Hacker News Reader

Comment by the_gastropod | Hacker News Reader

I hear what you're saying, and I don't think you're necessarily wrong. And at the risk of sounding like a partisan, I really don't think the two "sides" in U.S. politics are at all equivalent. There is one party that cares about "winning" at any cost. They absolutely justify this by, as you say, painting the other party—and those in their own party that don't toe the line—as "the enemy". It is terrifying, and I don't know how this gets resolved.

View on HN

I’m not trying to be glib when I say this, but I really don’t know which side you’re referring to. I’ve witnessed an equal amount of tribalism from supporters of both sides.

Hear, hear.

I almost said exactly the same thing you just did. I have absolutely no clue which "side" he's talking about.

I think it's the party engaging in voter suppression throughout the country, and the one that stripped the powers of the governor when someone from the other side won, and the one that literally fled the state so that the legislature didn't have quorum and couldn't pass legislation, even though they were a clear minority. Or the one that refused to confirm a seat on the supreme court for nearly a year, in an unprecedented move. I could go on.

I think GP has a point, and I'll illustrate by trying to simply flip the very convenient mirror that you've set up. Please get past the initial emotional response (canards! blasphemy!) and just realize that this is a paragraph that roughly half the country will read with a straight face and agree with.

"I think it's the party engaging in voter fraud [1] throughout the country, and the one that tried to impeach the president when someone from the other side won [2], and the one that literally fled the state so that the legislature didn't have quorum and couldn't pass legislation [3], even though they were a clear minority. Or the one that falsely accused a supreme court nominee of rape [4], in an unprecedented move. I could go on."

It's evident to me that people of all political bents in this country are extremely tribalistic, and none of the tribes count many saints among their numbers.

Citations added simply to highlight that I'm not pulling any of this out of thin air:

[1] https://www.heritage.org/voterfraud

[2] https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2019/politics/impeac...

[3] https://www.npr.org/2011/02/17/133847336/wis-democratic-lawm...

[4] https://reason.com/2018/11/05/brett-kavanaugh-due-process-fa...

It appears you have given a perfect illustration of the comment you are replying to.

I think the gastropod is basically on point. The democrats aren't beacons of virtue or rationality by any stretch of the imagination, but its a strange kind of self-imposed blindness to pretend the two political parties are playing the same game here.

We can simultaneously see that partisan politics isn't completely rational and also observe that one side, for various reasons, is working that irrationality harder than the other.

A study at Dartmouth found that 45 percent of Democrats say they would be uncomfortable rooming with a Republican. Comparatively, only 12 percent of Republicans said rooming with a Democrat would make them uncomfortable.

My anecdotal evidence bears this out. Progressives tend to be far more intolerant of opposing viewpoints than conservatives.

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/majority-of-democrats-at-...

I would find it uncomfortable being a roomate with an outspoken holocaust denier. A holocaust denier probably wouldn't find it uncomfortable being my roommate. I would wager this generalizes pretty well to holocaust accepters and deniers as a whole.

Is the takeaway from this that holocaust deniers are more accepting people?

The question isn't whether they're playing the same game. Indeed, it'd be surprising if they were, since the goals and principles of the two parties are often quite different. The question is whether "aha, that other party has decided to do the wrong thing rather than the right thing" is a helpful way to conceptualize the difference.

As another reply to you has shown, it's very easy to find specific differences and elevate them to an all-encompassing explanation, if that's how you decide you want to look at things.

The thing about tribalism is that all tribes think this about the "other" tribe.

This is hardcoded in us.

There's only one political party in the US right now that routinely uses labels such as "racists", "Nazis" and "white supremacists" against their opponents to dehumanize them and justify physical violence. Haven't seen anything like it from the other side.

Does it bother you that the same could have been said in defense of the actual Nazi party?

No, because 99% of the time these labels have no basis in reality and those who use these labels don't bother to even try to prove these accusations. They became just fighting words for dehumanization, used without a second thought.

I don't think it could have been said. The Nazis were, from the start, clearly and enthusiastically in favor of violence against their political opponents. Their first attempt at a violent coup happened only a couple years after they were founded.

They didn't go as far as Antifa does but the TEA Party certainly was guilty of many of the same things. Lots of threats to bring "Second amendment solutions" to political disagreements. They certainly engaged in dehumanizing their opponents. Seems like whoever is out of power does this and each cycle it gets ratcheted up another notch. It's worrying what the reaction in some quarters might be if someone like Bernie Sanders, who openly calls himself a Democratic Socialist, wins the presidency.

Both parties care, but one side wants government to do less or not interfere with things, and the other side wants government to do more or redistribute things. One side has an interest in government functioning properly and the other doesn't (until they need Medicare anyway). I think this contributes to the "win at any cost" appearance of the one side.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com