7 ms·

This divisive rhetoric is what got us here in the first place; a breakdown in civil communication. The blue team mimics the red team in this respect. I wish we

This divisive rhetoric is what got us here in the first place; a breakdown in civil communication. The blue team mimics the red team in this respect. I wish we could have a more mature dialogue but I wonder if we're past that. Violent communication is normalizing.

nerdponx 5y ago
This has been "red team" strategy for a long time. Be insufferably stubborn and immoral, force the "blue team" to talk and talk and talk until they stop making sense or get frustrated, then point out how incoherent/irrational/emotional the blue team is and declare victory.
- GoblinSlayer 5y ago
  The "blue team" cooling is long overdue for sure.
walls 5y ago
You can't have a mature dialog with people who don't believe facts.
- q1w2 5y ago
  One important fact you might consider is that not all Republicans are the same. ...and that the worst actors held up by the media are not even representative of the average. ...and that moreover, you might consider you are intentionally fed biased information to help reinforce your political stances and hyper-emotional content, because emotional voters are more loyal than thinking voters. Think for yourself. Recognize the good in your opposition. Denounce the bad in your own. No political party (nor their associated media outlets) are above lying and public manipulation.
  - ArchOversight 5y ago
    Too little too late for that. Invoking Godwins law, cause it seems apropos: "As we say in Germany, if there's a Nazi at the table and 10 other people sitting there talking to him, you got a table with 11 Nazis"
    - vageli 5y ago
      > Too little too late for that. > Invoking Godwins law, cause it seems apropos: > "As we say in Germany, if there's a Nazi at the table and 10 other people sitting there talking to him, you got a table with 11 Nazis" Is this in jest? Or are you truly suggesting that even conversing with someone who holds an opinion that differs from yours somehow makes you of the same opinion?
      - Afforess 5y ago
        >Is this in jest? Or are you truly suggesting that even conversing with someone who holds an opinion that differs from yours somehow makes you of the same opinion? Are you truly suggesting the correct action to take with Nazi's is a discussion? Because there is a certain British PM that tried that approach back in the day....
        mdp2021 5y ago
        > Are you truly suggesting the correct action to take with the irrational is showing reasons? Yes. Somebody with a non fully compromised mind may be eavesdropping (note: it's a metaphor).
    - q1w2 5y ago
      Guilt by association isn't just biased and lazy thinking - it's literally evil and a tool used by evil people. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McCarthyism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McCarthyism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smith_Act_trials_of_Communist_Party_leaders https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smith_Act_trials_of_Communist_...
    - GoblinSlayer 5y ago
      That's not even a proper ad hominem, more like a projection of ad hominem.
  - walls 5y ago
    They are, however, completely representative of your elected officials.
    - q1w2 5y ago
      Well in the case above - I haven't seen literally any other GOP politician support Gov Parson's effort here. So again - you are generalizing and stereotyping.
  - _jal 5y ago
    They are supporting politicians who are destroying the country. At some point, ignorance stops being an excuse.
    - anonAndOn 5y ago
      A few more rounds of variants, and there won't be many anti-vaxxers left. Evolution: "This is the way."
- mdp2021 5y ago
  Well, keep it mature just so you do not create further mental pollution, and contribute pulling everything down, then.
- agloeregrets 5y ago
  This. This is why there is any divisiveness. If you ignore facts it is impossible for a best solution to arise or for any answer to be accepted so a conversation cannot move on and has no end point, this drives a "You are the problem"/"You are attacking me" feeling.
- COGlory 5y ago
  I'm a structural biologist studying viruses that has voted for many republicans. Do I fit your definition of not believing facts?
  - threatofrain 5y ago
    The poster is discussing populations being polled, but you are talking about yourself. Can a single individual act as the spokesman of an entire population?
  - ModernMech 5y ago
    There was a time, maybe 2008, when this way okay. 2016 was a little iffy, but understandable the way things went. But after 2020? There's no plausible deniability left. That the loser of the last election used imagined fraud as a basis to launch a coup attempt, and the subsequent attempted memory-holing and normalization of that event by the Republican party have changed everything. It's clear what they are doing now. Namely: 1) take away independent control of state election processes and install a partisan election process that will "determine" whether any particular election result is "fraudulent". The result of the Arizona audit by the "Cyber Ninjas" reveals the playbook: - use the audit to kick up a cloud of dust (we are investigating reports of paper ballots from china containing Bamboo!) - muddy the waters (we are definitely going to find fraud, it's astounding) - find no fraud (The results show Biden won, but we have a list of concerns we will focus on instead of the actual count) - declare there was fraud anyway (Trump's statement on the result: "We won on the Arizona forensic audit yesterday at a level that you wouldn’t believe. They had headlines that Biden wins in Arizona when they know it’s not true. He didn’t win in Arizona. He lost in Arizona based on the forensic audit.") 2) Use these fabricated claims of fraud to send your own choice of electors to the Congress to select the next President. 3) The Democrats will object, because of the obvious fraud 4) The process, being contested, will follow the Constitution and eventually a vote will go before the House, where each state delegation has 1 vote 5) Because Republicans control more state houses than Democrats, they can just choose whoever they want as President 6) Any court challenges will end up at a court stacked with Republicans, 3 of whom were appointed by Trump, 5 of whom were appointed to the court by Republican Presidents who lost the popular vote their first term in office. That's how Democracy ends in America, and Republicans are setting up that exact scenario in 2024. If you wake up in November of that year and the person elected (read: appointed) lost both the popular vote AND the electoral college, well don't be surprised. That's the literal end of elections in America, and it's not hyperbolic at all. That's their stated plan: see the Eastman memo. If you are voting for Republicans post 2020, you are voting against democracy. I'm sorry, there's no other way to put it. This whole effort is anti-democratic and against the rule of law. I mean, it's fine if you don't believe in democracy and want an American dictator in the style of Putin (complete with the associated corruption of the rule of law and the neutering of elections as a method of self governance), but just be honest about it.
- TimTheTinker 5y ago
  > people who don't believe facts Much of it likely comes down to (a) misinformation coming from news sources they trust, (b) lack of trust in institutions (perhaps for good reason), and perhaps most importantly (c) prioritizing moral values differently than you do. I suspect (c) is at the root of much of the R-D split, with (a) and (b) being symptoms of it. Many Republicans and Democrats have non-negotiable moral values they hold to, and they hold their noses as they elect leaders who give lip service to those values but have glaring problems elsewhere. Elections are more about who people don't want in office than who they do want.
  - xapata 5y ago
    I wouldn't call them moral values, because the values expressed are so context-dependent.
    - TimTheTinker 5y ago
      The problem is that the true moral values held don't appear often enough in political speech. I and almost all of my friends and family hold that "humans are created in the image of God, and thus their inalienable rights begin at conception. Therefore abortion at any stage is committing murder against the baby." Not exactly context-dependent, unless I'm missing something. Perhaps you could elaborate?
      - hackersword 5y ago
        I would construe your belief to be summarized by "all life has value and should be protected/valued". The missing context is that your argument seek to protect the baby's life BEFORE birth , but after ... generally speaking the (R)/pro-life stance is pretty weak on social safety net, should the child have adequate (free!) health care, nutrition, etc. Does that life "deserve" these things when they are only an infant? How about when they are 5-10 ... or 10-20 , or ANY age? Passing laws to force women to give birth, but then systematically strip and reduce the social safety nets available seems highly context-dependent, and weakens greatly the belief that you "value life"
- deleted 5y ago
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- deleted 5y ago
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- tialaramex 5y ago
  This is a lesson from Gödel, Escher, Bach's Tortoise and Achilles stories too. Because the Tortoise refuses to accept Modus ponens (if A implies B, and A, then B), Achilles is unable to convince it of anything. The facts Achilles tells the Tortoise aren't any less true for its stubborn refusal to accept them, but Achilles won't convince the Turtle of them. If people won't be reasoned with, don't waste your time trying. On the upside, Mother Nature doesn't care what you believe - as hundreds of Americans, disproportionately Republicans, are learning every day at the moment.
  - andrewprock 5y ago
    The tragedy here is that MOST people would not accept modus ponens if presented it in the abstract.
  - vixen99 5y ago
    For the benefit of a non-US reader can you be specific about this? What exactly are they stupid about as in, presumably, refusing to act appropriately when a fact stares them in the face. How relevant to the argument is it that the group are Republican? Are there no examples where groups of Democrats behave in a similarly stupid fashion - assuming the validity of your claim? You are clearly desperate to make a partisan point.
    - tialaramex 5y ago
      In most countries, anti-vaccination positions are found in crazy sub-groups with both left and right tendencies and so can reasonably be said to have nothing to do with any mainstream political party. The serious opposition parties in New Zealand, the United Kingdom, or Canada, would have different policies on the minutia of the pandemic, but they aren't opposed to the vaccinations the government bought. But in the US that's a tacit Republican party position. Most senior Republicans have of course actually been vaccinated, but watch so many of them carefully choose their words to avoid endorsing vaccination. And the more junior Republicans, hungry for voter enthusiasm and maybe less scared of dying themselves, will outright say it, e.g. Lauren Boebert. Result: Dead Republicans. And I really don't have a partisan point here, it's usually Kang versus Kodos, it's just that the Republicans decided to go, as they say "full retard". You don't need to have a partisan dog in the game to know that the point of Democracy isn't who wins an election but the fact of peaceful transitions of power, and who did we see trying to prevent that peaceful transition of power in the US? Exactly.
- thesagan 5y ago
  Yes we can. It takes patience and an open mind and usually face to face conversation.
- warning26 5y ago
  At this point, some kind of mandatory deprogramming might be the only way to save those taken in by the crazy cult that the Republican party has transformed into. They're essentially incapable of reason at this point.
bjd2385 5y ago
Well-said. This ... makes me want to leave this HN story altogether.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
unsui 5y ago
> This divisive rhetoric is what got us here in the first place What you're doing is called "pearl clutching", and is not adding in any constructive way to the conversation. The way we got here is intentionally by using divisive rhetoric to ellicit "engagement". Traditionally, this has been used politically by identifying wedge issues with the explicit intention to divide people along belief borders. This has been accelerated and amplified n-fold via social media. Engagement is a proxy for divisive rhetoric, as that is what algorithmically produces the most engagement, thereby triggering the reward function(s). The cat's out of the bag. Its too late to go back and say "but what about the kids?" etc, (especially since there is so much overwhelming evidence that these themselves are simply rhetorical devices to push a particular argumnent or point of view). We know these arguments are not in good faith, so why should we give them that due process and respect? Cut the BS.
- GoblinSlayer 5y ago
  It's futile to hope for anything constructive before destruction of polarization.
- thesagan 5y ago
  Be nice. Golden rule. Don’t call bullshit on people honestly trying to have a dialogue in good faith. That’s divisive.
  - Afforess 5y ago
    Can you explain which of abvdasker's, hackerswords's, unsui's posts were not nice? I sincerely want to know, so I can argue against you further without being "unnice".
    - thesagan 5y ago
      “Cut the bs” paints someone as a bad faith conversationalist. You can reply to that but I think I’ve said my part.
      - 5y ago
pugets 5y ago
Related: 53% of Democrats and 56% of Republicans see other Americans as being the greatest threat to America's way of life (over foreign threats, economic disaster, and climate forces). [0] It pains me what's happened to discourse in the last 10 years. I suspect social media has played a role. Many liberals and conservatives frequent these online partisan bubbles where they are exposed to the crazies of the other side (and only the crazies) while dodging the controversies that would make them question their own beliefs. Surely, if there are foreign propaganda peddlers on social media, then the strategy they follow is not to aid one party or the other, but to pull from both sides until we collapse in the middle. [0] https://today.yougov.com/topics/politics/articles-reports/2021/01/20/americans-now-see-other-americans-biggest-threat https://today.yougov.com/topics/politics/articles-reports/20...
RC_ITR 5y ago
Remember when, in 1995, this happened? >In 1995, then-Republican House Majority Leader Dick Armey famously referred to Frank as "Barney Fag" in a press interview. Don't act like the past was some civil utopia.
Angostura 5y ago
I thought the original comment at the top of this thread was quite respectful and written in a non-inflammatory way. It may contain an uncomfortable truth, but that doesn't make it divisive, other than to the extent that saying "this this true - and this thing is false" is divisive.

nerdponx 5y ago

This has been "red team" strategy for a long time. Be insufferably stubborn and immoral, force the "blue team" to talk and talk and talk until they stop making sense or get frustrated, then point out how incoherent/irrational/emotional the blue team is and declare victory.

GoblinSlayer 5y ago
The "blue team" cooling is long overdue for sure.

walls 5y ago

You can't have a mature dialog with people who don't believe facts.

q1w2 5y ago
One important fact you might consider is that not all Republicans are the same. ...and that the worst actors held up by the media are not even representative of the average. ...and that moreover, you might consider you are intentionally fed biased information to help reinforce your political stances and hyper-emotional content, because emotional voters are more loyal than thinking voters. Think for yourself. Recognize the good in your opposition. Denounce the bad in your own. No political party (nor their associated media outlets) are above lying and public manipulation.
- ArchOversight 5y ago
  Too little too late for that. Invoking Godwins law, cause it seems apropos: "As we say in Germany, if there's a Nazi at the table and 10 other people sitting there talking to him, you got a table with 11 Nazis"
  - vageli 5y ago
    > Too little too late for that. > Invoking Godwins law, cause it seems apropos: > "As we say in Germany, if there's a Nazi at the table and 10 other people sitting there talking to him, you got a table with 11 Nazis" Is this in jest? Or are you truly suggesting that even conversing with someone who holds an opinion that differs from yours somehow makes you of the same opinion?
    - Afforess 5y ago
      >Is this in jest? Or are you truly suggesting that even conversing with someone who holds an opinion that differs from yours somehow makes you of the same opinion? Are you truly suggesting the correct action to take with Nazi's is a discussion? Because there is a certain British PM that tried that approach back in the day....
      - mdp2021 5y ago
        > Are you truly suggesting the correct action to take with the irrational is showing reasons? Yes. Somebody with a non fully compromised mind may be eavesdropping (note: it's a metaphor).
  - q1w2 5y ago
    Guilt by association isn't just biased and lazy thinking - it's literally evil and a tool used by evil people. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McCarthyism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McCarthyism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smith_Act_trials_of_Communist_Party_leaders https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smith_Act_trials_of_Communist_...
  - GoblinSlayer 5y ago
    That's not even a proper ad hominem, more like a projection of ad hominem.
- walls 5y ago
  They are, however, completely representative of your elected officials.
  - q1w2 5y ago
    Well in the case above - I haven't seen literally any other GOP politician support Gov Parson's effort here. So again - you are generalizing and stereotyping.
- _jal 5y ago
  They are supporting politicians who are destroying the country. At some point, ignorance stops being an excuse.
  - anonAndOn 5y ago
    A few more rounds of variants, and there won't be many anti-vaxxers left. Evolution: "This is the way."
mdp2021 5y ago
Well, keep it mature just so you do not create further mental pollution, and contribute pulling everything down, then.
agloeregrets 5y ago
This. This is why there is any divisiveness. If you ignore facts it is impossible for a best solution to arise or for any answer to be accepted so a conversation cannot move on and has no end point, this drives a "You are the problem"/"You are attacking me" feeling.
COGlory 5y ago
I'm a structural biologist studying viruses that has voted for many republicans. Do I fit your definition of not believing facts?
- threatofrain 5y ago
  The poster is discussing populations being polled, but you are talking about yourself. Can a single individual act as the spokesman of an entire population?
- ModernMech 5y ago
  There was a time, maybe 2008, when this way okay. 2016 was a little iffy, but understandable the way things went. But after 2020? There's no plausible deniability left. That the loser of the last election used imagined fraud as a basis to launch a coup attempt, and the subsequent attempted memory-holing and normalization of that event by the Republican party have changed everything. It's clear what they are doing now. Namely: 1) take away independent control of state election processes and install a partisan election process that will "determine" whether any particular election result is "fraudulent". The result of the Arizona audit by the "Cyber Ninjas" reveals the playbook: - use the audit to kick up a cloud of dust (we are investigating reports of paper ballots from china containing Bamboo!) - muddy the waters (we are definitely going to find fraud, it's astounding) - find no fraud (The results show Biden won, but we have a list of concerns we will focus on instead of the actual count) - declare there was fraud anyway (Trump's statement on the result: "We won on the Arizona forensic audit yesterday at a level that you wouldn’t believe. They had headlines that Biden wins in Arizona when they know it’s not true. He didn’t win in Arizona. He lost in Arizona based on the forensic audit.") 2) Use these fabricated claims of fraud to send your own choice of electors to the Congress to select the next President. 3) The Democrats will object, because of the obvious fraud 4) The process, being contested, will follow the Constitution and eventually a vote will go before the House, where each state delegation has 1 vote 5) Because Republicans control more state houses than Democrats, they can just choose whoever they want as President 6) Any court challenges will end up at a court stacked with Republicans, 3 of whom were appointed by Trump, 5 of whom were appointed to the court by Republican Presidents who lost the popular vote their first term in office. That's how Democracy ends in America, and Republicans are setting up that exact scenario in 2024. If you wake up in November of that year and the person elected (read: appointed) lost both the popular vote AND the electoral college, well don't be surprised. That's the literal end of elections in America, and it's not hyperbolic at all. That's their stated plan: see the Eastman memo. If you are voting for Republicans post 2020, you are voting against democracy. I'm sorry, there's no other way to put it. This whole effort is anti-democratic and against the rule of law. I mean, it's fine if you don't believe in democracy and want an American dictator in the style of Putin (complete with the associated corruption of the rule of law and the neutering of elections as a method of self governance), but just be honest about it.
TimTheTinker 5y ago
> people who don't believe facts Much of it likely comes down to (a) misinformation coming from news sources they trust, (b) lack of trust in institutions (perhaps for good reason), and perhaps most importantly (c) prioritizing moral values differently than you do. I suspect (c) is at the root of much of the R-D split, with (a) and (b) being symptoms of it. Many Republicans and Democrats have non-negotiable moral values they hold to, and they hold their noses as they elect leaders who give lip service to those values but have glaring problems elsewhere. Elections are more about who people don't want in office than who they do want.
- xapata 5y ago
  I wouldn't call them moral values, because the values expressed are so context-dependent.
  - TimTheTinker 5y ago
    The problem is that the true moral values held don't appear often enough in political speech. I and almost all of my friends and family hold that "humans are created in the image of God, and thus their inalienable rights begin at conception. Therefore abortion at any stage is committing murder against the baby." Not exactly context-dependent, unless I'm missing something. Perhaps you could elaborate?
    - hackersword 5y ago
      I would construe your belief to be summarized by "all life has value and should be protected/valued". The missing context is that your argument seek to protect the baby's life BEFORE birth , but after ... generally speaking the (R)/pro-life stance is pretty weak on social safety net, should the child have adequate (free!) health care, nutrition, etc. Does that life "deserve" these things when they are only an infant? How about when they are 5-10 ... or 10-20 , or ANY age? Passing laws to force women to give birth, but then systematically strip and reduce the social safety nets available seems highly context-dependent, and weakens greatly the belief that you "value life"
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
tialaramex 5y ago
This is a lesson from Gödel, Escher, Bach's Tortoise and Achilles stories too. Because the Tortoise refuses to accept Modus ponens (if A implies B, and A, then B), Achilles is unable to convince it of anything. The facts Achilles tells the Tortoise aren't any less true for its stubborn refusal to accept them, but Achilles won't convince the Turtle of them. If people won't be reasoned with, don't waste your time trying. On the upside, Mother Nature doesn't care what you believe - as hundreds of Americans, disproportionately Republicans, are learning every day at the moment.
- andrewprock 5y ago
  The tragedy here is that MOST people would not accept modus ponens if presented it in the abstract.
- vixen99 5y ago
  For the benefit of a non-US reader can you be specific about this? What exactly are they stupid about as in, presumably, refusing to act appropriately when a fact stares them in the face. How relevant to the argument is it that the group are Republican? Are there no examples where groups of Democrats behave in a similarly stupid fashion - assuming the validity of your claim? You are clearly desperate to make a partisan point.
  - tialaramex 5y ago
    In most countries, anti-vaccination positions are found in crazy sub-groups with both left and right tendencies and so can reasonably be said to have nothing to do with any mainstream political party. The serious opposition parties in New Zealand, the United Kingdom, or Canada, would have different policies on the minutia of the pandemic, but they aren't opposed to the vaccinations the government bought. But in the US that's a tacit Republican party position. Most senior Republicans have of course actually been vaccinated, but watch so many of them carefully choose their words to avoid endorsing vaccination. And the more junior Republicans, hungry for voter enthusiasm and maybe less scared of dying themselves, will outright say it, e.g. Lauren Boebert. Result: Dead Republicans. And I really don't have a partisan point here, it's usually Kang versus Kodos, it's just that the Republicans decided to go, as they say "full retard". You don't need to have a partisan dog in the game to know that the point of Democracy isn't who wins an election but the fact of peaceful transitions of power, and who did we see trying to prevent that peaceful transition of power in the US? Exactly.
thesagan 5y ago
Yes we can. It takes patience and an open mind and usually face to face conversation.
warning26 5y ago
At this point, some kind of mandatory deprogramming might be the only way to save those taken in by the crazy cult that the Republican party has transformed into. They're essentially incapable of reason at this point.

bjd2385 5y ago

Well-said. This ... makes me want to leave this HN story altogether.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

unsui 5y ago

> This divisive rhetoric is what got us here in the first place What you're doing is called "pearl clutching", and is not adding in any constructive way to the conversation. The way we got here is intentionally by using divisive rhetoric to ellicit "engagement". Traditionally, this has been used politically by identifying wedge issues with the explicit intention to divide people along belief borders. This has been accelerated and amplified n-fold via social media. Engagement is a proxy for divisive rhetoric, as that is what algorithmically produces the most engagement, thereby triggering the reward function(s). The cat's out of the bag. Its too late to go back and say "but what about the kids?" etc, (especially since there is so much overwhelming evidence that these themselves are simply rhetorical devices to push a particular argumnent or point of view). We know these arguments are not in good faith, so why should we give them that due process and respect? Cut the BS.

GoblinSlayer 5y ago
It's futile to hope for anything constructive before destruction of polarization.
thesagan 5y ago
Be nice. Golden rule. Don’t call bullshit on people honestly trying to have a dialogue in good faith. That’s divisive.
- Afforess 5y ago
  Can you explain which of abvdasker's, hackerswords's, unsui's posts were not nice? I sincerely want to know, so I can argue against you further without being "unnice".
  - thesagan 5y ago
    “Cut the bs” paints someone as a bad faith conversationalist. You can reply to that but I think I’ve said my part.
    - 5y ago

pugets 5y ago

Related: 53% of Democrats and 56% of Republicans see other Americans as being the greatest threat to America's way of life (over foreign threats, economic disaster, and climate forces). [0] It pains me what's happened to discourse in the last 10 years. I suspect social media has played a role. Many liberals and conservatives frequent these online partisan bubbles where they are exposed to the crazies of the other side (and only the crazies) while dodging the controversies that would make them question their own beliefs. Surely, if there are foreign propaganda peddlers on social media, then the strategy they follow is not to aid one party or the other, but to pull from both sides until we collapse in the middle. [0] https://today.yougov.com/topics/politics/articles-reports/2021/01/20/americans-now-see-other-americans-biggest-threat https://today.yougov.com/topics/politics/articles-reports/20...

RC_ITR 5y ago

Remember when, in 1995, this happened? >In 1995, then-Republican House Majority Leader Dick Armey famously referred to Frank as "Barney Fag" in a press interview. Don't act like the past was some civil utopia.

Angostura 5y ago

I thought the original comment at the top of this thread was quite respectful and written in a non-inflammatory way. It may contain an uncomfortable truth, but that doesn't make it divisive, other than to the extent that saying "this this true - and this thing is false" is divisive.