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Do you consider yourself a partisan? The pervasive notion that there are "two sides" and you must be on one of them, it results in ordinary citizens viewing one another with suspicion and fear. It's a useful lie that serves the interests of those who would foster division in order to maintain the cultural status quo.
Not calling you out in particular. Just that I think about this every time something is posted that perpetuates this false "our team, their team" narrative because it's a powerful, insipid tool of oppression against the common person. True, people differ on contentious issues, sometimes irreconcilably. But if we are made to view one another as dyed-in-the-wool adversaries over that, we will fail to discover our common interests much less promote them through solidarity.
Not denying that the two major political parties in the United States do hold seemingly unassailable dominance in major elections like the one we're entering, largely due to determining winner by first-past-the-post. And yes, sadly it's very often the case that a meaningful vote will support one of those parties. But it doesn't have to be this way forever. In fact, I will be able to vote for city office candidates by ranked choice starting this year!
Sorry for the rant. Not an expert. Just a dude who wants to love his neighbor.
And the big issue seems to be that the two sides have drastically different definitions of the word “love”. There was a study a while ago, which found that conservatives are more likely to have liberal friends, while liberals are less likely to have conservative friends. It sounds odd on the surface… But the reality is that if a liberal hangs out with conservatives long enough to become friends, those conservatives will eventually get comfortable. Comfortable enough to start using hard slurs, or they will call the liberal “one of the good ones” as if it’s a compliment.
It’s no wonder that liberals are less likely to report having conservative friends. Liberals have tried, and have been burned by all of the conservatives that they got close to. Meanwhile, the most offensive thing a liberal does around conservatives is just… Exist? Relatively speaking, it’s easy for a conservative to keep liberals around, because the liberal isn’t constantly trying to undermine the conservative’s right to personhood. Whether or not you can own guns isn’t an immediate existential threat to a conservative.
In this study, were the terms "conservative" and "liberal" self-applied by the subjects? People do adopt those labels for themselves, but I would urge careful consideration before doing so. Where they can be useful in describing one's position on a specific issue, when applied directly to the person they are needlessly reductive. Exactly the sort of thing that facilitates the mental assignment of oneself or others into an imaginary camp on one side of a false dichotomy.
The essence of what you are saying makes sense to me, and I do understand those terms are routinely applied to people both by themselves and by others. But your post, though well-meaning also serves to perpetuate the "conservatives vs. liberals" view of political discourse. I realize I may be Sisyphus under the boulder here, but it's my challenge to the United States political duopoly.
Nah, though there is an irony to arguing that the notion of two sides means we view each other with suspicion right after deciding what I believe because of the question I asked.
Just like you, I get that there are two major political parties, one of which will hold power, both of which view the other as the enemy. I asked this to see what the general consensus would be as my friends and I played a similar game and were stymied pretty quickly.
Not calling you out personally, Lauchs and I do apologize if it seems that way. Just that reading in your question the usage of "your side" and "the other side" brought to mind once again the fact that many people I know have come to view politics a team sport. Didn't decide anything about your beliefs.