I remember a time in America when a Republican & Democrat could peacefully disagree with dignity, and follow that up with an evening out as friends
I remember when the net first came up, I'd watch my friends in both parties argue online. They'd do some research, agree on the underlying facts, then things would progress.
They might never come to agreement, but they began a discussion on the terms of the discussion, which was progress. If done well, everybody could part as friends. This is the dialectic. It's what friends do. It's designed to understand the issue by understanding one another better. This is how productive conversations are supposed to happen.
But folks caught on to that, so they started flooding the internet with a lot of rhetoric. Now, if you disagree, there are a hundred sites on your side that are quite happy to provide you with all the emotional ammunition you need. This is argumentation, what lawyers do. It's designed to win at all costs. Conversations are battles to be won. Combine that with some nice rhetorical tricks and there's really no need to discuss facts anymore.
Take a look at what education a lot of the talking heads on TV have had. They were trained in rhetoric, the legal profession. That's no accident.
Sounds like what the ancient Greek sophists taught. That rhetoric was a useful tool for winning debates and being persuasive, particularly in politics.
But that cuts both ways: two skilled rhetoriticians in debate each won't permit the other to deploy a logical fallacy. Therefore they will always converge on the truth.
Rhetoric can only be weaponised when your opponent is unaware of it, and is powerless when they don't care about debate because their mind is already made up.
Been thinking about this all day. I didn't want to flippantly disagree, but there was something about your comment that bugged me.
I think maybe you have overstated. I would phrase it this way: skilled rhetoriticians _tend_ to converge on a semantic definition around the meaning of words and phrases.
I don't think they come to any ultimate truth, no matter what the greeks thought. I think what happens in any productive conversation is something more along the lines of shared mental model alignment, which I would argue is vastly more important.
Thanks for giving me something to cogitate on yesterday!
Two thousand years later, and Socrates is still relevant.
Is the right answer to dehumanize anyone with viewpoints and a political label different than the “correct” one? Should all Republicans be imprisoned, forcefully re-educated, and have their right to vote stripped from them as they committed the high crime of possibly voting for Trump?
I hope to God that it doesn’t take some kind of national unifying event that forcefully pulls us back together, neighbor to neighbor, because it shouldn’t take an immediate threat to survival for us to find common goals and listen to each other’s needs.
Nothing that is happening right now is normal. Checks and balances are hanging on by a thread. Executive power is being consolidated in ways never seen before in the US. 2-year-olds are sitting in concentration camps in the desert and are being forced to defend themselves in court. All the while our politicians are lying to our faces to cover this up. We should marching in the streets every day, not trying to make friends.
In my opinion, these differences are irreconcilable. The only escape valve is a multi-party system. This is something all sides could in theory work towards. Will the Republicans be willing to give up power in order to do so? Unlikely.
> Should all Republicans be imprisoned, forcefully re-educated, and have their right to vote stripped from them as they committed the high crime of possibly voting for Trump?
Comically, this is what the far left said was going to happen to them with Trump's Presidency. They're still saying it. John Ashcroft (whose policies I disliked immensely) was supposed to put everyone that disagreed with Bush into gulags. Reagan was going to get us all killed in a nuclear war, because he was crazy. And so on the hysterical behavior goes.
Maybe you've seen the insane chanting repetition videos online, where they indoctrinate the left marchers on what to say and how to behave, so they can put on an entirely fake show of protest. It's all about shrieking as loudly as possible to get as much attention as possible, and to intimidate others into capitulating. The concept is, the people that act out the most dramatically win, and get their way. The problem with that is, it loses its effect rapidly, you have to perpetually act crazier.
With as bad as it has all become lately, it can get worse yet. That's when the political class will begin locking down the capital and restricting access. We currently have Twitter flooded with death threats on Republican Senators, with the celebrity left saying the most vile, evil things possible about Senator Collins (and Twitter openly allowing it). Rand Paul's wife sent a letter to Cory Booker, pointing out that she now sleeps with a loaded gun next to her bed, because they're receiving endless numbers of death threats.
It can't end any other way than the US Government begins locking down its security and access further, cracking down on protest behavior, threats, etc.
One side now lives in an alternate reality and is forcing somewhat objective people (scientists, FBI) to parrot that reality or face punishment...
And the media megacorps are playing this up hard, really trying to push that divide to get people to view their reactionary bullshit, bringing in the ad revenue. And it's working probably even better than they intended, since Americans seem to hate each other more than they have in almost 150 years.
One party's views have not changed dramatically with time, and still have arguments and discussions grounded in reality.
Another party's views are being shaped by propagandistic forces that have no interested in basing themselves under any realistic interpretation of reality.
One party places anti-immigration rhetoric that completely contradicts the experts' understanding of immigration policies, from experts with all sorts of political backgrounds.
One party denies the entirety of the fields of climate science, environmental science, and has no trouble entertaining Creationist ideals that reject the entirety of the field of biology.
One party rejects our current understanding of policies that reduce violent crime, and incarceration. The other one at the very least has an internal dialogue where positions are based on known statistics.
This repeats itself on and on. The fact that there are people who reject our current understanding of topics on all political sides doesn't mean that there is one party whose political interests are completely disconnected to the point where there are no real internal arguments for logical cohesiveness.
I think you have inadvertently stumbled upon the real fundamental change in politics over my lifetime - it seems a lot more of the younger generations have been brought up to believe the experts.
50 years ago we all knew the experts were a bunch of quacks.
I am not even sure if I am the dunce here for not getting that you wrote it that way on purpose and I'm explaining you your own joke.
Of course that is what everyone ideologically invested in their own side thinks.
And the Democrats? I remember the Democrats laughing at McCain talking about the Russian threat.
> On trade and commerce? Deficits?
Largely the same?
> Military intervention?
Ok sure the Republicans aren’t the war hawks they once were but many of the same neocons are still there biding their time.
The Obama administration warned about the Russian threat. The Republican party has been coopted by it. How does that place any blame on the left when it has been the RNC who's allowed itself to be infiltrated by external actors?
> Largely the same?
The GOP had never been in favor of the tariffs Trump proposes. The current platform is entirely inconsistent.
This is my problem with the people who think it's not a "both sides" issue or that both sides dont have serious issues that makes people want to have nothing to do with their affiliations. Not that they disagree with my personal critiques of the left; but that they are typically so married to their party it is functionally impossible for them to find any fault or willingess to critique their side for the better when it's absolutey called for and necessary. Instead it's a matter of"YOU tell ME what wrong with the party and I'll tell you why you're wrong".
They will turn right around and blame "the other" or explain every failing of their opponents with vigor, with a straight face and not a single hint of irony or self-awareness for things like straight ticket voting or blind partisan loyalty
If you ignore the baggage in your ranks, you be signaled to everyone else it's fine for them to do the same.
No. Obama mocked McCain in the 2012 presidential debates for claiming Russia was a major threat.
“The 1980s are now calling to ask for their foreign policy back because the Cold War has been over for 20 years” - President Obama
The Obama admin only started talking about Russia much later when it became politically convenient.
> The GOP had never been in favor of the tariffs Trump proposes.
The GOP has no ideological problem with tariffs as evidenced by Bush implementing Steel tariffs back in 2002.
If the statement reads as confusing to you, because it lacks any meaningful pointers to identify who it's talking about congratulations on being a rational nuanced thinker..
If it makes perfect sense on the other hand...you've probably been drinking too much "everyone else is wrong but me and people who think like me kool-aid"
Q: I remember when people who disagreed could still be friends. Can't we get along a bit better?
A: (you) No, because people I disagree with are basically Hitler and aren't based in "reality" so we can never be friends.
One side now lives in an alternate reality and is forcing somewhat objective people (scientists, FBI) to parrot that reality or face punishment...
But both sides of political extremes think that. Several people are pointing this out but it doesn't seem to be sticking.
Let me try. I read an interesting story on Hacker News recently about a scientist who gave a talk, and was punished for his views. He wasn't being punished by Trump-like pillars of conservatism. He was talking about discrimination against men and was suspended by his university administrators, because even though there is great consensus amongst scientists that women and men think differently, this 'scientific reality' is completely rejected by one political tribe (but not the other).
See... more or less any extremist criticism you can make of the other tribe can be easily turned around on you.