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There's a famous optical illusion with a spinning silhouette of a dancer. When you look at it, you'll swear it's spinning in one direction -- say, counter-clock

There's a famous optical illusion with a spinning silhouette of a dancer. When you look at it, you'll swear it's spinning in one direction -- say, counter-clockwise. In fact, you'll be so sure it's spinning counter-clockwise, that the idea it could be spinning in the opposite direction will seem impossible to you. But if you stare at it long enough, and intently enough, you can make it spin the other way. I've noticed the same phenomenon with political views. People on the left think that anyone on the right is a lunatic, and everyone on the right thinks the same thing about the left. I, as most people do, lean in one direction politically, so naturally any comment I see coming from my side seems reasonable to me. In fact, it seems impossible that a reasonable person could think any other way. But since I grew up in a family that leaned in the opposite direction, and I shared their same mindset in my younger days, I can now draw on that experience, and I can take a political tweet that everyone on my side thinks is insane, and I can stare at it, and just as with the spinning dancer, I can flip it in my head so it seems reasonable. To me, it's a testament to the power of the tribal instincts within us. We think it's the other side that's crazy, but we're all under the same spell.

mlurp 6y ago
I think this is a really valuable way of thinking. Something similar I wish everyone would ask themselves is "why do I have this opinion/belief/etc?" for any topic. Just like most religious people are the religion that their parents were, most people don't really choose their political beliefs. It's not to say we don't learn justifications for what we believe, but it means that the fact that we believe in one thing over another is somewhat random imo. Somewhere out there in the US is someone who's pretty similar to me in most ways, they were just born in a part of the country where their default beliefs are different. And for consistency, I do put more stake in someone's beliefs when they change from their "defaults".
troughway 6y ago
Here's another one: https://i.pinimg.com/originals/59/c3/f3/59c3f3e74d9ca7f2ce945d70f80bc06f.jpg https://i.pinimg.com/originals/59/c3/f3/59c3f3e74d9ca7f2ce94...
charliemil4 6y ago
Political language "is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind" This feels a lot like GP/OP — Orwell’s politics and the English language, let’s metaphor away values and principles to the relativity of sounds from our meat flaps and we will all be free of this human condition
pqhwan 6y ago
Growing up in a country where I was in the ethnic majority, I went through a period of right-wing political bent as a teenager. Then I came to the US, where I found myself in the minority and leaning left. So I feel that I have some personal insight into the mindset that pushes people right. But... maybe it’s that my past right-leaning self was a teenager with half-baked ideas about the world, when I reflect on what drove me that way, I cannot point to any coherent, constructive thought, mostly feelings of entitlement and an unwillingness to put myself in the other’s shoes. And that’s what I see in the right-wing of today in the US. I guess I empathize with their fear and anger better because of my experience, but I don’t buy that their arguments are just a “different” way of looking at the world; a narrower, myopic way, maybe.
- millbraebart 6y ago
  I was a lefty my whole life, but this BLM/covid lockdown crap was the end for me. I hardly see how 14 unarmed black men (most of not all instigating/resisting) killed by police in the entire US in 2019 represents the biggest problem for black people. My mom works in the public school system and wholly agrees. The last thing black families need is "defunding" the police. And all these lockdowns over a virus with a 99%+ survival rate? It's not just "fear and anger" for us, in the word's of the left... facts matter.
- neither_color 6y ago
  As a minority considered “disadvantaged” in the US I’d like to counter that there’s a lot more to the right than lack of empathy for minorities or fear. I’m very appreciative of the opportunities provided to me here and don’t appreciate the recent cultural tendency to privilege shame people or to look back on the history here as only cruel or exploitative. Trump saw the highest turnout among minorities for republicans in 60 years and it’s for a reason. I look back at Ben Franklin or Jefferson or Washington and feel inspired, I don’t think “oh, I’m not privileged I could never do what he did.” I can see people as products of their time and separate the good from the bad. As someone who grew up in an apartment shared between 2 families and worked my way up into college and the tech field I’m just shocked at how many people today have grown into learned helplessness and think that the system is so bad and irreparable that they need to vandalize and protest in cities for months. The left has done so much more to insult me and my appreciation for this country than the right, and it’s just tragic that they think they’re the only good guys. I really do believe that foreign interference to agitate our society is real, as discussed by Tristan Harris in his interview by Joe Rogan, and it’s convinced millions of young Americans that they’re somehow resisting literal Nazis.
presentation 6y ago
Makes me think of San Francisco Bay Area politics, where progressives have become so progressive that they in one breath say that all minorities should be accepted and that the environment is precious, but in the next espouse policies and weaponize environmental legislation to prevent immigrants from entering while simultaneously destroying the environment, as though there's no internal contradiction in those actions. It's like people don't recognize what they truly think and do, but instead imagine themselves as a reflection of some ideological group they associate with and apply that image to their ultimately selfish motivations.
- crooked-v 6y ago
  Quite a lot of local politics becomes more comprehensible when you add a 'NIMBY/YIMBY' axis completely separate from other stated political views.
  - jonsno56 6y ago
    This. And yes to GP, progressive + NIMBY seems to be a very hypocritical view. Which is why more progressives ought to become more YIMBY [0] [0] opinion
Justsignedup 6y ago
I personally find it hard to look at the right as anything but poison. I can disagree with you on economic ideologies, I can disagree with you on military spending, how to treat the drug epidemic, how to solve the incarceration problem, etc. However when one side literally empowers those that executed my family in WW2, it is no longer a disagreement, but a fight for my life.
- kortilla 6y ago
  Did the Jews kill your family in WW2? Because Trump spent a lot of time pissing off Germany and cuddling up with Israel.
  - 0xB31B1B 6y ago
    wow man, theres a lot tied up in here. First of all, "the jews" and "israelis" aren't the same thing. In fact, the nazis killed basically zero Israelis in the holocaust. Second of all, the modern state of Isreal under Bibi is essentially an right wing Jewish ethnostate that oppresses the Palestinian minority, and the majority of American Jews do not support the current Israeli government.
    - njanirudh 6y ago
      What the hell are you talking about. Israel was created after ww2 just for the jews mainly affected by the wars
      - 0xB31B1B 6y ago
        ...yes. How could you execute someone from a country that didn't exist yet? To be more clear, the Jewish ethnic identity and the Israeli national identity aren't the same identity, and while there is overlap conflating them isn't insightful. OP was conflating them.
    - kortilla 6y ago
      Lol, well it’s hard to take you seriously when the comment I replied to said that the right was literally empowering the same people that killed his family members. If Israelites don’t qualify as Jews then the alt-right certainly don’t come close to Nazis.
mqrs 6y ago
> we're all under the same spell Isn't this an oversimplification of politics, though--that our political opinions are nothing more than preferences around which we form tribes, and that there is not one single tribe that is objectively correct when it comes to matter of policy when, in fact, there are correct ways of deciding on policy. Take vaccines, for example, or the matter of wearing masks. If I am for vaccines and for wearing masks during the pandemic, am I simply in some kind of "spell" and am I not, objectively speaking, correct, because my opinion on those matters are backed by science?
- cpufry 6y ago
  lol i no longer have energy for gotta hear both sides argument, whether its naive because of a myopic and narrow world view or just bad faith. like you said - how tf is mask wearing a political issue jfc
  - cmurf 6y ago
    Combination of decadence, selfishness, cultism and vindictive politics. The first two are self explanatory and certainly cross party lines. Cult of Trump is to merely accept his say so that mask wearing has no efficacy and is merely political correctness. And really believe he knows better than scientists (anyone really). From many conversations, it's just to piss off liberals. What I call vindictive politics. Literally many conversations, why do you like Trump and agree with him on things like fighting over masks? Schadenfreude. Making liberals scoff and angry makes them happy. Ok why so much annoyance with liberal? A common example, is gay marriage which many Trump supporters consider completely immoral on religious grounds. It's so heinous to them they use oral rape metaphor to describe it: you liberals jammed gay marriage down our throats. We support Trump because he makes you angry. I've asked for clarification: this is pay back for things like gay marriage and protecting abortion rights? "You betcha its payback! We don't care what crazy things he does or says. The more it pisses off liberals the better job he's doing." Their words. They have grievances. Trump soothes it by helping them get payback. He grew his base by 7 million in this election. He gained almost as many votes as Bernie Sanders total vote count in the 2020 primary. A lot of people think this is about Trump. And it's gone once he's gone. I don't.
namuol 6y ago
The difference is that with the spinning dancer optical illusion, there's never a "wrong" way to view it. This isn't always the case with politics, or any kind of view for that matter. It's important to empathize with people you disagree with, but it's just as important that we start with a foundation of agreed upon facts. In other words, reality isn't a point of view.
- roenxi 6y ago
  Apologies in advance if this sounds snappy, this hits an issue I feel strongly about. My local supermarket has precisely no empathy for me and the only thing I expect to agree on with the local store manager is price. Yet it is by far the most effective conduit for getting me cheap food. Effective systems simply are not very good at empathy and agreement on non-core issues is unimportant. Empathy in particular recommended at a personal level but not especially useful in politics. The critical tool is the ability to comprehend, negotiate, compromise and articulate why things are necessary. Having "empathy" for "the left"/"the right" isn't possible. The groups are too large and diverse. Ditto for major components of the left or right like "the black vote", "the evangelicals", "people in cities", "people from Detroit", "the wealthy", etc, etc. Entities that you can have empathy for or agree on facts with are too small to be politically important like individuals or families. Politics is done by large groups who's beliefs are too nebulous to align.
- mantas 6y ago
  Wasn't that OP's key point? Vast majority (if not all) political messages are both true and false, depending on context and personal bias.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
- dimgl 6y ago
  I completely disagree. I think reality IS a point of view. You are suggesting that there is only one way to think about reality. And that is complete lunacy.
ehnto 6y ago
There is an alternative to such polarized views. In many countries, politics is just politics, it happens in the background and is about as heart felt as the weather report. It can be controversial and felt by all sure, but it shouldn't be a lifestyle or ideological platform that the general public use to divide themselves. It's backoffice stuff, for the most part, and I am too busy being friends to really mind what someone's political views are, if they even think about it much at all themselves. Now more than ever the US needs democracy, and the government needs to work harder than ever on protecting it. But I argue that the people of America, the general public, need to give it a bloody rest with the politics. Be humans again and meet your neighbors as you are, part of the same cohort as citizens. Your vote is just as powerful, no matter how many flags, banners, or yard signs you have. Your vote is what decides the direction of your country, not the chest thumping and rallies and flag brigades.
- riffraff 6y ago
  >In many countries, politics is just politics, it happens in the background and is about as heart felt as the weather report. Which countries are those? Because the US are insane, but politics is heartfelt in all countries I'm familiar with. Which doesn't mean we have to reach such levels of infighting of course.
  - tempestn 6y ago
    Canada feels closer to what your parent described than to what I see in the US, for one. There are of course those at the extremes who are very partisan. Although most of those identify more with US politics than Canadian it seems. But for the vast majority it's much less of an issue than it is in the US. For one thing, most people are not members of one of our federal political parties. Local politicians don't even align with federal parties, nor do provincial ones in all cases. Many people will shift their vote between ideologically similar parties, especially the Liberals and NDP. Basically, for myself and most people I know, we vote for the party whose platform most closely matches our own priorities and beliefs, but it's not part of our identities in the same way. The parties themselves are also far less polarized than in the US. And because it's a multi-party system, you can have minority government that actually functions by garnering support of opposition parties. (We also effectively don't have multiple veto points though, so generally the governing party is able to govern; I think that also helps keep things from getting overheated.) Of course, the system isn't perfect. For instance by virtue of being both multi-party and first past the post, the winning party usually has the vote of a minority of the population, and still generally holds a majority of seats in parliament. But I've really come to appreciate it in comparison over the past few years.
Old_Thrashbarg 6y ago
Totally agree, and I've also voted both ways before. But I also would caution against going too far on the "both sides" thinking. There are some obvious examples of regimes in the past in certain countries where one side was just bad and it was not just a matter of different opinions: Germany, Serbia, Rwanda, etc. I think Trump and his administration lie somewhere between just being misunderstood by "the other side" and 100% depraved. I tend to think they're actually quite far to the depraved side of that spectrum, but that doesn't mean we can't still pay attention to making sure we see things from other perspectives (within reason).
DarknessFalls 6y ago
Are you trying to say that "Truth isn't truth"?
simonebrunozzi 6y ago
No surprise you've been upvoted so much. Yours is a truly remarkable comment, and observation. I'd humbly add that at least to my eyes, most of the time the discussions on disagreements between two political parties are simply ineffective at trying to solve the disagreement, and rather irrational or badly arranged. In other words: most political discourse you hear these days seems useless.
grawprog 6y ago
Honestly, right and left is pretty nonsensical, at least the current beliefs that qualify as right or left. The average person likely has beliefs that would fall on both sides and this incessant need to categorize someone as either left or right just leads to more polarization and more extreme views. When people are told they must be one thing because they have certain views about one issue, meanwhile their views on other issues lean more to the other side. But because of this strange all or nothing paradigm going on, there's no room for common ground or compromise, it's all or nothing one side or the other, you believe one thing, so you must believe all the things or you're on this side or the other. That's utter nonsense, political spectrums aren't all or nothing, take it or leave it, all inclusive things. A person is capable of having a range of views on different issues that may fall on either side and it's perfectly acceptable for this to be the case. Politics like everything in life isn't black and white all or nothing, take it or leave it, it'a a bunch of shades of grey like everything else and as with most things the average person, when asked about issues without the context of left or right involved, will likely express views that fall across both sides of the political spectrum.
mxfh 6y ago
While this might sound reasonable and balanced in most democracies, it's just not applicable to what is/was happening in the US. Regardless of moderate views of individuals, this election was not about economic policies or other debatable differences, this election was about if we can get back to this described discourse level of coexistence, not where one side's chief strategist says it's required to behead scientists for deterrence, any adherence to truth, decency and the general right to exist for minorities was on the table.
- lazyjones 6y ago
  You seem to be affected by the exact thing the post you replied to is alleging. As an outsider who reads both sides' arguments all the time, I am convinced that Republicans currently lean towards supporting freedom of speech and personal liberties, civil discourse, equal rights while the Democrats are the exact opposite. They are supporting and defending violent protests, looting, segregation(!), vowed to make lists of Trump supporters to deal with after the election etc. etc. ... Perhaps this is "truth and decency" for some people, but to many it's not.
  - mxfh 6y ago
    It was not about what reasonable people think at this point, it’s about what they do and who they enable to enact power. The people you mentioned have no power and are not endorsed or are told to „stand by“. This is a very significant difference. As a reminder the whole reason Biden entered the race was Charlottesville.
    - lazyjones 6y ago
      Charlottesville is a good point, as it was one of the most perpetuated lies during the Biden and supporting media campaign that Trump somehow supposedly called extremists "good people" (media and Biden omitted the rest of the quote to distort what Trump said, he explicitly condemned extremists).
      - thomastjeffery 6y ago
ABCLAW 6y ago
>People on the left think that anyone on the right is a lunatic, and everyone on the right thinks the same thing about the left. I firmly disagree. Not all political climates and discourses are as poisoned as they are in the US. That said, not all political disagreements are created equally. We can have a rousing polite disagreement about immigration levels, national financial priorities, cultural values and so on, but if the discussion is premised in a fundamental disagreement about whether or not certain people deserve dignity as human beings then there's very little common ground to build off of.
- amanaplanacanal 6y ago
  I’m fairly lefty, and used to have quite a a bit of respect for the right, since I am at heart a bit of a libertarian. I’ve lost quite a bit of it though after seeing how so many of them lined up to support sometime so obviously amoral as the current President.
  - blargmaster42_8 6y ago
    The left is winning the global culture war, Trump was the nuklear option.
ehsankia 6y ago
Quite relevant to that, there's this one SMBC comic from almost a decade ago that I've referred back to on a monthly basis, and it just keeps getting more and more relevant every year. https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/2013-04-07 https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/2013-04-07 This is what often happens in politics. There are a small subset of extremist on either side, and when people argue, they're pointing out the worst things the other side's extremists did. Calling each other KKK and Antifa and racist and SJW. Realistically, between those two extremes, the majority of people are good well meaning people who just don't know what the truth is anymore due to all the lies and disinformation on the web. All the clickbait shoving the most rage inducing stories about the other side all day long.
leptons 6y ago
>We think it's the other side that's crazy, but we're all under the same spell. In this case, one side is provably crazy, and the evidence from our intelligence agencies shows they are dangerous lunatics. The other side wants empathy, equality, science, and truth to rule the day. I'm not sure how you can just hand-wave that away. Your comment is the same old "both sides" fallacy.
- lawnchair_larry 6y ago
  Is the provably crazy side the one you’re on? Because this is provably false.
  - leptons 6y ago
    Then prove it.
- disgruntledphd2 6y ago
  When you think like that, you've already lost. Like, if you believe that all humans have rights and dignity, then you shouldn't be saying crap like that. If you don't then how are you different from your enemies?
  - thomastjeffery 6y ago
    What you are saying is that GP's conclusion is impossible, and are thereby falling into the very trap you describe.
    - disgruntledphd2 6y ago
      Describing your opponents as "provably crazy" is unlikely to provide a basis to make things better.
      - thomastjeffery 6y ago
        Denying that assertion the possibility of validity is unlikely to prove it false.
romanoderoma 6y ago
> anyone on the right is a lunatic In my country where there isn't a two party only system, but a plethora of positions ranging from the most extreme to the most moderate, for decades the left Vs right battle created a gradient of opinions There are lunatics on the left and on the right, sometimes they have been violent, sometimes they put our democracy at risk, but in the end both left and right rejected them We had our momentary lapse of reason when we (not me, but still...) elected Berlusconi, it seemed we lost our mind (we probably did) and nothing worse could ever happen to any other country politically speaking Trump is on a new level of tribalism, divide and polarization though How a real lunatic, with evident sever mental health issues ended up at the white house is gonna be a big black spot on American history (the greatest democracy in the World, the greatest country in the world, etc. etc.)
prossercj 6y ago
Is this not a function of how rationality actually works? We all begin with premises which are fundamentally unproven and unprovable. Our conclusions follow from those premises. Change the premises and the result changes, though both sets of deductions may be perfectly rational. In other words, rationality is a process, not a set of conclusions. One word for this is "tradition". If I've piqued your interest, please read Alasdair MacIntyre's book "After Virtue," and also it's sequel with a more provocative title, "Whose Justice? Which Rationality?"
secretsatan 6y ago
That’s a very long winded way of saying supporting a man who went on stage and openly opined that ingesting disinfectant could be a solution for covid is very sane
mleonhard 6y ago
I was a "Trumper" 20 years ago. Your comment initially made sense to me. Then I remembered the many wrong and harmful ideas that I recognized and rejected since that time. These ideas lead to real harm for many people. For example, during Bill Clinton's impeachment trial for sexual harassment of his woman intern, I thought that his behavior was no big deal, that we accept that powerful men like to play around with women, and that the intern knew what she was getting into when she got the job working for him. Later, I realized that I was wrong. Those beliefs enable sexual harassment of women across society. We must reject those beliefs so women can have equal opportunity and good quality of life. Other wrong ideas that I had: - Poor people are poor because they are lazy. - Violent criminals are violent because they don't want to control themselves. - Unlucky people failed to prepare properly or were careless. - Gay people are bad for society. - Men should be breadwinners. Women should be housewives. - USA is powerful because God is rewarding its Christian citizens for following His rules. All of these ideas are wrong. These ideas harm people and make our society poorer. Yes, I can remember my previous thought processes and see the dancer spin the other way, but the dancer is carrying a single-edged sword and spinning the other way way hurts people.
- fuzzfactor 6y ago
  People change. Trump was even a Democrat 20 years ago. Got lots more attention as a Republican now, since 2009.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
fuzzfactor 6y ago
The two parties provide the opposing agendas which dominate, and the particular characteristics of each candidate are secondary. Especially when neither party has much to offer the average citizen any more, they have built their strength traditionally on low voter turnout where extreme factions loudly broadcasting gradually become over-represented in the most polarizing way. As cycles continue only the most polarizing issues drive the turnout, and for turnout to grow beyond a certain point the majority of the potential voters must perceive the other party as a more serious threat, when compared to any security offered by their own party which they (might) have chosen because they found it less offensive (maybe only in past cycles too). The parties no longer need to have as much to offer the average citizen as cycles go on, when they can get contending turnout from their own extremists combined with orders of magnitude more sympathizers who can be convinced to strongly fear what the _other side_ could take away. Seems like after a party has been around for longer than any living person, they will not get support by having more to offer average citizens than in previous cycles, only by taking less away from them. So the average citizen hasn't had a positive outcome within reach for a while. Now it's too late, these top candidates are realistically as youthful as you can get compared to the grand old parties themselves, and regardless of personal integrity or leadership style can not offer anything above that from the parties alone. Even in the case of Trump's extreme personality, which the Democrats did not even try to nominate a candidate having that feature, so this element was as one-sided as you can get. I saw agreement from both sides that a wet dishrag could defeat Trump if only 270 electors represent voters who just plain dislike or hate him. Conversely it was recognized Trump would win if he had merely 270 electors of voters who dislike or hate one or more of the current items on the Democratic party platform. Neither strategy can offer anything to the majority of the citizens in the political middle, the true average citizen, since turnout has been driven by fear not opportunity. Building a coalition from a carefully-crafted extreme attention-getting position, and pushing hard from there so the other side ends up below the 50 percent needed to be in power, has turned out to prevail over representing even the middle 50 percent of voters which is how it was supposed to be at a minimum. So once the issues and/or personalities representing them have reached full polarity, 50 becomes more of a constant to be converged upon from afar rather than a starting point to build a majority from in both directions. Resulting in half the voters who turn out, and half the politically centrist citizens (which is a much larger group by a variable multiple of active voters) who will always be dissatisfied and these are two different groups (but having significant overlap), the latter of which is the core of the majority that all parties are supposed to be treating as constituents. But the core of the majority in the middle doesn't have a voice because they don't have any party which represents them any more, the parties are doing other things with the money and the concerns of centrist citizens are given lowest priority. The party gets more votes over the long run by fear-mongering against the other side regardless of who the candidates are at the time, and only declining resources can be justified which might actually benefit the majority of citizens. Problem is, the majority are voting against their own best interest because their own best interest has not been available for a number of cycles. Rather each side votes against what's perveived as the other's best interest instead, since that's the only thing at stake anyway. So the majority of voters end up speaking for the entire population as designed, but all votes are cast against someone's best interest because the minority party is voting exactly the same as the majority in this regard. So it's unanimous by both parties that as few of the average citizens as possible should have their best interest be served, and to redefine democracy in that direction can not be accomplished during a single cycle or maybe not even a single generation. Ending up with the choice between a trustworthy Joe and a dishonest Don the thing that doesn't really matter to half the voters as much as it should. It would probably help if there were parties which were younger than the candidates.
sleepysysadmin 6y ago
I'm not American but my non-political echo chambers have gotten quite political. Chess, Infosec, Atheism, philosophy, reddit, etc HATE trump for example. Then I have other echo chambers that tend to love Trump. Personally I'm neither side as I'm not American. I also enjoy looking at both sides and it's remarkable how different the viewpoints really are. The echo chambers worked exactly as expected, those places that hated trump only hear about things that are terrible about trump. Nothing negative about Biden at any point. Every single Gaffe by Biden was portrayed as completely fake as deepfakes or old footage dubbed over etc. Generally speaking my echo chambers leaned anti-trump. The one thing I failed to find in the last 2 months is any actual discourse. There is absolutely no neutral viewpoints. There is absolutely no discussions between the 2 camps. The political divide in the USA is worse than I have ever seen it. The perception I have, that wasn't a free and fair election. What's even more curious is that nobody seems to care. Ends justify the means. Which hey, I personally very much prefer Trump to lose. However, if healing the political divide is a goal, that's basically impossible now.
Wowfunhappy 6y ago
I really, truly, would like to believe both of the major political parties in the US have reasonably good intentions. It makes logical sense—how can half of the entire population be mostly wrong, and the rest mostly right? But then I always remember that in the United States, there is only one major political party that believes Climate Change is real. The other party believes the phenomenon is some sort of gigantic ruse. I consider Climate Change the most pressing issue of our time, and myself a single-issue voter. Not because everything else is unimportant, but because Climate Change is even more important. We have to get this right, and we have to start immediately! If the two parties disagreed on how to address Climate Change—say, with a carbon tax versus renewable energy subsidies—that would be one thing. But that's not the world we live in. As long as one of the parties insists that Climate Change is a complete fabrication, I don't see how I can possibly take anything they say seriously.

mlurp 6y ago

I think this is a really valuable way of thinking. Something similar I wish everyone would ask themselves is "why do I have this opinion/belief/etc?" for any topic. Just like most religious people are the religion that their parents were, most people don't really choose their political beliefs. It's not to say we don't learn justifications for what we believe, but it means that the fact that we believe in one thing over another is somewhat random imo. Somewhere out there in the US is someone who's pretty similar to me in most ways, they were just born in a part of the country where their default beliefs are different. And for consistency, I do put more stake in someone's beliefs when they change from their "defaults".

troughway 6y ago

Here's another one: https://i.pinimg.com/originals/59/c3/f3/59c3f3e74d9ca7f2ce945d70f80bc06f.jpg https://i.pinimg.com/originals/59/c3/f3/59c3f3e74d9ca7f2ce94...

charliemil4 6y ago

Political language "is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind" This feels a lot like GP/OP — Orwell’s politics and the English language, let’s metaphor away values and principles to the relativity of sounds from our meat flaps and we will all be free of this human condition

pqhwan 6y ago

Growing up in a country where I was in the ethnic majority, I went through a period of right-wing political bent as a teenager. Then I came to the US, where I found myself in the minority and leaning left. So I feel that I have some personal insight into the mindset that pushes people right. But... maybe it’s that my past right-leaning self was a teenager with half-baked ideas about the world, when I reflect on what drove me that way, I cannot point to any coherent, constructive thought, mostly feelings of entitlement and an unwillingness to put myself in the other’s shoes. And that’s what I see in the right-wing of today in the US. I guess I empathize with their fear and anger better because of my experience, but I don’t buy that their arguments are just a “different” way of looking at the world; a narrower, myopic way, maybe.

millbraebart 6y ago
I was a lefty my whole life, but this BLM/covid lockdown crap was the end for me. I hardly see how 14 unarmed black men (most of not all instigating/resisting) killed by police in the entire US in 2019 represents the biggest problem for black people. My mom works in the public school system and wholly agrees. The last thing black families need is "defunding" the police. And all these lockdowns over a virus with a 99%+ survival rate? It's not just "fear and anger" for us, in the word's of the left... facts matter.
neither_color 6y ago
As a minority considered “disadvantaged” in the US I’d like to counter that there’s a lot more to the right than lack of empathy for minorities or fear. I’m very appreciative of the opportunities provided to me here and don’t appreciate the recent cultural tendency to privilege shame people or to look back on the history here as only cruel or exploitative. Trump saw the highest turnout among minorities for republicans in 60 years and it’s for a reason. I look back at Ben Franklin or Jefferson or Washington and feel inspired, I don’t think “oh, I’m not privileged I could never do what he did.” I can see people as products of their time and separate the good from the bad. As someone who grew up in an apartment shared between 2 families and worked my way up into college and the tech field I’m just shocked at how many people today have grown into learned helplessness and think that the system is so bad and irreparable that they need to vandalize and protest in cities for months. The left has done so much more to insult me and my appreciation for this country than the right, and it’s just tragic that they think they’re the only good guys. I really do believe that foreign interference to agitate our society is real, as discussed by Tristan Harris in his interview by Joe Rogan, and it’s convinced millions of young Americans that they’re somehow resisting literal Nazis.

presentation 6y ago

Makes me think of San Francisco Bay Area politics, where progressives have become so progressive that they in one breath say that all minorities should be accepted and that the environment is precious, but in the next espouse policies and weaponize environmental legislation to prevent immigrants from entering while simultaneously destroying the environment, as though there's no internal contradiction in those actions. It's like people don't recognize what they truly think and do, but instead imagine themselves as a reflection of some ideological group they associate with and apply that image to their ultimately selfish motivations.

crooked-v 6y ago
Quite a lot of local politics becomes more comprehensible when you add a 'NIMBY/YIMBY' axis completely separate from other stated political views.
- jonsno56 6y ago
  This. And yes to GP, progressive + NIMBY seems to be a very hypocritical view. Which is why more progressives ought to become more YIMBY [0] [0] opinion

Justsignedup 6y ago

I personally find it hard to look at the right as anything but poison. I can disagree with you on economic ideologies, I can disagree with you on military spending, how to treat the drug epidemic, how to solve the incarceration problem, etc. However when one side literally empowers those that executed my family in WW2, it is no longer a disagreement, but a fight for my life.

kortilla 6y ago
Did the Jews kill your family in WW2? Because Trump spent a lot of time pissing off Germany and cuddling up with Israel.
- 0xB31B1B 6y ago
  wow man, theres a lot tied up in here. First of all, "the jews" and "israelis" aren't the same thing. In fact, the nazis killed basically zero Israelis in the holocaust. Second of all, the modern state of Isreal under Bibi is essentially an right wing Jewish ethnostate that oppresses the Palestinian minority, and the majority of American Jews do not support the current Israeli government.
  - njanirudh 6y ago
    What the hell are you talking about. Israel was created after ww2 just for the jews mainly affected by the wars
    - 0xB31B1B 6y ago
      ...yes. How could you execute someone from a country that didn't exist yet? To be more clear, the Jewish ethnic identity and the Israeli national identity aren't the same identity, and while there is overlap conflating them isn't insightful. OP was conflating them.
  - kortilla 6y ago
    Lol, well it’s hard to take you seriously when the comment I replied to said that the right was literally empowering the same people that killed his family members. If Israelites don’t qualify as Jews then the alt-right certainly don’t come close to Nazis.

mqrs 6y ago

> we're all under the same spell Isn't this an oversimplification of politics, though--that our political opinions are nothing more than preferences around which we form tribes, and that there is not one single tribe that is objectively correct when it comes to matter of policy when, in fact, there are correct ways of deciding on policy. Take vaccines, for example, or the matter of wearing masks. If I am for vaccines and for wearing masks during the pandemic, am I simply in some kind of "spell" and am I not, objectively speaking, correct, because my opinion on those matters are backed by science?

cpufry 6y ago
lol i no longer have energy for gotta hear both sides argument, whether its naive because of a myopic and narrow world view or just bad faith. like you said - how tf is mask wearing a political issue jfc
- cmurf 6y ago
  Combination of decadence, selfishness, cultism and vindictive politics. The first two are self explanatory and certainly cross party lines. Cult of Trump is to merely accept his say so that mask wearing has no efficacy and is merely political correctness. And really believe he knows better than scientists (anyone really). From many conversations, it's just to piss off liberals. What I call vindictive politics. Literally many conversations, why do you like Trump and agree with him on things like fighting over masks? Schadenfreude. Making liberals scoff and angry makes them happy. Ok why so much annoyance with liberal? A common example, is gay marriage which many Trump supporters consider completely immoral on religious grounds. It's so heinous to them they use oral rape metaphor to describe it: you liberals jammed gay marriage down our throats. We support Trump because he makes you angry. I've asked for clarification: this is pay back for things like gay marriage and protecting abortion rights? "You betcha its payback! We don't care what crazy things he does or says. The more it pisses off liberals the better job he's doing." Their words. They have grievances. Trump soothes it by helping them get payback. He grew his base by 7 million in this election. He gained almost as many votes as Bernie Sanders total vote count in the 2020 primary. A lot of people think this is about Trump. And it's gone once he's gone. I don't.

namuol 6y ago

The difference is that with the spinning dancer optical illusion, there's never a "wrong" way to view it. This isn't always the case with politics, or any kind of view for that matter. It's important to empathize with people you disagree with, but it's just as important that we start with a foundation of agreed upon facts. In other words, reality isn't a point of view.

roenxi 6y ago
Apologies in advance if this sounds snappy, this hits an issue I feel strongly about. My local supermarket has precisely no empathy for me and the only thing I expect to agree on with the local store manager is price. Yet it is by far the most effective conduit for getting me cheap food. Effective systems simply are not very good at empathy and agreement on non-core issues is unimportant. Empathy in particular recommended at a personal level but not especially useful in politics. The critical tool is the ability to comprehend, negotiate, compromise and articulate why things are necessary. Having "empathy" for "the left"/"the right" isn't possible. The groups are too large and diverse. Ditto for major components of the left or right like "the black vote", "the evangelicals", "people in cities", "people from Detroit", "the wealthy", etc, etc. Entities that you can have empathy for or agree on facts with are too small to be politically important like individuals or families. Politics is done by large groups who's beliefs are too nebulous to align.
mantas 6y ago
Wasn't that OP's key point? Vast majority (if not all) political messages are both true and false, depending on context and personal bias.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
dimgl 6y ago
I completely disagree. I think reality IS a point of view. You are suggesting that there is only one way to think about reality. And that is complete lunacy.

ehnto 6y ago

There is an alternative to such polarized views. In many countries, politics is just politics, it happens in the background and is about as heart felt as the weather report. It can be controversial and felt by all sure, but it shouldn't be a lifestyle or ideological platform that the general public use to divide themselves. It's backoffice stuff, for the most part, and I am too busy being friends to really mind what someone's political views are, if they even think about it much at all themselves. Now more than ever the US needs democracy, and the government needs to work harder than ever on protecting it. But I argue that the people of America, the general public, need to give it a bloody rest with the politics. Be humans again and meet your neighbors as you are, part of the same cohort as citizens. Your vote is just as powerful, no matter how many flags, banners, or yard signs you have. Your vote is what decides the direction of your country, not the chest thumping and rallies and flag brigades.

riffraff 6y ago
>In many countries, politics is just politics, it happens in the background and is about as heart felt as the weather report. Which countries are those? Because the US are insane, but politics is heartfelt in all countries I'm familiar with. Which doesn't mean we have to reach such levels of infighting of course.
- tempestn 6y ago
  Canada feels closer to what your parent described than to what I see in the US, for one. There are of course those at the extremes who are very partisan. Although most of those identify more with US politics than Canadian it seems. But for the vast majority it's much less of an issue than it is in the US. For one thing, most people are not members of one of our federal political parties. Local politicians don't even align with federal parties, nor do provincial ones in all cases. Many people will shift their vote between ideologically similar parties, especially the Liberals and NDP. Basically, for myself and most people I know, we vote for the party whose platform most closely matches our own priorities and beliefs, but it's not part of our identities in the same way. The parties themselves are also far less polarized than in the US. And because it's a multi-party system, you can have minority government that actually functions by garnering support of opposition parties. (We also effectively don't have multiple veto points though, so generally the governing party is able to govern; I think that also helps keep things from getting overheated.) Of course, the system isn't perfect. For instance by virtue of being both multi-party and first past the post, the winning party usually has the vote of a minority of the population, and still generally holds a majority of seats in parliament. But I've really come to appreciate it in comparison over the past few years.

Old_Thrashbarg 6y ago

Totally agree, and I've also voted both ways before. But I also would caution against going too far on the "both sides" thinking. There are some obvious examples of regimes in the past in certain countries where one side was just bad and it was not just a matter of different opinions: Germany, Serbia, Rwanda, etc. I think Trump and his administration lie somewhere between just being misunderstood by "the other side" and 100% depraved. I tend to think they're actually quite far to the depraved side of that spectrum, but that doesn't mean we can't still pay attention to making sure we see things from other perspectives (within reason).

DarknessFalls 6y ago

Are you trying to say that "Truth isn't truth"?

simonebrunozzi 6y ago

No surprise you've been upvoted so much. Yours is a truly remarkable comment, and observation. I'd humbly add that at least to my eyes, most of the time the discussions on disagreements between two political parties are simply ineffective at trying to solve the disagreement, and rather irrational or badly arranged. In other words: most political discourse you hear these days seems useless.

grawprog 6y ago

Honestly, right and left is pretty nonsensical, at least the current beliefs that qualify as right or left. The average person likely has beliefs that would fall on both sides and this incessant need to categorize someone as either left or right just leads to more polarization and more extreme views. When people are told they must be one thing because they have certain views about one issue, meanwhile their views on other issues lean more to the other side. But because of this strange all or nothing paradigm going on, there's no room for common ground or compromise, it's all or nothing one side or the other, you believe one thing, so you must believe all the things or you're on this side or the other. That's utter nonsense, political spectrums aren't all or nothing, take it or leave it, all inclusive things. A person is capable of having a range of views on different issues that may fall on either side and it's perfectly acceptable for this to be the case. Politics like everything in life isn't black and white all or nothing, take it or leave it, it'a a bunch of shades of grey like everything else and as with most things the average person, when asked about issues without the context of left or right involved, will likely express views that fall across both sides of the political spectrum.

mxfh 6y ago

While this might sound reasonable and balanced in most democracies, it's just not applicable to what is/was happening in the US. Regardless of moderate views of individuals, this election was not about economic policies or other debatable differences, this election was about if we can get back to this described discourse level of coexistence, not where one side's chief strategist says it's required to behead scientists for deterrence, any adherence to truth, decency and the general right to exist for minorities was on the table.

lazyjones 6y ago
You seem to be affected by the exact thing the post you replied to is alleging. As an outsider who reads both sides' arguments all the time, I am convinced that Republicans currently lean towards supporting freedom of speech and personal liberties, civil discourse, equal rights while the Democrats are the exact opposite. They are supporting and defending violent protests, looting, segregation(!), vowed to make lists of Trump supporters to deal with after the election etc. etc. ... Perhaps this is "truth and decency" for some people, but to many it's not.
- mxfh 6y ago
  It was not about what reasonable people think at this point, it’s about what they do and who they enable to enact power. The people you mentioned have no power and are not endorsed or are told to „stand by“. This is a very significant difference. As a reminder the whole reason Biden entered the race was Charlottesville.
  - lazyjones 6y ago
    Charlottesville is a good point, as it was one of the most perpetuated lies during the Biden and supporting media campaign that Trump somehow supposedly called extremists "good people" (media and Biden omitted the rest of the quote to distort what Trump said, he explicitly condemned extremists).
    - thomastjeffery 6y ago

ABCLAW 6y ago

>People on the left think that anyone on the right is a lunatic, and everyone on the right thinks the same thing about the left. I firmly disagree. Not all political climates and discourses are as poisoned as they are in the US. That said, not all political disagreements are created equally. We can have a rousing polite disagreement about immigration levels, national financial priorities, cultural values and so on, but if the discussion is premised in a fundamental disagreement about whether or not certain people deserve dignity as human beings then there's very little common ground to build off of.

amanaplanacanal 6y ago
I’m fairly lefty, and used to have quite a a bit of respect for the right, since I am at heart a bit of a libertarian. I’ve lost quite a bit of it though after seeing how so many of them lined up to support sometime so obviously amoral as the current President.
- blargmaster42_8 6y ago
  The left is winning the global culture war, Trump was the nuklear option.

ehsankia 6y ago

Quite relevant to that, there's this one SMBC comic from almost a decade ago that I've referred back to on a monthly basis, and it just keeps getting more and more relevant every year. https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/2013-04-07 https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/2013-04-07 This is what often happens in politics. There are a small subset of extremist on either side, and when people argue, they're pointing out the worst things the other side's extremists did. Calling each other KKK and Antifa and racist and SJW. Realistically, between those two extremes, the majority of people are good well meaning people who just don't know what the truth is anymore due to all the lies and disinformation on the web. All the clickbait shoving the most rage inducing stories about the other side all day long.

leptons 6y ago

>We think it's the other side that's crazy, but we're all under the same spell. In this case, one side is provably crazy, and the evidence from our intelligence agencies shows they are dangerous lunatics. The other side wants empathy, equality, science, and truth to rule the day. I'm not sure how you can just hand-wave that away. Your comment is the same old "both sides" fallacy.

lawnchair_larry 6y ago
Is the provably crazy side the one you’re on? Because this is provably false.
- leptons 6y ago
  Then prove it.
disgruntledphd2 6y ago
When you think like that, you've already lost. Like, if you believe that all humans have rights and dignity, then you shouldn't be saying crap like that. If you don't then how are you different from your enemies?
- thomastjeffery 6y ago
  What you are saying is that GP's conclusion is impossible, and are thereby falling into the very trap you describe.
  - disgruntledphd2 6y ago
    Describing your opponents as "provably crazy" is unlikely to provide a basis to make things better.
    - thomastjeffery 6y ago
      Denying that assertion the possibility of validity is unlikely to prove it false.

romanoderoma 6y ago

> anyone on the right is a lunatic In my country where there isn't a two party only system, but a plethora of positions ranging from the most extreme to the most moderate, for decades the left Vs right battle created a gradient of opinions There are lunatics on the left and on the right, sometimes they have been violent, sometimes they put our democracy at risk, but in the end both left and right rejected them We had our momentary lapse of reason when we (not me, but still...) elected Berlusconi, it seemed we lost our mind (we probably did) and nothing worse could ever happen to any other country politically speaking Trump is on a new level of tribalism, divide and polarization though How a real lunatic, with evident sever mental health issues ended up at the white house is gonna be a big black spot on American history (the greatest democracy in the World, the greatest country in the world, etc. etc.)

prossercj 6y ago

Is this not a function of how rationality actually works? We all begin with premises which are fundamentally unproven and unprovable. Our conclusions follow from those premises. Change the premises and the result changes, though both sets of deductions may be perfectly rational. In other words, rationality is a process, not a set of conclusions. One word for this is "tradition". If I've piqued your interest, please read Alasdair MacIntyre's book "After Virtue," and also it's sequel with a more provocative title, "Whose Justice? Which Rationality?"

secretsatan 6y ago

That’s a very long winded way of saying supporting a man who went on stage and openly opined that ingesting disinfectant could be a solution for covid is very sane

mleonhard 6y ago

I was a "Trumper" 20 years ago. Your comment initially made sense to me. Then I remembered the many wrong and harmful ideas that I recognized and rejected since that time. These ideas lead to real harm for many people. For example, during Bill Clinton's impeachment trial for sexual harassment of his woman intern, I thought that his behavior was no big deal, that we accept that powerful men like to play around with women, and that the intern knew what she was getting into when she got the job working for him. Later, I realized that I was wrong. Those beliefs enable sexual harassment of women across society. We must reject those beliefs so women can have equal opportunity and good quality of life. Other wrong ideas that I had: - Poor people are poor because they are lazy. - Violent criminals are violent because they don't want to control themselves. - Unlucky people failed to prepare properly or were careless. - Gay people are bad for society. - Men should be breadwinners. Women should be housewives. - USA is powerful because God is rewarding its Christian citizens for following His rules. All of these ideas are wrong. These ideas harm people and make our society poorer. Yes, I can remember my previous thought processes and see the dancer spin the other way, but the dancer is carrying a single-edged sword and spinning the other way way hurts people.

fuzzfactor 6y ago
People change. Trump was even a Democrat 20 years ago. Got lots more attention as a Republican now, since 2009.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

fuzzfactor 6y ago

The two parties provide the opposing agendas which dominate, and the particular characteristics of each candidate are secondary. Especially when neither party has much to offer the average citizen any more, they have built their strength traditionally on low voter turnout where extreme factions loudly broadcasting gradually become over-represented in the most polarizing way. As cycles continue only the most polarizing issues drive the turnout, and for turnout to grow beyond a certain point the majority of the potential voters must perceive the other party as a more serious threat, when compared to any security offered by their own party which they (might) have chosen because they found it less offensive (maybe only in past cycles too). The parties no longer need to have as much to offer the average citizen as cycles go on, when they can get contending turnout from their own extremists combined with orders of magnitude more sympathizers who can be convinced to strongly fear what the _other side_ could take away. Seems like after a party has been around for longer than any living person, they will not get support by having more to offer average citizens than in previous cycles, only by taking less away from them. So the average citizen hasn't had a positive outcome within reach for a while. Now it's too late, these top candidates are realistically as youthful as you can get compared to the grand old parties themselves, and regardless of personal integrity or leadership style can not offer anything above that from the parties alone. Even in the case of Trump's extreme personality, which the Democrats did not even try to nominate a candidate having that feature, so this element was as one-sided as you can get. I saw agreement from both sides that a wet dishrag could defeat Trump if only 270 electors represent voters who just plain dislike or hate him. Conversely it was recognized Trump would win if he had merely 270 electors of voters who dislike or hate one or more of the current items on the Democratic party platform. Neither strategy can offer anything to the majority of the citizens in the political middle, the true average citizen, since turnout has been driven by fear not opportunity. Building a coalition from a carefully-crafted extreme attention-getting position, and pushing hard from there so the other side ends up below the 50 percent needed to be in power, has turned out to prevail over representing even the middle 50 percent of voters which is how it was supposed to be at a minimum. So once the issues and/or personalities representing them have reached full polarity, 50 becomes more of a constant to be converged upon from afar rather than a starting point to build a majority from in both directions. Resulting in half the voters who turn out, and half the politically centrist citizens (which is a much larger group by a variable multiple of active voters) who will always be dissatisfied and these are two different groups (but having significant overlap), the latter of which is the core of the majority that all parties are supposed to be treating as constituents. But the core of the majority in the middle doesn't have a voice because they don't have any party which represents them any more, the parties are doing other things with the money and the concerns of centrist citizens are given lowest priority. The party gets more votes over the long run by fear-mongering against the other side regardless of who the candidates are at the time, and only declining resources can be justified which might actually benefit the majority of citizens. Problem is, the majority are voting against their own best interest because their own best interest has not been available for a number of cycles. Rather each side votes against what's perveived as the other's best interest instead, since that's the only thing at stake anyway. So the majority of voters end up speaking for the entire population as designed, but all votes are cast against someone's best interest because the minority party is voting exactly the same as the majority in this regard. So it's unanimous by both parties that as few of the average citizens as possible should have their best interest be served, and to redefine democracy in that direction can not be accomplished during a single cycle or maybe not even a single generation. Ending up with the choice between a trustworthy Joe and a dishonest Don the thing that doesn't really matter to half the voters as much as it should. It would probably help if there were parties which were younger than the candidates.

sleepysysadmin 6y ago

I'm not American but my non-political echo chambers have gotten quite political. Chess, Infosec, Atheism, philosophy, reddit, etc HATE trump for example. Then I have other echo chambers that tend to love Trump. Personally I'm neither side as I'm not American. I also enjoy looking at both sides and it's remarkable how different the viewpoints really are. The echo chambers worked exactly as expected, those places that hated trump only hear about things that are terrible about trump. Nothing negative about Biden at any point. Every single Gaffe by Biden was portrayed as completely fake as deepfakes or old footage dubbed over etc. Generally speaking my echo chambers leaned anti-trump. The one thing I failed to find in the last 2 months is any actual discourse. There is absolutely no neutral viewpoints. There is absolutely no discussions between the 2 camps. The political divide in the USA is worse than I have ever seen it. The perception I have, that wasn't a free and fair election. What's even more curious is that nobody seems to care. Ends justify the means. Which hey, I personally very much prefer Trump to lose. However, if healing the political divide is a goal, that's basically impossible now.

Wowfunhappy 6y ago

I really, truly, would like to believe both of the major political parties in the US have reasonably good intentions. It makes logical sense—how can half of the entire population be mostly wrong, and the rest mostly right? But then I always remember that in the United States, there is only one major political party that believes Climate Change is real. The other party believes the phenomenon is some sort of gigantic ruse. I consider Climate Change the most pressing issue of our time, and myself a single-issue voter. Not because everything else is unimportant, but because Climate Change is even more important. We have to get this right, and we have to start immediately! If the two parties disagreed on how to address Climate Change—say, with a carbon tax versus renewable energy subsidies—that would be one thing. But that's not the world we live in. As long as one of the parties insists that Climate Change is a complete fabrication, I don't see how I can possibly take anything they say seriously.