It’s actually quite rare for a person you meet in real life in the US to discuss politics at all, as most people here are bored to death by political debates. I have met a few people who could steer just about any innocuous conversation into a heated political discussion, but these individuals clearly didn’t have much going for them in life. Perhaps they were trying to find someone else to blame for all of their personal failings in life, and political conspiracy theories serve that need.
By contrast, people who are mentally healthy and have successful careers/friendships/finances/relationships don’t seem all that interested in politics. They have better things to do with their time.
Liberals and conservatives increasingly do not live in the same communities. They are self selecting out of having friends from the other political party by choosing where they live. They may not realize they are sorting themselves by political alignment, but that is exactly what they are doing.
To the extent that people avoid speaking about politics in mixed groups is not because they’re uninterested in politics. It’s because the are intentionally avoiding conflict.
I’ve been in very uncomfortable situations in which my doctor or auto repairman suddenly brings up politics while we are involved in a professional transaction. I’ve had to figure out how to avoid getting into it. And it’s not because any of us don’t care about it.
Politics is now about the most intimate details of a person’s life—am I allow to carry a gun, am I allowed to marry the person of my choice, am I allowed to bring my relatives into the country, am I allowed to refuse service to people whose beliefs or lifestyle offend me, etc., and what are my neighbors doing that restrict my life in ways I don’t want?
The people who seem not to care about such things are people who have already largely surrounded themselves with people who agree with them.
But Joe Bloggs who rants continuously against the Evil Terrorist Mooslems coming here, getting a new house, a new car and fabulous welfare payments (more than an Aus citizen) (none of which is true by the way), will still probably vote for the Left party because, as much as he hates the ETM’s, he hates the Rich Bastard’s Club of the Right even more.
At the same time, you might have Lady Josephine Bloggs who has always voted Right, who rallies regularly to shut down the detention centres on Nauru and Manus Island, opens her home to refugees evading apprehension and donates substantially to such causes. Some might even call her a SJW.
I just think the ‘dividing’ lines seem to be a lot fuzzier here in Aus, and I suspect Canada too.
Well, for climate change there IS only one side. For all the other topics you’ve mentioned, I can at least entertain the notion that the other side is debating in good faith. I think they’re wrong, and misguided, but at least their reasoning is comprehensible.
Climate change is where my patience breaks down. The ‘other side’ is people who claim that it is a lie, or a Chinese conspiracy, or whatever other gibberish they are pushing this week. There is no ‘other side’ worth discussing. And frankly, I can’t imagine why I should waste my time and theirs trying to convince someone of basic factual information when they willfully choose to disbelieve it.
Could that be because they’re more in agreement with you, a right-of-center voter, than those on the left are?
Also, what issues are you agreeing and disagreeing on?
I’m somewhere in the middle, leftish on some issues (mostly social), more conservative on economics and foreign affairs (although those definitions have changed a lot in the last couple years).
But I’ve had a lot more people scream and unfriend me for being too liberal than too conservative.
I think social issues often carry more weight in determining how others consider us: I’m a self-made millionaire, very pro-gun rights, and a deficit hawk. I’m also pro-immigrant (my father was one), I favor equal rights for LGBT people, and I’m an atheist. My liberal friends are more likely to consider me a moderate, whereas conservative friends (the ones who haven’t unfriended me) think I’m a liberal.
If you saw the news from the US, you may have seen that the president mocked and mimicked the victim of sexual assault while his crowd laughed and cheered. That’s why were separating. There is no compromise with that. We have constructed separate cultures that are in direct conflict with one another. The reason people here are reporting that they don’t have a lot of political conflict is because they don’t know they are already in their assigned bubble. Americans aren’t the most introspective people which is why an authoritarian movement is taking root here.
So, hope this isn’t a hijack, but would conservatives and liberals be better off living in a neatly-partitioned North America where they only have to interact with their own kind - essentially, each living in a 180-million strong echo chamber? Half and half of the land.
Not asking how this could be done, and this isn’t a secession debate, but asking whether it would be psychologically best.
That is the reality now. We increasingly live separated from each other as I have noted with a number of cites. It is not in our long term interests as it leads to the kind of radicalism you see now. There is little need to compromise when everyone already agrees with you.
That’s not the reality I was postulating, though. Right now, today, conservatives and liberals still run into perhaps 100 people every day who are the political opposite of them. Even in downtown San Francisco or rural Alabama you’d still run into many R’s and D’s.
I meant more like, two countries in which one is essentially nothing but deep red and 99% of everyone you meet is red and one of nothing but deep blue and 99% of everyone you meet is blue.
For the answer to all such questions who can you turn to but the Yes Minister/Prime Minister Diaries of the Hon Jim Hacker
[QUOTE=Yes Minister Vol 1 “A Victory for Democracy”]
Foreign and Commonwealth Office
London SW1A 2AH
18th April
Dear Bernard
I shall be happy to attend your meeting tomorrow. This bit of bother of St. Georges is getting to be a bit of a bore.
For your own background information, I believe that we made the real mistake twenty years ago when we gave them their independence.
Of course, with the wind of change and all that, independence was inevitable. But we should have partitioned the island as we did in India and Cyprus and Palestine and Ireland. This was our invariable practice when we gave independence to the colonies, and I cant think why we varied it. It always worked.
It has been argued by some people that the policy of partition always led to Civil War. It certainly did in India and Cyprus and Palestine and Ireland. This was no bad thing for Britain. It kept them busy and instead of fighting us they fought each other. This meant that it was no longer necessary to have a policy about them.
[/quote]
I’ve had a number of queer friends who’ve had their lives threatened by ‘those on the right’ for doing things like buying groceries while looking too butch. And not ‘back 30 years ago’, but ‘last month’. I don’t believe the idea behind that sentiment, I’m pretty sure that if I went around to a bunch of redneck bars wearing a dress (I’m a guy) and a rainbow flag that ‘those on the right’ would not actually say something like “I disagree with you, but lets have a beer together”, instead I think it’s highly likely that I’d end up beaten up or dead. Do you think that if you went around to some bars frequented by right wing voters while wearing the wrong clothes for your sex, that you’d actually be safe and they’d just tell you they disagree and have a beer with you?
And this isn’t even taking an extreme political stance of any sort, this is just buying some clothes that the other person thinks aren’t appropriate for you to wear.
Your suggestion is similar to an experiment I’ve long proposed to Christians who claim that they encounter more hostility than non-believers: I, and the believer, will dress in similar attire and carry picket signs. Mine will be generically proselytizing (“Jesus is Lord”); his will say “There’s no God”.
The first one to get his teeth punched out wins the debate.
Aus is party-political for structural reasons. This means that whatever you want, you get it by standing by the party line, not by striking out to the left or right. The money follows the party, not the individual reps. The amount of money available is proportional to our smaller size.
This is not universally true, and the present situation is unstable, but it’s the broad background.
It’s not clear why American politics is noticeably more corrupt than Aus politics. One theory was that it’s more noticeable because American politics is more democratic than English/Aus politics was. In any case, Aus politics is corrupt to the extent than money can buy influence: because of the political structure, that is smaller than is the case in the USA.
Exactly. I’m more than willing to discuss my political differences with someone. The problem is that we are long past that point. We aren’t disagreeing about politics, we are disagreeing about morality. Republicans have consistently demonstrated that they have none. I wouldn’t want to live with a Republican for the same reason I wouldn’t want to live near a thief or a rapist. Their morality is depraved and incomprehensible to me.
Relevant to the question, the guy in this Colbert interview has written a book on exactly this subject. The link goes to where they start discussing the book, he talks about Newt Gingrich’s steering of the R party to stand on one side of the multiple divides in US politics and widen the gap.
I don’t know. I think a man putting on a dress and walking into a “redneck bar” is a pretty strong political/cultural statement. What is he trying to say? Is he sending a message or not?
What if a scantily clad woman walked into a male gathering in Saudi Arabia? She’s just wearing clothes the other person thinks aren’t appropriate to wear, right? Is she sending a message/making a statement or not?
What does Saudi Arabia have to do with the US? Are you saying that parts of America are approaching the kind of oppression of women you see in theocracies?
Yeah, that’s not helping the case. “Look, redneck bars aren’t really politically extreme, I mean, they treat people they see as non-conforming no worse than the Saudis do!”
It’s a nice real-world of the divide in America that the OP asked about though. One America thinks that oppression is ok as long as it doesn’t reach Saudi levels.