If true, then people are losing focus on what's important. Half of my family is extremely conservative. Half is very liberal. We get along great at family gatherings, because we just agreed that discussing politics is less important than family relationships.
Maybe that will play out over the next couple years, now that the latest political developments seem to have really stretched the boundaries. Perhaps we will collectively decide it just isn't worth it to squabble. If we get super lucky we will realize we are being played, and we'll join together and turn on those who are driving the division.
Except politics dominate every faucet of your life and if you "get along" with your family members, your just lucky you aren't the target of their derision. This isn't even a liberal vs conservative thing. If someone's beliefs denigrate you, how can you tolerate being around them even if they try to keep that stuff quiet?
How do politics dominate every faucet of your life? My life is not affected at all when the government changes, except I pay slightly different taxes, and the news is different.
Even if politics significantly affect you, I don't see why you can't get along with someone who's beliefs could negatively affect you, as long as they don't hold those beliefs with the goal of hurting you personally. Everyone has reasons for their political beliefs, I think those reasons are more important than the beliefs themselves - if someone is anti-immigration because they are worried about national security, I think that is a fine opinion and I could get along with that person. If they have that opinion because they dislike mexicans, I would probably not like them so much.
I got a few downvotes around the time Trump got elected[0] because I tried to say here that maybe we should look into why people made this choice instead of being angry with them.
At that time, for days on end it felt a good chunk of users would bulk downvote everyone whos opinion was more nuanced than black and white and most voters are too dumb to understand their own good. (A good chunk of users also upvoted but since I think I write reasonable comments I hope they upvoted me because of that, not just because I seemed more aligned with them :-P )
[0] I still don't like him, and I repeatedly said so then too
There is multiple aspect that your comment brings up, but I will try limit it down to a couple.
> how can you tolerate being around them even if they try to keep that stuff quiet?
Relationships are not defined by someone's beliefs. To take a less emotional relationship, that of coworkers, its healthy if people of different religions can work together even if most religions denigrate unbelievers. Polarization and strict separation of people under different religions has a long history of violence and nations that have people of multiple religions "getting along" is usually seen as a sign of progress.
Going back to relationship within a family, it likely when there is a strong difference in political or religious believes that both parties will view the others view as laughable and ridiculous. There might be someone expressing a religious experience and the other person mentioning Flying Spaghetti Monster. Neither is ground for not having a nice Christmas dinner and reminiscing about childhood memories. Occasionally politics or religion will pop up and in my experience it is either dropped instantly or becomes part of friendly banter.
Honestly, I don’t really have any political faucets in my life. Just the regular ones: Two in each bathroom and one over the kitchen sink. Haven’t given too much thought about whether they were liberal or conservative—they just dispense water.
You suppose that some beliefs are denigrating others. I will guess you are a liberal that sees the world as 'Oppressors vs Oppressed' ?
I believe on the contrary that you can have political beliefs that are philosophical and ethical and way above some group-politics that sees some groups oppressing others.
what I'm saying is that if you believe in universal Healthcare or into the free market, it shouldn't change relationships.
I would agree, if those were the things that were dividing the average voter. However, having two daughters, friends who are LGBT, and being a man with more melanin in my skin than the average European, I find contemporary 'Social Conservatism' to be completely unacceptable. It doesn't help that social issues, along with the fact that studies are regularly finding that racial resentment and sexism, are very strong predictors for conservative voters.
I wish it was Universal Healthcare vs. Free Market, that way we could have rational discussions on most issues.
I dunno, I'm trying to square "political beliefs that are [...] above some group-politics that sees some groups oppressing others" with, well, okay, I have two close friends who are trans, and one of them lives in one of those states that's been doing the trans bathroom laws.
How am I supposed to square this ideal that politics doesn't need to involve oppressing people, when I see this one friend who's basically being told she can't legally use the bathroom that's right for her?
And what are you supposed to do when several of your relatives do not exercise this level of restraint and insist on steering the conversation toward politics?
Turn the other cheek. Steer the conversation back towards something less contentious. If necessary, confront them... but not as a partisan. Challenge them to abstain from political discussion in favor of a happier conversation. If they really cannot be adult enough to make that choice, then it really isn't politics that is the problem, it's just a symptom.
why, explain vehemently just how naturally sane and correct your opposing opinion is, naturally. if they wanted the right to speak, they’d have the right politics in the first place and the really important thing is to make sure they know that
Are we talking about having a nice dinner with someone or are we talking about petulantly asserting our "rights"? Someone is well within their "rights" to not stay somewhere they are not being made welcome.
My family is similarly divided, except we do talk about politics. If anything, our last Thanksgiving was longer than usual...
Politics is not "squabbling". America is a democracy - decentralized discussion of ideas is how democracy works. Social cohesion through silence is what creates hyperpartisan cultures like our own.
The problem is most Americans use mass media as their role model for communication... and modern media thrives on angry controversy.
Don't evangelize or try to convince, just deeply understand the other person. What values does a person hold (their "axioms"), and how are those prioritized? What opinions make up their practical world view, how do they resolve conflicts... unwrap the onion one layer at a time. And let them do the same to you.
The act of explaining often tunes people in to inconsistencies in their belief, and erodes the emotional foundation. From there, techniques like the Socratic method are useful for debate
That is easy to do when you are all similar in race and class. But if you have a truly diverse family that crosses all sorts of intersectionalities (race, gender, class, religion, nationalites, etc.) you end up trying to avoid a lot of landmines.
It's easy to agree to not talk about politics when you agree on everything else.
If my grandfather did that, he wouldn't do it a second time (at least, he'd know he'd better not do it within my hearing). Not that either of my grandfathers would have done that (I think).
Yes, I know, grandfathers with thicker heads than mine exist. Even if they can't get it through their heads that such views are wrong, maybe they can understand that people get in their grill every time they say it, and the whole family turns against them. After a few times, they may start to get the idea that they shouldn't say such things. (Or maybe they never will. Either way, I don't think I'm going to let racist comments about individuals slide in my family.)
I have a [southern baptist] brother who, while visiting us for Thanksgiving, lectured to his children in front of us about how we were all sinners who lived evil lives doing evil things. I assure you he said some things that were every bit as offensive as racist comments.
I disagree. Lots of people think it's perfectly acceptable to say terrible things about (people they think are) Mexican. You can readily predict the political alignment of the people who do think such things are acceptable. I would not be surprised if their behavior extended to other groups, such as Muslims.
Additionally, a subset of these people also believe that it should be socially acceptable to say disparaging things about blacks, Jews, and other groups that "enjoy" social protection from such behavior.
An individual's drug addiction is not a political issue, even though it predicts their political leanings around drug legalization. An individual's racism or xenophobia is not a political issue, even though it predicts their political leanings around immigration.
If politicians 1) talk about something a lot, and 2) take separate sides of the matter, then it's a political issue.
Drug addiction absolutely is a political issue, and a hot one at that. Same with race issues and immigration. White bread or wheat would be an example of a non-political issue.
It's possible that you live in a country where these are not political issues, but I'm from the USA and these topics are discussed by politicians on a daily basis. They have the secret to fixing the heroin issue, or the immigration crisis, or the Muslim terrorists, etc.
That doesn't make it a political issue though, because there isn't really any serious debate about it. Just because more racists support Republicans doesn't make it a political issue unless racism is something a significant amount of Republicans are supportive of.
How so? Were there politicians debating on whether it was OK to be racist? Being anti-immigration is not racism regardless of how you feel about the topic.
Except that it's amazing how many people will say racist things after disclaiming, "this may not be politically correct...[insert racist garbage here]"
My understanding is that truly racist people don’t even acknowledge or mention races they despise. It’s a bit different if your grandfather (or parents for that matter) refuse to ever see you again because you’re dating someone from a race they despise, versus them making an ignorant statement. Not sure which is better, but I think you can correct someone’s mistaken beliefs by simply having a discussion.
Its a nice dream. It’ll never happn. All it takes is one family member acting out, and lacking complete self awareness about it, to cause everyone else to regret being arund family.
I’ve know pople to change their likes and beliefs. I’ve never known anyone to change their psychology. A narcissist is always a narcissist. Unfortunately.
Ideology is a relatively new (taking the long view of human history) mechanism for demarcating tribal affiliation that is a uniquely powerful tool for sowing discord and disunity among people who otherwise have every reason to owe allegiance to and be socially bound to one another.
Using Popper as an excuse for not engaging with those you find intolerant is lazy. The paradox is that unlimited - not any - tolerance is self-defeating. Here's the man himself on the subject:
> I do not imply, for instance, that we should always suppress the utterance of intolerant philosophies; as long as we can counter them by rational argument and keep them in check by public opinion, suppression would certainly be unwise. But we should claim the right to suppress them if necessary even by force; for it may easily turn out that they are not prepared to meet us on the level of rational argument, but begin by denouncing all argument; they may forbid their followers to listen to rational argument, because it is deceptive, and teach them to answer arguments by the use of their fists or pistols. We should therefore claim, in the name of tolerance, the right not to tolerate the intolerant. -- The Open Society and Its Enemies
Popper doesn't conclude that one must absolutely intolerate intolerance, but that one must reserve the right to not tolerate intolerance when the expression of that intolerance "answers arguments by the use of their fists or pistols." One might even argue that by refusing to "meet them on the level of rational argument, but beginning by denouncing all argument" you are in fact that intolerant person that Popper argues must be met with intolerance.
This is a great example of what I keep trying to get people to recognize.
The trending method of improving diversity and inclusivity is through exclusivity.
This will not work. People and groups who don't talk to each other grow further apart and trust each other less.
It is a short step from being willing to dismiss opinions with a simple "that's racist" to being unable to discuss reality. See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16908414 for an example of a conversation that is hard to have when you dismiss other people's views with "that's racist".
To take an obvious example, I'm sure his friends thought he was a swell guy, but I don't think we need to revisit Hitler's ideas about the Jews. I don't think we need to give much serious thought to theories about moon landing hoaxes or theories about how the Earth is flat either, no matter how nice the people promulgating them may be. We are only given so much time on this Earth; I can think of better ways to spend it than seriously engaging with obvious claptrap.
Everyone I know (and know of) espouses obvious claptrap from time to time. If that is the sieve with which you denote undesirables to remove from your personal sphere, your circle either has a radius of 1 or you delude yourself about your detection abilities.
However at this point "racists" organized and wound up controlling Congress, the Senate, the Presidency and the Supreme Court. The people that you'd like to ignore are currently running the place. Ignoring them might not be the best idea...
It's pretty unlikely that any dyed-in-the-wool Republican is going to hear your rational argument and be so astonished at your doctrine that he changes his mind.
I don't think this kind of exercise is that difficult, and I get plenty of practice on HN talking to people who have very right-wing ideas about the economy. But come on; it's not a way of working miracles. You might persuade your uncle who loves Donald Trump to moderate a couple of positions; you aren't going to turn him away from the Republican Party.
This is the main reason that election campaigns have moved on and focus much more heavily on turning out their own supporters than persuading "undecided" voters, who are a statistical nullity.
Is that what's at issue here? I think very few people -- nearly none -- are actually open to being rationally persuaded to completely flip their political beliefs. People with completely different political commitments usually start from different axioms.
What is a racist? Is this a fixed idea or does it change year to year and depend on the context? Shouldn't we be careful about writing off people based on fluctuating social mores? What about fascists, Marxists, communists, and anarchists? And, say, Trump supporters? Do they deserve basic human respect? Is there any reason not to dehumanize these groups too? Or others who fail our moral tests?
I lived with my sisters kid who was 22 at the time. We decided to do Christmas at our apartment. So about 30 people crammed into our two bedroom place. Coreys dad came and and was wearing a MAGA hat and shirt. Then he said Trump will win and my beaner girlfriend will be deported. He is a cop in Vancouver Washington at this very moment.
So I just grab a book and six pack and head to the roof of the the Jack in the Box a few blocks away. Easy to get up there and I can read and drink in peace.
Fast forward a year.
Now I live alone. Christmas at my apartment. Corey is in San Diego. The Trump supporter who has no real connection to any family that will be at my apartment asks for directions to the C-mas party. I tell him he is not invited. He is not happy. I do not care.
Seriously. Life is short. I am not going to try to get along with openly racist people. They can die in a fire.
Maybe that will play out over the next couple years, now that the latest political developments seem to have really stretched the boundaries. Perhaps we will collectively decide it just isn't worth it to squabble. If we get super lucky we will realize we are being played, and we'll join together and turn on those who are driving the division.