louder than words. It might not be their platform, but it's what they're doing. If you see your party taking action to strip away rights from LGBTQ groups, immigrants, women and you still support them, then I don't know what else to say.
This is their explicit platform. Trump's presidential campaign officially ran on the basis of "Agenda 47", which clearly sets out their goals and aims. It includes dismantling the basic structures of democracy (in the form of heavy expansion of executive powers), and reducing access to healthcare for women and LGBTQ people. We have already seen evidence of the above, as well as events like the new administration arresting protestors without due process.
I think your point is that Project 2025 is not Trump's explicit platform, which is correct (although this doesn't affect my statement which was about his explicit platform). However, if it looks, walks, and talks like a duck, we also need to be willing to call it a duck. Project 2025 goes significantly above and beyond Agenda 47, the group behind it explicitly endorse Trump, and many of Project 2025's authors are involved in the Trump administration. Being an "independent thinker" does not mean accepting what both sides say at face value, it means looking at people's behaviour and drawing judgements based on that.
No, this is explicitly what the Republican Party platform is.
If you have any doubts, please read Project 2025. Most of this is extremely explicit and impossible to ignore. Of course, most conservatives will still try to ignore it because nobody wants to admit they might have made a mistake.
According to polls, slightly more women voted for Trump in 2024 than in 2020 and significantly more minorities voted for Trump in 2024 than in 2020 (https://www.nbcwashington.com/decision-2024/2024-voter-turno...). One party energetically claims to be on the side of the oppressed but the oppressed don't exactly seem to be flocking to be on the side of that party. Makes you think, doesn't it?
The Democrats cannot win as long as there's a substantial faction inside it unwilling to face the reality of what voters actually think instead of what they want to tell the voters to think.
You are giving a fully partisan version from one side, while ignoring the partisan view from the other. Not entirely your fault correctly stating what the other side thinks, in terms that the other side will agree with, is an extremely hard task. It sounds like it should be simple. But getting it right requires getting past our cognitive biases that the other side is wrong, which make it hard to actually see what they are seeing.
Here is a Republican take that is about as biased as your take on Republicans. "Democrats are fully infected by the woke mind virus, destroying merit in favor of DEI, promoting antisemitism in support of Hamas terrorism, and suppressing free speech in favor of totalitarian control."
Both partisan perspective have some truth, and a lot that is false. For example, while it is true that Trump represents a threat to democracy, threatening democracy is not part of the Republican party's explicit platform. Conversely, while it is true that there has been a sharp rise in antisemitism on the left, most of that really is antizionism. (That said, if you try to make Palestine free from sea to sea, where will over 7 million Jewish refugees go? You're unlikely to be more lucky than Hitler was in the 1930s in finding a country who is willing to accept them. What happens then?)
This is a fundamental difference with how people on the (American) left and people on the right view politics. Those on the right frequently vote based on a single or a few issues, ignoring the rest of the platform that may be unpalatable. While those on the left frequently view voting as an endorsement of the whole person. Any unwanted policy tends to be a turn off. It's why you say "you don't get to absolve yourself of support for kicking puppies" while the right does just that. You would be better served understanding the values and motivations of your opposition rather than projecting your values onto them and judging them based on a strawman.
Does it matter what drives someone to vote for a candidate if the outcome is all the same? It feels like we're discussing manslaughter vs. first degree murder. I don't want to be friends with someone who takes the life of someone else and doesn't feel remorse for it.
Maybe it's a good theoretical exercise, but life is too short for me to appreciate the various reasons that might drive someone to become an asshole.
I would've probably agreed with this point 10 or 15 years ago. Someone saying "I would've liked universal healthcare, but lower taxes are more important to me" has an understandable position. I might not agree with their choice, but I can respect their decision.
However, these days the American political landscape looks a lot different. I understand having priorities, but if someone believes that a magical make-eggs-be-cheaper plan should have a higher priority than their friend (i.e., me) having basic human rights, why would I want to be friends with them? It doesn't matter if they personally agree with the politician's strip-their-friend-of-basic-rights plans or not, the fact that it isn't a priority to them at all says enough.
In the US there are no federal antidiscrimination protections for LGBT people except in employment through Bostock (and conveniently, Trump's EEOC has stopped pursuing these cases). You can be evicted from your home for being gay but not for being black or Christian.
Access to gender affirming care for trans minors is banned in more than half of US states. The very same medicines are allowed to be given to cis minors.
In 13 US states bathroom bills prevent trans people from comfortably existing outside of their homes for more than a few hours at a time.
It has only been 22 years since sodomy laws were found unconstitutional. It has only been 10 years since gay marriage was legalized nationwide. Thomas wrote in his Dobbs concurrence that Lawrence should be revisited. Several state legislatures have passed resolutions calling for Obergefell to be overturned.
While less of a "basic right", the Trump administration has banned trans people from serving in the military. Visibility of gay or trans characters in media available for minors is also regularly threatened. Products for trans people sold at stores like Target have led to bomb threats.
> Access to gender affirming care for trans minors is banned in more than half of US states. The very same medicines are allowed to be given to cis minors.
The Cass report conclusions and recommendations should be listened to, it was a way better and more thorough study than the Netherlands study that begat all of the "gender clinics" in the US and elsewhere. https://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/ukgwa/20250310143...
> In 13 US states bathroom bills prevent trans people from comfortably existing outside of their homes for more than a few hours at a time.
As far as bathrooms, i feel uncomfortable in public restrooms. I don't know what the rate of people that feel uncomfortable in public restrooms, but those of us that do find family or single occupant restrooms, and know what places have those. No one wants to piss in a literal trough, i could be wrong.
I don't consider sodomy a basic human right, but i could be argued with, i guess.
I don't see what "bomb threats" have to do with human rights, in this context. Is there a human right to have products available at Target? If everyone boycotted Target (like they did with Bud Light), is that a violation of human rights, too?
I am unsure why people keep deleting their replies. It is possible to have a reasoned discussion about inflammatory topics.
This is how things often goes. "Oh those aren't actually rights."
You can think this, I suppose. But let me tell you that a very large number of LGBT people do consider these things to be questions of their basic rights.
i'm willing to listen to arguments about why any of those are basic rights. I am unsure about the housing, so i didn't mention it. Upon a quick check, Bostock prevents renters from being evicted or otherwise un-housed merely for being LGBT. Unless i see actual writing that shows there is a literal directive to ignore complaints, i cannot just accept your words. top results for eviction of LGBT sort of news is about people "behind on rent." If i don't pay rent for 2 months, i'll also get an eviction notice (sometimes called a pay or quit.)
there's groups of people that think all kinds of things are "basic rights" but it doesn't mean they are. I could say nothing is a "basic right" since any example you can give is violated globally. Maybe some stuff should be globally truly basic rights. But i am willing to listen to arguments that any of these things are a basic right as it stands.
just a for instance: Sodomy. saying it's a human right implies that sexual intercourse is a basic human right. I am unsure if you really want to make this argument.
Bostock applies to Title 7. The reasoning is that discrimination based on sexuality or gender identity is sex discrimination, which can be applied to other laws like the FHA but this is not established federally and the Trump administration is currently in legal fights explicitly in opposition to this position. So I do not think that it is fair to say that Bostock prevents renters from being evicted based on their gender identity or sexuality.
And I do think the ability to have consenting and private intercourse without being imprisoned is a human right. I did not expect that this would be controversial.
If you're talking about employment (which the EEOC appears to cover) - i've been fired for not cutting my hair short enough. I've been fired for refusing to wear a tie for a cubicle job. In the US, employment is at-will, generally. If that's what you have an issue with, then let's talk about that. Even if the issue is with hiring discrimination of any kind, i can get behind that, too.
And there's a subtle, yet perceivable difference between what you said, "sodomy laws" and your statement now about "consenting and private intercourse." i also notice you didn't mention "between adults."
I don't really want to have a side-channel discussion, here. The employment vs housing statements, you either had a typo, or it was a red herring, i am unsure. I feel like this is devolving, perhaps of my own fault, into a god of the gaps argument.
My original comment regarding the EEOC was about the impotence of Bostock in modern federal courts because the EEOC is dropping cases of Title 7 workplace discrimination brought by LGBT people. Although the US generally has at-will employment, there are certain reasons for firing people that are prohibited by law.
The discussion of housing is separate from that and is instead a point about the fact that LGBT people do not have federal protections in this domain. I thought that my post was very clear. LGBT people do not have any federal protections in many domains (housing for example). They have protections in some domains (employment, via Bostock) and even that is backsliding because of the EEOC's changing behavior.
Only adults can consent. The sodomy laws struck down in Lawrence were about consenting and private intercourse, both in general and in the very specific case of Mr. Lawrence.
I am extremely uninterested in any discussion that smacks of painting gay people and their relationships as in any way related to child rape.
Like I said, depending on an agency's interpretation of how Bostock's reasoning could be applied to a different law is not protection in the modern Trump administration. This is like you saying that Bostock protects trans people via Title 9 because of the Biden admin's interpretation of Title 9.... which was undone by the Trump administration.
Federal legislation, or at least clear jurisprudence, is needed for this protection to meaningfully stick.
Most views on Palestine are just different priorities or different viewpoints too. You can equally say that not all support for Trump is rooted in misogyny and xenophobia, but most is. Perhaps you should not recommend that other people engage in such tolerance when you won’t.
> I’m pretty sure that they weren’t voting for those candidates for the express purpose of stripping away those rights and there were other policies and values that they were voting for.
I thought the GOP was pretty clear throughout the election cycle, from President to local office, that their desired world can only come to be through a drastic restructuring of the Constitutional status quo ante.
I don’t know that “I only voted for (e.g.) tax cuts, everything else is collateral damage and I’m not culpable for it,” is a defensible moral stance.
> than applying purity tests to your friends and family
It's more about watching people pivot towards unquestionable evil. "Empathy is a sin" is such a deep, dark line in the sand. I'm not going to just stand there and watch you cross it.
> I’m pretty sure that they weren’t voting for those candidates for the express purpose of stripping away those rights and there were other policies and values that they were voting for.
Well, Alabama outlawed abortion except for life of the mother. A federal judge had to rule that the state can't prosecute doctors and reproductive health organizations for helping patients travel out of the state to obtain abortions. The Project 2025 plan is for the Republican controlled Congress to at some point pass the most restrictive federal abortion law they can get away with.
That is stripping away the rights of women to choose. There are many religious conservatives who support this.
That's one possible framing. But from their perspective, they are defending the lives of innocents from those who wish to do them harm. If one accepts their framing of the issue, that's a righteous cause indeed. Why is your framing accurate, and theirs inaccurate?
You're doing what so many people do in the abortion debate, and begging the question. You can't simply sidestep deep differences of opinion on moral issues by declaring your position to be right and theirs wrong. It's wilful ignorance of a whole lot of nuance that exists on this topic, nuance that must be engaged with if one wishes to be effective in having a discussion.
Their framing needs to acknowledge that the fetus is part of the mother's body, not an independent life, and that child birth has risks. Thus the autonomy of the mother over her own body has to be part of the discussion. Their framing can't depend on a soul entering at conception, or God/their sacred scripture telling them abortion is murder. That's not a rational or legal basis for compelling other people who don't believe that way.
If they want to enter a scientific discussion on viability and neural development for when to start placing limits on abortion, and how making victims of rape or incest carry to term is ethical, then we can have a meaningful discussion.
Otherwise, they can feel free to go have their own theocratic community in the wilderness where they don't choose to have abortion. Also known as Alabama these days, unfortunately for those stuck wandering the wilderness with them.
I think there is value in trying to understand the other "tribe". If for nothing else, then for practical reasons in figuring out how to defeat the other tribe at the next encounter.
I also think especially in today's political environment, political beliefs at least partially reflect an individual's core values. In some cases I may not want to associate with people that have fundamentally opposing core values to my own. For example this guy's interviews with his parents: https://www.tiktok.com/@thenecessaryconversation
> I think essentially tolerating other peoples opinions and trying to understand where they are coming from is more useful than applying purity tests to your friends and family.
Most of the time this is just being an enabler, who excuses, makes up rationales and blames "the other side" for not being nice enough to extremists. Especially when we talk with about fascist close groups. People who say this achieve only limitations on the opposition to extremists. They rarely or never manage to move extremist into the center.
> I’m pretty sure that they weren’t voting for those candidates for the express purpose of stripping away those rights and there were other policies and values that they were voting for.
Why are you so sure? There are plenty of conservatives who openly talk about it. It is not being tolerant when you decide that no one is allowed to do that observation. You are not being neutral here, you are biasing the discussion toward the extremism when you do it.
> I’m pretty sure that they weren’t voting for those candidates for the express purpose of stripping away those rights and there were other policies and values that they were voting for.
Sure. But this is that age-old meme: You know those people (most people?) in 1930s Germany who supported the Nazi party but they perhaps weren't really for annexations and genocide. You know what they call those people? Nazis.
People who voted for Trump are responsible for the fate of Ukraine, the demise of Nato, the fallout with Canada and Mexico, the inevitable inflation and economic turmoil of tariffs etc. And that's of course even if they only voted for Trump because they hold "traditional republican values", or because of single issues like gun rights, migration or taxes.
> tolerance is necessary
Tolerance stops at intolerance. You can never tolerate intolerance. Apart from that, politics also relies on a few fundamental things like the reliance on facts and experts, and respect for the rule of law. Obviously you can't ever tolerate "politics" which starts to tamper with either of these. Luckily I can keep a tribe which consists of people who agree with this, which can vote for any party in my parliament, and is 98% of the population. I'd hate to be in the US though where the tribes cut down the middle of the population.
First you try to argue tolerance and understanding, and then you say that "most pro-Palestine views are antisemitic" and that you cut off all contact with people who hold those views. Your hypocrisy is astounding and you should be embarrassed.
What I was suggesting was to be tolerant of more general views like choosing a political party or candidate and large complicated things, and reserve intolerance for actual directed hatred.
Didn't these friends and family essentially apply purity tests to us?
I've cut off my aunt who still claims the 2020 election was stolen. The data I worked with to support fragile communities was removed/altered in the transition (CDC Social Vulnerability Index). I've already lost my job in the federal purge. I have a [former] coworker who was born intersexed that cannot be legally recognized by the government. I'll likely lose my right to marry due to my aunt's beliefs. My boyfriend will likely lose access to lifesaving medication with cuts to funding. My grandma is paying for hospice care with social security and claiming Trump is fixing the country. I'm renewing my passport; several friends have already left the country.
> I’m pretty sure that they weren’t voting for those candidates for the express purpose of stripping away those rights and there were other policies and values that they were voting for.
I'm sure there were people who voted for the Republican party in the last USA election for purely economic reasons. However, "anti-woke" policies were absolutely the most important issue for a lot of people. Just this week the attorney general in my state posted an "April Fool's Day Joke" where the "joke" was him standing next to a LGBT flag.
> I’m pretty sure that they weren’t voting for those candidates for the express purpose of stripping away those rights and there were other policies and values that they were voting for
I don't know, man. If they're really your friends, those should be non-negotiable.
> I’m pretty sure that they weren’t voting for those candidates for the express purpose of stripping away those rights and there were other policies and values that they were voting for.
In some markets, about one third of the entire Trump campaign advertising was fear-mongering about how dangerous LGBTQ people are. They wouldn't have spent so much on this if they didn't think it was a uniquely important to their constituents.
I think you're unequivocally wrong if you don't think that Conservatives in the US are above voting for a single issue.
I don't know enough about the Palestine/Israel conflict to be able to make an informed opinion on it, so I won't comment on that.
> I don't know enough about the Palestine/Israel conflict to be able to make an informed opinion on it, so I won't comment on that.
Wise, given the guilt & political climate. But, see also:
Progressive except Palestine (also known as PEP) is a phrase that refers to organizations or individuals who describe themselves politically as progressive, liberal, or left-wing but who do not express pro-Palestinian sentiment or do not comment on the Israeli–Palestinian conflict.
The issue is that I feel like there's an awful lot of opinions on this, and it's difficult for me to find objective information on this stuff.
I tend to be pretty progressive, so it's probable I would be more on the Palestine side, but I try not to express strong opinions on things that I haven't done at least a cursory amount of research on, and I also don't really want to be labeled an antisemite or racist or anything like that.
If you remove yourself from a group, how will they change their minds without a dissenting opinion? I had to do it myself eventually, for my own sanity, but I believe this is still a real problem I am no longer addressing among my loved ones.
In my case, my goal isn't to change anyone's mind. It's to preserve sanity -- I can't in good faith "pretend" to get along and have normal conversations when people are actively engaging in behavior that directly harms myself and others.
People proudly voting for parties and policies that demonise trans people, of which I know many. I cannot be your friend in good conscience if you're willing to destroy the lives of my other friends.
Being told that you have to follow the same rules as everyone else for e.g. spaces designated to be used solely by the opposite sex, doesn't seem so bad.
I don't believe you're asking this question in good faith, but there are many, many attempts at erasing them from public existence: https://translegislation.com/
Doesn't this change make it more historically accurate? In 1969, the year of the Stonewall uprising, the "TQ+" hadn't been invented yet as a cultural concept. The Stonewall Inn was a gay bar and was being targeted for that reason.
Interesting to see the difference and I agree that's an inaccurate edit. For historical accuracy it should describe Zazu Nova as a gay man who was also a transvestite or drag queen.
You do realize that "gay man", "transvestite", "drag queen", and "trans woman" are all different things right?
None of them implies the others. And using any term besides trans woman would be disingenuous, as trans people existed before before 1969, with that exact nomenclature already existing. Just because the letters might not have been attached to an "LGBT" title, neither T or Q are new. Only their increased acceptance and knowledge is.
And deleting references to those is, as you can see, seen as an obvious attempt to walk back on that public perception and acceptance.
While ( as often is ) a very summarized version of the history can be found on the wikipedia page https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transgender_history , the sources should lead you to more detailed info, if you do care about learning about the historical accuracy.
The Stonewall Inn was a gay bar so we know that Zazu Nova must have been there due to being a gay man. As the previous iteration of the website describes Nova as "queen", "she" and "transgender woman", this means that in 1960s terminology Nova would almost certainly have been understood to be a transvestite, possibly a drag queen.
Sources on the web refer to Nova having involvement with the Street Transvestites Action Revolutionaries group, which fits with that description also.
I don't think they're arguing in a good faith with you.
"“Never believe that anti-Semites are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words. The anti-Semites have the right to play. They even like to play with discourse for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert. If you press them too closely, they will abruptly fall silent, loftily indicating by some phrase that the time for argument is past.”
This is an oversimplified strawman argument. Biological sex is a complex subject. The cultural understanding of sex is complex. If I has a man take my 2 year old daughter to the men's room is that a bad thing? (For the record I don't have any children)
I don't think anyone is arguing that you should be barred from taking your hypothetical two-year-old daughter into the men's bathroom if the need arises. That's really not the issue.
but I thought "Being told that you have to follow the same rules as everyone else for e.g. spaces designated to be used solely by the opposite sex, doesn't seem so bad."?
No it isn’t. When people see the anti trans party winning elections they see that as permission to bully trans people. The vote directly leads to abuse.
voting for trump tells everyone in the country that you dont mind if trans people are abused. This creates a culture that is uninviting even if no one acts poorly beyond the voting. You dont have to physically abuse someone for your actions to have direct consequences
Priceless! Maybe you should move to the UK. Might be a job opening on the Guardian newspaper where you'd be welcomed with open arms. They think much the same about the British Conservatives and as for the new Reform Party - I guess they are beyond contempt.
Whataboutism is outsider tribe X also does thing B therefore B is not to be argued about.
Instead maybe consider that it's thinking in tribes that's the issue at root.
Personally I think it's impossible to stop being in a tribe. One should, if free, only be able to choose the tribe to join. We can't choose not to join a tribe. Most people either are not free to choose or not willing to consider that they can choose. Freedom to choose a tribe is very scary.
Looking at how other countries do politics might help. For example did you know that conspiracy and paranoia is a characteristic strategy used in American politics? It's not used as much in other parts of the world.
It's incredibly difficult for a person to see themselves as being paranoid or to believe in a conspiracy theory. But paranoid people who believe in conspiracy theories make great tribe members. It is literally a way to make people think of things as "us vs them"
I actually agree, I don't think people should merely dismiss differences on issues that strike at core values -- I think it's okay to cut friends/family off on huge differences in values. I have actually done this to both left and right-leaning friends.
But what I'm arguing is that most people do not actually come to these values by way of thinking, but rather by blindly adopting them en masse from their chosen tribe.
And when they choose not to be open to the possibility they might be wrong, then they have a religion, not a intellectually-driven view.
This is okay if acknowledged imo, as per this sentence in the piece:
"If someone is self-aware enough to consciously acknowledge their choice to remain in the bubble, that’s totally fair. I respect it like I’d respect anyone who chooses to participate in a more traditional religion. My issue is when this view is falsely passed off as an intellectually-driven one."
One way people keep themselves in bubbles is by dismissing counter opinions as being tribal or trendy. Some opinions may appear that way because the people that have them seem similar. But it could also be due to them having similar backgrounds that led them to those opinions. For example, most doctors believe in vaccines, but that's not group think, it's based in evidence that they have studied. From the outside, it might seem like group think.
> For example, most doctors believe in vaccines, but that's not group think, it's based in evidence that they have studied. From the outside, it might seem like group think.
I'm willing to bet that in most cases, that is groupthink. It's hard to tell, because the conclusion is identical to one based on evidence, so you can't infer from the opinion whether it's groupthink or not.
Sometimes you can tell by how someone holds a belief. Defensiveness, unwillingness to consider ways in which their chosen belief is not 100% wholly good, or shouting someone down are evidence of groupthink. For example: if someone brings up that in the past some inactive virus vaccines contained live viruses and a doctor claims that it never happened and could never happen, that's either groupthink or just a doctor sick of arguing with uninformed patients who has given up bothering with explaining the intellectual basis of his beliefs.
My personal suspicion is that the 1% don't exist, that everyone's opinions and beliefs are a mishmash of tribalism and intellectual conclusions, it's just that the balance is very different in different people. I try very hard to make my stances intellectually based and evidence-driven, yet I continually discover that more and more of my deeply held policy positions aren't as clear cut and the real world is more nuanced than I thought.
It's not like nuance is a binary thing (by definition!)
My method to discern between beliefs with intellectual backing and those from the community is by presenting them with some bizarro counterargument. If they copy/paste specific phrases and keywords, it's from the community. If they engage with the argument and refute it, then they have given them proper thought.
I can appreciate comparing these immovable political stances to a "religion".
One thing I've noticed, as people get more entrenched in their viewpoint, is that they stop accepting the possibility that they're wrong, and this flawed thinking starts to extend to the wildest corners of their position.
"Well, if I'm right about the person, the person is right about everything too. And anyone who disagrees with me is therefore wrong about EVERYTHING."
It's a very shallow viewpoint, and some people just refuse to accept that they're wrong sometimes.
Have they eaten two plates of food and enjoyed two drinks and then announced, “I’m a proud republican and support Trump 1000%?” Because that’s what we’re getting and we’re banning neighbors and friends we’ve had for 25 years over it.
Maybe try understanding that expecting everyone to hold their nose and vote for the dog shit alternative "opposition" candidates provided is not a good litmus test for friendship either.
And I say this with all sincerity: I'm also disappointed in my friends continually voting for Democratic candidates after Obama, as it's clear the DNC will do nothing as long as they can rely on these votes. They put up losing and awful candidates while supposedly our democracy depends on it.
If I were to cut them off as friends for being part of the problem, that sounds unreasonable right?
Why does it sound unreasonable? If it's problem that affects you deeply enough, if you sincerely believe that they're a core part of that problem, then I don't see why the person you replied to would be opposed to it.
I don't have friends for the sake of "having friends". I choose the people I want to hang out with because I enjoy their company and like/respect them. Being around them makes me happy.
Similarly, people I dislike (rude or mean people, for example) make me unhappy when I'm around them. Cutting them out of my life is a net benefit there too, because I'm happier without them.
It seems to me that when some of your friends want to imprison, institutionalize, or straight-up murder some of your other friends, not taking a side and standing up for the latter group of friends is being a shitty friend.
And maybe "How does this benefit me?" isn't the right question to be asking in this situation.
"Moderates" always like to speak in vague terms as if it's not literal murder being proposed by one side. I literally know a guy who is accumulating firearms, has bumper stickers that say "kill your local pedophile", and thinks all trans people are pedophiles. This is not a person I am going to be friends with just because we play the same kind of guitar music.
Not every opinion deserves the same level of tolerance, respect or acceptance. If someone I know starts goose-stepping I’m not going to write it off a “just a difference in opinion.”
The other comment I made here was flagged, though it very clearly doesn't have anything in violation of the rules. It's clear that people here are using flagging to try to censor opinions they don't like.
The question then becomes how to convert a member of a tribe to ones own correct tribe. It's a very tough question to answer.
It's like spycraft during the cold war. A double agent must pass as being in both tribes for the good of their country. They literally isolate themselves from their homelands tribe to embed themselves in another. They are forever changed. They can't go back. In other words: to change another changes oneself too. It weakens ones own group identity.
Almost all people would never want to risk their identity to change another person for the good of their group. It's very risky and very painful.
Another way that the article suggests is to let people change themselves.
Lol. "Liberal" people create an echo chamber by eliminate opposing opinions and then are surprised that people elect far-right candidates.
> Until we can live in a world where fundamental rights are protected and respected
It wasn't hiding from uncomfortable things, opinions and people, that created the world where you can even think about women or minority rights, or even know how to write to express your opnions.
So this approach will not create the world you described.
indeed. This kind of attitude is contrary to what is needed to produce the sort of world desired.
The conceptualization of what fundamental even means is very much subjective, so posing such a condition to dialogue is, in principle, the negation of possibility of improvement on either side.
this is the core kernel of what a tribe even is in my opinion: pose a subjective condition, divide people based on it.
The subtle art of not giving a f** had a great chapter on the importance of deciding your values, that is, what's important to you. The parent advice clearly stated what's important: living in a world where fundamental rights are protected and respected.
Clearly defined values are fine until we get more specific though. What values? Whose responsibility? And what's holding is back from achieving what we want even if our party is in charge? Is it a matter of excluding people who disagree with us? More money? Or is the utopian vision we're attempting not presently achievable?
So is an agreement on fundamental rights for everyone what you want to live your life on? Or do you have other priorities in the meantime where you can agree with people on more immediate matters?
+1. I had to cut a lot of people out of my life after seeing the Democrats' response to October 7th. I cannot be friends with anybody who votes for candidates that support exterminating Jews.
+1. I'm cutting people out of my life who think it's justified to harass families on the street or write Nazi symbols on their property because they happen to be riding in a particular brand of car. Fascism/Nazism should not be tolerated.
I'm jealous of you. I've got a limited number of family members and friends and find it difficult to get more of either. I don't think I'm in a position to burn them on politics so I'll just have to take them as they are.
I haven't talked to my grandmother since Trump won the first time in 2016.
It wasn't just that she voted for him, but the fact that she actively supported all of his policies around immigration, including mass deportations that would have included my wife (who was on DACA at the time). She has also said some extremely disturbing stuff about what should happen to gay people that I don't even know that I can post without breaking some form of TOS, which would be horrible already, but slightly worse to me because my sister is gay.
It's easy to say "just be neutral and don't talk about politics around her", but there are some issues with that.
First, you don't know my grandmother; no matter how much I try and avoid any political subject she will keep bringing it up. She will divert a conversation about my job as a software engineer to somehow a rant about how Mexicans are stealing American jobs (this actually happened). I could just roll my eyes and bite my tongue, but this brings me to my next point:
Second, neutrality isn't neutral. I don't really know who started this myth that somehow avoiding the subject is "not taking a side", it's just a lazy way to endorse the status quo. If I keep trying to be amicable with people who actively want my wife to be deported, then that's sort of signaling to my wife that I don't give a shit about what happens to her. I don't want to signal that, because it's not true. At that point, my only option is to either stop talking to my grandmother or talk to her and constantly push back she says something racist or horrible, which isn't productive.
Before you give me shit over this, all of you do this. You all draw the line somewhere. You probably all draw it at different points than I do, but you absolutely do draw the line. If your best friend suddenly joined the Klan and became the Grand Wizard, you probably wouldn't continue being friends with them, even if you could avoid talking politics, because that would signal that you're ok with their racism. You also probably wouldn't be friends with Jeffrey Dahmer even if you could avoid the whole "killing and eating people" topic.
As it stands, I don't really feel bad for cutting her off. I absolutely do not make a concession for age on this. If you're going to live as a grownup in 2025 then it's not wrong to judge someone by 2025 standards. I don't give a fuck what the world was like when you grew up, you have to live in the world as it is now.
Further, I mute and unfollow aggressively any family or friends that just constantly post political news/rants etc from Facebook and other social media platforms.
I disagree strongly with this. This is how we get into the state of political divisiveness that we are currently in. Discussing politics has always been a verboten topic with many families and friends, and now we are here where we think not talking about it is healthy.
Not discussing politics with friends is really indicative of the friendships you have. This is really an article about someone who has failed to discuss politics with "friends." As someone who routinely talks politics with friends (and we do NOT all agree with each other), it's a healthy experience. One where you can get a better understanding of people and their beliefs.
Stay in your bubble. But let's not pretend it's healthy or good.
Not sure if you read the article, because it's quite plainly stated that my reason for writing it is precisely because I have discussed it with many friends (and continue to do so)
Unless I encounter a signal that someone wants to remain in their bubble
"Why I don't discuss politics with friends" implies that you don't discuss politics with friends. What you're saying here sounds quite different. It sounds like "I do discuss politics with friends, except when I encounter a signal that [etc.]".
I do worry about seeing more of these posts, as a way of SV people - who bare a substantial burden of guilt for enabling the collective mess we’re in because the ad-tech/algorithm dollars were nice - collectively distancing themselves from facing said guilt.
No idea is this particular person is especially part of the problem, I’m just talking about general vibes.
The big issue is a lot of people will believe what they want to believe. Most folks are not scientists - they start by assuming their conclusions and will choose the soothing moral and emotional rhetoric over evidence.
Trying to see the world objectively puts you in a category of outliers. The people you become friends with due to proximity in everyday life will not be outliers.
Most people are unaware of how small that outlier group is.
Like there's an even bigger group of people who think they're scientific and unbiased and impartial but they actually aren't. That group is more likely the group you and I are in.
The group of actual objective people is so small that you may never meet a single person like this in your lifetime. That person may even be autistic.
Part of being scientific is realising that you can't be completely unbiased and impartial, but you can be thorough, systematic, rigorous and informed by evidence rather than soundbites.
Some questions don't have definite answers, it's the sophistication of the analysis that counts.
It’s super sad that the political establishment has managed to polarize people so much that a rational discussion about very important issues is not possible anymore for a lot of people. It’s a dream come true for unscrupulous politicians and oligarchs who can do whatever they want as long their propaganda is strong enough.
I think its a side-effect of depoliticization by neoliberal reform from the 80s onward in the western liberal democracies. Everything has already been privatized and financialized, technocratic decision making has taken over. People are increasingly hurt by this system, but there is no political conceptualization of where that hurt is coming from. So people are galvanized into impotent political camps where they can hysterically scream about gay people, abortion, immigrants, guns or whatever.
I would be very curious to know what people here even consider "rational debate", probably a bunch of centrist takes on gay people, abortion, immigrants, guns or whatever would be my guess.
I like it. There's an easier answer to "why don't people move from tribe to view". It's because it's painful to question one's own beliefs, and that's how that change happens. In fact such a move appears masochistic to many, since it almost never pays to undermine loyalty in favor of principle.
I hypothesize that we're seeing the influence of the legal system on the public turbo-charged by Citizens United money. An attorney is paid to be a "zealous advocate" for their client. This means never spending effort on anything that might be against the client's interest. Self-reflection is stochastically against their interest, so why even risk it? Considering alternative views might be against your interest, so why risk it? Therefore, in this new zeitgeist, such behavior is not just perverse and painful, but even unethical and wrong.
The problem, of course, is that for this system of adversarial argument you need an impartial judge. In theory that would be the public, but it turns out flooding people's minds with unethical lawyer screed 24x7 turns more people into lawyers, not judges. "The world is changed. I feel it in the water. I feel it in the earth. I smell it in the air. Much that once was is lost, for none now live who remember it." This could very well refer to the value of dignity, honor, integrity, fairness in debate, respect for one's opponents. These are always under assault, but in the last 10 years they have been decimated to the point people don't remember they ever held sway and young people don't know what politics was like when they did.
Challenging your own viewpoints is not just hard, it's downright dangerous. You can really lose your sense of identity and question your own morals if you are not well-grounded. It's much easier to dig your heels in and try to limit your self-reflection to be more "safe". (I still think you should question your viewpoints, but I don't blame people for being a little afraid.)
This is especially true if you have a history of being somewhat cruel to people on the basis of a conclusion you're not really 100% sure you agree with anymore. Now if you question it, you have a lot of guilt to contend with.
I totally disagree. "Shattering" one's identity (which is a completely fictional idea, only existing inside one's head) is essential for finding one's place in the universe.
Failure to adopt an accurate perspective of one's place in the universe is the greatest source of human anxiety.
Plus, if you can't discuss something like politics with people, are they really your friends at all? Not very good ones at least...
I would say as I've gotten older, I've actually tried to be a little more grounded in my beliefs. Our political world is so crazy, that I think sometimes, it can even be hard being committed to basic kindergarten morality. "Look at all these bad people doing bad things and being successful, maybe I should do bad things to be more successful" is a challenge to your viewpoints that is worth cutting off at the roots.
OTOH, I am the kind of person who feels great joy in discovering that I have been wrong about something, I have learned something better, and I have deepened my understanding. It could be about anything. Challenging my viewpoints is very enjoyable.
It surprises me that most people don't seem to feel that way and I struggle to understand why. Apparently, people often feel angry and alienated by the truth. I think that never makes sense, but I've learned to accept that people simply feel threatened by the truth sometimes and I can't usually convince them otherwise.
I feel this way too, it's in one of the footnotes actually
"[8] Few things give me greater joy than a discovery-ridden conversation with smart friends, and this is only enhanced if I learn something I previously believed to be true is actually wrong. Seriously, come prove some core belief I have as wrong and you will quite literally make my week."
I generally agree, but some views wind up being pretty central to one's identity. It's easy to give up a viewpoint where the stakes are very low, but the stakes can potentially be very, very high (on a personal level.)
You have to be wrong to learn. Sure it can be frustrating to try to make or do something difficult. But you've never done it before, of course you're not going to know all the correct answers! It just makes it all the more sweet when you do make progress and start to know more about a subject.
I suppose, but there is no such thing as objective morality, it's all subjective. That’s not to say people shouldn’t feel guilt or hesitate when evaluating their past actions, but we often act based on the best framework we had at the time.
Morality evolves, both personally and culturally, and trying to hold a static identity in the face of that change just leads to more internal conflict. It’s uncomfortable, yeah, but clinging to certainty for safety’s sake can be more corrosive in the long run.
.. "we will need writers who remember freedom" Ursula Le Guin
Both of our best ways at getting to the truth - Journalism and Science - rely on entertaining and following all sorts of contradictory ideas and then comparing them with observed reality.
Universities in particular need to be physically safe spaces, where ideas of every kind can be mercilessly attacked.
They become too entangled with identity. The advantage of holding one's identity loosely, and attributing it one's actions, is it facilitates changing one's mind about certain things, or updating beliefs in increments.
The author has a huge blindspot: discussing politics with others where it's not a co-operative search for truth; instead it's an opportunity to let your friends explain themselves. Don't challenge them, ask them questions. Let them talk it out. Offer your own observations not as ways to change their minds but as an invitation to elaborate and explore.
You don't need to share your opinions in every conversation. You don't need to challenge another's beliefs that you disagree with or think are factually wrong. You can bond over listening to them. And they can invite you to share your thinking non-judgementally.
This is actually how most of my conversations operate, I rarely share my beliefs in conversation, but ask questions -- often geared towards a tribal view I've detected
Yeah I sympathize with the author, but it’s not hard to talk about these things with a little bit of tact. Intellectual humility also helps. I’ve come to realize I and most others know approximately 0 about most political issues, so it’s an opportunity to not truth seek but to get to know the other persons and their values better.
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[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 411 ms ] thread- Bad parenting is bad, we should have a permit for it --> are you ready to get denied the right to try having kids?
- Thou shalt not kill --> except those really bad people I don't like!
- Stealing is bad --> except when you're "starving"
Our perception of good and evil are multifaceted, with most of it happening in our background cognition.
There is a strange "mirror" stopping people from exchanging once a rift has opened. Someone else posited that it might be a fight or flight reaction.
I posit that our cognition is based on negation, and thus the shape of our tool impact our results.
I find it astonishing that anyone would ask this. The only time I've ever been asked this question has been by pollsters. In my social circle, anyway, the taboo on this question is very strong.
Yeah it seems there is less of a taboo among my friends, despite a strong tilt in one political direction.
I suspect this is because most people assume everyone shares the same opinion in our state
I understand that some things can be more important than just having fun though, down to personal values.
"To be ignorant" sounds like a moral failing on its face, but I feel it is increasingly becoming required in some circumstances with the explosive amount of information available to subscribe to nowadays.
All you really want to know is what category to put them in.
I'm not sure why I'm bothering, but I'll bite.
I didn't vote for the guy, don't like the guy, never have.
Trying to understand _why_ people _did_ vote for him is much more important than declaring half the country (really like 30-35% of the country, more people didn't vote than did vote for a specific candidate) evil.
If we need to assign blame, Biden should have dropped out long before he did so the democrats could have found their next Obama, or something.
Or maybe, just maybe, people were desperate for a change and they were manipulated into a false sense of illogical hope.
The question is, why did they need hope? What was so wrong, in their mind, that we all ended up here?
Or, just declare them evil and hold a useless sense of moral superiority. This solves nothing, but I suppose it makes you feel better.
I have a pretty good understanding of why people didn't vote, the block I care about a lot more. The people that did vote for Trump specifically either are ride or die conservative, fell victim to misinformation, or are otherwise uneducated.
Trying to say that Biden and the DNC is "too blame" for someone picking a president that is happy sending citizens to an El Salvador prison is something. I expect a bit more from the electorate myself, and think they should take some accountability for their own mistakes.
I hope you have an excellent rest of your day, take care.
You didn't acknowledge the distinction between calling a person evil, and calling a person's actions evil. There isn't a way to "restate your point" that voxl said something he didn't say which would make it any less of a straw man argument.
You're not talking past him--he responded directly to what you said--you're just incorrect.
And you don't even have to admit you were incorrect: you can just have a little red-faced moment alone by yourself in front of your computer and then move on with your life without posting a response. And that would be better than posting this posturing thing where you pretend that some restatement of the singular incorrect point you made would be more correct if only it weren't so exhausting being correct.
I have no idea what point you think you just made.
I hope you also have an excellent rest of your day, take care.
> The people that did vote for Trump specifically either are ride or die conservative, fell victim to misinformation, or are otherwise uneducated.
But this take is very dismissive of Trump voters, trying to find an easy way to avoid the conclusion that the majority of them are sane and rational people who liked what he was saying. Perhaps because it's an uncomfortable truth.
While I admittedly despise Trump, I'm under no illusions that I'm somehow meaningfully better or superior than those who support him.
His promises on things he can actually do are exclusively for things that are wantonly destructive and incomprehensibly stupid (tariffs, mass layoffs), hateful and incomprehensibly evil (mass deportations without due process), or straight up treason (pardoning J6 insurrectionists, breaking alliances). If you voted for this person, you have to either be so stupid that you believe his obvious lies, or so evil that the things that aren't lies are things you like.
Does choosing a correct tribe increase intelligence and reduce gullibility?
One increasing view we hear today is of the "uneducated ignorant malleable masses". Should we think of our fellow tribe members this way?
The question being asked by people in tribes are "what to do with stupid/evil people" and history shows examples of tribes attempts to answer that.
> trying to find an easy way to avoid the conclusion that the majority of them are sane and rational people who liked what he was saying.
My point is that to vote Republican in 2024 you must either be insane, irrational, or outright evil. It doesn't make you that way, it reveals that you already were.
> Many people who voted for tribe X voted for tribe Y a few years back. Have these people irredeemably changed in your eyes?
I think that Biden->Trump voters, or Obama->Trump voters, are incredibly stupid or short-sighted. There is no good reason to have done that. If you were a consistent Republican voter you might instead be a selfish racist piece of shit, but if you've switched from the Democrats in recent years the only option I have is to assume you're a gullible idiot.
And to be clear, yes, I think this is specific to the time we're in. I don't think I'd say this in 2000, for instance - it was pretty obvious that W was not going to be a good president, but he was not an incomprehensible choice, and you could imagine people who thought Gore's brand was tainted by association with Clinton's various forms of griminess. But Trump and his merry band of lunatics are not simply "the other tribe". They are an obvious and unprecedented threat no matter what your values are, unless your only value is breaking shit for the lulz.
Yep, and I'm not really agreeing either :-)
There is an alternative to thinking in binaries.
One way perhaps is to think about the permanence of judgements.
Think about how many people would need to switch sides for the next election. Would their status as lunatics and gullible and idiots be instantly revoked and become mentally healthy, rational and intelligent after they are on the correct side?
Many politicians would say they would remain idiots even when they vote for them and that a cynic might say that politics is just about two tribes warring against each other on a battlefield where they seek to manipulate a group of idiots to their side.
I would suggest that thinking about one's allies as idiots isn't a good thing. (Maybe their status does change instantly - in that case the idiots have the potential to be intelligent which weakens the original judgement) However it's also a difficult thing to do as it would compromise one's own group identity. It makes the binary groups more fuzzy. It introduces an overlap in the venn diagram of us vs them. Thinking of an "other" as potentially one of "us" reduces the internal coherence of the "us" group - it opens the borders.
People in groups like to keep the group strong and the borders secure. To open the borders is a difficult and painful thing. It's understandable that the binary tribal politics remains strong as it benefits both tribes.
You ask why did they need hope, do you have an answer why did they need hope? What’s so bad in America that people could be manipulated as you put it.
It feels a like a repeat of Brexit, where people vote against there own material gains to punish others because that’s the quickest high they can get https://youtu.be/GPgatTnVvVY
What's so bad in America? You'll be surprised how many people have hard lives in America. A lot. And I think when it's bad there, it's really bad.
I mean what's your point here? Okay, so this guy I know had a terrible life and now he's a Trumper--you want me to say it's just okay that he wants to kill my trans friends in a very literal way (as in he's accumulating guns, touts the "kill your local pedophile" slogan, and openly states that trans people are pedophiles)? Sure, I can empathize with the guy having lost everything when he was younger, but empathy doesn't mean we have to ignore the danger he poses.
What you're describing is never right and should be dealt with by law enforcement. That's likely far from where many of Republican voters are on this topic.
I mean, sure, even the guy I mentioned doesn't directly say he wants to kill trans people.
But you remove all healthcare and social support for trans people, and they start committing suicide--as anyone would given those conditions. You remove all protections for trans people, and they start getting killed. Republican leadership can keep their hands clean--they just look away and let the fringe do the dirty work. And the same is true for a dozen other groups. For example, there's no real controversy about the homeless (most agree that homelessness is bad)--you just look away and do nothing and they die of homelessness.
All that adds up to that a vote for Republicans is a vote that results in these people dying. Whether your opinion is that those people should die or not, is sort of irrelevant, if your vote results in them dying.
You seem to be under the impression that if a Republican voter feels that trans people deserve to live in their head, that means they aren't voting for trans people to die, but that's simply not the case. If you believe in your head that trans people deserve to live, and then vote for a guy who does a bunch of stuff that kills trans people, you're voting to kill trans people, and your fuzzy kind feelings in your head are irrelevant.
And finally: what country do you live in where trans people can safely call law enforcement? Because it's not the US.
What does that even mean? Healthcare is a mess for everyone already. Social support? What does “social support” in the context of trans people actually entail? Spending enough time and resources to normalize the concept? Support what? How?
If you think somehow bigots will eventually change their tune, I have a bridge to sell you.
Trump on Oprah in 1988 https://youtu.be/SEPs17_AkTI?si=odkWs3urOu0xq2nX
That's an important distinction to me because I believe people can change and start choosing better actions.
But, a whole lot of people haven't changed, still support Trump, and until that changes, those people are dangerous.
And sure, we can empathize with the reasons that got them to do that, but it doesn't follow that we should just pretend what they did was okay, especially is they continue to do harmful things.
Why should I believe that they're disguising some secret, more sympathetic motivation? I spent a long time hoping that was the case, because I don't want to believe that so many people favor inflicting harm for its own sake, but there's a point where trying to understand someone in terms I find reasonable becomes falsely putting my own ideas in their mouth.
You can't cherry pick policies from a candidate and pretend your vote is not culpable for all the harm it inflicts.
Like it would be easy not to ask someone's religion when there isn't a 35% chance they're going to say "extremist martyr".
But I don't ask this question if I don't think I know the answer already, and I only ask it with people I think I can have a conversation with.
Yes, because it's literally not a thing that I see happen. It seems like a terribly intrusive question to ask, and I certainly wouldn't ever feel comfortable asking anyone.
> What your "social group" does is outside the norm.
Perhaps now, but myself and most of my social group are old enough that it absolutely was the norm when we were younger. I was unaware that this was a thing that had changed.
> They are using ignorance to maintain tribal unity
Certainly not, since most know each other's political stances through the ordinary course of interacting with each other over the years.
> My guess is that your actually not astonished at all.
You guess wrong, so your personal attack here is powerless.
> pretending you're unaware of how abnormally impartial your group is
I never claimed my social circle was impartial at all, let alone "abnormally impartial". You're reading things into my statements that aren't there.
Saying I'm pretending is the same thing as saying that I'm lying. But it doesn't really matter either way. Your claims about what's in my head are mistaken. You are, of course, free to think anything you like.
Correct, I think you're lying. But that's an extreme way to put it. You're more humble bragging.
Again, it wasn't an attack. Even if I say you're lying it's not an attack either. I'm just stating what I'm thinking.
You've used the term "humble bragging" twice now. What in my statements do you think counts as a brag? I was just saying what my personal experience is, and I can't think of what I've said that would be anything to brag about, humble or otherwise. My experience is just my experience, not some kind of superior one.
But you think I'm a liar, so there's no point in talking about this any further. Thanks for your response.
How do we keep a democracy where ideas we don't agree with can still be implemented if there's a majority (assuming minority rights are protected reasonably well) while at the same time ensuring we don't end up with democracy being used as a tool to get a totalitarian regime.
For a more recent example we can look maybe at Türkiye.
Preventing ideas that are still within the boundary of a democracy from being implemented is not democracy either.
The US e.g. has a Supreme Court and a constitution. Presumably as long as that court is functional and the constitution is applied then all is good?
Unfortunately I'm not familiar enough with Germany's fall into fascism and whether there was some sort of watershed moment where it was clear that something was broken and could still have been remediated.
Have we got some news for you
Fascism is an easy sell when it's immediately preceded by the Weimar Republic.
I reminded the voter of the secret ballot and the ability to just lie.
"Tell them what you think they want to hear", was my advice
intentional moderate = they're trying to straddle the middle, meaning they adjust views based on political swings
unintentional moderate = they accidentally end up in the middle from the average of their views, for which some may be extreme left or right
E.g. I'm moderately left but I'll still engage in healthy conversation with right-leaning friends and acquaintances because I like to understand where they're coming from. However I have some friends who I love dearly but know that despite their intelligence and how much I enjoy their company, they've become very tribal in their politics, so I don't bother engaging in political discussions with them beyond basic diplomatic contributions. Or posing questions that offer new perspectives. I still trust them and value their friendship though.
Another example of an illustration I like that is somewhat derided is the classic equity vs equality cartoon with the boxes[1]. I say this in spite of the fact that I generally find myself identifying more with equality as a baseline, and the simple reason is it's a good illustration of the potential pitfalls of overindexing on equality.
IMO It's all in how you use them. It's hard to avoid that useful metaphors/analogies often become overused and cliche.
[1]: https://interactioninstitute.org/illustrating-equality-vs-eq...
this reply nails it imo, some images just boil things down perfectly
As long as there's respect that's what matters.
If two people don't have some different opinions, at least one of them isn't thinking for themselves.
You're highly unlikely to grow up Protestant in Israel just like you're highly unlikely to going to grow up with liberal views in Tennessee.
Second to geography is demographic. You're unlikely to support DEI if you're surrounded by 90% white people all the time, and you're unlikely to decry globalism after you've been exposed to large cities and dense population centers for a long time.
Don't pretend like Nashville doesn't exist. It's very much rural very homogeneous areas versus more urban and diverse areas. It's much easier to label entire demographics as The Enemy and then vote to elect someone to attack The Enemy when you've literally never met The Enemy and just rely on what your news stations of choice tell you. Who The Enemy is changes. It's been women's suffrage and and civil rights. It's been "Mexicans" and Arabs and Gays and now Trans folk. But conservatives will literally always have The Enemy to rally against.
Growing up in more diverse areas means you're more likely to have met a Muslim who doesn't want to "kill or convert you" or a trans person who just wants to live a normal life in the best way they can, or a DACA recipient just trying to make a life in the only place they have ever known as home. Knowing these people builds empathy for outgroups. The key trait conservatives seem to lack. More they seem incapable of comprehending it. So "liberals" can't support "illegal immigrants" because they actually want the best outcome for people. That's a concept conservatives can't comprehend. So it must be that liberals support them for all the "illegal voting" that "illegal immigrants" are doing. Never mind that these people cannot vote. Never mind that if these people could vote, they are far more religious and far more likely to ascribe to the conservative social political agenda. It makes absolutely no sense that "liberals" support "illegal immigrants" to capture their votes. But that's a hard fact to conservatives.
"It’s not that truth-seeking is a requirement for friendship, far from it."
agree (and thanks for reading)
It's just not worth it. Publish or tweet something if you have something to say and want to reach a lot of people. Talking to ONE person and risking your relationship has a lousy cost/benefit ratio.
so I guess I agree to some degree
I generally keep people's political opinions at arms length, as some relationships are worth the pain or lack of depth. But it has caused unforseen pain at times, and hurts when relations from different spheres interact negatively.
F.ex. one of my most altruistic and charitable friends is a Trump supporter
She's run a Christmas time charity for 10 years, solely out of the goodness of her heart, to ensure that families in our community who are struggling get what they need for a happier holiday in tough times.
It's a non-trivial 6 months of work, between making prizes for donation-driving lotteries, attending events and promoting, and then finding the most cost-effective deals for the families.
So I choose to say "She's a better person than most I know, in some ways, and disagrees with me in others. Worth friendship."
What’s the endgame to this approach? Seems to me, folks with genocidal thoughts and feelings would find more positive reinforcement amongst themselves and less negative reinforcement everywhere else. Not great for the “genocide is bad” theory.
It's hard to imagine isolating them from counter points is going to mitigate their position.
Like we all know a guy who we can't keep around because he keeps saying unhinged stuff, or creeps on any women, or whatever it is he does that ruins it for everyone else.
So I think it's more nuanced than just refusing to cut off heinous viewpoints. It's also how this person injects this view in your existing friend ecosystem.
But the premise here is these people have these beliefs and are working to make them legal. The idea isn’t that these people want to kill Jews, it’s that they want to make killing Jews the right thing to do.
Then, it becomes your problem. Particularly so if you are Jewish, but even if you are not.
This of course extrapolates to less extreme examples.
When challenging such beliefs I find some are hyperbole or a side effect of group-think. Rarely are they genuine, but when they are it's the most worrying. And that's usually when I stop engaging that line of thought.
Yeah PG sorta talks about this in his piece I reference, that for some reason he notices conservatives tend to do this less than their liberal counterparts
I thought this was a fair data point and sad it seems to be downvoted almost? I'm not super familiar with HN's voting system
Ask any gay kid how true that is.
but this is a great example of what my essay was highlighting
I'd rather be right than popular, and I usually am.
Politics dictates so much of daily life, at every level, that it's important to be able to have conversations about it. It's frankly self-righteous to see yourself as the one person with nuanced opinions in a crowd of simpletons, and while I do think that politics in many liberal democracies has become more polarized, you'll never restore nuanced debate or good-faith disagreement in political discussions by just avoiding the topic.
I'm not advocating for politics being the only thing you talk about with your friends, but if you and your friends are able to have useful discussions about the impact of some policies over others, can have constructive disagreements over reasonable political discourse, and can identify larger problematic trends in politics, a lot of good can come of that.
But with family and acquaintances, it's not worth getting into. Except when someone isn't being respectful. Then I will certainly speak up and ask why they aren't respecting someone's right to think for themselves.
I have a problem with the fact that my dad votes for people who do not do those things, and then gets upset when people point that out to him.
He told me that "I think people just need to have more patience with each other and accept our differences" as a moral to a story he told about being a manager to trans and non-binary folks. IMO it's 100% the right take, and he holds no negative feelings for any trans people or nonbinary people.
Then he votes for the anti-trans candidate.
How do you square that circle?
The reality is that I know my dad's voting history (we have talked about politics) and my dad is not an idealist or a pragmatist or conservative or liberal.
My dad is a populist.
It's unlikely that most people will agree with all the positions of a party, so they choose the one who most closely aligns with their highest priority issues.
Perhaps trans policy is just a lower priority issue for your dad. His voting may be illogical based on your priorities, but may be the rational choice based on his ranking of issues.
> How do you square that circle?
I don't know your dad, maybe he doesn't see that candidate as "anti-trans"?
If you think that some group has unfair benefits you can vouch for stripping those benefits without seeing yourself as "anti". Your drive is not hatred but fairness. You can be misguided but that's a different question.
If you think church must pay taxes, it doesn't make you anti-church. If you want to reduce police funding it doesn't make you anti-police. If you want stricter control of guns that doesn't make you anti-guns.
The whole "anti" split is indeed a sing of the tribalism which in US takes a binary form. You're either with us or against us.
I actually say there are reasons to persevere and encourage debate if it's not just trying to "win":
"However, one reason to persevere is to find the 1% of people that also want to see the world as it is. Aka, finding your own community of anti-tribalists."
"Few things give me greater joy than a discovery-ridden conversation with smart friends, and this is only enhanced if I learn something I previously believed to be true is actually wrong. Seriously, come prove some core belief I have as wrong and you will quite literally make my week."
That’s weird because you can live life of total ignorance of what’s happening in the news. Lobbying and marketing make you think things are important that aren’t.
Being unaware of politics, just like being unaware of biology or physics, doesn't reduce or disprove the degree to which it impacts your life, it just recuces your understanding.
Spending hours a day worrying and reading about cancer risk and fatalities increases your understanding, but it certainly isn't healthy or proportional.
It’s a nice thought. But it’s kind of like thinking you will become an athlete by watching ESPN talk shows. Or maybe even hoping to learn about physics by watching the Big Bang theory. You might pick up some new words, but It’s two levels removed from the real thing.
A marginal understanding of what's happening in the world around you helps you navigate it better.
I’d recommend a short course in mindfulness instead, at whatever point in the spectrum between science and mysticism you’re comfortable with.
will check this out, thanks for reading!
Also by Jon Stewart on Crossfire in 2004: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=aFQFB5YpDZE&t=310s
The critique about what passes for debate is as apt today as it was then.
I firmly believe that if wealth distribution today was the same as it was in the 70s-90s, the culture wars would be significantly dampened or non existent. If people could still buy homes, afford to have kids and healthcare, we would all be able to talk about religion, sex, and politics without this extreme tribalism. It’s happening because there are way more “losers” in the economic game now, it’s become a life or death issue, and people are looking for who to blame.
Since the decision was made post GFC to bail out the banks and protect capital over the normal person that just wanted a house to live in, the position of the rentiers has been consolidated hugely. We have Rachel Reeves thinking we in the UK can build a growth strategy on the back of financial services (which generally means "rent-extraction services"). A rational system would separate the GDP from the real economy from the income from rent extraction, and seek to eliminate the latter.
To the common man, they see themselves working longer and harder than they used to and getting a smaller and smaller slice of the pie. It turns out when your real outputs have to support a sizeable portion of the population who have dedicated their lives to the art of rent extraction to live like kings, you don't see much of the gain.
I have many contemporaries that have gone into finance. A vast pool of intellectual capability, shuffling money around playing zero sum games, and ultimately protected from loss by the power of the state.
You’re right that people feel less secure, but that doesn’t mean that they are correct when they feel that.
By pretty much any measure, I believe that people in 2025 are far more secure than they were in 1975, 1985 or 1995.
However in the real world and 1:1 you can still have good discussions with smart people who disagree with you. And we need to have those.
The missing ingredient is "intellectual honesty". It used to be the case that when you talked to people on the right they would
This did end up in duelling statistics and arguments over what mattered, but that's a reasonable place for discussion. Nowadays it's much deeper into making wild arguments from conspiracy theories with no or highly questionable evidence. Pizzagate. Birtherism. And so on.Having a vast difference between opinions is fine, but some of their decisions are fundamentally against my core beliefs and have done literal harm to many people I know.
For that reason, terminating family and friendships has been absolutely worth it for me.
Until we can live in a world where fundamental rights are protected and respected, we have no common ground, and it's pointless to tiptoe around these insanely harmful beliefs while maintaining a facade of friendship.
see my reply to rdegges
Hello. I preach moderation and apolitical discussion. You were vague about what "particular candidate" you meant, but if you meant Trump I didn't vote for him. In fact I did not cast a vote for any presidential candidate this year because none of them was someone I wanted in office. So, you now have seen at least one person who does not match your description.
I preach moderation and apolitical discussion because the toxicity of political discussion is tearing our country in two. It is the single biggest threat our society faces today. If we cannot learn to resolve our differences (which starts with genuine attempts to reach each other even when others' actions seem reprehensible to us), this country will die. People do not, as a rule, choose evil. They are often mistaken about what is good, or disagree with each other on the best way to achieve good ends. But to round that off as "they are evil" is intellectually lazy and toxic to a civilized society.
> You cannot not discuss politics when the political scene that dictates your daily life is governed by objectively evil people and subjectively less evil people on the other side of the aisle.
If people were objectively evil, they would be considered evil by all. The fact that this has not happened is by itself proof that these people are not objectively evil, and that their evil is a matter of subjective views. If you wish to change others' views, the first step must be to recognize this so that you can formulate a plan of persuasion. Blasting people as "objectively evil" feels good, but accomplishes nothing.
No, MAGA led by Trump, assisted by the Heritage Foundation and the tech billionaire Yarvin disciples are the biggest threat, because they have power and are in the process of implementing an autocratic takeover. It's crazy to me how many moderate, apolitical people don't see this. But I was that way a few months ago and started paying attention.
> They are often mistaken about what is good, or disagree with each other on the best way to achieve good ends.
I don't think there is any agreement to be had anymore. They don't care about the Constitution, they just want a king/CEO to force things through. What can you say about a president talking about a third term, making Canada a 51st state, claiming Greenland will 100% join the US, saying allies have been ripping us off, deporting people without due process because they had suspicious looking tattoos, calling for impeachment of judges because they ruled against Trump. Refusing to pay agencies what Congress already approved. Forcing big law agencies into making deals.
Rand Paul gave a speech tonight about how the president doesn't have the power to tax the American people, which is what tariffs are. MAGA is out to win the culture and political war. Permanently. Wake up.
But I agree with parent that it's perfectly justifiable to draw lines that limit potential relationships. You're not obligated to welcome everyone or tolerate views in others that have unbearable consequences for yourself. Vote with your feet.
I’m pretty sure that they weren’t voting for those candidates for the express purpose of stripping away those rights and there were other policies and values that they were voting for.
I’ll be honest that I’m Jewish and certain posts about Palestine where friends or non Jewish family have specifically expressed values that I find anti-myself I have completely cut out of my life. (not all beliefs about pro Palestine are anti-semetic, but most are) But I believe that most views at the party level are just different priorities or different view points and tolerance is necessary, because they are not directly in conflict.
Looking at exit pool demographics might help if you're struggling to have any empathy for a Trump voter. They are largely working class and undereducated and astonishingly diverse for a republican candidate in recent memory.
Trump hurt the poor the last time he was in office. Republicans literally WROTE DOWN ALL THEIR PLANS to hurt the poor and destroy the country well before the elections. Anyone who saw that and still voted for them gets no empathy.
Voting for a party explicitly demonstrates at least acceptance of if not outright support for its platform. You don't get to absolve yourself of support for kicking puppies because the FooBar party also includes a modest tax cut in its policy agenda that you really want.
It doesn't matter if the opposing party advocates for raising taxes or even eating kittens.
That's true even if realistically, there are no other parties capable of winning. You can support a third party, abstain out of protest, or even begin a grass-roots campaign to start yet another party. You can even try changing the FooBar party from within, so long as you don't vote for them until sufficient change has occurred.
Similarly to “silence is complicity.” Refusing to oppose a party by choosing the other is indicating acceptance of what they will do.
Virtually no independent thinker is going to support either major party's platform, for the simple reason that both parties have a collection of inconsistent policies that are an incoherent ideological mishmash. Therefore you do not so much vote FOR a party as you instead hold your nose and vote AGAINST the other one.
When you vote for a party, you may not fully agree with all their policies, but you are stating that the drawbacks are acceptable compromises. When you vote for FooBar, you might not want puppies to be kicked, but you consider it a tradeoff worth making if it gets you that tax cut.
If you are looking at the political landscape of the US as an independent thinker, and are questioning whether abandoning the principles of human rights and liberal democracy are a tradeoff worth making, then I really question whether your thoughts are really as independent as you would like to believe.
You can't hold who they voted for against people in a two-party system. There just isn't enough choice.
This certainly might be what you believe their platform amounts to. But it is most certainly not their explicit platform. Accuse people of what they actually have done, not what you believe their actions to be logically equivalent to. Otherwise there can't actually be a reasonable discussion, because you're giving off heat rather than light.
I think your point is that Project 2025 is not Trump's explicit platform, which is correct (although this doesn't affect my statement which was about his explicit platform). However, if it looks, walks, and talks like a duck, we also need to be willing to call it a duck. Project 2025 goes significantly above and beyond Agenda 47, the group behind it explicitly endorse Trump, and many of Project 2025's authors are involved in the Trump administration. Being an "independent thinker" does not mean accepting what both sides say at face value, it means looking at people's behaviour and drawing judgements based on that.
If you have any doubts, please read Project 2025. Most of this is extremely explicit and impossible to ignore. Of course, most conservatives will still try to ignore it because nobody wants to admit they might have made a mistake.
According to polls, slightly more women voted for Trump in 2024 than in 2020 and significantly more minorities voted for Trump in 2024 than in 2020 (https://www.nbcwashington.com/decision-2024/2024-voter-turno...). One party energetically claims to be on the side of the oppressed but the oppressed don't exactly seem to be flocking to be on the side of that party. Makes you think, doesn't it?
The Democrats cannot win as long as there's a substantial faction inside it unwilling to face the reality of what voters actually think instead of what they want to tell the voters to think.
Here is a Republican take that is about as biased as your take on Republicans. "Democrats are fully infected by the woke mind virus, destroying merit in favor of DEI, promoting antisemitism in support of Hamas terrorism, and suppressing free speech in favor of totalitarian control."
Both partisan perspective have some truth, and a lot that is false. For example, while it is true that Trump represents a threat to democracy, threatening democracy is not part of the Republican party's explicit platform. Conversely, while it is true that there has been a sharp rise in antisemitism on the left, most of that really is antizionism. (That said, if you try to make Palestine free from sea to sea, where will over 7 million Jewish refugees go? You're unlikely to be more lucky than Hitler was in the 1930s in finding a country who is willing to accept them. What happens then?)
Maybe it's a good theoretical exercise, but life is too short for me to appreciate the various reasons that might drive someone to become an asshole.
However, these days the American political landscape looks a lot different. I understand having priorities, but if someone believes that a magical make-eggs-be-cheaper plan should have a higher priority than their friend (i.e., me) having basic human rights, why would I want to be friends with them? It doesn't matter if they personally agree with the politician's strip-their-friend-of-basic-rights plans or not, the fact that it isn't a priority to them at all says enough.
I'm cheering for you!
Access to gender affirming care for trans minors is banned in more than half of US states. The very same medicines are allowed to be given to cis minors.
In 13 US states bathroom bills prevent trans people from comfortably existing outside of their homes for more than a few hours at a time.
It has only been 22 years since sodomy laws were found unconstitutional. It has only been 10 years since gay marriage was legalized nationwide. Thomas wrote in his Dobbs concurrence that Lawrence should be revisited. Several state legislatures have passed resolutions calling for Obergefell to be overturned.
While less of a "basic right", the Trump administration has banned trans people from serving in the military. Visibility of gay or trans characters in media available for minors is also regularly threatened. Products for trans people sold at stores like Target have led to bomb threats.
The Cass report conclusions and recommendations should be listened to, it was a way better and more thorough study than the Netherlands study that begat all of the "gender clinics" in the US and elsewhere. https://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/ukgwa/20250310143...
> In 13 US states bathroom bills prevent trans people from comfortably existing outside of their homes for more than a few hours at a time.
As far as bathrooms, i feel uncomfortable in public restrooms. I don't know what the rate of people that feel uncomfortable in public restrooms, but those of us that do find family or single occupant restrooms, and know what places have those. No one wants to piss in a literal trough, i could be wrong.
I don't consider sodomy a basic human right, but i could be argued with, i guess.
I don't see what "bomb threats" have to do with human rights, in this context. Is there a human right to have products available at Target? If everyone boycotted Target (like they did with Bud Light), is that a violation of human rights, too?
I am unsure why people keep deleting their replies. It is possible to have a reasoned discussion about inflammatory topics.
You can think this, I suppose. But let me tell you that a very large number of LGBT people do consider these things to be questions of their basic rights.
there's groups of people that think all kinds of things are "basic rights" but it doesn't mean they are. I could say nothing is a "basic right" since any example you can give is violated globally. Maybe some stuff should be globally truly basic rights. But i am willing to listen to arguments that any of these things are a basic right as it stands.
just a for instance: Sodomy. saying it's a human right implies that sexual intercourse is a basic human right. I am unsure if you really want to make this argument.
[Here](https://www.eeoc.gov/newsroom/removing-gender-ideology-and-r...) is an EEOC's "literal directive" pulling back on relevant cases. If you want specific cases then [this article](https://www.cbsnews.com/news/eeoc-transgender-discrimination...) references specific ongoing cases that have been dropped by the EEOC.
And I do think the ability to have consenting and private intercourse without being imprisoned is a human right. I did not expect that this would be controversial.
If you're talking about employment (which the EEOC appears to cover) - i've been fired for not cutting my hair short enough. I've been fired for refusing to wear a tie for a cubicle job. In the US, employment is at-will, generally. If that's what you have an issue with, then let's talk about that. Even if the issue is with hiring discrimination of any kind, i can get behind that, too.
And there's a subtle, yet perceivable difference between what you said, "sodomy laws" and your statement now about "consenting and private intercourse." i also notice you didn't mention "between adults."
I don't really want to have a side-channel discussion, here. The employment vs housing statements, you either had a typo, or it was a red herring, i am unsure. I feel like this is devolving, perhaps of my own fault, into a god of the gaps argument.
The discussion of housing is separate from that and is instead a point about the fact that LGBT people do not have federal protections in this domain. I thought that my post was very clear. LGBT people do not have any federal protections in many domains (housing for example). They have protections in some domains (employment, via Bostock) and even that is backsliding because of the EEOC's changing behavior.
Only adults can consent. The sodomy laws struck down in Lawrence were about consenting and private intercourse, both in general and in the very specific case of Mr. Lawrence.
I am extremely uninterested in any discussion that smacks of painting gay people and their relationships as in any way related to child rape.
https://www.findlaw.com/lgbtq-law/housing-discrimination-pro...
> At the federal level, you can find protections for renters in the following:
Federal legislation, or at least clear jurisprudence, is needed for this protection to meaningfully stick.
...
> I am unsure why people keep deleting their replies. It is possible to have a reasoned discussion about inflammatory topics.
I also think it is possible, but I don't think your first quoted statement here is compatible with that discussion.
I really should read the philosophical school of "me good, you bad" it sounds so convenient.
I thought the GOP was pretty clear throughout the election cycle, from President to local office, that their desired world can only come to be through a drastic restructuring of the Constitutional status quo ante.
I don’t know that “I only voted for (e.g.) tax cuts, everything else is collateral damage and I’m not culpable for it,” is a defensible moral stance.
It's more about watching people pivot towards unquestionable evil. "Empathy is a sin" is such a deep, dark line in the sand. I'm not going to just stand there and watch you cross it.
Well, Alabama outlawed abortion except for life of the mother. A federal judge had to rule that the state can't prosecute doctors and reproductive health organizations for helping patients travel out of the state to obtain abortions. The Project 2025 plan is for the Republican controlled Congress to at some point pass the most restrictive federal abortion law they can get away with.
That is stripping away the rights of women to choose. There are many religious conservatives who support this.
You're doing what so many people do in the abortion debate, and begging the question. You can't simply sidestep deep differences of opinion on moral issues by declaring your position to be right and theirs wrong. It's wilful ignorance of a whole lot of nuance that exists on this topic, nuance that must be engaged with if one wishes to be effective in having a discussion.
If they want to enter a scientific discussion on viability and neural development for when to start placing limits on abortion, and how making victims of rape or incest carry to term is ethical, then we can have a meaningful discussion.
Otherwise, they can feel free to go have their own theocratic community in the wilderness where they don't choose to have abortion. Also known as Alabama these days, unfortunately for those stuck wandering the wilderness with them.
I also think especially in today's political environment, political beliefs at least partially reflect an individual's core values. In some cases I may not want to associate with people that have fundamentally opposing core values to my own. For example this guy's interviews with his parents: https://www.tiktok.com/@thenecessaryconversation
Most of the time this is just being an enabler, who excuses, makes up rationales and blames "the other side" for not being nice enough to extremists. Especially when we talk with about fascist close groups. People who say this achieve only limitations on the opposition to extremists. They rarely or never manage to move extremist into the center.
> I’m pretty sure that they weren’t voting for those candidates for the express purpose of stripping away those rights and there were other policies and values that they were voting for.
Why are you so sure? There are plenty of conservatives who openly talk about it. It is not being tolerant when you decide that no one is allowed to do that observation. You are not being neutral here, you are biasing the discussion toward the extremism when you do it.
Sure. But this is that age-old meme: You know those people (most people?) in 1930s Germany who supported the Nazi party but they perhaps weren't really for annexations and genocide. You know what they call those people? Nazis.
People who voted for Trump are responsible for the fate of Ukraine, the demise of Nato, the fallout with Canada and Mexico, the inevitable inflation and economic turmoil of tariffs etc. And that's of course even if they only voted for Trump because they hold "traditional republican values", or because of single issues like gun rights, migration or taxes.
> tolerance is necessary
Tolerance stops at intolerance. You can never tolerate intolerance. Apart from that, politics also relies on a few fundamental things like the reliance on facts and experts, and respect for the rule of law. Obviously you can't ever tolerate "politics" which starts to tamper with either of these. Luckily I can keep a tribe which consists of people who agree with this, which can vote for any party in my parliament, and is 98% of the population. I'd hate to be in the US though where the tribes cut down the middle of the population.
I've cut off my aunt who still claims the 2020 election was stolen. The data I worked with to support fragile communities was removed/altered in the transition (CDC Social Vulnerability Index). I've already lost my job in the federal purge. I have a [former] coworker who was born intersexed that cannot be legally recognized by the government. I'll likely lose my right to marry due to my aunt's beliefs. My boyfriend will likely lose access to lifesaving medication with cuts to funding. My grandma is paying for hospice care with social security and claiming Trump is fixing the country. I'm renewing my passport; several friends have already left the country.
I'm sure there were people who voted for the Republican party in the last USA election for purely economic reasons. However, "anti-woke" policies were absolutely the most important issue for a lot of people. Just this week the attorney general in my state posted an "April Fool's Day Joke" where the "joke" was him standing next to a LGBT flag.
I don't know, man. If they're really your friends, those should be non-negotiable.
In some markets, about one third of the entire Trump campaign advertising was fear-mongering about how dangerous LGBTQ people are. They wouldn't have spent so much on this if they didn't think it was a uniquely important to their constituents.
I think you're unequivocally wrong if you don't think that Conservatives in the US are above voting for a single issue.
I don't know enough about the Palestine/Israel conflict to be able to make an informed opinion on it, so I won't comment on that.
Wise, given the guilt & political climate. But, see also:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progressive_except_PalestineI tend to be pretty progressive, so it's probable I would be more on the Palestine side, but I try not to express strong opinions on things that I haven't done at least a cursory amount of research on, and I also don't really want to be labeled an antisemite or racist or anything like that.
Politics is almost always indirect, usually with multiple levels of indirection.
Being told that you have to follow the same rules as everyone else for e.g. spaces designated to be used solely by the opposite sex, doesn't seem so bad.
For example, what exactly is "gender-affirming care"? Because I suspect that includes giving life-altering drugs to young children.
https://edition.cnn.com/2025/02/13/us/stonewall-inn-national...
Removing people from information about a historical event doesn't look good under any lens.
For example, see the section regarding "Zazu Nova" on the current page
https://www.nps.gov/ston/learn/photosmultimedia/virtual-fenc...
and before the erasure
https://web.archive.org/web/20250202042345/https://www.nps.g...
None of them implies the others. And using any term besides trans woman would be disingenuous, as trans people existed before before 1969, with that exact nomenclature already existing. Just because the letters might not have been attached to an "LGBT" title, neither T or Q are new. Only their increased acceptance and knowledge is.
And deleting references to those is, as you can see, seen as an obvious attempt to walk back on that public perception and acceptance.
While ( as often is ) a very summarized version of the history can be found on the wikipedia page https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transgender_history , the sources should lead you to more detailed info, if you do care about learning about the historical accuracy.
Sources on the web refer to Nova having involvement with the Street Transvestites Action Revolutionaries group, which fits with that description also.
"“Never believe that anti-Semites are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words. The anti-Semites have the right to play. They even like to play with discourse for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert. If you press them too closely, they will abruptly fall silent, loftily indicating by some phrase that the time for argument is past.”
It literally does not. You can vote for Trump without ever having thought of trans people a day in your life, much less thought of "abusing" them.
Additionally and AFAIK, Trump himself has never expressed a desire to abuse trans people, according to a normal and accepted definition of "abuse".
You're pretty much the exact kind of person that the article talks about.
Instead maybe consider that it's thinking in tribes that's the issue at root.
Personally I think it's impossible to stop being in a tribe. One should, if free, only be able to choose the tribe to join. We can't choose not to join a tribe. Most people either are not free to choose or not willing to consider that they can choose. Freedom to choose a tribe is very scary.
Looking at how other countries do politics might help. For example did you know that conspiracy and paranoia is a characteristic strategy used in American politics? It's not used as much in other parts of the world.
It's incredibly difficult for a person to see themselves as being paranoid or to believe in a conspiracy theory. But paranoid people who believe in conspiracy theories make great tribe members. It is literally a way to make people think of things as "us vs them"
But what I'm arguing is that most people do not actually come to these values by way of thinking, but rather by blindly adopting them en masse from their chosen tribe.
And when they choose not to be open to the possibility they might be wrong, then they have a religion, not a intellectually-driven view.
This is okay if acknowledged imo, as per this sentence in the piece:
"If someone is self-aware enough to consciously acknowledge their choice to remain in the bubble, that’s totally fair. I respect it like I’d respect anyone who chooses to participate in a more traditional religion. My issue is when this view is falsely passed off as an intellectually-driven one."
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Master%E2%80%93slave_morality
popularity is not the same as tribal, tribal implies a blind following -- when individuals cannot explain why they believe something
I'm willing to bet that in most cases, that is groupthink. It's hard to tell, because the conclusion is identical to one based on evidence, so you can't infer from the opinion whether it's groupthink or not.
Sometimes you can tell by how someone holds a belief. Defensiveness, unwillingness to consider ways in which their chosen belief is not 100% wholly good, or shouting someone down are evidence of groupthink. For example: if someone brings up that in the past some inactive virus vaccines contained live viruses and a doctor claims that it never happened and could never happen, that's either groupthink or just a doctor sick of arguing with uninformed patients who has given up bothering with explaining the intellectual basis of his beliefs.
My personal suspicion is that the 1% don't exist, that everyone's opinions and beliefs are a mishmash of tribalism and intellectual conclusions, it's just that the balance is very different in different people. I try very hard to make my stances intellectually based and evidence-driven, yet I continually discover that more and more of my deeply held policy positions aren't as clear cut and the real world is more nuanced than I thought.
It's not like nuance is a binary thing (by definition!)
One thing I've noticed, as people get more entrenched in their viewpoint, is that they stop accepting the possibility that they're wrong, and this flawed thinking starts to extend to the wildest corners of their position.
"Well, if I'm right about the person, the person is right about everything too. And anyone who disagrees with me is therefore wrong about EVERYTHING."
It's a very shallow viewpoint, and some people just refuse to accept that they're wrong sometimes.
If I were to cut them off as friends for being part of the problem, that sounds unreasonable right?
I don't see how cutting them out creates a positive. It's like "Javy thinks men can become women", now I have one less person to play disc golf with.
What's the point of that? People can have different opinions, it's not their only character trait.
Similarly, people I dislike (rude or mean people, for example) make me unhappy when I'm around them. Cutting them out of my life is a net benefit there too, because I'm happier without them.
And maybe "How does this benefit me?" isn't the right question to be asking in this situation.
"Moderates" always like to speak in vague terms as if it's not literal murder being proposed by one side. I literally know a guy who is accumulating firearms, has bumper stickers that say "kill your local pedophile", and thinks all trans people are pedophiles. This is not a person I am going to be friends with just because we play the same kind of guitar music.
Quality over quantity for a start.
> people can have different opinions
Not every opinion deserves the same level of tolerance, respect or acceptance. If someone I know starts goose-stepping I’m not going to write it off a “just a difference in opinion.”
It's like spycraft during the cold war. A double agent must pass as being in both tribes for the good of their country. They literally isolate themselves from their homelands tribe to embed themselves in another. They are forever changed. They can't go back. In other words: to change another changes oneself too. It weakens ones own group identity.
Almost all people would never want to risk their identity to change another person for the good of their group. It's very risky and very painful.
Another way that the article suggests is to let people change themselves.
> Until we can live in a world where fundamental rights are protected and respected
It wasn't hiding from uncomfortable things, opinions and people, that created the world where you can even think about women or minority rights, or even know how to write to express your opnions. So this approach will not create the world you described.
The conceptualization of what fundamental even means is very much subjective, so posing such a condition to dialogue is, in principle, the negation of possibility of improvement on either side.
this is the core kernel of what a tribe even is in my opinion: pose a subjective condition, divide people based on it.
Clearly defined values are fine until we get more specific though. What values? Whose responsibility? And what's holding is back from achieving what we want even if our party is in charge? Is it a matter of excluding people who disagree with us? More money? Or is the utopian vision we're attempting not presently achievable?
So is an agreement on fundamental rights for everyone what you want to live your life on? Or do you have other priorities in the meantime where you can agree with people on more immediate matters?
It wasn't just that she voted for him, but the fact that she actively supported all of his policies around immigration, including mass deportations that would have included my wife (who was on DACA at the time). She has also said some extremely disturbing stuff about what should happen to gay people that I don't even know that I can post without breaking some form of TOS, which would be horrible already, but slightly worse to me because my sister is gay.
It's easy to say "just be neutral and don't talk about politics around her", but there are some issues with that.
First, you don't know my grandmother; no matter how much I try and avoid any political subject she will keep bringing it up. She will divert a conversation about my job as a software engineer to somehow a rant about how Mexicans are stealing American jobs (this actually happened). I could just roll my eyes and bite my tongue, but this brings me to my next point:
Second, neutrality isn't neutral. I don't really know who started this myth that somehow avoiding the subject is "not taking a side", it's just a lazy way to endorse the status quo. If I keep trying to be amicable with people who actively want my wife to be deported, then that's sort of signaling to my wife that I don't give a shit about what happens to her. I don't want to signal that, because it's not true. At that point, my only option is to either stop talking to my grandmother or talk to her and constantly push back she says something racist or horrible, which isn't productive.
Before you give me shit over this, all of you do this. You all draw the line somewhere. You probably all draw it at different points than I do, but you absolutely do draw the line. If your best friend suddenly joined the Klan and became the Grand Wizard, you probably wouldn't continue being friends with them, even if you could avoid talking politics, because that would signal that you're ok with their racism. You also probably wouldn't be friends with Jeffrey Dahmer even if you could avoid the whole "killing and eating people" topic.
As it stands, I don't really feel bad for cutting her off. I absolutely do not make a concession for age on this. If you're going to live as a grownup in 2025 then it's not wrong to judge someone by 2025 standards. I don't give a fuck what the world was like when you grew up, you have to live in the world as it is now.
"They do it" should not be enough of a reason, but it affects youtube income for individuals, so let the market work, I guess? /sarcasm
Not discussing politics with friends is really indicative of the friendships you have. This is really an article about someone who has failed to discuss politics with "friends." As someone who routinely talks politics with friends (and we do NOT all agree with each other), it's a healthy experience. One where you can get a better understanding of people and their beliefs.
Stay in your bubble. But let's not pretend it's healthy or good.
Unless I encounter a signal that someone wants to remain in their bubble
On HN, your title should match what the article actually says ("Please use the original title, unless it is misleading or linkbait" -https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)
I think if we change the title to "When I don't discuss politics with friends", that would be more accurate given what you've written here.
Edit: I looked at the article and didn't see anything that particularly mitigated the title, so I've put it back to "Why" above.
No idea is this particular person is especially part of the problem, I’m just talking about general vibes.
The big issue is a lot of people will believe what they want to believe. Most folks are not scientists - they start by assuming their conclusions and will choose the soothing moral and emotional rhetoric over evidence.
Trying to see the world objectively puts you in a category of outliers. The people you become friends with due to proximity in everyday life will not be outliers.
Like there's an even bigger group of people who think they're scientific and unbiased and impartial but they actually aren't. That group is more likely the group you and I are in.
The group of actual objective people is so small that you may never meet a single person like this in your lifetime. That person may even be autistic.
Some questions don't have definite answers, it's the sophistication of the analysis that counts.
I would be very curious to know what people here even consider "rational debate", probably a bunch of centrist takes on gay people, abortion, immigrants, guns or whatever would be my guess.
And then there are forbidden words, words that make you lose your job, or your freedom...
I hypothesize that we're seeing the influence of the legal system on the public turbo-charged by Citizens United money. An attorney is paid to be a "zealous advocate" for their client. This means never spending effort on anything that might be against the client's interest. Self-reflection is stochastically against their interest, so why even risk it? Considering alternative views might be against your interest, so why risk it? Therefore, in this new zeitgeist, such behavior is not just perverse and painful, but even unethical and wrong.
The problem, of course, is that for this system of adversarial argument you need an impartial judge. In theory that would be the public, but it turns out flooding people's minds with unethical lawyer screed 24x7 turns more people into lawyers, not judges. "The world is changed. I feel it in the water. I feel it in the earth. I smell it in the air. Much that once was is lost, for none now live who remember it." This could very well refer to the value of dignity, honor, integrity, fairness in debate, respect for one's opponents. These are always under assault, but in the last 10 years they have been decimated to the point people don't remember they ever held sway and young people don't know what politics was like when they did.
nailed it imo, thanks for reading!
This is especially true if you have a history of being somewhat cruel to people on the basis of a conclusion you're not really 100% sure you agree with anymore. Now if you question it, you have a lot of guilt to contend with.
Failure to adopt an accurate perspective of one's place in the universe is the greatest source of human anxiety.
Plus, if you can't discuss something like politics with people, are they really your friends at all? Not very good ones at least...
But I understand why someone may not want to I guess
It surprises me that most people don't seem to feel that way and I struggle to understand why. Apparently, people often feel angry and alienated by the truth. I think that never makes sense, but I've learned to accept that people simply feel threatened by the truth sometimes and I can't usually convince them otherwise.
"[8] Few things give me greater joy than a discovery-ridden conversation with smart friends, and this is only enhanced if I learn something I previously believed to be true is actually wrong. Seriously, come prove some core belief I have as wrong and you will quite literally make my week."
Thanks for reading!
Morality evolves, both personally and culturally, and trying to hold a static identity in the face of that change just leads to more internal conflict. It’s uncomfortable, yeah, but clinging to certainty for safety’s sake can be more corrosive in the long run.
Both of our best ways at getting to the truth - Journalism and Science - rely on entertaining and following all sorts of contradictory ideas and then comparing them with observed reality.
Universities in particular need to be physically safe spaces, where ideas of every kind can be mercilessly attacked.
We are losing what took so long to build.
yep, it's "why would i risk finding out i'm wrong when everybody around me already thinks i'm right"
You don't need to share your opinions in every conversation. You don't need to challenge another's beliefs that you disagree with or think are factually wrong. You can bond over listening to them. And they can invite you to share your thinking non-judgementally.