Using a scale of one to one hundred, American now rate members of The Other Party at about twenty-five. About forty percent of us thing The Other Party is a threat to the nation. Between twenty and thirty percent of us would be upset if our child married someone of The Other Party.
Further it notes that fewer and fewer of us work with, live near or have family of The Other Party.
This is crackers, don’t you think? How can we dial all this back a few notches?
Maybe it is healthy. Maybe our politics and nation have evolved to a point where it is literally not in our interests to live with and share our lives with people who hold opposing political perspectives. Is it such a tragedy?
Personally, I find it relatively easy to live without conservatives in my life and my life is clearly better without their interference in promoting the ideas I value. I don’t mind them having enclaves in Alabama, after all, they do have good ideas here and there and I would like my local government to adopt them, but to live with their promotion of savage ideas like refusing a business dinner with a female co-worker without the wife present? Really? That can stay in Alabama or Indiana or Taliban-occupied Pakistan where it belongs.
Be the solution. Start by not ridiculing the other side and calling them stupid names. (Not aimed at the OP, I don’t know if he does that, but it’s SOP here for so many posters.) Quit justifying such actions by jumping in with “but they started it” or “they do it worse”!
I like people too. I don’t know what about my post makes you think otherwise. Once again, what is the problem with people choosing to live in places where they are not required to interact with conservative or liberals? What terrible thing will result?
I want to be diplomatic and say that ‘both sides are to blame’ but I honestly don’t feel that way. I don’t mean all people on the right necessarily, but I absolutely blame a lot of right wing influencers in this country for starting a fake culture war in the late 1980s that has become an increasingly real culture war in 2017. Going back to 1992, I remember how shocked Republicans were that a philandering lawyer and governor from the backwoods of Arkansas managed to defeat a former CIA cold warrior and Reagan’s heir apparent. They never got over it. They never got over Hillary Clinton asserting herself and wanting to be more than someone who turns her head and smiles at her husband whenever he speaks.
The growth of AM radio and cable news pushed blatant lies and attacked not only the Clintons but their supporters. It was guys like Rush Limbaugh who basically started telling millions of listeners that liberals, not just the people we vote for both the voters themselves, are what’s wrong with our society. And with the rise of more talk shows on radio, television, and the internet, there have been other talk show hosts who have tried to out-Limbaugh Limbaugh. They say all sorts of outrageous things to fire up their audience and history has shown that people have a tendency to believe what they hear and see from ‘trusted’ sources. The tone of the rhetoric is vicious and they’ve never really been held to account unless they go so far over the line that advertisers are forced to drop them. It’s no wonder then that someone like Donald Trump felt like he had a shot at being president. When you’ve got Rush Limbaugh calling a birth control advocate a “slut” in front of millions of listeners, really, what is off-limits then? Pretty much nothing.
Have some progressives responded in kind as of late? Yeah probably so, but they were not the original aggressors. And they’re fed up with having to listen to the outrageous smears and lies of right wing talking heads who question their patriotism, their faith, and their basic decency as people just because they believe that abortion is not necessarily a binary choice and that maybe a tax increase for the richest of people and spending money to help working class people might be good for the country. The real problem has gone well beyond just a matter of saying offensive things on the radio; it has now reached the point where people can’t even have a conversation anymore without getting shouted down – I repeatedly dealt with people like that last year during the campaign and I’ve just decided that I’m not going to talk politics anymore with people I know unless I just want to vent. And it’s sad because I’ve always believed that those conversations, even if they get a little passionate, can be opportunities for people to gain some exposure and awareness. But that’s not likely to happen in today’s climate. And I 100% blame the right wing for that. Hell, it didn’t take long for the usual right wing shitheads to politicize this week’s shooting and blame the rhetoric of the left without any introspection whatsoever – and the sad part is, I didn’t expect anything else.
We will not learn from each other. We grow to become foreigners. We will fail to love and respect each other. Our monoculture of a life will be less fun and productive.
That’s a nice thought, but that’s basically accepting a false equivalency, and I’m done with that. What I will do is have a reasonable conversation with people who seem reasonable, and fortunately, there actually are reasonable republicans and right-leaning independents left. They’re vanishing but they still exist. But that’s about the best I can do. I’m not going to argue with them; I’ll just ignore them. I won’t ignore their bullshit but just like when I see people posting rubbish here, I don’t respond to it. Why waste my time arguing with someone who believes that the world is flat? Time is a precious commodity and I’m not going to waste it on people who enter into a “debate” disingenuously.
Over time, I suspect that what will happen is a realization among many that they’ve been lied to, and that they’ve been given a false choice. Maybe things will change then. In the meantime, I am cordial with all people as long as they’re cordial to me. I treat people with respect. None of that changes. But I tend to care less and less about what’s on people’s minds when it comes to politics and social matters. I’ll vote one way and they can vote theirs.
ISTM the vast majority of the time, when people encounter the message, “Both sides claim they are right and the opposing side is wrong,” their reaction is simply to dig in, “But my side really *is *right. The opposing side really *is *wrong.”
This is your error. I currently live in the Bronx. This city votes overwhelmingly for Democrats in every election. Am I exposed to ideas that I learn from? Of course. My neighbors are contractors, garden hobbyists, mechanics, and doctors. There are immigrants from Greece, Albania, Turkey, various parts of Africa, the Dominican Republic, the Caribbean, and Mexico. There are African-Americans, Whites, Latinos, and pretty much every segment of the native-born American population you can see. There are various flavors of Christian, Muslim, Jew, and Hindu. There is any number of individual political ideas here and I hear them all if I ask.
New York State is developing the most progressive set of laws in the country. I live in a place where I enjoy the benefits of Democratic/Progressive political domination and work with and live with people who tend to vote for Democrats by a huge majority. But this doesn’t mean it’s a monoculture at all. I like this political environment because the arguments are over “What’s the best way to make colleges free for all?” and “Free public college isn’t free enough!”. I don’t live in some hellhole where people discuss bathrooms and throwing people off welfare. Fuck that (I say this knowing that in two years I probably will live in someplace that obsesses over bathrooms).
Yup its a problem. I don’t know if there is a solution. Maybe it’ll be like India and Pakistan where the Hindus live in one country and the Muslims in another.
The problem is, we really do have reasons to hate and fear each other. Maybe that is due to media balkinization, but it is there. Plus people’s sense of identity, their moral values, and their ability to feel safe in the world is now intimately tied into politics.
It sucks, no idea what the solution is or if there is one. Maybe we can’t get along. The Civil War was because of conservative whites and northern liberals not getting along.
My office is mostly conservative – old, white, male, military veterans (I’m a young white male military veteran). There are a few women, and some non-veterans, and about a third are under 45 or so.
I try to avoid talking politics, even if many of my co-workers don’t. Sometimes if I hear something that strikes me as particularly dumb or offensive or ignorant I can’t help myself and I’ll respond. But it’s usually pointless.
I get along fine with them, but some of them say a lot of ugly things about immigrants and minorities that make me not want to associate with them outside of work.