I disagree. There are things like climate change that become politicized when they really shouldn't. It shouldn't be an 'us vs them' mentality, and the republicans were very wrong to take that hardline position against it, but the democrats where hardly helping the situation by equating any concerns about cost and implementation with outright denial of the issue at hand.
Even abortion and the definition of the beginnings of life is not something so black and white as even people of strong faith believe. We are nearing the point where we may be able to remove a fetus and bring it to term outside of the mother's womb and that possibility really changes the discussion. What argument for bodily autonomy is there if the baby can be grown and birthed outside of the mother?
Now i can still see people arguing both sides on that. Some people may feel its the childs' right to be grown in its mother womb and some may feel that the mother should still be able to decide if the baby lives, but for those people you can clearly see their motivations were never based in bodily autonomy or the right to life anyway.
That situation isn't here yet and probably not soon, but doesn't mean the abortion debate is neatly settled into two different sides.
(Also, even though i know your last point wasn't serious, i think that if we did just divide the nation in two all we would end up with is the worst of both and the best of neither)
I think you're spot on in regards to why people voted for Trump. No one likes what he says or what he does, even the people who voted for him.
For the Eisenhower Republican model, I know exactly where it went. Its the same labeling issue as above. If you didn't 100% agree with climate change as defined by liberals, then you were 100% the enemy. Questions about personal motivation among scientists (scientists are people, people are selfish and greedy, not a hard leap)? Climate change denier. Think there are serious problems in our peer review process? Anti-science Nut. Don't think some proposed solutions to climate change actually address the issue and instead push political agendas of inequality and social issues instead? Obviously an extremist who hates minorities and women.
Maybe if the media didn't treat and entire spectrum of people as extremists, there would be more progress.
This is exactly the behavior that is the problem. You don't care why someone might think that, you don't care about any of their reasons. You take one political point and extrapolate it into how they feel about all LGBT issues, label them "BIGOT" and move on.
You are the problem.
Yes, thats exactly my problem with these discussions. One side only comes back with the "you're a terrible person because you said that" and there isn't any response to that except to walk away. Neither persons mind is changed. No one has learned anything. The entire premise of this name calling is the mentality of "You are not worth arguing with, you are just wrong, the only acceptable course of action is for you to abandon everything about your position and agree with me" and then they wonder why people like Trump get elected.
It doesn't matter if you think the other side is racist or bigoted or whatever, thats an intellectually dishonest position to take in a discussion. It's immature and the only thing it communicates is disrespect.
I feel like this falls into the trap of who gets to define the terms here. 'Tolerance' can mean different things to different people, and what might be perfectly 'tolerant' behavior to some is completely 'intolerant' behavior to others. Who gets to define what is tolerant and what isn't? Going based off who gets harmed is useless because we all interact with each other so a couple being gay DOES affect me, it just so happens i don't care about it. Demanding different pronouns IS an imposition, it clearly takes up neurons in my brain and bits in any software, its just one most people are OK with. The problem comes up when people assume things they are OK with should be things everybody is OK with, and not liking something becomes actively discriminating against it. I think that mentality is a real problem.
This was actually the point i was concerned about. If you don't like illegal immigration you're 'racist', if you think the government should stay out of marriage completely and that expanding the definition is going in the wrong direction you're 'homophobic', and if you think gender quotas miss the point and are a bad idea you're a 'mysogynist'. There's no real discourse, just name calling when someone tries to speak up.
I don't think its a healthy way to have civil discourse, but it seems like the norm.
I would really like to see someone reply to this with a realistic solution. I don't have an answer to that problem and the only response I seem to be hearing is "Their (read: republicans) viewpoints aren't reasonable or worthy of consideration", which shuts down any kind of dialogue before it starts.
Agreed, its quite clear from what the article spends their page space on what they care about, and given that metric the topic is certainly not map accuracy.
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Dunno how, but i seem to have responded to my own post. It was meant for you, but i can't seem to delete it...
I disagree. There are things like climate change that become politicized when they really shouldn't. It shouldn't be an 'us vs them' mentality, and the republicans were very wrong to take that hardline position against it, but the democrats where hardly helping the situation by equating any concerns about cost and implementation with outright denial of the issue at hand.
Even abortion and the definition of the beginnings of life is not something so black and white as even people of strong faith believe. We are nearing the point where we may be able to remove a fetus and bring it to term outside of the mother's womb and that possibility really changes the discussion. What argument for bodily autonomy is there if the baby can be grown and birthed outside of the mother?
Now i can still see people arguing both sides on that. Some people may feel its the childs' right to be grown in its mother womb and some may feel that the mother should still be able to decide if the baby lives, but for those people you can clearly see their motivations were never based in bodily autonomy or the right to life anyway.
That situation isn't here yet and probably not soon, but doesn't mean the abortion debate is neatly settled into two different sides.
(Also, even though i know your last point wasn't serious, i think that if we did just divide the nation in two all we would end up with is the worst of both and the best of neither)
I think you're spot on in regards to why people voted for Trump. No one likes what he says or what he does, even the people who voted for him.
For the Eisenhower Republican model, I know exactly where it went. Its the same labeling issue as above. If you didn't 100% agree with climate change as defined by liberals, then you were 100% the enemy. Questions about personal motivation among scientists (scientists are people, people are selfish and greedy, not a hard leap)? Climate change denier. Think there are serious problems in our peer review process? Anti-science Nut. Don't think some proposed solutions to climate change actually address the issue and instead push political agendas of inequality and social issues instead? Obviously an extremist who hates minorities and women.
Maybe if the media didn't treat and entire spectrum of people as extremists, there would be more progress.
This is exactly the behavior that is the problem. You don't care why someone might think that, you don't care about any of their reasons. You take one political point and extrapolate it into how they feel about all LGBT issues, label them "BIGOT" and move on. You are the problem.
Holy crap, i don't think i've ever seen a straw man that blatant before. I'm going to bookmark this as a example to bring up in the future.
Yes, thats exactly my problem with these discussions. One side only comes back with the "you're a terrible person because you said that" and there isn't any response to that except to walk away. Neither persons mind is changed. No one has learned anything. The entire premise of this name calling is the mentality of "You are not worth arguing with, you are just wrong, the only acceptable course of action is for you to abandon everything about your position and agree with me" and then they wonder why people like Trump get elected. It doesn't matter if you think the other side is racist or bigoted or whatever, thats an intellectually dishonest position to take in a discussion. It's immature and the only thing it communicates is disrespect.
Except that the constitution trumps all of those proposed laws, making them all moot?
I feel like this falls into the trap of who gets to define the terms here. 'Tolerance' can mean different things to different people, and what might be perfectly 'tolerant' behavior to some is completely 'intolerant' behavior to others. Who gets to define what is tolerant and what isn't? Going based off who gets harmed is useless because we all interact with each other so a couple being gay DOES affect me, it just so happens i don't care about it. Demanding different pronouns IS an imposition, it clearly takes up neurons in my brain and bits in any software, its just one most people are OK with. The problem comes up when people assume things they are OK with should be things everybody is OK with, and not liking something becomes actively discriminating against it. I think that mentality is a real problem.
This was actually the point i was concerned about. If you don't like illegal immigration you're 'racist', if you think the government should stay out of marriage completely and that expanding the definition is going in the wrong direction you're 'homophobic', and if you think gender quotas miss the point and are a bad idea you're a 'mysogynist'. There's no real discourse, just name calling when someone tries to speak up. I don't think its a healthy way to have civil discourse, but it seems like the norm.
I would really like to see someone reply to this with a realistic solution. I don't have an answer to that problem and the only response I seem to be hearing is "Their (read: republicans) viewpoints aren't reasonable or worthy of consideration", which shuts down any kind of dialogue before it starts.
Agreed, its quite clear from what the article spends their page space on what they care about, and given that metric the topic is certainly not map accuracy.