Actual Discussion

219 readers

1 users here now

Are you tired of going into controversial threads and having people not discuss things, circlejerking, or using emotional responses in place of logic? Us too.

Welcome to Actual Discussion!

DO:

Be civil. This doesn't mean you shouldn't challenge people, just don't be a dick.
Upvote interesting or well-articulated points, even if you may not agree.
Be prepared to back up any claims you make with an unbiased source.
Be willing to be wrong and append your initial post to show a changed view.
Admit when you are incorrect or spoke poorly. Upvote when you see others correct themselves or change their mind.
Feel free to be a "Devil's Advocate". You do not have to believe either side of an issue in order to generate solid points.
Discuss hot-button issues.
Add humour, and be creative! Dry writing isn't super fun to read or discuss.

DO NOT:

Call people names or label people. We fight ideas, not people here.
Ask for sources, and then not respond to the person providing them.
Mindlessly downvote people you disagree with. We only downvote people that do not add to the discussion.
Be a bot, spam, or engage in self-promotion.
Duplicate posts from within the last month unless new information is surfaced on the topic.
Strawman.
Expect that personal experience or morals are a substitute for proof.
Exaggerate. Not everything is a genocide, and not everyone slightly to the right of you is a Nazi.
Copy an entire article in your post body. It's just messy. Link to it and maybe summarize if needed.

For more casual conversation instead of competitive ranked conversation, try: [email protected]

founded 10 months ago

MODERATORS

[email protected]

(Open-ended) Politics posting and partisanship (self.actual_discussion)

submitted 8 months ago by ElectroVagrant to c/[email protected]

3 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Been going back and forth on this, as personally I don't have much problem with politics posts and discussions. I know how they can get, and some of why people dislike them, but nevertheless...To not discuss politics enables the worst among us to take the reigns and drag us all over the cliff.

Given that, I'd like to pick apart what may be meant when people say politics. It's a can of worms, so to try to focus things a little, let's say, is it when they're distinctly partisan that disliking them may be meant?

Something you find across the board is the sentiment that a lot of political journalism has very blatant partisan-leanings, and for some organizations there's zero doubt of that.

I should also take a moment to clarify here, when I say partisan, I mean any strongly held political views, not merely left or right, but also including moderate/centrist.

Or is it slightly less the kind that matters, and more the volume of it, pervading every discussion? Especially when one may already be aware and trying to address it in their own ways, and is visiting an online community to get a little respite.

What's your take on this?

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] [email protected] 3 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

Politics is inevitable since it is literally making decisions in groups (along with all the other baggage attached to that including power structures, etc.). If you have a group of people you have politics. End of story. Anybody saying "keep politics out of my " is exercising politics: specifically the power structure elements of it. They are being oxymoronic (as well as the same minus 'oxy').

So it's not politics that's objectionable, I'm going to guess, but rather ...

... drum roll ...

PARTISAN politics.

And "partisan" doesn't mean "left/right". It means any kind of politics that separates and generates an in-group and an out-group. (The root "part" is in partisan as well as political party for a reason.) Partisans by their very nature automatically hate the political opinions of their non-partisans—their "out-group". (And people like me hate all partisans for being that way.) This is true if you're "left" (by whatever definition you use), "right" (ditto), feminist, religious, plutocratic, anti-religious, liberal (in the non-American sense of the term), progressive, racist, etc. etc. etc. If you're dividing society into parts, some of whom are deemed "not one of us" you're a partisan.

It is partisanship that is toxic for the most part. Partisanship is what gives you "the party of 'NO'" in most democracies (especially the USA, but not exclusively): you can't, as a partisan, admit that the "other team" did something good or has a good idea. This gives us ridiculous situations like the most memorable one to me: Pierre Trudeau lambasting Lester Pearson's plan to introduce wage and price controls, getting elected on a platform against that, then promptly introducing wage and price controls. It turns out Pearson's plan was a good one, but for reasons of partisanship Trudeau couldn't admit it. He was a "Liberal" (read: center-left by American standards) not a "Conservative" (read: center-slightly-left by American standards—keeping in mind that the American "left" party is a center-right party in almost any other country).

And indeed, I'll go a step farther: political parties are explicitly anti-democratic. They are specifically there to undermine democracy. In Canada, for example, you in theory vote in your riding to send a representative to speak on your interests to Parliament. Political parties subverted this, however, and now you vote for a party to provide a representative that represents the party's views to you. Your views don't matter.

So politics is inevitable. You can't avoid it. But partisanship doesn't have to be, and it's partisanship that is destructive, even when it's for a "good cause".