How to Get Beyond Tribal Politics | Hacker News Reader

How to Get Beyond Tribal Politics

wsj.com

I wonder to what degree the recent bifurcation in American politics may call for a slight return to more local governance. Much of the mistrust seems to originate in the idea that the [coastals|hicks] will get an outsized say in their inverse communities. If Alabama wants to teach that the world is 10kyo then is that really the worst thing? I think it's pretty bad, I think that it dooms a generation of Alabamans to not work in STEM jobs (statistically), but the cost might be worth it to depressurize the political environment across the country. The other likely option seems continued mutual alienation and eventual political violence. I don't like the idea of leaving more liberally inclined pockets of Americans to the whims of their more conservative and populous neighbors but presumably the inverse is also true so it might be a worthy compromise. The final point I'll make is that the virtue of different approaches will be born out in the variable results of states approaches and vindicate or indict them, ultimately leading to a gradual consensus.

Caveat: yes this would be super dangerous for a lot of liberal priorities (topically trans rights comes to mind). There is however the overriding reality that the legitimacy of government needs to be overwhelmingly accepted in a healthy democracy and telling 40% of the country to pound sand may be ultimately more counterproductive.

What would be nice is for people to start checking members of their own tribe or party. Saying Trump is Hitler and things of that nature is ridiculous. Republicans are not the KKK. Tell your friends to tone it down a notch.

On the other side when some can only describe liberals as libtards or some such juvenile insult there is a problem. Or when a tiny group on campus does something ridiculous and then extremists say all liberals are like them.

Stop puting up FB posts on something political that don't cite sources. If it doesn't have a easily linkable source then it is almost always a half truth. Most situations are shades of gray.

The whole Hitler thing is strangely universal. I've previously read about Abe being compared to Hitler.

A stranger incident was a picture of Modi next to a Swastika - the (Indian) authors found no irony in using a Hindu symbol, and embedding in it the European epistemology of "Aryan pure blood", in order to appeal to people who they were appealing to.

Admittedly the elites of the latter are indistinguishable from those in the US, and this is imaginably true of Japan too.

Is this true outside the Anglosphere and their peripheries too ?

Edit: I think Assange has the situation right. Trump is symbolic of "White trash" - much as Modi is symbolic of the un-anglicized mass in India. Their opposition, dub themselves with various epithets like "progressive" "liberal" "secular" etc.. until the cows come home.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_sbT3_9dJY4

That said, it should be noted that this doesn't necessarily mean the contenders are going to do anything drastically different from the status-quo. Certainly has been true in India.

> A stranger incident was a picture of Modi next to a Swastika - the (Indian) authors found no irony in using a Hindu symbol, and embedding in it the European epistemology of "Aryan pure blood", in order to appeal to people who they were appealing to.

You're missing some context -- that most Indian-locals have. Swatika is a common religious symbol used on everything from new stationary to inaugurations/events. The "Nazi"-ness of it is likely unknown to most.

So it would only be strange to those for whom the symbol is only taught/learnt in the Hitler-WW2 context.

The polar sentiments and social divide in America that Trump took advantage of will not go away after the election. I really don't want them to be swept under the rug, but I worry about the civil unrest if we continue to debate each other in such barbaric ways.

"in such barbaric ways."

This is the crux of it, I think. We need to push back on the vitriol by not letting it suck us in. Over the past couple of weeks there's been a few pockets of discussion on approaches to doing this in a more civil manner.

- Crocker's Rules: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12881288

- Principle of Charity: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12774600

- Rapaport's Rules: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12774692

> that Trump took advantage

You mean the division that was caused by the current administration?

The divide in this country was here before the election... it's why the "alternative" candidates (Trump and Bern) were on track to win (if not for DNC shenanigans). People are sick of politics as normal.

Those politics are driving the wedge between groups, causing cops to be ambushed and are destroying this country/world from the inside out.

It's clear you have strong opinions about this, which indicates you care. That's great.

I agree with you that the Trump comment was unnecessary, but agree with the sentiment of the rest. I chose to ignore that small part of the statement to focus on the part we agree on.

The manner in which you're expressing those opinions sound like you're trying to call the gp out rather than try to figure a constructive way forward. Do you disagree? Do you think there is a way forward? If so, what is your method? Does your comment support that method?

One thing you agree with the gp on is that a wedge is being driven, and it sounds like you also believe that's a bad thing. How can we work together to mend that?

It's hard to say how we get past the polarization that is dividing everyone. Past the partisan politics.

It's hard to arrive at a constructive conversation for complex topics within the span of a text message - or a few paragraphs.

Both sides are pulled further left/right and people spend more time in echo chambers where they unfriend/get unfriended by those with different opinions.

I'm not sure how you get past these hurdles in a "text messaging"/facebook type environment.

"Trump takes advantage" of the divide caused by the "current administration". I try not to be vitriolic but its hard not to be angry at those in power for letting it get this bad. And by "those in power", I do include BOTH sides.

I completely agree. I'm amazed at how infuriated I can find myself sometimes.

One advantage of the text messaging/Facebook-type environment is that it's async. We have the opportunity to step back, take a breath, re-read what we wrote before we press send. I think I end up deleting at least a third of the comments I start to write because I realize I haven't figured out ways to express something properly. Or I'll blanket it in so many qualifiers to try to make sure I'm not misunderstood that the actual content is hard to parse out. And just text is a difficult, low-bandwidth medium because we don't get to see any of the cues associated with body language or tone.

But hopefully I'll get better with practice. And I don't want to stop trying, because I think it's really important for us to figure this out.

Thanks for taking the time to respond. It gives me hope that we'll be able to get through this.

I agree with you that the wedge was there before Trump arrived.

The original comment might have insinuated that Trump was the primary cause of the divide. My intention was to ask: where do we go from here?

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