[ropetin]

> Contrary to the national security threat machine’s picture of a country at war with itself, we all got along so swimmingly that the idea of a civil war or anything like it struck me as laughable, as did the notion that the statistically insignificant number of politically-motivated killings, though real, said anything at all about the vast majority of real-world Americans.

This line of thinking drives me crazy, especially from someone like Ken. Just because a bunch of privileged Americans were friendly with each other while enjoying an amazing time in nature doesn't immediately negate the very real problems going on in the US.

[Eisenstein]

I think what he is trying to say is that if we all sit down with each other and stop requiring that people agree with our worldview before engaging in good faith, we would find that we actually get along peacefully. He is saying that it isn't as bad as he thought it was before he experienced a situation where that happened.

[ffuxlpff]

See them discuss about how much someone of them gets paid or taxed, if he has medical help if needed or if he can afford to live where he's living now.

[Eisenstein]

This person lives and breathes politics, he is a political blogger. Just interacting with people outside of politics was new for him.

He isn't saying 'ignore politics', and he isn't saying 'we can all agree on everything'. What he is saying is 'making your life about political issues distorts your perspective to where you think that everyone hates one another to point of declaring a civil war' and is advocating sitting down and just socializing with people without the baggage.

As the kids say 'its not that deep'.

[dangus]

But this is an environment where people aren’t talking about real and very important issues.

We obviously get along as a society when we are just doing day to day things. You don’t have to be on vacation to witness that.

But when it comes to discussing whether my trans friends have basic human rights, or whether we should treat foreigners like criminals with no due process by default, whether we should build coal power plants or nuclear power plants or solar power plants, or whether we should start a war, or whether healthcare should be a human right, it’s easy to find people I’ll have strong disagreements with these days.

And those are disagreements that have real consequences. Just ask the people I know who are discontinuing healthcare coverage due to ACA subsidies ending.

Ignorance and avoiding discussing these issues is bliss…until one day it might affect you.

The polarization is unfortunate but I think one way to lessen that is to actually confront issues and solve them. And that’s a fight since there’s a whole system setup that intends us to never solve those problems. But perhaps we might observe that a lot of the solved problems no longer occupy the debate space.

[Eisenstein]

If you want to get people on your side, the best way to do that is not to argue with them, but to be friendly with them. This doesn't mean rolling over and letting them say untrue things or not advocating for causes that are important to you, but it means respecting that other people have different views and putting aside disagreements to socialize with them. There is a reason why armies disallow 'fraternizing with the enemy'.