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Comment by ergot_vacation | Hacker News Reader

I hate mudflinging as much as the next guy, but how would someone even engage in politics at all without statements that could be described as detestation or vilification? Politics is saying mean things about the other side in support of your side. If you don't believe the other side to be fundamentally bad in some way, why are you fighting them?

Yes yes, there's "on the basis of a prohibited ground of discrimination." That seems about as firm as a plastic bag blowing through a parking lot. I'm sure that category won't grow larger and larger until it's impossible to criticize the powerful or the status quo at all.

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I don't even know where to start with this.

> Politics is saying mean things about the other side in support of your side.

This is not the definition of politics, this is how it is being executed in some places, there are plenty of places where this is not the default method.

> If you don't believe the other side to be fundamentally bad in some way, why are you fighting them?

This only makes sense if Twitter is your only source of political news/opinion.

You may think the other group is swell but have different opinions on how to get to the same end goal. You may have a disagreement on what an ideal world looks like or what our current one looks like (ie. different perspectives) . None of that includes "fundamentally bad".

See: all parties that have splintered off from a common one. They are still in the same corner but have adjusted their views, strategy or goals. They don't suddenly think their earlier compatriots are evil incarnate.

Interestingly, I think an argument could be made that ‘having a disagreement on what an ideal world looks like’ is equivalent to thinking the other is evil or at minimum immoral.

Willing to be told I’m wrong.

Disconnect the statement from actual politics and think about the concept in a more local setting. Here's a somewhat contrived example.

There are two engineers in your company trying to work out the best way to reduce the rate of bugs being introduced into a system. One of them is advocating for pair programming, and the other is advocating for a dedicated testing team. Both are trying to convince the other engineers that their method is best.

They may argue in good faith. They may resort to calling the other silly names. This is politics on a local scale. There's nothing to imply that the other side is evil, immoral, or even wrong. The fact that current democratic politics has devolved into mudslinging isn't an inherent fact of politics - it just seems to be an effective way to win these days.

In your example, both engineers agree code with less bugs is good.

It might be a moral disagreement if one of them felt more bugs is intrinsically better.

There can absolutely be moral disagreements but it's not a given. That's probably the main point contested in this thread - that not all politics is about thinking the worst of your opposition. Certainly it happens, but it's not predicated on it.

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