It's trite and ironically simplistic but I keep coming back to the idea that a lot of things would go quite a bit better if we were just better at acknowledging that everything, and especially politics, is complicated.
Adding to my previous comment, this country would be far, far better off if people would learn to be gracious to those they disagree with. Much more could be done. Once insults and disrespect begin (and these are now the norm) people on the "other side" are never going to be amenable to your way of viewing things. Whereas if you respect their viewpoint that lays the groundwork for them respecting yours.
Media and politicians are playing a huge role too in the polarization of our country, both by divisive rhetoric and (regards the media) incomplete and inaccurate presentation of the facts on any topic. This is as true of liberal media as conservative media (I actually think liberal media are worse about this because they've repeated the same canards for so long they believe them).
I remember dating someone on the left during the Halcyon days of 2015. We would spend half our dates discussing politics, and persuaded each other on a few issues here and there. Then 2016 happened, and both of our preferred candidates lost, and we voted third party.
Sadly, now that we’ve been married for a long time, political arguments are the least productive. We’ve heard all of each other’s best arguments by now, and won’t be persuaded on what we still disagree on. Our news sources are so different, that we end up with radically different views of things. She thought Project 20205 was an evil plot to destroy the country, where I thought it was a useful job application portal to get considered for political appointments. That led to a brutal argument.
I say this to say that you can definitely have a longterm relationship with someone who disagrees with you politically, but man it can get frustrating sometimes. It is definitely easier if you disengage from politics a little.
A good and sane article and wonder why more people don't take this attitude. I have pretty strong feelings about these topics, some that differ from yours but I do understand why people feel differently than I do.
Personally I'm voting Republican for president though would prefer another candidate besides Trump. And I think Trump would be find if he'd rein his worst characteristics in.
Because it's not accurate, it's just a way of feeling "more mature" by admitting that hey, people believe different things. But it's just a blanket statement to have to avoid to harshly criticize extremely stupid ideas. No, your opinion is not just different if you think socialist economics is better, you're simply a flat earther.
Ah, maybe, but from a naïve reading of his policy proposals it seems like his proposal to send troops into Mexico might interfere with his ability to deport 6% of the population.
It's unfortunate, because healthy political engagement is arguably a duty and certainly something that ought to be fostered, but I find so much of politics manifesting in a personality to be little more than an expression of resentment, frustration and unhappiness. It becomes so obvious by the time we get to a point where deeply personal, complex questions are grafted onto these absurd top-heavy Schmittean friend/enemy silos. Not to mention zero-sum, "cruelty is the point" politics. How we got like this is certainly a good question - in the Unites States we've had two or three generations of pathological cynicism of even the very concept of society which probably didn't help. But regardless, it does nobody any good to pretend that this is at all healthy or reflective of what political engagement ought to be.
This: “While philosophy can be decided from the armchair with sufficient thought, politics can’t” is so deeply wrong.
You need two thousand years of Science and social progress to begin to be modestly right on philosophy.
Philosophy created science to solve philosophical issues. You need understanding of science and history to even begin to address the important philosophical questions.
I agree that people need to calm down about politics in their personal lives. However I would say that dating/marriage is one of the areas where you actually do need to take it very seriously. With political polarization being so intense today it's legitimately much harder to make a marriage work with someone of the opposite political tribe. You're taking a real risk by trying it. In the past where there was more of a shared moral foundation and the stakes in politics were lower, it makes sense that this was less of a problem.
But today I honestly wouldn't try to date a leftist woman, not necessarily because I think she is evil, but just out of the fact that I don't think the relationship could work. Imagine for instance if we had a kid and the kid takes an interest in LGBT stuff and decides they are trans, and their mother is supporting that and basically threatens divorce if you don't go along with it? Nightmare scenario.
The clear conclusion to be drawn from this is that one should be monarchist, because under a (functional, not ceremonial) monarchy no one but the king has to have an opinion about politics.
Of you believe abortion should be legal only up to a certain point,your view is more in line with the pro-life view,so calling yourself pro-choice is contradictory
Labels were simpler before Dobbs. I thought Abortion should be illegal after 12-15 weeks, like the majority of Americans, so I wanted Roe overturned so that my policy preference could be implemented. That made me identify as Pro Life. Then the GOP overreached and try to pass 6 week and 0 week abortion bans and the Democrats went radical and are now trying to let people abort the day before delivery as long as a doctor signs off. With me in the middle of these two extremes, neither label feels right anymore.
I don't think there's an absolute, obviously correct scale.
Presumably, it would depend on what the current status of the political disputing is, for your 8.5 monther: if the debate is over killing two-year-olds or not, they'd be pro-life, if the debate is over killing IVF embryos, they're pro-choice, if each side is proposing one or the other extreme (comparatively) positions, then he's not really either, and has to clarify. At least, that seems like a reasonably guideline.
This makes sense with the names! A lot of people think there's a tradeoff between valuing the rights of the child vs. the mother, and so in some cases care more about the life, and in others more about the choice.
In application to this instance, whether Matthew should consider himself pro-life should depend on how he relates to the current political environment. Not sure which state he's in, and what their abortion laws look like.
Not to overcomment but I just noticed this pertinent quote from Yoshi Matsumoto's substack
The insanity of the world and the culture war can lead one into bad places very quickly. Do not meditate too long on such things. If, indeed, you need to “fight”, do not let yourself be deceived into thinking that you must defeat other people. In order to be a virtuous hero you must fight to save other people, not to destroy them. Even, if you have such, your enemies ought be objects of your compassion, trying to save them from their own evil and destruction. This doesn’t mean you won’t come into conflict with others, you will, but if you don’t go into conflict from a position of love you will also be corrupted and destroyed.
This totally downplays the importance of worldview. Dating and marriage requires people to be comparable on that. If you can’t even agree on what words mean how can you possibly have a successful marriage. If anything conservatives should be more like liberals and only date those who agree with them
Debates about the minimum wage are within the realm of rational disagreement because it's a complex topic that requires a strong foundation of knowledge and lots of research into higher order effects. Trump falsifying electoral votes to overturn the 2020 election and getting Giuliani to intentionally lie about voter fraud is out in the open, yet 70% of Republicans still believe the election was stolen. These people are simply idiots and have no clue how to escape their media bubble or gain knowledge on any object level facts. Despite that I don't think there's any limits on friendship so you can and should do whatever you want.
The US is obviously not a country with a long history of unprosecuted electoral fraud - otherwise we would've had much more events like Jan 6 where protestors attacked government buildings to delay the certification of the vote because they thought an election was being stolen from them.
I also didn't claim that everybody who still believes in widespread voter fraud is crazy, but that they're an idiot, and specifically because they don't have any object level knowledge on the outcomes of the 2020 election fraud claims. I would consider anybody appealing to some vague meta historical argument to also fall into this camp, especially if they didn't alter their historical view in light of the evidence that all 60+ lawsuits the Trump administration filed alleging voter fraud were debunked - not just in the courts, but by members of Trump's DOJ, Republican state representatives, and people like Giuliani who admitted that some were intentionally fabricated.
Most historians agree significant fraud occurred in the 1982 Illinois gubernatorial election. Many credible sources note violence, fraud, and sketchy methods used by ACORN in the 2008 primary. In both cases only a few underlings were punished and the winners and the systems they used were not harmed.
Expecting groups capable of fraud to return fraudulent results in court is a non starter. So trump relying on lawsuits was foolish.
>Most historians agree significant fraud occurred in the 1982 Illinois gubernatorial election.
They also agree that most of the people responsible for the fraud were prosecuted and that the fraudulent votes did not overturn any of the election results. "Mr. Stevenson said his discovery recount found 3,814 ballots cast for Governor Thompson that carried no initials of election judges, and 1,089 cast for himself. If the votes were thrown out, Mr. Stevenson would gain 2,725 votes."
>Many credible sources note violence, fraud, and sketchy methods used by ACORN in the 2008 primary.
ACORN disproportionately hired ex-convicts who would go on to contribute to election registration fraud. Once their actions were discovered by internal investigation, they were promptly fired and turned over to law enforcement. Recounts and audits showed that the % of false registrations were in the 100s to 1000s, which again, people were prosecuted for and were not significant enough to pose a threat to the results of the 2008 election.
>Expecting groups capable of fraud to return fraudulent results in court is a non starter. So trump relying on lawsuits was foolish.
There were audits in each contested state and multiple recounts, even despite the lack of standing of the court cases, and despite Giuliani intentionally lying and calling random election workers "professional fraudsters." The authenticity of Trump's claims is of course also in question - he derided mail in voting despite using it himself, pushed for throwing out mail in ballots rather than pushing for any legislation to make them more secure, and repeatedly said to just "stop the count."
As the great late philosopher Jose Ortega y Gasset used to say: being right wing or left wing are just two of the infinite ways a man can indulge to be an imbecile. It's a form of moral hemiplegia.
Can you say he was wrong? Even in political reality neither party deliver a 100% left wing or 100% right wing agenda. Trump emerged in 2016 as a “centrist” outsider. Harris herself is pandering to several right wing coded policies after she played as a racialist progressive in 2020. Sounds like being “above it all” is a winning card after all
Well right liberal and left liberal are totally incoherent, but the idea that there isn’t a coherent position you can arrive at through reason and instead we should throw up our hands is a stupid take that only liberals came up with
It's trite and ironically simplistic but I keep coming back to the idea that a lot of things would go quite a bit better if we were just better at acknowledging that everything, and especially politics, is complicated.
Adding to my previous comment, this country would be far, far better off if people would learn to be gracious to those they disagree with. Much more could be done. Once insults and disrespect begin (and these are now the norm) people on the "other side" are never going to be amenable to your way of viewing things. Whereas if you respect their viewpoint that lays the groundwork for them respecting yours.
Media and politicians are playing a huge role too in the polarization of our country, both by divisive rhetoric and (regards the media) incomplete and inaccurate presentation of the facts on any topic. This is as true of liberal media as conservative media (I actually think liberal media are worse about this because they've repeated the same canards for so long they believe them).
I remember dating someone on the left during the Halcyon days of 2015. We would spend half our dates discussing politics, and persuaded each other on a few issues here and there. Then 2016 happened, and both of our preferred candidates lost, and we voted third party.
Sadly, now that we’ve been married for a long time, political arguments are the least productive. We’ve heard all of each other’s best arguments by now, and won’t be persuaded on what we still disagree on. Our news sources are so different, that we end up with radically different views of things. She thought Project 20205 was an evil plot to destroy the country, where I thought it was a useful job application portal to get considered for political appointments. That led to a brutal argument.
I say this to say that you can definitely have a longterm relationship with someone who disagrees with you politically, but man it can get frustrating sometimes. It is definitely easier if you disengage from politics a little.
I remember being at a beer garden with a friend the night Trump won. A girl began crying and was being consoled by friends.
When there’s so much emotion on the line it’s hard to see past disagreement.
A good and sane article and wonder why more people don't take this attitude. I have pretty strong feelings about these topics, some that differ from yours but I do understand why people feel differently than I do.
Personally I'm voting Republican for president though would prefer another candidate besides Trump. And I think Trump would be find if he'd rein his worst characteristics in.
Because it's not accurate, it's just a way of feeling "more mature" by admitting that hey, people believe different things. But it's just a blanket statement to have to avoid to harshly criticize extremely stupid ideas. No, your opinion is not just different if you think socialist economics is better, you're simply a flat earther.
Socialist economics has been nowhere near as debunked as flat earth-ism. There are more possible angles to defending it than flat earth.
False. If anything flat earthism makes much more sense than socialism does in a type of radical empiricism type of way.
Ah, maybe, but from a naïve reading of his policy proposals it seems like his proposal to send troops into Mexico might interfere with his ability to deport 6% of the population.
It's unfortunate, because healthy political engagement is arguably a duty and certainly something that ought to be fostered, but I find so much of politics manifesting in a personality to be little more than an expression of resentment, frustration and unhappiness. It becomes so obvious by the time we get to a point where deeply personal, complex questions are grafted onto these absurd top-heavy Schmittean friend/enemy silos. Not to mention zero-sum, "cruelty is the point" politics. How we got like this is certainly a good question - in the Unites States we've had two or three generations of pathological cynicism of even the very concept of society which probably didn't help. But regardless, it does nobody any good to pretend that this is at all healthy or reflective of what political engagement ought to be.
Yes!
This: “While philosophy can be decided from the armchair with sufficient thought, politics can’t” is so deeply wrong.
You need two thousand years of Science and social progress to begin to be modestly right on philosophy.
Philosophy created science to solve philosophical issues. You need understanding of science and history to even begin to address the important philosophical questions.
I agree that people need to calm down about politics in their personal lives. However I would say that dating/marriage is one of the areas where you actually do need to take it very seriously. With political polarization being so intense today it's legitimately much harder to make a marriage work with someone of the opposite political tribe. You're taking a real risk by trying it. In the past where there was more of a shared moral foundation and the stakes in politics were lower, it makes sense that this was less of a problem.
But today I honestly wouldn't try to date a leftist woman, not necessarily because I think she is evil, but just out of the fact that I don't think the relationship could work. Imagine for instance if we had a kid and the kid takes an interest in LGBT stuff and decides they are trans, and their mother is supporting that and basically threatens divorce if you don't go along with it? Nightmare scenario.
The clear conclusion to be drawn from this is that one should be monarchist, because under a (functional, not ceremonial) monarchy no one but the king has to have an opinion about politics.
Unfortunately the record of history seems to show this is not true. Even the monarchs have to worry about the masses. Ask King Charles II.
But they will which is why the secret police.
Of you believe abortion should be legal only up to a certain point,your view is more in line with the pro-life view,so calling yourself pro-choice is contradictory
Labels were simpler before Dobbs. I thought Abortion should be illegal after 12-15 weeks, like the majority of Americans, so I wanted Roe overturned so that my policy preference could be implemented. That made me identify as Pro Life. Then the GOP overreached and try to pass 6 week and 0 week abortion bans and the Democrats went radical and are now trying to let people abort the day before delivery as long as a doctor signs off. With me in the middle of these two extremes, neither label feels right anymore.
Are people who believe abortion should be legal up to 8 and a half months, but illegal after that, more pro-choice or more pro-life?
I don't think there's an absolute, obviously correct scale.
Presumably, it would depend on what the current status of the political disputing is, for your 8.5 monther: if the debate is over killing two-year-olds or not, they'd be pro-life, if the debate is over killing IVF embryos, they're pro-choice, if each side is proposing one or the other extreme (comparatively) positions, then he's not really either, and has to clarify. At least, that seems like a reasonably guideline.
This makes sense with the names! A lot of people think there's a tradeoff between valuing the rights of the child vs. the mother, and so in some cases care more about the life, and in others more about the choice.
In application to this instance, whether Matthew should consider himself pro-life should depend on how he relates to the current political environment. Not sure which state he's in, and what their abortion laws look like.
Not to overcomment but I just noticed this pertinent quote from Yoshi Matsumoto's substack
The insanity of the world and the culture war can lead one into bad places very quickly. Do not meditate too long on such things. If, indeed, you need to “fight”, do not let yourself be deceived into thinking that you must defeat other people. In order to be a virtuous hero you must fight to save other people, not to destroy them. Even, if you have such, your enemies ought be objects of your compassion, trying to save them from their own evil and destruction. This doesn’t mean you won’t come into conflict with others, you will, but if you don’t go into conflict from a position of love you will also be corrupted and destroyed.
This totally downplays the importance of worldview. Dating and marriage requires people to be comparable on that. If you can’t even agree on what words mean how can you possibly have a successful marriage. If anything conservatives should be more like liberals and only date those who agree with them
That chart… social media and it’s consequences
Comfy chickene
https://x.com/HotForMoot/status/1825897041735663710
Debates about the minimum wage are within the realm of rational disagreement because it's a complex topic that requires a strong foundation of knowledge and lots of research into higher order effects. Trump falsifying electoral votes to overturn the 2020 election and getting Giuliani to intentionally lie about voter fraud is out in the open, yet 70% of Republicans still believe the election was stolen. These people are simply idiots and have no clue how to escape their media bubble or gain knowledge on any object level facts. Despite that I don't think there's any limits on friendship so you can and should do whatever you want.
The US is a country with a long history of unprosecuted electoral fraud, so believing that it happened again is not that crazy.
The US is obviously not a country with a long history of unprosecuted electoral fraud - otherwise we would've had much more events like Jan 6 where protestors attacked government buildings to delay the certification of the vote because they thought an election was being stolen from them.
I also didn't claim that everybody who still believes in widespread voter fraud is crazy, but that they're an idiot, and specifically because they don't have any object level knowledge on the outcomes of the 2020 election fraud claims. I would consider anybody appealing to some vague meta historical argument to also fall into this camp, especially if they didn't alter their historical view in light of the evidence that all 60+ lawsuits the Trump administration filed alleging voter fraud were debunked - not just in the courts, but by members of Trump's DOJ, Republican state representatives, and people like Giuliani who admitted that some were intentionally fabricated.
Most historians agree significant fraud occurred in the 1982 Illinois gubernatorial election. Many credible sources note violence, fraud, and sketchy methods used by ACORN in the 2008 primary. In both cases only a few underlings were punished and the winners and the systems they used were not harmed.
Expecting groups capable of fraud to return fraudulent results in court is a non starter. So trump relying on lawsuits was foolish.
>Most historians agree significant fraud occurred in the 1982 Illinois gubernatorial election.
They also agree that most of the people responsible for the fraud were prosecuted and that the fraudulent votes did not overturn any of the election results. "Mr. Stevenson said his discovery recount found 3,814 ballots cast for Governor Thompson that carried no initials of election judges, and 1,089 cast for himself. If the votes were thrown out, Mr. Stevenson would gain 2,725 votes."
>Many credible sources note violence, fraud, and sketchy methods used by ACORN in the 2008 primary.
ACORN disproportionately hired ex-convicts who would go on to contribute to election registration fraud. Once their actions were discovered by internal investigation, they were promptly fired and turned over to law enforcement. Recounts and audits showed that the % of false registrations were in the 100s to 1000s, which again, people were prosecuted for and were not significant enough to pose a threat to the results of the 2008 election.
>Expecting groups capable of fraud to return fraudulent results in court is a non starter. So trump relying on lawsuits was foolish.
There were audits in each contested state and multiple recounts, even despite the lack of standing of the court cases, and despite Giuliani intentionally lying and calling random election workers "professional fraudsters." The authenticity of Trump's claims is of course also in question - he derided mail in voting despite using it himself, pushed for throwing out mail in ballots rather than pushing for any legislation to make them more secure, and repeatedly said to just "stop the count."
You’re just repeating what I said with nicer sounding words.
As the great late philosopher Jose Ortega y Gasset used to say: being right wing or left wing are just two of the infinite ways a man can indulge to be an imbecile. It's a form of moral hemiplegia.
Typical big brain liberal. Very cringe “I’m above it all” attitude
Can you say he was wrong? Even in political reality neither party deliver a 100% left wing or 100% right wing agenda. Trump emerged in 2016 as a “centrist” outsider. Harris herself is pandering to several right wing coded policies after she played as a racialist progressive in 2020. Sounds like being “above it all” is a winning card after all
Well right liberal and left liberal are totally incoherent, but the idea that there isn’t a coherent position you can arrive at through reason and instead we should throw up our hands is a stupid take that only liberals came up with
Saying right and left are usually idiots is a totally coherent position you arrive through reason and factual analysis. Cope