31–40 of 302 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Read the rest of the post. Indian politics are not somehow lower stakes than ours, the Indian subcontinent is not less diverse, and the author's friend included a specific example of people getting literally killed over their politics.
There’s literally no way the nation of India is more diverse than the United States- we have the biggest spread of racial, and religious diversity on the planet, by far.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's the problem though right? I think that there are people who are so completely and utterly wrong that I don't know what to do with them. They also think that I am so completely and utterly wrong that they don't know what to do with me. So we don't talk about it.
Exactly. To one side, the other side includes (or defends) people who were "trying to dismantle democracy [over] unsubstantiated claims of fraud". To the other side, these rioters were "peaceful protesters" (I guess they never watched the videos) who did nothing wrong. In a nutshell, the two sides simply can't even agree on basic reality . If you can't agree on the basic facts of something, it is not possible to have…
I assume anyone claiming this is lying.
This is silly: “In my hometown in India, everyone talks about politics all the time. And most of us don’t agree with one another. But that’s okay. I can even tease other people about our political disagreements and it doesn’t get in the way of friendships. Why isn’t that the case here in the US?” Because when you're in a homogenous in-group you can discuss politics and get annoyed, or heated, and shake hands and go h…
I. This is a well written, engaging article, thanks for sharing. I absolutely agree that the thesis is true to an extent, though I would phrase it more broadly (perhaps "American culture is unusually individualistic" or "American local social communities are being replaced by online parasocial ones"). I don't see any reason to suspect that politics is taboo in Mongolia, or frequently debated in China! II. A huge part…
Is obviously daft in a country where, by the person's own admission, people get killed for their political views.
I have friends who come from Welsh and Swiss backgrounds and would have layers of internal inhibition before saying something out of fear of embarrassment or multitude of other concerns. A lot of time that leads to them assuming and assumptions can be wrong. They do a lot less verbal or video contact with family members, almost intentionally so, but would still get together in person (broader context i suspect). A lot of relationships on that side degrade quickly when contact is not made for a while - assumptions upon assumptions of offense or who knows what seems to erode the relationship. So when you meet again it’s almost like you have to earn the friendship again.
Politics in this country involves those two mixes of people and waaaay more. The cultural spread, the political spectrum spread, forms a matrix too big to navigate in 99.9 % of conversations The in-person interactions are not long enough to peel all layers of the political onion and the relationship trust onion before you get to the core that you both agree on. Instead there are often unsaid assumptions, experiences, trauma that won’t fit in a tweet and if they do, nobody has time to read it. The more complicated things get and the lower the attention span, the harder it is to invest time and get a favorable relationship outcome if you discuss politics, so you’re better off not even trying.
If it really was population density, it would be easy to discuss politics in urban NYC and very difficult/ rare in rural Wyoming. I don’t think that’s really the case. I suspect politics are more discussed in forums where there is more “psychological safety” where the consequence of saying a thing that others disagree with doesn’t cause a rift in the relationship (as evidenced by the “it’s hard enough for a parent to…
But many of the current political topics are life or death for parts of the community. Like, I know plenty of trans sysadmins for whom politics isn't just "well, one party advances ideas I support and the other less so". For them it's "One party will make my every waking moment a nightmare".
I understand why, even with practice, some political positions are simply intolerable for them. (And to me, this feels different than, say, "I have opinions about which rate I should be taxed" though I admit tax rates could be life or death for some people.)
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Maybe they'd have less political violence if they didn't associate with people who disagree with them. I'm not sure I'm convinced that dying for your political views is a fair price to pay for conversations with your neighbors.
I'm not convinced that the two are correlated. We did just fine associating with people of different political perspectives and discussing politics with them all the way up through 2008 at least, ~~without the violence~~. [Scratching this part out because it's drawing plenty of justified criticism. I stand by the rest, and this part was generally true—with small exceptions—from at least 1990-2008.] The complete refus…
No, we didn't. Look up what happened in the 1960s. And even that was mild compared to what went on in election campaigns in the 19th century in the US.
For a lot of people in the US, politics has become very personal. I believe that some policy decisions have become a direct threat to my health and I can try to discuss those policies calmly but I'm not good at covering my aggravation. I'd say that everyone has gotten increasingly disdainful of the 'other side'. I know I have - I'm not proud of it but I'm also not a good actor. I was in a message group recently and s…
Want some practice? What policies?
Doctors are unwilling to give pregnant women appropriate care because they may face criminal charges.
This is happening directly because of legislation that has been pushed forward exclusively by one political party in this country.
So I find it hard to understand how someone can care about women's health and support these policies. I'm flabbergasted that I know parents of daughters who support these policies.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Maybe they'd have less political violence if they didn't associate with people who disagree with them. I'm not sure I'm convinced that dying for your political views is a fair price to pay for conversations with your neighbors.
I'm not convinced that the two are correlated. We did just fine associating with people of different political perspectives and discussing politics with them all the way up through 2008 at least, ~~without the violence~~. [Scratching this part out because it's drawing plenty of justified criticism. I stand by the rest, and this part was generally true—with small exceptions—from at least 1990-2008.] The complete refus…
You must have forgotten the US Civil War, plus all the turbulence of the 1960s.
The big difference there was that, for the most part, the two sides were geographically separated from each other.
>The complete refusal to interact with someone who disagrees with you is a relatively new phenomenon that seems to have risen alongside social media.
If you're thinking of the early-to-mid 20th century, things have changed. America has become much more diverse, and co-mingled (in the past, immigrant and other minority groups tended to keep to themselves and not socially interact so much with other groups). White European-descended people are no longer the overwhelming majority (remember, immigrants in the past mostly came from Europe), religion has lost much of its power and many of its believers, homosexuality has become far more accepted, basically one side feels existentially threatened, and the other side oppressed.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Read the rest of the post. Indian politics are not somehow lower stakes than ours, the Indian subcontinent is not less diverse, and the author's friend included a specific example of people getting literally killed over their politics.
There’s literally no way the nation of India is more diverse than the United States- we have the biggest spread of racial, and religious diversity on the planet, by far.
We're taking about a country with ~4x the population of the US where no single language has the majority of native speakers (the closest is Hindi at 26% [0]). 12 different languages are spoken natively by >1% of the population. India has diversity that someone born in the US can't even begin to comprehend.
I think it's hard for Westerners to understand because we view diversity through such a skin color and organized religion lens. 'Everyone' in India is dark-skinned and most are Hindu, so that means they're not diverse, right?
The trouble is that that's a very Western perspective on both ethnicity and on religion, one that doesn't carry over at all.
[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_languages_by_number_...