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Comment by daenz | Hacker News Reader

>Majorities in both parties say it is very important that elected officials treat their opponents with respect. But while most Democrats (78%) say it is very important for Republican elected officials to treat Democratic officials with respect, only about half (47%) say it is very important for officials from their party to treat Republican politicians with respect. There is similar divide in the opinions of Republicans; 75% say Democrats should be respectful of GOP officials, while only 49% say the same about Republicans’ treatment of Democratic officials.

If there's one thing that unites us all, it is intense and hypocritical tribalism.

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> If there's one thing that unites us all, it is intense and hypocritical tribalism.

"You need to be tolerant of my beliefs, but I don't need to be tolerant of yours"

I can tolerate anything except the outgroup.

Not all opinions are equal and there's no reason to treat them as such.

True, but for some reason in the US we’ve decided that all/most people are equal sources of viable opinions when it comes to electing representatives. Whether or not you treat their opinions with respect matters little compared to their ability to vote their opinions into office.

Your interpretation of his comment quite succinctly sums up the problems with society today. Being tolerant of something is not the same as treating it identically to other views. Imagine my neighbor is completely and absolutely convinced that 2+2=5. I'd be somewhat curious why somebody would believe such a peculiar thing. If we had the time I'd certainly be happy to indulge him and of course I'd also try to correct him. If, at the end of the day, we couldn't agree? That's fine. Of course I'm probably not going to be convinced that 2+2=5 and won't make a secret of it, but agreeing to disagree is okay.

In practice this distinction of tolerance vs "all opinions are equal" is even more critical because many of the topics people love to get into heated arguments about have compelling, entirely factual, arguments supporting mutually exclusive conclusions. Life's fun that way. On these sort of topics - guns, migration, economic systems, etc - there are of course some completely unsupportable views, but there are no right answers. In fact they probably literally do not exist since even with omniscience, the answer would still be contingent on the state of a society and people at any given point in time and place.

We all believe the things we believe because we, tautologically, think they're what we ought believe - what is most right, or most supported, or whatever our personal value system tells us is correct. The problem we face today is when we then start assuming that because our value system tells us this belief must be the most valid, that we start to treat other completely supportable views as invalid.

I think deep down, most people agree with you. But it's not very practical to have a level-headed approach to political discourse, since most political topics of the day are not rooted in morality, but instead are economic agendas shrouded in morality. For example, no one really knows the systems effect of forgiving student loan debt, but politicians advocating for it are quite confident that that policy helps them win. So, being uncertain or open to discussion along the lines of whether or not that policy is good for the US isn't really the point. It's already known to be good for other, more palpable reasons, and any effort to shift the discussion into uncertainty about the effects of the US is only bad for the politician who already knows about the policy's effect on them personally.

This feels like the prisoners dilemma scenario, where cooperation with the other side is riskier than ratting them out. Neither side is particularly incentivized to cooperate, so what’s to give?

Being respectful of elected officials is totally different from being respectful of their supporters.

For example, I can directly blame a senator for her votes. If her vote was for something I think is indefensible (like the Iraq War), showing disrespect is acceptable and deserved, as long as it's non-violent.

However, not all of her voters might have expected or condoned that vote. Even if they did, their responsibility for the vote is a small fraction of the senator's.

Joe Biden gave us a great example of this recently when he praised himself for getting along with segregationist colleagues. Treating them with respect was unwarranted because they didn't treat tens of millions of black Americans with respect.

This can't be overstated. I think the tendency to treat politics like sports and develop a strong emotional connection with a political figure that you will never have any personal knowledge of is a huge part of what leads us to the inability to stop feeling attacked by each other (and, in reaction, attacking each other). E.g. if I am making some broad criticism, I make it clear I'm talking about politicians, not constituents. I don't talk shit about "Republicans" in the abstract. The difference may seem small, but the point is that just because I think Trump is a stupid asshole doesn't mean I think people who voted for Trump are.

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