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Comment by onetwotree | Hacker News Reader

The really shocking bit of data is near the end -- many Americans would be deeply upset if their child were to marry someone of the opposite political party. This is making politics way too personal! I'm not sure how the country is going to recover from this state of polarization. The media isn't helping, and none of the current crop of political candidates seem to be addressing the need to rebuild the American consensus held in past generations, although this might change once the primaries are over.

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I have switched from a life long moderate Republican to a moderate Democrat. I think most of my friends think I am now going to Hell and I am a Hillary lover. I tell them that Republicans have no room for moderates. They make the craziest things up about Common Core, Environment and the nation's Safety Net. They have no idea how crazy they sound.

> I tell them that Republicans have no room for moderates.

Consider that the Democrats want no restrictions on ultra-late-term abortions. I think there's plenty of blame to go around here.

I've never understood why so many people allow abortion to so heavily influence their choice of party/political candidate. So few people will ever have abortions in their lives and yet everyone will pay taxes, receive health care and most of us will know someone in military service. These issues affect our lives in ways that are so much more profound than abortion does and yet we continually allow the two parties to distract us from these issues with the issue of abortion.

Note: I say this as the grandchild of someone who attempted to abort my mother after being raped by my grandfather. My grandmother's life was basically ruined when she was forced to marry her rapist after the then-illegal abortion failed. My mother, and transitively, me, would not exist had safe, legal abortions been available in 1940. Even with this intensely personal connection to the abortion issue, the issue has zero influence on how I vote. It boggles my mind that those with almost no personal connection to it let it influence their votes to the degree that they do.

> So few people will ever have abortions in their lives...

1. Few people are killed by cops. Does that mean the issue isn't important?

2. Abortion rates are higher than you probably realize. For example, in NYC over 1/3 of pregnancies are terminated [1]. And that's after it's been getting better. There are on the order of a million abortions every year, depending on how you count. You know a lot of people that have had terminated pregnancies. They just haven't told you about it.

3. Is it fair to be a single issue voter? If your perfect candidate in every other respect also planned to take away the right to vote from Native Americans, could you vote for her? Of course not.

The reason it's a controversial issue is because both sides see it as a human rights issue (like universal suffrage).

pro-choice:

* Women deserve autonomy

* They don't deserved to be punished and have their lives ruined due to mistakes and oversights in birth control

* Women are intelligent and deserve the benefit of the doubt about when abortion is a good choice or not

* Government should support women and their goals in their healthcare, not dictate their lives

pro-life:

* Unborn humans are humans, too, and deserve to be recognized as people with rights

* This is literally a civil rights issue on the order of importance of slavery, suffrage for women, or black civil rights

* Erring on the side of not killing is the right way to balance 'choice' with 'life'

* Bodily autonomy has limits in extreme circumstances (having sex in public, taking illicit drugs, wearing seatbelts)

* The sexism argument is a red herring. Half of children are women, and the most vocal pro-life proponents tend to be women as well.

Additionally, the pro-life side has procedural objections since there was never a democratic process for expanding the right to abortions. I agree with this point, which means I blame the Supreme Court and Roe v. Wade for all this animosity.

[1] http://nypost.com/2014/02/17/abortion-rate-plummets-in-new-y...

> If your perfect candidate in every other respect also planned to take away the right to vote from Native Americans, could you vote for her? Of course not.

If there's no reasonable way they could push that pet issue of theirs through (because the rest of Congress would just call them an idiot) then sure, why not?

It's sort of like the think/say distinction ("you can't get in trouble for thinking"), but taken another few notches further: politicans shouldn't really be judged for what they say they'll do, or even what they appear to attempt to do knowing they'll fail—only what they're likely to actually use power granted to them to accomplish.

Most candidates, once in power, are effectively centrists. With presidential candidates, there's the moderating influence of Congress and the Judicial system; but even with individual Congressmen or Senators, once they attain their positions, they're sitting atop a hierarchy of (technocratic) policy advisors that tend to—when all advising in the same direction—override the boss's personal preferences. If all your employees, all your lobbyists, and all the think-tanks say to do X, you're going to do X, even if you (and your "base") would rather do Y. (Which is why we call the thing the President heads the Executive branch: the President isn't much setting policy, they're effectively just executing policy decisions arising from the entirety of the D.C. strategic intelligence community.)

Thus, most candidate positions are postures: things said to signal allegiance to certain voting bases, in full knowledge of the fact that those promises will never (be allowed to) come to pass. Posturing is PR: a big machine which gets set aside when the election is over. And thus, posturing should be ignored—given no weight—when trying to predict the value of electing any given candidate. The candidate's posturing—their PR—has no predictive value on what they'll really accomplish when handed power.

If, on the other hand, you can look below the posturing, and figure out what each candidate will really do with power (which is much harder; it involves a lot of looking at who they have ties with and what promises or deals they've made to get power), then you can actually pick a candidate based on how you want the world to look in the future.

MYTH = Republicans are Pro-Life

Abortion is not a Democrat or Republican issue Don't fall into that lie. The Republicans had the White House and both Houses and did ZERO over the years they had this. The Connecticut Republican Platform is Officially Pro-Choice if a party wants to say they are lying for your vote. With Obama and a divided house the number of abortions are at a all time low since Roe v Wade as well as Teenage pregnancy.

There are 3 Republican US Senators who and 4 Republican Representatives who get 100% funding from the Republican Party. Where I live Charlie Dent is (R) and is Pro Chose and got everyone's backing when he ran against a Pro-Life Democrat. Think that will happen here is we will have a Pro-Life Democrat running for US Senate and he will have zero support from "Pro-Lifers" even though his record is much better then his opponent.

I am a Pro-Life Democrat and we have a Pro-life Democrat Senator and a Pro-Choice Republican. My "Pro-Life" friends supported the Pro-Choice candidate due to the Myth that Republicans are Pro-Life.

> Abortion is not a Democrat or Republican issue Don't fall into that lie. The Republicans had the White House and both Houses and did ZERO over the years they had this.

They're doing stuff in Texas and liberal groups are suing to overturn the rules. There are exceptions, but they are exceptions.

If abortion was an issue in the Democratic party, it would have come up in the debates. Not a single question in the Democratic debates had to do with abortion.

> MYTH = Republicans are Pro-Life

This kind of proves my point, actually. There are many more than two political positions here. You can be mostly pro-choice but think abortion at 8.5 months is a travesty.

I think you're looking at that very wrong. They want people to be able to decide what they do with their own bodies. That's leaves the maximum amount of room for everyone's opinion.

You don't want it? Don't do it.

> They want people to be able to decide what they do with their own bodies.

I actually understand the argument. For all the rest of you know, I actually wrote the above response myself (I didn't, but I could have).

The counterargument is that there are absolutely two people involved if a woman decides to abort on her due date. Even in liberal Western Europe abortions must be performed before certain gestation dates.

Now, this sort of absolutism makes a kind of logical sense. The kind that also makes legalization of heroin a defensible position. And there are smart, compassionate people who want to legalize heroin. Just not the President and every candidate in the Democratic primary.

Point being, there's no room for compromise on the abortion issue from the left. We could be talking about eight months versus seven months, what counts as a "medical exception", what forms of enforcement are fair, etc. But we're not. There's absolutely no room for compromise.

> Point being, there's no room for compromise on the abortion issue from the left.

Did you mean left? There's lots of discussion on the left about what time limits should be set; or how many doctors you need to persuade; or what conditions could extend the time limits; etc. But from the right there's a blanket "no abortion, ever, for any reason", with fucking stupid comments like "First of all, from what I understand from doctors, that's really rare. If it's a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down. But let's assume that maybe that didn't work or something. I think there should be some punishment, but the punishment ought to be on the rapist and not attacking the child."

My actual point was that the left is uncompromising as well. There are certainly absolutists on the right.

The fact that you brought up a foam-at-the-mouth comment from a disgraced former politician seems like a point for the there's-too-much-partisanship-on-the-left-too column.

There is actually common ground on the abortion issue, perhaps counter-intuitively. There is overwhelming support for reducing abortion rates, for example. The American people would absolutely be OK with a compromise that includes education, increased access to birth control, and bans on abortions after, say, 8 months of gestation.

You've mentioned this 8 month thing a few times. You probably need to know that there are good reasons why a woman might need to get an abortion at 8 months.

https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg22129580-200-the-worl...

Listening to anti-abortionists you'd think the woman just found the pregnancy inconvenient, when the reality is that the woman is going through an intensely traumatic time and having to cope with the loss of a much wanted child.

Except that there are two bodies, one is just attached with an umbilical cord.

You can rip that baby out (AKA C Section) and that baby lives. There has to be an issue when a 30+ week old fetus (Latin for little one) can be ripped apart piece by piece inside a mother's womb but if anyone did that to a new born outside the mother's womb that would be INSANE.

> They make the craziest things up about Common Core, Environment and the nation's Safety Net.

I find your selection of topic really interesting. I'm not a US citizen, but I'm on good terms with a lot of smart and reasonable people in US from all the political spectrum, from Bernie to Trump, and I've noticed a curious thing: the issues these people are talking about are different. Even if they are sometimes related (like taxes and government spending), red/blue teams don't make the connection.

When a friend of mine (highly intelligent developer at Facebook, btw) explains why he would vote for Trump, he doesn't mention any of these. He and others like him talk about gun laws, about foreign policy, macro-economics and capital flight.

If both parties weren't as polarized, I think they would be able to come to some compromise about these issues, allowing the adversary to get his way on some stuff that is just not as important for them. But the rhetoric I see is always polarized and absolute. People aren't ready even to ask the question about why would the other side think otherwise and assume good will even for a second. Instead, they immediately conjure racist/anti-american/anti-poor/communist strawmen.

I think Thomas Sowell's "A conflict of visions" should be mandatory reading at high school for this sort of reason. And not just in America. In every democracy. The book really is that good.

(it presents a very compelling theory as to why people separate into political left and right)

I might be reading your posts incorrectly but you appear as highly ideological and combative as said Republicans you know who sound 'crazy'. This is the problem with politics, everybody has their ideology and anybody with different ideology is insane, a heathen, inhuman, ect.

I've taken lately to becoming a Trump contrarian in social settings full of ideological group think which are students I hang out with for an Advanced Calculus by Sternberg and Loomis study group where afterwards the conversations always devolve into politics. Not that I would support any current politician let alone Trump but he was the easiest candidate to find blatant media misrepresentation, and I do find it an interesting social experiment to witness normally friendly people go into witch trial mode for daring to challenge their ideology.

I did the reverse and found the same is true the other way.

I seriously would be interested on what topics you find the same thing.

I FORGOT to say minimum wages I just find it crazy that we provide the safety net for low wages for large profitable corporations and that they want to continue supplying workers for them on the backs of tax dollars.

I think you should put some time and effort into researching who in America works for a minimum wage, how long they work for minimum wage, what economists think about minimum wage. I typically find that if I find something 'crazy', and can't believe that 'the other side' would have such an ignorant view, it just means I don't understand the problem.

I see it all the time though that is anecdotal evidence.

I use to be a librarian and I do a lot of statistical work and analysis but I am not an expert but everything I have looked at that is anti-minimum wage I can usually always trace back the money to corporations or some private entity that feels they benefit from low wages. The Pro-Wealth and down trodden the poor has been going on for centuries and we are doing a better job BUT we can do so much better.

I fail to see the proper small government view of low wages. These people HAVE TO HAVE MONEY so instead of their job paying them tax payers are making up the slack. WIC,Health Care, Food Stamps would go away with higher wages but instead we continue to give the money to corporations.

It doesn't make much sense that I've provided you with anecdotal evidence, as I have not provided you with any evidence at all. My suggestion was that you do real research on the topic. You've made a number of generalizations that you should really research. Factor out just one of your statements and describe each item in it. 'These people HAVE TO HAVE MONEY' - who are these people and how much money should they have? How much are their jobs paying them and how much tax payer money is making up the slack? What is the slack? How do health care and food stamps go away with higher wages? What are 'higher wages' in this context? How are we giving money to the corporations? Who is we in this sentence? Once you start to answer those questions with real evidence, then you can come up with solutions to each of those problems, create models for how those solutions will impact other problems and existing solutions. I won't tell you what you'll find, and I doubt you'll actually follow through, but it is unlikely that you'll persuade anyone with the current form of your argument.

I think you may have misinterpreted baldfat's first sentence.

> I see it all the time though that is anecdotal evidence.

He's saying that he "sees it all the time," but he recognizes that this is only "anecdotal evidence."

> I seriously would be interested on what topics you find the same thing.

All the nation-wide issues that could easily be state issues.

This is making politics way too personal!

Governments have never been as powerful, influential, or pervasive as they are now. Even at the height of the Roman Empire, the machinations of the Senate and the Caesar had less impact on the average citizen's life than today.

It's fairly natural to assume that as the scope and influence of government grows, the more personal politics will become, as it affects our lives to increasing degrees.

This schism will only get worse as governments become larger and more intrusive.

Would you be okay if your child married a neo-Nazi who believed strongly in the white nation's victory in the coming race-war?

Because that's politics. I wouldn't let someone like that near my children at Christmas because of potential memetic contagion, much less enjoy having a conversation with them.

Lesser degrees of disagreement are lesser degrees of disagreement, but political positions are personal beliefs about the philosophy of how we cooperate with each other and what we should be doing, not simply different teams to root for at the big game every four years.

Not sure if you meant it this way, but the insight that I drew from your comment was:

When we think that either A or B are not super important beliefs, or we are observing from such a distance that the differences between A and B seem small, then we feel the people are narrow minded and prejudiced if they strongly hold on to their belief and are openly discriminatory against the other.

However, when we personally and strongly think that one of the beliefs is completely evil or unacceptable, then we feel that the distinction is justified and that it's okay to not just oppose it, but also feel confident enough to do so openly and with pride.

TLDR; It's much easier to be non-discriminatory if we (or our belief system) don't (doesn't) have any skin in the game.

> Because that's politics. I wouldn't let someone like that near my children at Christmas because of potential memetic contagion, much less enjoy having a conversation with them.

I find this comment interesting. I think that most people, or perhaps most people just a few years ago, tolerated such ideas because they knew they didn't stand a chance in the battleground of ideas; you didn't have to worry about your children picking it up because it was so obviously wrong.

This, on the other hand, implies that ideas can be so dangerous people (especially children? only children?) must avoid exposure to them lest they be swayed.

Neither US political party is Nazi. The unthinking demonization of 'the enemy' lies at the heart of this problem.

Clearly too many of us have become fond of identifying ourselves through membership in Party X. Shaping my world view around a political agenda by wholeheartedly embracing their entire platform is unnatural and illogical. But to take the next step and label nonparty folk as unbelievers and infidels creates a problem that's impossible to fix through rational discussion, much less leading to the design of workable policy. At best it's bad policy.

But party-based exclusion really isn't politics. It's just gangsterism.

> Would you be okay if your child married a neo-Nazi who believed strongly in the white nation's victory in the coming race-war?

I would probably be unhappy about that. But - as you say, lesser degrees of disagreement are lesser degrees of disagreement.

I don't think that it's always making politics too personal, to be upset about the political opinions of your child's spouse. I do think that if those political opinions are held by ~50% of the country, then that does seem to be making politics too personal.

The only way out I can see is to make government small enough (or homogeneous enough) that one's opinion doesn't matter much. That's the way it was in America for much of the 20th century - there wasn't much difference between the major political parties. When people are trying to remake society through the political process, is it any wonder that is polarizing?

So how should people remake their country if not through the political process? Through armed rebellion? I'd say that's rather polarizing too.

I think the solution goes back to an old civic ideal that's central to a successful democracy. Duty. If Americans dutifully studied the issues, civilly discussed the alternative policies (knowing there must be tradeoffs and delays as different solutions are tested and refined), and participated constructively in the process as if their children's future depended on it, we wouldn't have time to bitch and moan. And we'd rightly shame those who do for being childish and useless.

> there wasn't much difference between the major political parties

That's not my understanding of 20th century politics at all. You'll need to elaborate on what qualifies as "much difference". Roe V. Wade, for example, happened right in the middle of the 20th century.

I don't know which period the parent may be referring to, but if you believe in Mr. Monroe's methodology[0], you can definitely see the reduction in moderates on both sides starting at a peak around 1930.

[0]: https://xkcd.com/1127/large/

He means from the New Deal to the nomination of Goldwater when Democrats controlled Congress and Republicans weren't as polarized or conservative

>> many Americans would be deeply upset if their child were to marry someone of the opposite political party.

I's not a political problem , it's a societal one. Even in Israel , where there's has been no consensus and there has been quite a bit of political polarization ,most people don't take it that personal.

My family was traditionally extreme right wing (My dad likes Trump, is racist, is a young earth creationist, etc), but both my sister and I ended up being pretty moderate, if slightly liberal leaning (we are both Socially Liberal, Financially Conservative), and my wife, who has similar parents (though not as extreme) is considering voting Democrat (Sanders, but not Hillary, definitely not Trump, if he wins, we might move to Canada - for real)

Anecdata and all that, but I still get along well with my parents, and my wife, hers. We avoid religion and politics (though if it comes up we kinda stay quiet while the other rants, no arguing).

I consider myself Moderate and really don't like the "foam at the mouth" extremes on either side, to be honest, I don't understand the need to go to that extreme, and to fight and argue so passionately about it.

This is a bit off topic, but how exactly do you plan on moving to Canada?

My longterm girlfriend is Canadian and I am American. I'm a mechanical engineer with work experience. I have yet to find a realistic way for me to just "move to Canada".

There's a point-based skills assessment for skilled workers. If you get 67 points you can immigrate to Canada and become a permanent resident. Once you're there you have complete freedom of movement - it's like a green card as opposed to being on a work visa. You may be able to qualify for a NAFTA work visa as well, but if you want actual residency as an engineer you're probably better off applying for permanent residency.

http://www.cic.gc.ca/english/immigrate/skilled/apply-factors...

Canada isn't Utopia - it can be hard to find engineering jobs, housing is expensive in big cities and cost of living is higher than the US. There's a reason why so many Canadian engineers end up moving to the US.

I know it is not a Utopia. I have spent a lot of time there, both with her and when my mother was working in Toronto. It looks like I've only managed to score a 66...

Language:24 (English CLB:9) Education:21 (B.Sc. M.Eng) Experience:1 year full-time (MAYBE stretch to 2 years..) Age:12 Arranged Employment:0 Adaptability:0 (if she was my spouse or common law this wouldn't be needed..)

It's possible I could get the points for the French language with a few months of study and if I "extend" my work experience based on past part time/freelance type employment to two years.

Does having a score of 67 "guarantee" my immigration or does it just qualify me for the pool of candidates?

It looks like arranging employment would do it.

Easier said than done these days as a M.E.. A great deal of M.E.'s that are born in Canada are having trouble finding a job since the oil market is down so far.

For a qualified American, I think a NAFTA visa makes a lot more sense for the potential wave of American "trumpfugees" - first requires them to get a job (and still want to accept it after doing the conversion back to USD :) and also have an easier path to the realization that Canada is actually a different country with a culture that they may not be willing to embrace.

Digging around a bit it seems like the Canadian equivalent of the TN status page is here: http://www.cic.gc.ca/english/resources/tools/temp/work/inter...

Basically get a job offer, have the correct qualifications and be on the NAFTA approved professions list, apply at your point of entry.

That's really interesting. Often in the past 20 years I've considered such a move, largely in response to the trends in US politics and policy.

As a Michigander I think I have a fair sense of what it'd be like to live in the climate of the Great White North, but not as much feel for the economy or the culture. It'd be fascinating to hear from folks who have made that move, especially with a view to assimilation: Canadian citizenship.

In my view, everything you need to understand the difference, culturally and economically, between Canada and the United States, follows from two important phrases found in the respective founding documents of the countries:

"Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness" - America

"Peace, Order and Good Government" - Canada

Canada and the US have, as part of NAFTA, an agreement to grant work visas right at the border for 'professionals', including engineers. It's a straightforward process.

http://www.cic.gc.ca/english/work/special-business.asp#nafta http://www.nafsa.org/_/file/_/amresource/8cfr2146.htm

I haven't dug into any specifics yet so it's probably harder than I imagine. It's actually been a dream of mine for some time anyway; not to get away from the US, just that I love Victoria and Vancouver and Vancouver Island. I have some family friends that did it, and live in Vancouver (moved there 15+ years ago), and we'd probably plan on talking to them about the pain points too. Work might be harder for me, as mentioned in other comments, but my wife might not have as much issue being a Physical Therapist (just a guess to be honest).

I'd love to move to other Countries as an alternative though; New Zealand and parts of Sweden or Norway sound pretty good (the milder climate areas). I have that digital nomad itch, but married with a kid so that keeps me more tied down, and don't actually like the heat, so the typical places don't interest me much.

My father is very conservative on most issues, where I am very liberal on most issues. We still get along perfectly because politics is not that important. He's still my dad, still a great person, and still an exceedingly good debater.

I have conservative friends and relatives as well, and we get along just fine -- the trick is to see the person and not the ideology. This is why this statistic is so shocking to me. So your kid fell in love with someone from the opposite party, and you can't see why your kid fell in love with them through your ideological glasses?

Probably you are able to interact civilly because you want to maintain a positive relationship. So you don't dismiss the other without a fair hearing and exchange of perspective. Fundamentally, you respect each other.

I think the primary source of Americans' anger is the disrespect for other peoples' opinions that's spoon fed into us 24x7 by the mass media, who cares much less for civil discourse than a good fistfight that attracts more viewers.

The rise in America's anti-populism starts with the rise of broadcast hate speech, IMHO.

Politics is personal for many people. For example, reproductive rights are being eroded by one party, and not the other. If reproductive rights are important to a person, then politics is personal and important to them. If someone is poor and rely on food stamps, then politics is personal and important them. If politics isn't personal for you, i'm glad for you, but i think you can understand why it can be very personal for others.

There was never an American consensus. There is just a dominant culture that tries to erase a history of conflict and astroturf it with a false narrative of unity.

I'm disappointed that you're getting downvoted - this point rings very true (And is quite reminiscent of the sentiment in A Letter from a Burmingham Jail[1]).

[1] http://www.africa.upenn.edu/Articles_Gen/Letter_Birmingham.h...

It's probably because political party is now a stand-in for whether you intrinsically think all of society needs to work together or its every in-group for themselves.

Both precepts have merits depending on your general outlook on life, but they are diametrically opposed in terms of how you think people should act in the large and small.

Which party is the one that wants everyone to work together for the common good, and which party is the one looking out only for its constituent in-groups?

I would guess that he means Democrats for the former and Republicans for the latter, but I'm not the person you replied to.

I would be upset if my child married someone of either political party.

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