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You still need to account for the leap from party to community. Unless you are active in politics in a capacity that needs party support (such as running for of

You still need to account for the leap from party to community. Unless you are active in politics in a capacity that needs party support (such as running for office), you don't really care if the party ostrizes you, as long as the community does not.

ocdtrekkie 6y ago
I've regularly found both issues retaining liberal and conservative friends because I don't fully support the party platform of either. As long as sharing political memes of your party to the community continues, many people are outright pushing away anyone in the middle. Bear in mind, many people's politics and values have become very aligned: If you don't support someone's views on identity issues, for instance, they may not feel they can be friends with you anymore. If you consider abortion to be literal murder, the color it places on someone who supports or has had an abortion, may make friendship similarly challenging.
- omgwtfbyobbq 6y ago
  You really hit the nail on the head. I've had issues even outside of politics. For whatever reason, if you don't conform to certain beliefs in a group, other members will sooner or later think you're the nail and they're the hammer.
- asdfasgasdgasdg 6y ago
  Nobody (ed: I mean, "few people", as of course there are non-zero people who believe this) believes abortion is literal murder. They might say they do, but if there were buildings where actual literal murder were happening it wouldn't be long before people would destroy those places. Folks would lynch abortion providers -- not one or two, but en masse. Plenty of conservative women get abortions. If it were the type of thing that led to social ostracization as a general rule, you'd see articles being written about it. It doesn't. That's actually kind of the point of this article, as I read it: political opinions are very malleable. Tribal identification is one mechanism by which they can be changed. If the tribe decides we're cutting taxes, we change our opinion to favor cutting taxes. If the tribe decides that trans identity is extremely important, we do too. Not because of any overt pressure but simply because of natural herd and instincts. But self-interest is an even stronger hammer with which to shape political opinions. If it is strongly in my economic best interest to get an abortion, there's a pretty decent chance I'm gonna finagle my way to believing it's OK -- at least for me -- even if I "thought it was literal murder" before. It's easy enough to do because abortion has none of the physical hallmarks of literal murder (you know, struggling, screaming victims, blood everywhere, etc.) and society clearly treats it as a different thing, no matter where in the U.S. you live. I have noticed a similar pattern whereby rich liberal friends are slightly less in favor of eating the rich than poor liberal friends, even though the Twitter crowd has pretty much decided where they stand on this issue. Self-interest is a powerful motivator! Us rich folks like to talk about all the entitlements we support but we get a little less comfortable when it comes time to talk about who pays for them. This is just a general rule, it doesn't apply universally by any means. Even this article suggested that there's just a 15% shift in personal opinion directly after a tribe opinion change. But I guess the change grows over time too. I hadn't heard a damn thing about illegal immigrants from my conservative father until about 2016. Now sometimes it seems like every third article he sends me is on that subject. Hey, you know another interesting thing about this: everyone hates literal murder, but somehow murderers families often -- not always, but often -- come around to forgiving them. Sometimes they forgive the murderer so hard that they come to court to support them before they're even convicted, pay for lawyers, etc. You'd almost never do that for someone who wasn't family. Self-interest, family, and tribe are extremely powerful mutators of political and even moral opinion!
  - throwaway6299 6y ago
    > Nobody believes abortion is literal murder Sure people do. There are plenty of us. Even those of us who are atheist and/or pro-LGBT. It doesn’t strictly align with parties; for instance my own views are rather liberal except for this particular issue. > Folks would lynch abortion providers -- not one or two, but en masse This did not happen for a lot of other viewpoints throughout history that we now consider illegal and unthinkable. Those of us who are anti-abortion consider abortion to be much the same—it will take a long time to change society’s opinion but violence is not the answer to solving the problem.
  - gruez 6y ago
    >They might say they do, but if there were buildings where actual literal murder were happening it wouldn't be long before people would destroy those places. What if it's state sanctioned? Where were all the people destroying nazi concentration camps?
    - asdfasgasdgasdg 6y ago
      Well, the Nazi concentration camps were guarded by lots of soldiers with many guns, so that's one thing. My understanding also is that people had largely changed their opinions on whether killing Jews was actual murder by the time Hitler got around to setting up his final solution. For example, there was never a point, during Hitler's reign, where a political opposition strongly opposed to killing Jews controlled all branches of the government. (This did happen with the Republicans in 2016, and they did not stop abortion at that time, though it was within their power to do so.) I would also just note that there are policies that have been clearly demonstrated to reduce the number of abortions, but they require a small amount of spending. I struggle to believe that someone who believes abortion is literal murder would shrink from providing e.g. free contraceptives, given the alternative. Yet Republicans tend to be opposed to these things, certainly at the legislative level. The behavior and voting patterns just don't support the claim, IMO.
      - rayiner 6y ago
        It was not within Republicans’ power to stop abortion so long as Roe v. Wade is on the books. And a significant fraction of Republicans don’t oppose abortion (just as a significant fraction of Democrats do).
- jjj123 6y ago
  Worth pointing out that the political spectrum isn’t a line with democrats on one extreme and republicans on the other, it stretches much further on either side and probably has more dimensions. I’d put myself much further left than the establishment democrat platform. But your main point is right, that things like memes often serve to push people away if you’re not already in the in-group. Edited to add a space

ocdtrekkie 6y ago

I've regularly found both issues retaining liberal and conservative friends because I don't fully support the party platform of either. As long as sharing political memes of your party to the community continues, many people are outright pushing away anyone in the middle. Bear in mind, many people's politics and values have become very aligned: If you don't support someone's views on identity issues, for instance, they may not feel they can be friends with you anymore. If you consider abortion to be literal murder, the color it places on someone who supports or has had an abortion, may make friendship similarly challenging.

omgwtfbyobbq 6y ago
You really hit the nail on the head. I've had issues even outside of politics. For whatever reason, if you don't conform to certain beliefs in a group, other members will sooner or later think you're the nail and they're the hammer.
asdfasgasdgasdg 6y ago
Nobody (ed: I mean, "few people", as of course there are non-zero people who believe this) believes abortion is literal murder. They might say they do, but if there were buildings where actual literal murder were happening it wouldn't be long before people would destroy those places. Folks would lynch abortion providers -- not one or two, but en masse. Plenty of conservative women get abortions. If it were the type of thing that led to social ostracization as a general rule, you'd see articles being written about it. It doesn't. That's actually kind of the point of this article, as I read it: political opinions are very malleable. Tribal identification is one mechanism by which they can be changed. If the tribe decides we're cutting taxes, we change our opinion to favor cutting taxes. If the tribe decides that trans identity is extremely important, we do too. Not because of any overt pressure but simply because of natural herd and instincts. But self-interest is an even stronger hammer with which to shape political opinions. If it is strongly in my economic best interest to get an abortion, there's a pretty decent chance I'm gonna finagle my way to believing it's OK -- at least for me -- even if I "thought it was literal murder" before. It's easy enough to do because abortion has none of the physical hallmarks of literal murder (you know, struggling, screaming victims, blood everywhere, etc.) and society clearly treats it as a different thing, no matter where in the U.S. you live. I have noticed a similar pattern whereby rich liberal friends are slightly less in favor of eating the rich than poor liberal friends, even though the Twitter crowd has pretty much decided where they stand on this issue. Self-interest is a powerful motivator! Us rich folks like to talk about all the entitlements we support but we get a little less comfortable when it comes time to talk about who pays for them. This is just a general rule, it doesn't apply universally by any means. Even this article suggested that there's just a 15% shift in personal opinion directly after a tribe opinion change. But I guess the change grows over time too. I hadn't heard a damn thing about illegal immigrants from my conservative father until about 2016. Now sometimes it seems like every third article he sends me is on that subject. Hey, you know another interesting thing about this: everyone hates literal murder, but somehow murderers families often -- not always, but often -- come around to forgiving them. Sometimes they forgive the murderer so hard that they come to court to support them before they're even convicted, pay for lawyers, etc. You'd almost never do that for someone who wasn't family. Self-interest, family, and tribe are extremely powerful mutators of political and even moral opinion!
- throwaway6299 6y ago
  > Nobody believes abortion is literal murder Sure people do. There are plenty of us. Even those of us who are atheist and/or pro-LGBT. It doesn’t strictly align with parties; for instance my own views are rather liberal except for this particular issue. > Folks would lynch abortion providers -- not one or two, but en masse This did not happen for a lot of other viewpoints throughout history that we now consider illegal and unthinkable. Those of us who are anti-abortion consider abortion to be much the same—it will take a long time to change society’s opinion but violence is not the answer to solving the problem.
- gruez 6y ago
  >They might say they do, but if there were buildings where actual literal murder were happening it wouldn't be long before people would destroy those places. What if it's state sanctioned? Where were all the people destroying nazi concentration camps?
  - asdfasgasdgasdg 6y ago
    Well, the Nazi concentration camps were guarded by lots of soldiers with many guns, so that's one thing. My understanding also is that people had largely changed their opinions on whether killing Jews was actual murder by the time Hitler got around to setting up his final solution. For example, there was never a point, during Hitler's reign, where a political opposition strongly opposed to killing Jews controlled all branches of the government. (This did happen with the Republicans in 2016, and they did not stop abortion at that time, though it was within their power to do so.) I would also just note that there are policies that have been clearly demonstrated to reduce the number of abortions, but they require a small amount of spending. I struggle to believe that someone who believes abortion is literal murder would shrink from providing e.g. free contraceptives, given the alternative. Yet Republicans tend to be opposed to these things, certainly at the legislative level. The behavior and voting patterns just don't support the claim, IMO.
    - rayiner 6y ago
      It was not within Republicans’ power to stop abortion so long as Roe v. Wade is on the books. And a significant fraction of Republicans don’t oppose abortion (just as a significant fraction of Democrats do).
jjj123 6y ago
Worth pointing out that the political spectrum isn’t a line with democrats on one extreme and republicans on the other, it stretches much further on either side and probably has more dimensions. I’d put myself much further left than the establishment democrat platform. But your main point is right, that things like memes often serve to push people away if you’re not already in the in-group. Edited to add a space