[dragonwriter]

> Why is it silly to expect it to be less extreme?

It's silly to expect that national distribution of political thought to be approximated in every geographic subdivision. It has never been even approximately, the case. Structurally, the US electoral system encourages coalition building and dividing so that factions that nationally are roughly balanced form the major national parties, but there is no reason that that's even a privileged frame to decide what is “balanced”.

[amitkgupta84]

No one is saying every geographical subdivision needs to reflect exactly the aggregate distribution at the national level. I expect the split in individual cities to deviate from the national mean split. Based on my subjective experience living in SF, and based on the data, SF’s deviation is too extreme.

Sure, we can regress to a form of solipsism and just say there’s no possible discussion to be had about whether SF is too extreme. Yes, God has not written down a cosmological constant of what threshold determines too extreme vs not too extreme. I think it’s pointless for us to gaslight ourselves into this belief. If we can’t say SF is too extreme, how can we say crime is too high, or persecution of LGBTQ is too high, or anything else?

In the link I shared above, SF deviates as far left as the scale can go. If you think it is possible to have an inter-subjective conversation about whether SF is too extreme, but think SF isn’t, what would need to be true for you to declare SF past the threshold?

[dragonwriter]

> Based on my subjective experience living in SF, and based on the data, SF’s deviation is too extreme.

What data? What data could even support the idea of a threshold of acceptable deviation from the national average distribution of political thought?

Honestly, I think that while there is a problem, you have conceptualized it entirely incorrectly. The problem is not with the diversity of distribution of political thought, the problem is national political duopoly and the electoral systems that support it, among the many manifestations of which (and far from the most important) is an absence of partisan competition in jurisdictions whose political center isn't very close to the national political center.

> If you think it is possible to have an inter-subjective conversation about whether SF is too extreme

It's not (and I think obviously not), unless you specific for what. If you specify that, it's may be that such a discussion is possible (and even, though less likely, possible that it is meaningful and not a distraction from more important considerations for that purpose.) But I’m not optimistic.

[amitkgupta84]

1. The data I’m referring to is in the link I was referring to. See how far left on the spectrum SF is. Take also your figures on registered voters in each party. I suspect SF is many standards deviations from the national mean split.

Can we agree on any possible intersubjective standard for too extreme? If not, fine, we revert to solipsism.

If either of the data mentioned in the first paragraph is a possible metric, how many standard deviations is too many?

If not this standard/metric, will you propose another? I challenge anyone to propose a metric or set of metrics that reasonable people will entertain as a standard of measuring a cities extremes, plus a set of thresholds that reasonable people will entertain as determining too extreme/not too extreme, and then coming to the conclusion under these metrics that SF is not too extreme. In other words, any way you want to slice it, SF is too extreme, unless you refuse to “slice it”.

2. National political duopoly is problematic, but we live in a democracy. Every citizen is free to have their own positions, vote for whoever they want, and run for office if they don’t like who’s running. Your perspective is not your skin color, you can change it and update it as you participate in the real world. Citizens of SF simply cannot blame the national duopoly for their choices. It’s completely possible to foster, appreciate, and embody diversity and non-partisanship of thought. It’s possible to foster a culture of balance and diversity, which in turn could encourage the partisan competition you mention.

SF even has ranked choice voting which should weaken the duopoly’s death grip, in theory.

The national structural problems you mention are true for every city. There’s nothing in the water or Karl the Fog that uniquely prevents people in SF from doing what I mentioned above. But they don’t, that’s their choice, that’s SF culture, and that’s the problem.