> I don't get why "talking politics" is something to so desperately avoid in the US.
It's because there isn't a single party where you can't find crazy people who have no contact with reality who also hate anyone who disagrees with them. Oh, and the blogs/online news comments are filled with paid political hacks during election season. During the election, I noticed things like how the same guy got first post with the same username to every news story with comments on every paper at the top of Google News. He vanished immediately after the election. I think someone even paid their supporters openly.
Worse, feelings and identity have become much more important than facts (you don't vote for your political party, you are a Republican/Democrat/Libertarian/Green/Pirate/Socialist/Communist/Independent/I'm sorry if I left your party out) and it's simply not possible to discuss the issues in any depth without getting someone really mad.
Even if you can absolutely prove that X is untrue, you'll get a "But $other_party is just as bad! They did $bad_stuff (and that might even be true). Why did you fail to mention that? Why don't you hate them for that, too!? You're not one of us, you're one of them!"
In short, rational debate has become impossible because there are strong feelings everywhere and it's just not worth it to anyone but strong partisans to jump into the fray (most people don't like being hated), so moderate voices are excluded and the US vs. THEM dynamic gets intensified.
Alas, this is infecting more than just politics. I don't even want to touch the tech flamewars.
I agree with what you said, I just think it can't be allowed to continue. It causes more and more damage all the time.
Maybe someone could make a TV show where you have guests and talk politics, but if one of the participants commits a logical fallacy (e.g. you're "but they're just as bad!" example) they have their mic turned off for 2 minutes, get kicked off the show or something. There must be some way to begin associating arguing from emotion with being "uncool".
It's because there isn't a single party where you can't find crazy people who have no contact with reality who also hate anyone who disagrees with them. Oh, and the blogs/online news comments are filled with paid political hacks during election season. During the election, I noticed things like how the same guy got first post with the same username to every news story with comments on every paper at the top of Google News. He vanished immediately after the election. I think someone even paid their supporters openly.
Worse, feelings and identity have become much more important than facts (you don't vote for your political party, you are a Republican/Democrat/Libertarian/Green/Pirate/Socialist/Communist/Independent/I'm sorry if I left your party out) and it's simply not possible to discuss the issues in any depth without getting someone really mad.
Even if you can absolutely prove that X is untrue, you'll get a "But $other_party is just as bad! They did $bad_stuff (and that might even be true). Why did you fail to mention that? Why don't you hate them for that, too!? You're not one of us, you're one of them!"
In short, rational debate has become impossible because there are strong feelings everywhere and it's just not worth it to anyone but strong partisans to jump into the fray (most people don't like being hated), so moderate voices are excluded and the US vs. THEM dynamic gets intensified.
Alas, this is infecting more than just politics. I don't even want to touch the tech flamewars.