[thephyber]

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 make friends” statement).

The reason we can’t discuss politics is because we don’t practice. The widespread saying “don’t discuss politics or religion [in X context]” means that we have fewer places to discuss it, so we get less practice to do it. We are less practiced so it is brittle. If we practiced more, we would be more resilient.

Discussions about politics and religion are rife with conflation of opinion with fact, true fact with false fact, claim with evidence.

Most good faith differences on politics boil down to differing values and priorities. Having a discussion about those directly, rather than through the lens of the broken US political parties / election system is usually more productive in avoiding the screaming / emotions.

Then again, you could argue that the premise is flawed and we talk about politics too much…

[johnnyanmac]

Two issues that are probably rare but not worth the risk

1. political stance is not a protected status. if I find out (or vice versa) that some manager has opposite stances of me, things get awkward at best or dangerous at worst. Rather not be fired that easily, especially since a lot of work is from home with little opportunity for small talk.

2. there are just crazies out in my area, and US is only getting more violent. I ain't risking that just to make some small talk in public. Most people are far from good faith and a few have enough short fuses that I'd rather not take that risk.

[shiroiushi]

Don't forget that a lot of the crazies are carrying guns, thanks to America's obsession with "gun freedom".

[LinuxBender]

For what it's worth I am in the most gun toting state and we do talk politics. I do not claim to be one of theirs and do not always say nice things about their guy. I try to focus on areas that I know we have common ground and that I think they will find interesting. It usually works out to be a fun conversation. In fairness I would not try this in a bar where peoples inhibitions are taking a break but I do not drink so that's fine. I think my saving grace is that I distrust all politicians equally and I know some bits of the deep state they were unaware of so they get something out of it. At the end of the day we are all still part of a community and still help each other out.

[Swizec]

> rather than through the lens of the broken US political parties / election system

This is key, in my observation as an immigrant from Europe who's lived here ~10 years. Europe for the most part has multi-party democracies meaning that for every pet cause you might have there is a party that focuses on your cause. Larger causes get parties that might even get elected into parliament.

Those larger parties still have to work together with other parties to form a coalition/anti-coalition. Those coalitions then end up running the country.

In practice this means that when you're discussing politics with friends, you don't bifurcate into right/wrong, you discuss differences on specific causes. You and your friend might disagree about UBI, or trans rights, or whatever, but you both understand that you more or less agree on the other 9/10 issues. You are more alike than you are different and that makes debating your differences easier.

Contrast that with american politics where it's all or nothing. If you like abortion and low taxes, there is no way for you to vote.

Additionally americans have this weird thing where they worship politicians instead of treating them as disposable public servants who exist at the mercy of your vote. People actually treat whom they vote for as a part of their identity. That always felt weird to me. It means any discussion of politics becomes a triggering assault on your ego.

edit to share an example:

In college I signed a thing to support The Pirate Party. The most they've ever achieved is like 1 or 2 seats in parliament. But this means that every law that gets discussed has a voice or two talking about its impact on copyleft, opensource, net neutrality, etc. This is great! And it doesn't mean anyone has to abandon the bigger more important issues to get this representation.

[maeil]

> Contrast that with american politics where it's all or nothing. If you like abortion and low taxes, there is no way for you to vote.

I'm European. The most influential topic in voting behaviour is immigration, as any study (or recent European election result) would tell you. In the wealthier countries, climate policy is also in the top 5. If I want to vote for progressive climate policy and being tough on immigration, there isn't a single party that I can vote for. And there hasn't been, for decades.

It's hardly better in Europe.

[sologoub]

Agree, the forced two-party system is very limiting and the identity tied to politics is emblematic of modern US. In EU, as I believe in India from the anecdotes in the article, a lot of the identity is tied to the place you are from and the social strata the family occupies. Those are somewhat immutable things (where you were born and what family you are from), so deciding to break off communication with that community is “expensive” socially because there is no other community that will readily accept you as their own. Whereas in US, it’s quite normal to change social circles at will. Density/proximity makes it much more obvious, but the semi-fixed social circles I believe have a lot to do with it. Many US expats report loneliness when moving abroad for similar reasons - it’s hard to find a new inner circle in societies built around other identities.

[Nursie]

> americans have this weird thing where they worship politicians instead of treating them as disposable public servants who exist at the mercy of your vote

As a British person I also find this weird. There was a tiny amount of it with Boris Johnson and that was mirrored in the very small cult of personality that rose up around Jeremy Corbyn. But for the most part politicians of all stripes are considered with mild disdain and actual membership of a political party is seen as probably a bit weird.

In America... rallies! Thousands of people actually pay to go and listen to this self-aggrandising nonsense. It's very odd.

In the UK I usually voted for the liberal democrats or the greens because each appealed to my views in different ways. Occasionally held my nose and voted Labour when "get the conservatives out" seemed the most important thing. Here in Aus, when I get citizenship, I will feel even more free to vote for smaller parties because we have preference voting. I can (and do) discuss politics with friends who have different views, though as my friends mostly skew liberal (ironically) this means none of them will be voting for the Liberal Party...

[justin66]

> Thousands of people actually pay to go and listen to this self-aggrandising nonsense. It's very odd.

I’m pretty sure they’re free. They are nevertheless odd.

[mike_hearn]

Corbyn was famous for organizing large rallies, if anything this was a criticism of him - he was much more interested in rallies and protests than leadership.

Pictures of Corbyn in front of huge crowds at rallies:

https://labourlist.org/2019/08/corbyn-encourages-labour-mps-...

https://www.counterfire.org/article/letter-left-corbyn-labou...

https://socialistworker.co.uk/news/thousands-rally-for-jerem...

[Nursie]

That first one seems to be a bit more protest than rally - but yes, he did seem to, and that’s quite unusual in the UK political landscape.

[jaarse]

Very well put. I think it’s this tribalism, us vs them mentality that is the issue

[rebeccaskinner]

> Those larger parties still have to work together with other parties to form a coalition/anti-coalition. Those coalitions then end up running the country.

Although I think there might be some benefits to this style of government, I also think people over-index on it. One way or another these groups end up forming coalitions and making compromises in order to govern. In one case it happens before the election, and mostly behind the scenes with some influence from the primary process. In the other case, it happens after the election when the parties are figure out how to form a majority after the representatives have been selected. One advantage to the former is that at least you know who what other policies your special interest are going to align you with ahead of time, rather than finding out after the fact that your vote brought along more baggage than you bargained for.

> You and your friend might disagree about UBI, or trans rights, or whatever, but you both understand that you more or less agree on the other 9/10 issues.

But if one the people in that discussion is trans, and the other person doesn't believe that trans people are real, have a right to exist, deserve health care, etc. then it doesn't matter if they agree on 9/10 other issues. Same with abortion. If one person in a discussion believes in the value of rational evidence based decision making, and the other believes in woke 5g space lasers, there's simply no foundation on which to build a shared understanding upon which to base a conversation.

Many of the central arguments that are causing polarization in politics today are due to fundamental incompatibilities in values- the kind that no amount of agreement on other matters of policy

> Contrast that with american politics where it's all or nothing. If you like abortion and low taxes, there is no way for you to vote.

There absolutely is. There's no perfect candidate, but there's still going to be a better choice. You pick what matters most to you, and how many things you are willing to compromise for those things, make the best choice available, and work to push the discussion of one party or the other closer toward your views in the areas you don't like.

[zeroonetwothree]

I don’t think God is real but it doesn’t stop me from talking to Christians about other topics.

[shiroiushi]

Do those Christians advocate burning unbelievers at the stake?

Luckily, these days, you'd have a very, very hard time finding any Christian who publicly advocates this, but centuries ago it was rather common.

[Swizec]

> But if one the people in that discussion is trans, and the other person doesn't believe that trans people are real ...

Why tho? Just because we might disagree on the details of gender doesn't mean we can't discuss NIMBYism. I don't see what gender has to do with housing.

It's possible I'm the weirdo here because the American obsession with identity never quite clicked for me. We once did a "What are your identities" team building exercise and the question felt so nonsensical that I couldn't complete the exercise.

(for the record I am pro-trans, at worst indifferent and think it's none of my business)

[rebeccaskinner]

> Why tho? Just because we might disagree on the details of gender doesn't mean we can't discuss NIMBYism. I don't see what gender has to do with housing.

Imagine you have cancer, and thankfully there’s a medication that you can take that keeps your cancer in remission. You’ve been taking it for 15 years, and you’ve been living a pretty good life. Lately though, a bunch of people have been claiming cancer doesn’t exist, and if it does, your form of cancer definitely doesn’t. They’ve already made it illegal for kids to get treated for this cancer in several states, and as you’d expect a lot of kids are dying. Some states are trying to make it illegal for anyone to get treated for their cancer. Companies that used to sell merchandise to raise awareness during cancer awareness month. Oh, and you can’t get a drivers license anymore because your cancer suddenly means that you are “biologically dead”. A major political organization has a policy platform that would make it illegal for anyone with cancer to go into public, because they claim it’s contagious and kids might catch it, and later in that same document they say anyone who risks kids catching a disease should be put to death. One of the major political parties has essentially adopted this platform, and several states have started rolling out parts of the plan.

Now, your neighbor just wants to talk to you about the rules for how far back new houses should be set from the curb, but every other sentence is about how sick those people are who think they have cancer, and how great party is with all of the policies that would basically ensure you die.

Can you really have a polite with them? If so, then I guess we are just of very different dispositions, because I absolutely could not.

[Swizec]

> Now, your neighbor just wants to talk to you about the rules for how far back new houses should be set from the curb, but every other sentence is about how sick those people are who think they have cancer, and how great party is with all of the policies that would basically ensure you die.

See that's what I mean. There is (from what I remember) less of this in Europe because the kill-cancer-kids party is different than the curb-setbacks-party. You can even vote for saving kids and curb setbacks!

So basically the cancer thing doesn't come up while you're discussing curb setbacks. Because they're separate issues whose venn diagrams don't overlap. You could even go decades without ever realizing your neighbor doesn't believe in cancer.

[rebeccaskinner]

My (probably somewhat incorrect) understanding of most European governments was that you might end up in a situation where you vote in the curb setbacks party and then afterwards they decide to form a coalition with the kill cancer kids party because they see it as the most expedient means to get a majority that can increase curb setbacks. Now you have a real problem because maybe you really do care about curb setbacks but not to the point of wanting kids killed.

My understanding is that’s more or less what recently happened in France.

It might make it easier to talk to your neighbor, who can more plausibly say “don’t look at me, I just voted for curb setbacks”, but it does come with some substantial downsides too, and in the end you still have broad multi-interest umbrella coalitions.

[dgoldstein0]

That last part is called "identity politics". It's partly due to different politicians and parties trying to directly pander to specific demographics. It doesn't always work - like Trump saying you can't be Jewish and vote for Harris is laughable. But in rural areas it's hard to be a Democrat and be out and proud about it; in urban areas, it's hard to be a Republican in the sea of Democrats. And much of that has to do with how heated politics has gotten around issues like abortion, trans rights, DEI, immigration. Politicians on both sides have leaned into the "culture war" - Democrats arguing the rich should pay their fair share, Republicans with their "stop woke".

It's really unfortunate that quick sound bytes work so much better than real policy discussion.

[tdeck]

I think lack of good practice is a big part of it, and I also would add that a lot of the "practice" input our brains get comes from online debate culture and/or watching politicians and surrogates acting in bad faith. That means there's a lot of baggage and bad habits lying around that folks can easily and reflexively fall back, on and it really increases the burden on someone trying to have a good discussion.

[thephyber]

Yeah, this reminds me that “politics” is easily confused with tribalism.

Politics at its core is about the organization of who/what gets the government’s attention and resources. It has completely enveloped tribalism, becoming something much closer to a sport/entertainment, especially when people passively consume it rather than actively investigate.

[JumpCrisscross]

> 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 live in both! It’s easy to discuss if you’re respectful. Even with someone who will take offence to any opinion but their own. You can label them zealots. But they’re also passionate about something, and even if the what is banal the why is usually incredibly beautiful.

[blast]

> If it really was population density, it would be easy to discuss politics in urban NYC and very difficult/ rare in rural Wyoming.

This assumes that the effects of population density are continuously distributed, but what if the national discourse is affected by population density in a way that shows up across the entire country?

[thephyber]

It turns out that population density is highly correlated with Democrat / Republican voting behavior.

But I was pointing out that the article/title is easily refuted. It’s not as simple as that heuristic.

[RickJWagner]

Psychological safety is another way of saying 'anonymous, cowardly trolls'.

People say things they shouldn't when they believe they are anonymous. It's to our detriment.

[thephyber]

Psychological safety is also a necessary part of intimacy in your closest personal relationships and is incredibly valuable for a company to provide their employees. It isn’t exclusively tied to anonymous trolling.

[whaaaaat]

Practice is important. And being able to say, "I disagree, and discussing it further won't change my mind" is important.

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.)

[nataliste]

And this is precisely why people, not just Americans, can't disagree about politics over time. Politics always turns into someone having the perspective "civil disagreement cannot be tolerated because the stakes are too high for my side" which is anethema to reason and concord regardless of whether it's actually true or not.

Catastrophizing is always incentivized in the immediate term because it forces any interlocutor(a) to address it at the expense of any other topic and then the catastrophizer can accuse them of apathy and marginialization if they don't show the requisite enthusiasm and deference.

It's a no-win situation for anyone attempting to deescalate and many just check-out rather than deal with the litany of accusations, which I guess is another kind of victory for the catastrophizers.

[bongoman42]

This. I've had conversations with PhD folks who are genuinely afraid Trump getting elected will mean their naturalized citizenships will be reversed and they'll be deported. I've had conversations with gay Americans who asked me if they should consider moving to Canada because Trump may remove recognition for gay marriages. Both of these positions are so far out of the likelihood of things that may happen that there is no reason to think about them at all, and yet they do. There is little point in discussion at that point.

[locopati]

What reason do you think it's unlikely? He's talked about it. The Supreme Court has talked about it. The Republican party has talked about it.

[bongoman42]

Talked about what? Trump was in power for 4 years, neither of those things came even close to happening. Trump has explicitly said he wants more legal immigration. He has said he wants to stamp Green Cards on everyone graduating from a US college. Vance has explicitly said they're not looking to break up loving families.

[locopati]

why on earth would we believe anything they say?

[fragmede]

But what's special about Americans and politics? If I told my coworkers I think the Earth is flat, they'd think I was an idiot and shrug and then continue to work with me. But somehow knowing how I vote is a shortcut to assuming I've drunk the party koolaid and believe in everything the party does and then we can't work together? The extreme sides of both parties are just that, extremes, and don't represent my beliefs on any number of issues, but it's a two party system so you have to go with one or the other, or throw your vote away. Elsewhere, people can work together just fine knowing their coworkers voted for the wrong party.

[from-nibly]

Why not just throw your vote away anyway? Whats the point unless you live in a swing state? Also why give the government any ammunition to legitimize their existence in the first place.

[nataliste]

>Whats the point unless you live in a swing state?

The game theory strategy in the electoral college is to register and vote as the non-dominant party in any election. If enough people follow this strategy, the locality becomes a swing state and the party platform and candidates will reflect their interests.

>Also why give the government any ammunition to legitimize their existence in the first place.

Until the government collapses, they still control the monopoly on violence. Unless you're a radical pacifist and willing to be the sacrificial lamb, there is a pretty clear need to participate to the extent that the wolf of government doesn't eat you. The punishment which the wise suffer who refuse to take part in the government is to live under the government of worse people.

[from-nibly]

Worrying about which government is worse is a much worse punnishment for me. Also why not just let it get worse maybe it will help more people wake up.

[nataliste]

fragmede, 2017:

>I’m not sure what’s turned the tide for me, but I now believe there are limits to free speech. It turns out that some ideas are toxic, as in, people get sucked into them, are too stubborn/whatever to admit they were wrong, and become rabid believers of nonsense.

>Witness the adherents to the flat earth society or those that stringently don’t believe we landed on the moon, never [sic] the Googler’s sexist manifesto. Anti-semitic screeds like “the Jews run the banks and this is why you’re poor!” frequently leak into open comment sections of your local news’ website, or YouTube comments.

It's not just Americans. The worst offenders tend to be those that believe that they are immune to it.

[fragmede]

Not wanting people to led to believe in a flat earth, and being able to work with people that believe in a flat earth are two different ideas that I don't believe contract each other, but I'm honored you think my writing is worth reading that much of!

[nataliste]

Is flat earth actually catastrophical for you? It seems like other catastrophized topics are much greater points of passion.

>When Twitter pretends to be powerless to do anything about death/rape threats to women journalists, the light of civilization is dimmed, ever so slightly. When entire classes of people disengage from mainstream discourse because they are being threatened by bodily harm, maybe it is possible that it is disingenuous to pre-conclude that anything possibly resembling censorship will result in a dystopian police state where African Americans are still denied the right to vote.

Would you honestly be willing to work or discuss politely with someone that endorsed the ideas behind James Damore's memo? Your writing (at least as of 2017) suggests not.

[JumpCrisscross]

> being able to say, "I disagree, and discussing it further won't change my mind" is important

Though, I would argue, unnecessary. If you faithfully believe, challenge shouldn’t be burdensome. If you’re open to revision, maybe they have a point. I’m not Epictetus, but unless your conversation partner is an idiot or a bore, there is usually something redeeming there.

[whaaaaat]

It has an opportunity cost. It's not burdensome to be challenged, per se, it's burdensome to repeat that, "Yes, I think trans people are humans with complex interior lives who mostly want to be left alone. No, they are not coming into bathrooms en masse to molest you. Yes, they deserve to just get on with their lives. No, we shouldn't mock them for who they are" etc. etc.

It takes someone 3-5 seconds to "just asking questions" and it takes me much more than that to respond. There's an obvious imbalance there that leads to:

a) It's a lot more exhausting to respond than to ask

b) It's vulnerable to malicious askers abusing my good faith answering time

So while, with close friends, I'm happy to answer questions. Or with well meaning allies who genuinely want to learn and just don't understand. But like, random folks? On an internet forum? Nah. They can ask and I can say, "Sorry, let's just not engage."

[JumpCrisscross]

> it's burdensome to repeat that, "Yes, I think trans people are humans with complex interior lives who mostly want to be left alone

So…don’t. Listen to why they think that. The point is it’s fine to walk away still disagreeing but understanding why a little better.

> On an internet forum?

Oh hell no, I’m talking about in person.

[ungamedplayer]

Challenge response has a higher cost than challenging.

For example, would you debate with every flat earther you see? It's simply not worth the time spent. Maybe they fall into the idiot category though.

[KittenInABox]

I think this is however kind of lopsided. For example, trans people are a hotly debated subject but are only 1% of the population or whatever. An individual trans person might have to engage in this debate daily, but a non-trans person might only engage online voluntarily because they have never met a trans person IRL and the concept of one is a fun thought experiment. In that sense being able to say "discussing this topic further won't change my mind" may be an important part of simply letting politicized minorities go about living life.

[sunshowers]

We only have a finite amount of time on this planet.

[JumpCrisscross]

Yet we’re in this very discussion.

[diogocp]

> unless your conversation partner is an idiot or a bore, there is usually something redeeming there.

My recent experience is that even intelligent and thoughtful people start sounding like idiots when they decide to talk politics, and the conversations quickly turn into a huge bore. All I can do is roll my eyes.

[strken]

I think a lot of people genuinely believe that transwomen are grooming and raping children en masse, or at least trying to get into women's sport so they can win medals. The fact that this is both wrong and stupid and has no real non-circumstantial evidence does not stop them.

At some point people have to talk to each other, right? And that's where you have a discussion about how you don't think kids should go to the Folsom Street Fair either, but that you also don't think it's fair for a 39 year old transwoman not to be allowed onto the division F basketball team with her friends, and maybe you and your interlocutor both discover that the other side is a little more tolerable than you thought.

Edit: I didn't really explain that very well. What I mean is that neither extreme finds the opinions of the other extreme tolerable, and that this is the result of paying too much attention to the long tail extremes instead of the middle of the bell curve.

[fragmede]

The topics of housing and drugs and energy and monetary policy and don't get more airtime because we spend time discussing gender and abortion. This is by design.

[rightbyte]

> And being able to say, "I disagree, and discussing it further won't change my mind" is important.

'Agree to disagree' is just an opt out. At that point there usually isn't any agreement upon what is disagreed upon in the first place. It is a debate evasion.

It is usually more honest to say 'I don't want you to convince me or the audiance otherwise'.

But ye there is some endurance limit the discussion need to respect. My point is that 'agree to disagree' is way overused.

[danaris]

The problem with this position is that politics in the current situation are not just about minor details of tax policy or whether to build a bridge here or five miles away there. They are an existential matter for too many people.

When the issue at hand is something like "I think black people deserve the same rights as white people," no, no one is ever going to convince me of the opposite. There is literally no point to me listening to someone who has that as their position (and you're damn right I don't want them convincing the audience either). Same with a number of other prominent issues at stake today.

So if someone comes at me with one of those positions, and doesn't seem, from the outset, to be already seriously on the fence, or to be presenting extremely easily debunked misinformation, yeah, I'm going to nope out of there. It's not worth raising my stress level to argue with that type of person, with or without an audience.

[rightbyte]

I think it might be benifitial to not assume one self is the good guy. It doesn't work on a macro level to assume that.

You could change black and white to Palestinian and Israeli and suddenly most of these 'I would never' would have a very nuanced view on the matter.

But, as I agreed, there is a limit on stamina to discuss with the outmost fringe people.

[danaris]

I don't assume I'm the good guy. I strive, every day, to be good, and to become better.

And yes, the issue of Palestinian rights in Israel, in particular, is extremely thorny, which I presume is why you picked it. There are extremes on both sides—both of which are very real positions that very real people are taking today, neither of which is supportable—and there are shades of gray in the middle, and if I had an answer to that question that didn't raise 100 more, I'd probably have already won the Nobel Peace Prize.

But there are plenty of people in the US who would genuinely try to argue that black people don't deserve the same rights as white people, and unless you are one of them, I think you're likely to agree that that is not a thorny issue: there's a very clear right and wrong answer. It's not conceptually analogous to the situation in the Middle East, even though the words sound similar.

The existence of hard moral questions without easy answers does not negate the existence of moral questions with very obvious answers that a large number of people are nonetheless very obviously on the wrong side of.

[zero-sharp]

What are some other, modern, issues that instantly cause you to lose interest?

[toofy]

> …It is a debate evasion.

> It is usually more honest to say 'I don't want you to convince me or the audiance otherwise'

i’m not trying to be mean but this is just wild. i’ve walked away from “debates” with people many times, not because i “don’t want to be convinced” it’s because too often i just genuinely don’t care what the person thinks about $ISSUE.

i mean, most of us went to university and many of us took those classes, many of us have been online for long enough to have seen every argument and every sophist angle countless times. i learned quick enough that many of these issues have no ‘correct’ answer, they’re personal beliefs with deep foundations.

we also learned early on that debates are silly unless there are actual subject experts (like recognized-by-their-peers-experts), strict moderators, and rules in place. randoms “debating” incredibly complex nuanced topics without actual experts is just… i mean…

…without those things it’s just rhetoric and sophistry. for the debateBros it’s about “winning” rather than coming closer to a truth. other than a few loud debateBros most people discovered these things in like sophomore year.

even more important, and this is just a personal opinion, but i find debateBros super weird and not in the good way. far too often their antisocialness just kills conversations. if someone is a grown adult and can’t tell the difference between a conversation and a debate they almost universally just end up making the entire atmosphere awkward. i learned pretty quickly when out with friends to spot randoms shifting into "debate mode" and we drag the conversation in a totally different direction to stave it off.

unless i know someone irl and enjoy them on a personal level theres almost unlimited things id rather do than spend my time "debating" with them. it boggles my mind how they just repeatedly fail to understand that adversarial debate is not at all normal conversation.

while i absolutely do enjoy passionate discussions of politics with a few family members (cousins, aunts, etc…) and a few friends, but with randoms? almost never. randoms "debating" outside of actual experts? nah, not a chance.

and it’s super important to understand that most of the current divisive topics don’t have “one” correct answer. often they don’t even have a correct answer at all, but rather many valid ways to approach and from multiple foundational beliefs.

[rightbyte]

Well, nothing like a lengthy meta debate about lengthy debates.

I think I was quite clear that I accept the 'endurance excuse'.

I was trying to make the point that the 'endurance excuse' is used as as an escape hatch way too often to silence the debate by people often with the consenus opinion that don't want to risk losing a debate.

In general I agree with you points.

[toofy]

i hope i didn’t come across as if im “debating” something, apologies if it did.

[tourmalinetaco]

There is no party that will make “every waking moment a nightmare" for the LGBTQIAP+. That’s the same thing we heard in 2016, and nothing came of it then. And in fact between 2020 and 2024 there is definitely an argument that can be made that even under the “preferred” party things got worse. Ironically, that exact rhetoric has led to multiple terror attacks on innocent people.

[teg4n_]

>nothing came of it

I’m guessing you aren’t trans or know anyone that is.

Trans people were kicked out of the military under trump. Some republican governments are making it difficult to near impossible for trans people to get transition related medical care. Republican governments are making it difficult to even get identification documents that match your identity. Republican governments are trying to make certain identities to be considered profane and excluded from general society.

[firesteelrain]

“ In August 2017, the White House put out the actual policy behind those tweets. According to the administration, Trump would effectively return to the pre-2016 era in which trans troops could not serve openly. It would also ban the military from paying for gender-affirming surgeries, with some exceptions to “protect the health” of someone who had already begun transitioning. The guidance also allowed the secretary of defense, after consulting with the secretary of homeland security, some wiggle room to decide what to do with already serving trans service members — and it let them advise the president on reversing the ban.”

https://www.vox.com/identities/2017/7/26/16034366/trump-tran...

There are also no reliable numbers of any trans people who were kicked out of the military (if any). Many continued to serve that were already in.

[whaaaaat]

To be clear, I believe both parties are anti-trans. Malcom X was spot on with the Fox and the Wolf -- they both want to eat the lamb, the wolf is just a lot more honest about it.

I regularly argue that Biden has been specifically and materially awful to the trans community. Do not mistake me saying that Republicans want to do worse as somehow saying the Dems are good.

But anti-trans legislation, particularly at the state level, is rising dramatically. (With almost 700 bills introduced this year, compared to merely 10-20 10 years ago.)

The follow states passed anti-trans bills last year: Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Iowa, Idaho, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Missouri, Mississippi, Montana, North Carolina, North Dakota, Nebraska, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Wisconsin, West Virginia, Wyoming

I think, looking at that list, it's pretty clearly predominantly right-leaning states who are actually enacting legislation to make access to education, healthcare, mental health support, services, name changes, etc. more difficult. Like, I don't think that's even subjective. 87 bills passed in those states, and those states are the only ones who passed anti-trans bills.

[ChocolateGod]

> To be clear, I believe both parties are anti-trans

This is IMHO the most toxic and divisive topic not just in politics, but in society too, it touches upon a universal long and cultural fabric of sex division. What you may consider anti-trans to someone else is updating legislation to cover something they never thought it would need to.

Republicans or conservatives in general, may be opposed to same-sex marriage, but it doesn't specifically make them anti-gay.

For context, I'm not a conservative, I just try and be polite, respectful and understanding to those with opposite opinions, as long as they treat me the same.

[whaaaaat]

> may be opposed to same-sex marriage, but it doesn't specifically make them anti-gay.

It absolutely does make them anti-gay. "Gay people should have fewer rights than we do" is fundamentally an anti-gay stance.

[thatswrong0]

[flagged]

[dang]

Please don't do this here.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

[blackeyeblitzar]

> But many of the current political topics are life or death for parts of the community.

This is just hyperbole intended to stop debate and discussion. It’s not life and death to stop biological men from competing in women’s sports for example.