I think that Progressives are much more comfortable wearing their politics on their sleeve. As someone in Deep Blue America, I think Progressives have fun loudly mocking something Trump did or said in a non-political situation, while conservatives keep their mouths shut.
Progressives generally imagine everyone already agrees with them, so they see no issue.
As someone who belongs more or less to the Progressive persuasion, I gotta agree. Esp. because this party feels under fire/in the opposition role, there is a lot of outsized emotion now (as there was from the Right during the Biden era). At a "civilities" round-table with a bunch of left-leaning colleagues the other day, the view mainly was that it was "the haters" (guess who those were) who had to work on their civility. One basically said, "when I'm angry, I'm not uncivil, I'm civIC" (as in, just fine). Another said, "I don't really care what the other side thinks" - so much for civilities in politically polarized America. 😉
The Ancient Greeks considered politics to be the 5th branch of philosophy. Politics are the means by which we implement our philosophy in the real world.
The US was built on a philosophy. For most of our history, Americans agreed with and embraced the ideas of the Declaration and the Constitution. They understood that the US wasn’t perfect, but we were working toward our philosophical ideals. Our politics were about means, not ends.
That’s no longer true. Now we have a fairly large group of people who believe our history is evil. That our Constitution is a “living document” which they are eager to stretch to any interpretation so they can justify imposing their version of utopia on the country.
Divisive politics is only a symptom. A clash of philosophy is the source of the problem.
I think of myself as a political centrist. An unfortunate tendency I've noticed (more so in the last few years) is the inability of those on the far right or far left to hear about survey data (evidence) on a particular issue when the data conflicts with their opinion about the issue. Immediately dismissing the source and methodology of the survey.
Media and polling companies are in the business of providing confirmation bias to the people who pay the bills. This is the fruit of ideological capture.
Often the data is presented in such a way as to mislead. Often I follow the link directly to the source and then do some thinking about the way the question was posed and how I might state it differently and get a different result. I'm not accusing one side or another, I'm accusing both.
I follow political matters closely, but I don't have a huge emotional investment in any politician because I'm not extreme Left or Right, pretty much a moderate who is willing to vote for sensible candidates regardless of party. These days I'm forced to vote against candidates - rarely if ever do I vote FOR someone. So if someone who hates Trump starts ranting and raving about his many flaws, I can usually agree amiably. If someone starts ranting and raving about how crazy the wokester Democrats are, I can also agree amiably.
Of course, here's what happens when I post online comments: on most sites I am immediately pigeonholed by people who assume that I am extreme one way or the other. If I write that Trump repels persuadable people by his often repulsive public personality, I am called a socialist, a Marxist, a Harris-lover, etc. If I write that extreme DEI and transgender mania hurt Democratic candidates, I am called MAGA lover, far Right, a Christian Nationalist, etc. Most online people make outlandish assumptions based on almost zero evidence.
Mostly I just listen. Only a third of people are registered to a party, and half of them aren't insane, so I wait for one of the typical insane statements before responding in such a way as to convince them I don't even know who is President let alone care.
If they don't bring up chemtrails, the 2020 stolen election, or TDS, I'll keep listening with an occasional "uh huh" to show I'm still in there. Most people have a fairly legitimate gripe, things aren't working out how they'd like and they feel powerless to do anything about it.
Via canvasing what was then a swing state in 08, 10, and 2012, I must have listened to thousands of people, and my job was to listen, not to opine. There are stronger opinions these days and more ridiculously false info via partisan sources, but people's underlying unease with our government is the same.
The idea that politics and religion are topics best avoided in polite conversation goes back centuries.
This piece also seems to conflate two very different things:
Cutting someone off entirely because of their politics.
Refusing to talk politics with someone because of their politics.
The latter strikes me as rather sensible. It’s the former that’s new and a problem. Yes in my experience it is predominantly an issue for the upper 5% heavily credentialed “laptop class”.
These new schools of civic discourse are in fact classically liberal. That is the very core of their mission. That they get described as “right coded” only speaks to how illiberal the left has become. Especially on college campuses.
Yes people do tend to have a legitimate grip. So much more is controversial today than when I grew up in the fifties and sixties. Our federal government was much smaller then, so fewer people had fewer federal government activities about which to complain. Not that there weren’t any problems, just that they may have been handled at the local or state level.
There was 9 cabinet level departments in 1955:
• State
• Treasury
• Defense (created 1947)
• Justice
• Interior
• Agriculture
• Commerce
• Labor
• Post Office Department (Cabinet-level until 1971)
We now have 7 more:
Health & Human Services
Housing & Urban Development
Transportation
Energy
Education
Veteran’s Affairs
Homeland Security
We have so much more to discuss, complain about, or defend
John Halpin is right about something important. A lot of people are tired of political conversation. But I think the problem goes deeper than discomfort or tone.
What I’ve seen, personally and more broadly, is how much politics has become moralized. Once disagreement turns into a test of whether you’re a good or bad person, conversation shuts down. It is no longer “let’s reason this through.” It becomes “which side are you on?”
At that point, stepping back is not intolerance. It is self-preservation.
There is also a reward system built into modern tribal politics that we do not talk about enough. Staying inside your tribe brings certainty and approval. You do not have to wrestle with trade-offs or complexity. You can repeat the lines and feel like you understand what is going on. The harder intellectual work of sorting evidence, ranking competing values, and admitting ambiguity becomes optional.
That is the deeper issue for me.
We do not just disagree more. We no longer share a civic center. We do not agree on what counts as reliable evidence, which values take priority when they conflict, or how to evaluate trade-offs. Without that shared foundation, debate quickly moves into moral territory, and once it gets there, it becomes almost impossible to keep it productive.
So the problem is not simply that people are rude or intolerant. It is that the ground rules for thinking together have eroded. And until those are rebuilt, more and more people will decide it is simply not worth the cost to engage.
GREAT POST. I'm a Trump-voting conservative Republican, but never start a conversation about politics (finishing one is another matter). There are FAR many more important things than politics, including our faith, our families, and our communities. I know full well that nobody cares about my opinion, but they're happy to answer my questions so I can better understand theirs. We should all operate that way.
There are certain people who shall remain unnamed in my life who can't help but talk about politics even after I've asked them not to. One person tries to bring up at least one political discussion in almost every conversation we have and it's always negative. It's strange to me that people are so obsessed.
GREAT post that I've been saving for days to read (until I had the time)! I wish TLP had more to say along these lines - instead of other posts re: cultural populism (i.e., throwing red meat to the base). Are you guys getting each other's memos? 😉 Thank you again - I myself am exhausted by politics and looking for other ways to connect!
In her friendly memoir "Scoundrel Time" sweetie pie Lillian Hellman writes that "We, as a people, agreed in the Fifties to swallow any nonsense that was repeated enough[.]"
Experts agree that the whole point of politics is to get people to swallow nonsense in case we need to go to war.
Democrats agree that Trump is talking nonsense. Republicans agree that wokies are talking nonsense. So that's all right.
I think that Progressives are much more comfortable wearing their politics on their sleeve. As someone in Deep Blue America, I think Progressives have fun loudly mocking something Trump did or said in a non-political situation, while conservatives keep their mouths shut.
Progressives generally imagine everyone already agrees with them, so they see no issue.
As someone who belongs more or less to the Progressive persuasion, I gotta agree. Esp. because this party feels under fire/in the opposition role, there is a lot of outsized emotion now (as there was from the Right during the Biden era). At a "civilities" round-table with a bunch of left-leaning colleagues the other day, the view mainly was that it was "the haters" (guess who those were) who had to work on their civility. One basically said, "when I'm angry, I'm not uncivil, I'm civIC" (as in, just fine). Another said, "I don't really care what the other side thinks" - so much for civilities in politically polarized America. 😉
The Ancient Greeks considered politics to be the 5th branch of philosophy. Politics are the means by which we implement our philosophy in the real world.
The US was built on a philosophy. For most of our history, Americans agreed with and embraced the ideas of the Declaration and the Constitution. They understood that the US wasn’t perfect, but we were working toward our philosophical ideals. Our politics were about means, not ends.
That’s no longer true. Now we have a fairly large group of people who believe our history is evil. That our Constitution is a “living document” which they are eager to stretch to any interpretation so they can justify imposing their version of utopia on the country.
Divisive politics is only a symptom. A clash of philosophy is the source of the problem.
I think of myself as a political centrist. An unfortunate tendency I've noticed (more so in the last few years) is the inability of those on the far right or far left to hear about survey data (evidence) on a particular issue when the data conflicts with their opinion about the issue. Immediately dismissing the source and methodology of the survey.
Media and polling companies are in the business of providing confirmation bias to the people who pay the bills. This is the fruit of ideological capture.
It is all tainted to advance a narrative.
Often the data is presented in such a way as to mislead. Often I follow the link directly to the source and then do some thinking about the way the question was posed and how I might state it differently and get a different result. I'm not accusing one side or another, I'm accusing both.
I follow political matters closely, but I don't have a huge emotional investment in any politician because I'm not extreme Left or Right, pretty much a moderate who is willing to vote for sensible candidates regardless of party. These days I'm forced to vote against candidates - rarely if ever do I vote FOR someone. So if someone who hates Trump starts ranting and raving about his many flaws, I can usually agree amiably. If someone starts ranting and raving about how crazy the wokester Democrats are, I can also agree amiably.
Of course, here's what happens when I post online comments: on most sites I am immediately pigeonholed by people who assume that I am extreme one way or the other. If I write that Trump repels persuadable people by his often repulsive public personality, I am called a socialist, a Marxist, a Harris-lover, etc. If I write that extreme DEI and transgender mania hurt Democratic candidates, I am called MAGA lover, far Right, a Christian Nationalist, etc. Most online people make outlandish assumptions based on almost zero evidence.
Get off social media. You'll feel much calmer.
I feel seen. I too have been accused of being from every politcal group based on my moderate views. Apparently we contain multitudes.
Mostly I just listen. Only a third of people are registered to a party, and half of them aren't insane, so I wait for one of the typical insane statements before responding in such a way as to convince them I don't even know who is President let alone care.
If they don't bring up chemtrails, the 2020 stolen election, or TDS, I'll keep listening with an occasional "uh huh" to show I'm still in there. Most people have a fairly legitimate gripe, things aren't working out how they'd like and they feel powerless to do anything about it.
Via canvasing what was then a swing state in 08, 10, and 2012, I must have listened to thousands of people, and my job was to listen, not to opine. There are stronger opinions these days and more ridiculously false info via partisan sources, but people's underlying unease with our government is the same.
The idea that politics and religion are topics best avoided in polite conversation goes back centuries.
This piece also seems to conflate two very different things:
Cutting someone off entirely because of their politics.
Refusing to talk politics with someone because of their politics.
The latter strikes me as rather sensible. It’s the former that’s new and a problem. Yes in my experience it is predominantly an issue for the upper 5% heavily credentialed “laptop class”.
These new schools of civic discourse are in fact classically liberal. That is the very core of their mission. That they get described as “right coded” only speaks to how illiberal the left has become. Especially on college campuses.
Yes people do tend to have a legitimate grip. So much more is controversial today than when I grew up in the fifties and sixties. Our federal government was much smaller then, so fewer people had fewer federal government activities about which to complain. Not that there weren’t any problems, just that they may have been handled at the local or state level.
There was 9 cabinet level departments in 1955:
• State
• Treasury
• Defense (created 1947)
• Justice
• Interior
• Agriculture
• Commerce
• Labor
• Post Office Department (Cabinet-level until 1971)
We now have 7 more:
Health & Human Services
Housing & Urban Development
Transportation
Energy
Education
Veteran’s Affairs
Homeland Security
We have so much more to discuss, complain about, or defend
John Halpin is right about something important. A lot of people are tired of political conversation. But I think the problem goes deeper than discomfort or tone.
What I’ve seen, personally and more broadly, is how much politics has become moralized. Once disagreement turns into a test of whether you’re a good or bad person, conversation shuts down. It is no longer “let’s reason this through.” It becomes “which side are you on?”
At that point, stepping back is not intolerance. It is self-preservation.
There is also a reward system built into modern tribal politics that we do not talk about enough. Staying inside your tribe brings certainty and approval. You do not have to wrestle with trade-offs or complexity. You can repeat the lines and feel like you understand what is going on. The harder intellectual work of sorting evidence, ranking competing values, and admitting ambiguity becomes optional.
That is the deeper issue for me.
We do not just disagree more. We no longer share a civic center. We do not agree on what counts as reliable evidence, which values take priority when they conflict, or how to evaluate trade-offs. Without that shared foundation, debate quickly moves into moral territory, and once it gets there, it becomes almost impossible to keep it productive.
So the problem is not simply that people are rude or intolerant. It is that the ground rules for thinking together have eroded. And until those are rebuilt, more and more people will decide it is simply not worth the cost to engage.
GREAT POST. I'm a Trump-voting conservative Republican, but never start a conversation about politics (finishing one is another matter). There are FAR many more important things than politics, including our faith, our families, and our communities. I know full well that nobody cares about my opinion, but they're happy to answer my questions so I can better understand theirs. We should all operate that way.
There are certain people who shall remain unnamed in my life who can't help but talk about politics even after I've asked them not to. One person tries to bring up at least one political discussion in almost every conversation we have and it's always negative. It's strange to me that people are so obsessed.
GREAT post that I've been saving for days to read (until I had the time)! I wish TLP had more to say along these lines - instead of other posts re: cultural populism (i.e., throwing red meat to the base). Are you guys getting each other's memos? 😉 Thank you again - I myself am exhausted by politics and looking for other ways to connect!
In her friendly memoir "Scoundrel Time" sweetie pie Lillian Hellman writes that "We, as a people, agreed in the Fifties to swallow any nonsense that was repeated enough[.]"
Experts agree that the whole point of politics is to get people to swallow nonsense in case we need to go to war.
Democrats agree that Trump is talking nonsense. Republicans agree that wokies are talking nonsense. So that's all right.