9 ms·

> It turns out, people can get along in real life, not because we’re exposed to many different ideas and ways of life, but in spite of this fact. My family's p

> It turns out, people can get along in real life, not because we’re exposed to many different ideas and ways of life, but in spite of this fact. My family's pretty conservative. In 2018, my brother's best friend from high school ran for political office as a democrat and won. Every Christmas, my mom bakes cookies and takes them to family friends. She had to look past all the headlines, politics, political disagreements, and that guy is everything FOX News told her to hate, to remember she likes the guy and his family. It's hard enough to look past disagreements normally; it's even harder when your people are telling you that should you hate this guy you've known for 20 years. On one hand, I'm very encouraged that, when faced with this choice, people can cut through the divisions and look at the person. On the other hand, this doesn't scale, and he's still dead to my dad.

twofornone 5y ago
It really doesn't help when the institutionally dominant side insists that the only way someone could possibly become conservative/republican/right leaning is by falling victim to Fox news propaganda. There's far more nuance to the discussions regarding, say, border security, entitlement spending, immigration reform, etc beyond accusations of racism and xenophobia. It's quite possible for two people to look at the same set of data and come to different conclusions because of differing value systems, priorities, risk tolerance, etc. Maybe part of the problem is this insistence that our platforms are justified in censoring opinions because of this false belief that if two people differ in political opinion, one side must be mislead by "misinformation".
- andrew_ 5y ago
  check the username of the parent comment. safe to assume that was meant to enflame.
- gmac 5y ago
  Not-an-American here. Seems to me there's arguably an important difference between (a) being conservative/right leaning and (b) being Republican. People can, of course, legitimately be found in all sorts of positions on the liberal/left leaning <—> conservative/right leaning spectrum (Jonathan Haidt has some interesting things to say on this [1]). But from this side of the Atlantic it looks rather as if Trump's Republican party strongly prioritises getting and keeping power over basic democratic principles [2]. I find that very worrying, and I also find I can only really give two explanations for people supporting it: either "they're bad people" or "they're misinformed". I prefer to think that in most cases it's the latter. [1] e.g. https://www.ted.com/talks/jonathan_haidt_the_moral_roots_of_liberals_and_conservatives/transcript?language=en https://www.ted.com/talks/jonathan_haidt_the_moral_roots_of_... [2] e.g. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/jun/06/republican-party-donald-trump-american-democracy-elections https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/jun/06/republ...
  - Viliam1234 5y ago
    > either "they're bad people" or "they're misinformed". Maybe they vote for (what they perceive to be) a lesser evil. Like, they know that it's not okay. But they think the alternative is even less okay. I am not agreeing with them here. Just pointing out that when we talk about our support for groups containing bad people, we excuse it like "a few bad apples". But when we see other people supporting groups containing bad people, we are likely to see it as unambiguous support for those bad people. Our party's glass is half-full and we keep hoping it gets even fuller; their party's glass is half-empty, how could they vote for it?
  - twofornone 5y ago
    >But from this side of the Atlantic it looks rather as if Trump's Republican party strongly prioritises getting and keeping power over basic democratic principles Only if your definition of "trump's republican party" is excessively reductionist. Which speaks to my point - your point of view lacks nuance, likely because the guardian (and any of the outlets unilaterally labeled as "reliable/authoritative", enforced by tech censorship) is not an unbiased source on the matter. Particularly when they are still referring to jan 6th as some coordinated "attack" (sans guns?) rather than a riot. When all right leaning sources have been preemptively defined as unreliable then naturally the only possibility is that anyone right of center is misinformed; but this is a toxic manufactured consensus which is at odds with the views and values of about half the country. Indeed you would think that this half is merely some crazed racist minority if your views on the US are informed by a steady stream of blatantly agendad left leaning sources. The logic is effectively circular, and left leaning journalistic interpretations are being paraded as objective facts. Jan 6th is an excellent example.
    - gmac 5y ago
      It looks to me as if the Republican party is broadly still Trump's: he has a powerful voice and as far as I am aware very few Republican politicians have disavowed him. Can you tell me what important nuance I am lacking here? Perhaps you are saying: supporting Republicans doesn't necessarily mean supporting Trump and his allies — but in practical terms, surely it does? It's obviously difficult to be certain of which information is reliable and which information is not. In my view, the discourse has shifted rightwards such that there aren't any longer any genuinely left-leaning sources in the mainstream media. The Guardian, the NYT, CNN and suchlike all look solidly centrist to me. The Guardian piece I linked is by an academic, so I have a bit more faith than usual that it will be an intelligent and independent viewpoint. But that Guardian piece is not the only thing I'm relying on, and the events of 6 January are not the only thing I'm relying on either. In particular, there appears to be gerrymandering, voter suppression, and worse on the Republican side [1]. I'm not aware of Democratic attempts to undermine the democratic system to any similar degree, but perhaps you can point me to some? [1] e.g. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/25/podcasts/transcript-ezra-klein-interviews-ari-berman.html https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/25/podcasts/transcript-ezra-...

twofornone 5y ago

It really doesn't help when the institutionally dominant side insists that the only way someone could possibly become conservative/republican/right leaning is by falling victim to Fox news propaganda. There's far more nuance to the discussions regarding, say, border security, entitlement spending, immigration reform, etc beyond accusations of racism and xenophobia. It's quite possible for two people to look at the same set of data and come to different conclusions because of differing value systems, priorities, risk tolerance, etc. Maybe part of the problem is this insistence that our platforms are justified in censoring opinions because of this false belief that if two people differ in political opinion, one side must be mislead by "misinformation".

andrew_ 5y ago
check the username of the parent comment. safe to assume that was meant to enflame.
gmac 5y ago
Not-an-American here. Seems to me there's arguably an important difference between (a) being conservative/right leaning and (b) being Republican. People can, of course, legitimately be found in all sorts of positions on the liberal/left leaning <—> conservative/right leaning spectrum (Jonathan Haidt has some interesting things to say on this [1]). But from this side of the Atlantic it looks rather as if Trump's Republican party strongly prioritises getting and keeping power over basic democratic principles [2]. I find that very worrying, and I also find I can only really give two explanations for people supporting it: either "they're bad people" or "they're misinformed". I prefer to think that in most cases it's the latter. [1] e.g. https://www.ted.com/talks/jonathan_haidt_the_moral_roots_of_liberals_and_conservatives/transcript?language=en https://www.ted.com/talks/jonathan_haidt_the_moral_roots_of_... [2] e.g. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/jun/06/republican-party-donald-trump-american-democracy-elections https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/jun/06/republ...
- Viliam1234 5y ago
  > either "they're bad people" or "they're misinformed". Maybe they vote for (what they perceive to be) a lesser evil. Like, they know that it's not okay. But they think the alternative is even less okay. I am not agreeing with them here. Just pointing out that when we talk about our support for groups containing bad people, we excuse it like "a few bad apples". But when we see other people supporting groups containing bad people, we are likely to see it as unambiguous support for those bad people. Our party's glass is half-full and we keep hoping it gets even fuller; their party's glass is half-empty, how could they vote for it?
- twofornone 5y ago
  >But from this side of the Atlantic it looks rather as if Trump's Republican party strongly prioritises getting and keeping power over basic democratic principles Only if your definition of "trump's republican party" is excessively reductionist. Which speaks to my point - your point of view lacks nuance, likely because the guardian (and any of the outlets unilaterally labeled as "reliable/authoritative", enforced by tech censorship) is not an unbiased source on the matter. Particularly when they are still referring to jan 6th as some coordinated "attack" (sans guns?) rather than a riot. When all right leaning sources have been preemptively defined as unreliable then naturally the only possibility is that anyone right of center is misinformed; but this is a toxic manufactured consensus which is at odds with the views and values of about half the country. Indeed you would think that this half is merely some crazed racist minority if your views on the US are informed by a steady stream of blatantly agendad left leaning sources. The logic is effectively circular, and left leaning journalistic interpretations are being paraded as objective facts. Jan 6th is an excellent example.
  - gmac 5y ago
    It looks to me as if the Republican party is broadly still Trump's: he has a powerful voice and as far as I am aware very few Republican politicians have disavowed him. Can you tell me what important nuance I am lacking here? Perhaps you are saying: supporting Republicans doesn't necessarily mean supporting Trump and his allies — but in practical terms, surely it does? It's obviously difficult to be certain of which information is reliable and which information is not. In my view, the discourse has shifted rightwards such that there aren't any longer any genuinely left-leaning sources in the mainstream media. The Guardian, the NYT, CNN and suchlike all look solidly centrist to me. The Guardian piece I linked is by an academic, so I have a bit more faith than usual that it will be an intelligent and independent viewpoint. But that Guardian piece is not the only thing I'm relying on, and the events of 6 January are not the only thing I'm relying on either. In particular, there appears to be gerrymandering, voter suppression, and worse on the Republican side [1]. I'm not aware of Democratic attempts to undermine the democratic system to any similar degree, but perhaps you can point me to some? [1] e.g. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/25/podcasts/transcript-ezra-klein-interviews-ari-berman.html https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/25/podcasts/transcript-ezra-...