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> how willingly other people bring up politically sensitive issues in the workplace I'd say I'm a mix of conservative/Libertarian and this kind of blows my min
by jb775 5y ago
> how willingly other people bring up politically sensitive issues in the workplace
I'd say I'm a mix of conservative/Libertarian and this kind of blows my mind over the past few years. It seems like I constantly hear people on the left openly voicing their political opinions around crowds of people, and always speak in a way that they genuinely believe everyone around them agrees....and often have a condescending way of saying it. It amazes me how they seem to have absolutely no idea where the right-wing people are even coming from. I think this recent over-confidence is mostly due to them not realizing the major media outlets are essentially feeding them communist propaganda (if you don't agree with this I'd consider researching cognitive dissonance). I experience this on a regular basis, and it usually leads to me completely losing respect for that person purely due to the lack of awareness that person is showing.
The other dynamic, and what the leftists don't realize (or can't process), is that the left's arguments are primarily things that sound good in practice, but don't add up in theory. It always sounds good when someone says they want to help someone else, no matter who says it. This allows them to go crazy in public giving one liners about the surface level of their political policies ("everyone should have world class health care!", "everyone should have lots of money!", "No one should ever shoot someone else with a gun!"...all because they sound good (even to conservatives). Conservative policies take a bit more explaining to get their point across, and are much more focused on the logical and realistic side of things. No one likes to say "someone who doesn't work and doesn't contribute to society doesn't deserve govt handouts"...but it makes logical sense. That kind of talk doesn't exactly sound as good around the water cooler. Also, the time horizon for conservative viewpoints is often much longer (think about generations in the future and the impact today's decisions will have down the road). Compared to the left's policies that solve shallow issues today while mortgaging the well-being of future generations.
The simple fact is that conservatives have an easier time seeing where the left is coming from as a result of the left's primary policies being shallower and less thought out. These aspects also make it easier for the left to create snarky comments around. Conservatives however, simply don't agree and think it's all a pipe dream. They see the shallowness that the left is not able to. The left on the other hand, not only doesn't understand the right's overarching viewpoints...they also aren't even willing to try to understand where the right is coming from.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- joe_91 5y agoAnother point I think is relevant is that I feel many solutions that you've described are easy to understand, quick fixes. In a world that is growing more and more complicated I think people are more prone to gravitate towards the simple. Another reason, in my opinion for the leftist narrative being so captivating at the moment is that people are delaying adulthood, kids, family more and more. When you are young, or have little, true life experience you don't see why the simple solutions to help all these people wouldn't work. You haven't been in the trenches of life to realise that compromise is needed and that we don't always understand the 2nd or 3rd order effects that our actions will have. Again all this is my own personal experience but I think it has some bearing on todays political minefield.
- samvher 5y agoIt sounds like you're saying "I only see these leftists using extremely shallow reasoning, and they don't understand that they're wrong because they don't look at my/our reasoning beyond a shallow level." If you would look for more depth in the reasoning of the people you're disagreeing with yourself, you might be surprised at what you might find. The frustration you're expressing to me seems to be very symmetric, occurring on both sides of the spectrum.
- toyg 5y agoOne of the problems of modern political discourse is that the world is now extremely fragmented, and the economic and social theories underpinning this or that position are extremely complex - on all sides. For example, stuff like gender-related issues on the left have now evolved through hundreds of papers and volumes, which might even make sense if considered sequentially (and if validity is granted to the field at all) but look outright baffling from "the street". There is no possibility of civil dialogue between some intellectual who spent his or her life (over)analysing a complex and niche topic, and an averagely-informed person. It's like having a professor of String Theory discuss that with an undergraduate drop-out: whether the theory is right or wrong, they are just not speaking the same language, and there is not enough time for either side to work on finding a level of complexity that is agreeable to both. Add to it that social incentives push people towards finding "un-owned niches" and push them into mainstream consciousness even if they are very rare, and you end up with constant arguing on what are basically strawmen (the "immigrant who never works", the "transexual who wants to use this or that toilet", etc etc).