There are a large number of policy issues the average American should be able to agree on, but have been polarized to the point that we don’t solve them.
- Get money out of politics. Everyone complains about corruption, no one tries to do a constitutional amendment to get rid of Citizens United.
- Strong privacy protections for your online data. Does anyone like the fact that your data gets sold and then used against you by car insurance companies?
- Break up big companies that are taking their power too far. Seriously, take your Syscos, Nestles, AB InBevs of the world and break them up. No company deserves to have that much power over consumer markets, and the centralization of that power definitely makes prices higher. My conservative parents definitely don’t like how when Walmart and Rite Aid came to small-town midewest, all the local drug & grocery stores went out of business.
- Every American knows our private health insurance system sucks. I mean every person you meet either doesn’t have good coverage, hasn’t used it much, or has had had a terrible experience with it.
- We need to do away with police overstep like asset forfeiture, where the government can basically just rob you. I’m not talking defund the police, but you could sit the average American down, and probably come to agree that the police state has too much power and not enough accountability in a couple areas.
There are so many stories along these lines which could get republicans and democrats on a similar page, and it comes down to the frustrations we ALL have with the systems we live in. It doesn’t matter who you voted for, when health insurance starts scamming you out of a procedure you need, it’s frustrating on a deeply personal level. And we all feel like we don’t have much control over federal policy — partly because businesses & moneyed interests can protect their interests while everyone else struggles, no matter who’s in charge.
(And btw, this isn’t a elected officials on both sides are the same comment, more of a “we Americans have a lot of shared frustrations regardless of party”
1) Despite the quite liberal lobbying laws the US seems to have, corruption is still rampant and illegal donations continue. Cracking down on lobbying would probably remove some of the money in lobbying but not all of it.
Points 2-5 are all "impactful for the average american" but most people will disagree with how and how far these should be implemented. Why did you signal out asset forfeiture as your example of police overstep but not no knock warrants, stop and search laws or the current ICE street gang situation?
The problem with the view that all members of a nation share common struggle and therefore have the same political wants and needs is naive and these seemingly shared frustrations are often oversimplifications that disguise various political interests
- same sex marriage should be treated equally to heterosexual marriage
- the tradition of gender being strictly tied to genitalia at birth should be abolished, with individuals able to change gender (and genitals) at their whim
Oops Americans don’t agree on queer rights and equality oops
- everyone should be treated equally and afford equal protection under the law, regardless of where they were born or what the colour of the skin is or what their genitals look like
And what happens when political actors capitalize on the things that divide you? What makes people vote against their own economical interest for the sake of preventing transgender care being passed or abortions becoming illegal?
Most people even on the left don’t agree with the gender aspect of your points. It’s a pretty minority view.
Other than that we’re still at the point where most people will at least verbally agree with you that everyone should be treated equally (whether they believe it or not internally is another matter).
> the issues arise when it gets a smidge more nuanced then that
The issues arise when folks get distracted from common prosperity.
I meet so many people in the Rockies and New York who are up in arms about some imaginary problem, or a problem they have no influence over and which cannot affect them, one they solely know about due to social media.
Specifically, it feels like the lack of discernment goes off the rails and falls into the chasm of derangement where people assume that their opponents do not have that common goal. Anti-natalists and population control advocates excluded, most of us do share that goal. The differences are in the proposed approaches.
There are legitimate discussions which can be had about those approaches to achieving that common goal. The discussion is no longer in good faith where partisans deny that common goal or assume evil intent.
That is a good example of a bad faith presupposition. It assumes intent. You may passionately believe this and it may even be a popular view here at HN. However, it isn't a starting point for a dialogue.
You're stepping into a distinct issue where you specify politicians or the political classes. Thus far I took the discussion to be about individuals engaging in informal political discussions. The poll itself wasn't limited to politicians.
There are well known malign incentives for politicians and the political classes. Generally speaking these involve the expansion of the purview of the state and the time preferences dictated by electoral cycles. These are realist views around the incentives political actors find themselves subjected to. The extent of how much these incentives are perceived to dictate outcomes might correlate with the observer's cynicism. However, presuming that these incentives would only apply to one political party would be naive at best. At worst it would be divisive partisan tilting. The suggestion that it is specific to Republicans and the devolution of this thread is illustrative of the polling data.
There is something particular to the twitter style of website that is toxic. I tried twitter for a month or two and my mental health fell apart. Back to reddit and hn and my life feels better. They are also less addicting. The segregation into interest specific communities helps you context switch.
No, the issue is wider. Everyone has something that can be considered a "fundamentalist value" by someone else who doesn't share it. It just doesn't feel that way when the value is yours.
I suspect you misunderstand the meaning of the word fundamentalism; it's not just about absolutism, but also the authoritarian aspect, i.e. this issue is "back and white" and "i'm going to force you to to adhere to this black and white framework" (for some mechanism of "force"). My point is that it is the combination of "lack and white" and "forced compliance" that is the issue.
So your point "considered a "fundamentalist value" by someone else who doesn't share it" either a) directly contradicts the "No, the issue is wider", or b) you didn't understand what I was saying.
Yeah but when you discuss nuances in person rather than online your natural social chemistry in your brain kicks in and we all behave like actual people instead of mindless savages
Unfortunately it's not that simple any more. There are already very fundamental issues on which we are already very polarized, online or not. One of these is safety for example – far too many people are ready to give up any freedoms in the name of security. Ideas for EU chatcontrol, camera networks etc don't come from some bureaucrats, there is a very broad social demand for this.
Voters in democracies are usually not people who deeply understand issues. We outsource that to politicians, but politicians have a second agenda, serving the people who paid their campaign.
The very concept of manufactured consent seems very much projection on Chomsky's part. Very much, 'they don't agree with me but I know what their real interests are so I can speak for them better than they can for themselves' crap to turn the masses into sock puppets to win arguments.
The demand comes from people who value their children’s perceived safety over the ability of some internet perv to get at porn or for terrorists to plan atrocities.
And no, they don’t want to hear about the importance of freedom to communicate being more important boy. I’m just gonna move this road we go do you wanna go out that way okay, because they believe that their communication will never cross these lines, so it’s irrelevant.
“But what if the government turns bad and uses this against you” carries far less weight, in a large part due to its theoretical nature, than “we need to stop this bad thing now”.
Heck, a lot of the governments likely aren’t thinking beyond “we need to stop this bad thing now so people vote for us” either. The immediate leap from governments wanting any form of oversight to “this is all part of the wider plan to subjugate humanity” that often comes up on this site is amusing but ultimately unhelpful and comes across as conspiratorial. Not because it’s wrong exactly, but because it posits a plan where it’s not very clear there is one. It’s just well intentioned people making well intentioned but poor choices as we stumble our way into mediocrity.
