Divided and Conquered Part 1

Not sure if this belongs in philosophy, as it is probably more psychology but I couldn't find the right forum top fit for this:

"As someone who has had an interest in American politics and government I find I have come through a certain transformation over the years. When I first jumped into the internet debating sites on politics, I went into it looking for someone to challenge me in a debate. As I started this way, I didn’t intend to alter my beliefs or my stances as I had thought I had everything figured out, as I was really just looking for ways to better form and cement my arguments. I really enjoyed debating with other people as it was a way for me to gauge my intelligence against others. For years I was stuck in this stage of debating just to measure up against other people, and to become a more intelligent debater and also gain more knowledge of the world.

This stage is very similar to what psychologists call the immersion-emersion phase (typically reserved for race identity but I think it applies for political identities as well), where I was aware of my beliefs, was adamant about them, took pride in them, and disparaged others with differing view points. I became more involved in groups and attended events with people of like beliefs, and became more emotionally attached to them. This is a phase that I think a lot of people end up stuck on when it comes to political beliefs. Now that I look back at this phase, I see this as a very immature and emotionally stunted stage to be stuck in, and I believe this is why we have such a deep divide in this country."

Continue reading at the link.


Divided and Conquered Part 1 | Heretical Druthers

I pretty much gave that up quite a few years back. I think what I think, and I believe what I believe, and it doesn't offend me for other people to think and believe otherwise. The world is going to move in the direction that it moves, regardless of our individual ideologies, and the pendulum will continue to swing back and forth, as it always has, to achieve some sort of balance overall. It's really nothing to get too emotionally tied up in, because our life is a short one, and in the big scheme of things, most of this is pretty insignificant. You do what you are able to do, and affect what you are able to affect, while you're here.

Yes, not too sure where JP is going with this, but I suppose we'll find out. So far all we have is a foundation for a thesis.

Meanwhile, so long as no contribution or participation is required by any other, I am elsewhere passionately arguing for a return to principles of liberty that allow each of us to be who and what we are and to think, believe what we do without fear that someone will try to punish us. I do not look for the collective POV to dictate my values and convictions to me because I learned long ago that just because something is popular does not make it right. These days what too many think is empirical evidence is in fact the politically correct version of something that is literally force fed to the people and won't hold up under intellectual honesty. Not that PC and intellectual honesty co-exist all that well.

I participate on these message boards partly for the social nature of it which can be enjoyable. And part of it is to test those things that I believe to be true to see if some smart soul can shake my faith in what I believe. If they can, I have learned that I need to go back to the drawing board and rethink it. Unfortunately there are only so many who do message boarding who have the common sense and reasoning ability to really articulate a position. The rest mostly cut and paste opinions of others often when they couldn't explain what they cut and paste if their lives depended on it.

Or they engage what 'feels' like valid debate to them but really is just memorized talking points that again they could not defend if they absolutely had to. Or they use the typical non sequitur, red herring, straw man, appeal to authority, projections, and other gimmicks in an effort to make an argument.

If you were wondering where I was going with this I did write on this some more today.

I plan on writing on the topic of "division" quite a bit, so I will keep everything I add into it in this thread.

"Getting two sides to agree on solutions.

There was a time when the saying “United we Stand, Divided we Fall” motto was used as a rallying cry in songs and in literature to convince people to stay the course in important historical fights. It is a term that I don’t often hear as much today as when I was younger when learning about history in grade school. Maybe it is a motto we should bring back to remind us all that our political divide may be causing our nation to falter and potentially fail. These days our political climate seems to be hurting our country because of the divide it is creating between major parties, between races, and between religions. Politicians can’t seem to agree on anything in recent years in order to make our government actually function, which is important as working together to improve our country is exactly what our elected officials are supposed to do.

Whether you believe that the government is too big or too small or has too many regulations or not enough regulations, I do think there is something that most people can agree upon: that in it’s current state the government is not working for us anymore. Without getting into how to fix the government, I believe it is more important to first start with a position of agreement and work from there.

When you start off with a point of agreement, you then can start to begin on positions of negotiation. Usually both parties of a negotiation will come into it with some biases of the opposing party so this will cause frustration and tension. To alleviate these tensions and fears it is best recognize those tensions and fears and come to an understanding of why the opposing party feels the way they do. Even if you don’t think the other sides fears are warranted, it is important to recognize the fears they have and show a willingness to alleviate those fears, you have to recognize that the other side has legitimate concerns, otherwise negotiations are pointless.

Building trust is another aspect to consider in this process of coming to agreements and negotiating. Often times opposing parties don’t trust the information that they are given by the opposing party. Each side needs to clarify their assumptions they make about opposing information, that way those assumptions can be addressed. Then it is also important to set up a system of promises and have each party hit those promises so that each side becomes more trustful that they will be more honest and reach goals together.

At this point it seems like a government may need a non-partisan negotiator in this process to make sure this process is being followed and met. This could likely be done with both parties agreeing on an outside arbitrator with a history of non-partisan decision making. The mediator should be responsible for keeping communication open and tracking the promises being met and making sure information being shared is meeting the requirements of each party.

As stated before it is important to come to a common agreement of sorts. Both sides could put together a list of interests, and have the mediator highlight the interests that are in common, and have the negotiations start at those points of commonality. And through these interests, options on solutions to these interests need to be presented, and a way to determine a method for picking these options. After these options are presented then they need to come to another list of pros and cons of each option, along with opportunities and risks associated with them. Then when these are listed and presented a solution can be agreed upon.

As the system stands right now, we don’t really have a technical process to agreement. We have politicians trying to gain votes through media interviews, and making assumptions about the opposing party. We have filibusters that delay any kind of agreement on an issue, via voting. We have in fighting within parties and rhetoric from both sides that destroy any chance of even having both sides meet with each other on issues. Right now our mediators are the media being used to promote each sides views and solutions, but you rarely see a table of differing views coming together to achieve a solution. People tend to “agree to disagree” and the same discussions get repeated over and over again."

Divided and Conquered Part 2 | Heretical Druthers

It's fairly rare for two sides of an issue to an agreement through one or both sides changing their minds. Much more commonly, one side destroys the other in some way.

I think the divide is much deeper than could be solved by saying "can't we all just get along?". There is the left/right, liberal/conservative, socialist/free market dichotomy, which is largely political, but deeper than this is the believer/ non-believer. To the believer the consequences of compromise are a life of sin, bringing damnation. While the non-believer considers the "opponents" morality to be outmoded, irrational, and an offense to personal liberty. This is beyond political, but it has been brought into the political argument as part of the "moral position" of a party or leader.
On the other hand was there ever a time when there was such unity and willingness to collaborate? If so, what was that society like, in terms of their moral views, were people "like-minded"? Yes, it would seem they were. Look back at the 1950's, more or less the end of the era of cooperation, where in the 60's there was the beginning of popular unrest. Protest movements, especially in the youth. It was in the music. It popularized hippy culture, which is comparable to communism. Leftism, amorality, atheism. This divided the society into two groups, one loud, rebellious, seeking to break from tradition and reform society. The other more traditional, dutiful, trusting authority. The silent majority. They were silent for a time but no longer. The bible-belters have found their own political voice and the country is no longer unified, or willing to compromise.

Whereas we used to be defined by our similarities, today people are defined by their differences. Americans aren't Americans first and foremost, we're liberals and conservatives and libertarians and people take those political identities as part of their self-identity. People don't debate to test their ideas, they do it to defeat the opposition. Most people don't care if their positions are defensible or rational or the best of the bunch, they believe because it makes them feel good to do so and because it makes them feel good, they will never admit that their ideas might not be perfectly correct and superior all the time.

I am writing another piece on this tomorrow, for some reason this topic has really got my writing juices flowing. But until I finish it read this research that Pew has put together. It is damn telling of how bad things are:

Political Polarization in the American Public | Pew Research Center for the People and the Press

Is the media causing a larger political divide?

The human race is in a new era of assimilating information because of the recent advent of cable news and the internet in the past 25 years. Science has still yet to determine how this is effecting our divide but there is plenty of valuable tidbits that are correlative that could lead one to believe that media is playing a major role in creating a political divide.

The onset of cable news channels began when CNN first aired in 1980, but at that time cable wasn’t as prevalent as it is today, so it went without much in competition for nearly 16 years, until MSNBC and FOX News both aired in 1996. At first intuition one would think that more competition is a great thing, to which I would agree. But has this competition led to greater news coverage? Or has it lead to more divisiveness in this country?

Since the inception of other cable news networks fostering this competition of opinions, there has been a steep incline in creating a political divide. According to Pew Research (read through this whole thing, it’s amazing):

“The overall share of Americans who express consistently conservative or consistently liberal opinions has doubled over the past two decades from 10% to 21%. And ideological thinking is now much more closely aligned with partisanship than in the past. As a result, ideological overlap between the two parties has diminished: Today, 92% of Republicans are to the right of the median Democrat, and 94% of Democrats are to the left of the median Republican.”

The above survey was conducted over a 20 year period and dates back to 1994, so it is feasible to pin some of this divide on the sudden rise in cable news, and the opinions they state on their stations. Of course this is highly susceptible to the fallacy of correlation implies causation, but it ought to make someone wonder why the specific divide started to occur then, and continues to worsen.

According to the same Pew research the views of opposing parties have also become more extreme. In 1994 16% of democrats had an unfavorable view of republicans and today that number is up to 36%, and republicans had a 17% unfavorable view of democrats in 1994 and is now up to 43%.

Pew has also done great research on who watches cable news, and what they are watching. At prime time, cable news will focus on talk shows to capture their audience. Those that are heavy watchers of cable news, will be more prone to develop issues of group think as they are only listening to opinions on one side.

If you read the first link I posted from Pew, it goes on for several pages as to just how divided people are. There are increasing percentages of people who are so ideologically cemented in their beliefs that they don’t want to live near people opposed to them, and often times won’t befriend them. As shown on page 4 of that report it shows that consistent liberals have over a 70% unfavorable view of Fox news and over 70% of consistent conservatives have an unfavorable view of MSNBC. So if our two main partisan cable news stations are fostering such a divide it makes it safe to ascertain that they are part of the blame for such a divide in our country.

Divided and Conquered Part 3 | Heretical Druthers