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Comment by ryandrake | Hacker News Reader

This is why arguing politics with these guys is pointless. I once naively thought I could bring around one of my MAGA friends to the light side by focusing on policy but it just doesn't work. He admitted that everything Team R is doing is not really helping him but in the end it's always something like: "Look, I was born a Republican, my family is Republican, I will never vote Democrat, no matter what any of them do. We have to trust Trump to do the right thing." It's truly a religion. There is no getting to these people.

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We could offer them an alternate social structure that they're welcome in. It beats calling them deplorables and trying to browbeat them.

Why should I offer charity to people who keep referring to *all* Dems as scum of the earth and similar?

Depends on what you want. Do you want to win, or do you want to spite the people who hurt your feelings?

Given the complete destruction of norms and institutions over the last year, the country is already lost for at least a decade, if not several. "Winning" is now a fantasy for our kids to maybe enjoy one day. I'm not sure that spite is a particularly bad option in this scenario.

Winning is when me and my friends don't get brutalized and murdered by the government

Seriously I wish we could split the country. Let the deplorables live by themselves un-vaxxed, with guns, religion and all of their other non-sense. And let us normal people live by ourselves with science and compassion.

(Unfortunately this will not happen. Because two things will have to be split: national debt and the nuclear arsenal. Heavy Sigh…)

I think that a fundamental problem with democracy is that as the state indulges its natural tendency to expand and centralize it leads to a state that is the average of an increasingly large pool of citizens' opinions on how their country should work and much like how the average number of fingers on a human hand is very different from the expected number of fingers on a human hand the average of everyone's opinions on how things should work is completely different from any one person's opinion. Thus, the thing that is ostensibly designed to ensure everyone gets at least some of what they want actually ends in no one getting anything they want, and it promotes factionalism that will eventually lead to separate power structures. It's happening right now, whether its southern sheriffs refusing to enforce gun laws or northern mayors declaring their cities to be sanctuaries from federal immigration enforcement, the development of competing power structures has us hurtling toward a constitutional crisis and maybe that's not the most terrible thing? Getting there is gonna suck but maybe there's just a natural boom/bust cycle for democracies where they swing on a pendulum between "growing and consolidating power while watering down voters' intent" and "collapsing back down to a place where voters feel like they're actually part of the society they're governed by". Maybe the antifederalists were right, and this was always supposed to be several independent countries governed by a few overarching laws that should really only ever have been concerned with trade and immigration, and accepting a common currency to further enable both of those goals.

“All of those people are deplorable and garbage because they think I am the scum of the earth (because I think they are all deplorable and garbage)”

I wish all y’all would just own up to the fact you hate each other for a million different reasons and can’t play nice together.

No, this will not work.

The people who have the most success in terms of engagement against Anti-Vaxxers are not the pro-vax or normal people. Its the Anti-anti-vaxxers

The vibe of being able to fight for a moderate position, extremely - is what is currently working in debates.

Being treated like a worthy adversary, or being beaten by someone they can respect is one of the avenues is likely going to succeed more.

This doesn't work. Respectability politics just backfires, this makes the extreme more extreme, not the other way around.

Don't you think it cuts both ways though? I saw a video where a guy was asking (presumably liberal) NYU students about quotes relating to immigration policy. He initially said they were from (republican person T), and they stated that they thought the comments were racist. Then the interviewer said, oh wait, sorry, they were actually from (democrat person O), and the students immediately shifted their opinions and said the comments were reasonable.

I'm sure there's a little tribalism on the (D) side, too, but I don't know anyone who decorates their house, yard, and truck with Democrat merchandise and flags, wears Democrat political shirts and hats, has a shrine at home with a life-size figure of a Democrat politician, or brings up Democrat politics in social settings that are not even remotely political like a kid's birthday party. I've seen real life examples of all of these from the (R) side.

Really? You’ve never seen a life sized Barack Obama cutout?

You’ve not seen an “in the house we believe” yard sign?

It goes both ways.

You've never seen evidence of cultural/tribal signaling on the left? Never seen an "in this house" sign, somebody wearing a mask outside and alone/spread out, NPR tote bag, "Anti-Racist Baby" book on the shelf, brought up Robin Deangelo or random Trump jokes at a bbq... Fish don't know their wet.

I don't doubt they exist--I just haven't seen any, and I have seen many dozens of examples from the other side. I'm talking about an order of magnitude difference in degree of tribalism, not claiming total absence of tribalism from one side.

I live in Seattle and they exist on the (D) side too, it just depends on the neighborhood. And don’t get me started on Portland :)

Speaking to you as a progressive here I wish we had more viable parties.

You don't want this, I promise you. I was in a Discord recently that was the liberal equivalent of MAGA and it scared the bejeezus out of me to see Dems frothing at the mouth like rabid red hatters.

I would love to see this video if you can find a link

Yes, second the desire for the video.

Tribalism coming to the Dems is taking FAR too long. People recognize that tribalism is working for the Republicans, so it’s natural that they are going to eventually imitated the winning strategy.

Seriously, I can’t believe it took this many decades for it to happen, and only after Trump made its efficacy blindingly obvious.

PS: Tribalism is not good for the overall health of a polity. Its just that people imitate whatever strategies appear to work.

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