[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.

[Swizec]

Yep that does happen and ultimately the goal of all this is that some sort of concensus is reached.

The benefit is that you get a few seats representing curb setbacks and a few seats representing cancer kids and they both have to work together to make anything happen. As opposed to USA where voting for curb setbacks means the cancer kids get no seats.

I think an important feature is that (as far as I understand) politicians in EU vote based on their issue whereas politicians in USA vote based on their party regardless of issue. And in Europe there's lots of referendums for when the politicians can't agree on something. The big stuff is often decided via direct instead of representative democracy.

So in your example of cancer kids, the party would probably make a big ruckus, then run a few polls to force a referendum, then a few months later everyone would directly have to vote yes/no on the issue. Obviously the parties would run voter campaigns to convince you to vote the way they'd like, but at least they don't get to just decide these things based on whom 50.5% of the country voted for a few years ago.

It's also, I think, a lot easier in [most of?] Europe to refresh the government. I can't even remember the last time a parliament in my home country managed to last a full 4 years without someone forcing an election. The UK in 2022 famously had a prime minister that lasted just 44 days.

We change our politicians like underwear. They're there to do a job not to build empires.

[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.