Where is the Common Ground?

JoeMorgue said:
I'm being dead serious here but what does, in a democracy, "marginalize" mean that isn't just straight up voter fraud/disenfranchisement.
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Uke already said:

I'm simply saying that we need to focus on outnumbering them at the polls and then fix the system once we're back in power so that the inbuilt advantage of the GOP is eradicated
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That's all.



You do have to ask yourself, if even as a hypothetical, what happens when you even the playing field... and you still lose?
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We'll cross that bridge when we come to it. The world is chaotic, so who knows what things will be like in 5 or 10 years?
 
Distracted1 said:
One might observe that the current administration is a result of the "other side" feeling politically marginalized already. Further, it is pretty clear that they recognize that they are not a majority already- hence the gerrymandering and voter ID initiatives.
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They didn't do that stuff because they know they're in the minority; they did it when they were a majority to lock it in perpetually, because they're ruthless.
 
Tommy Jeppesen said:
You seem smart. I wish I could pick your brain to learn more. :)

Back to the Overton window. You said it had moved both good and bad in different sense. Care to explain.
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Its a broad question. Kind of depends on the time frame. We now talk about homesexuality and race relations in polite company for instance. Those where changes that occurred in the 60s, 70s, and 80s. On the other hand, the way do is often very circumscribed. Its a good thing that some terms are generally forbidden but you can't even say the N word discussing why we can't say the N word. You get folks objecting to Huck Finn on account of the N word even though its kind of the point to in that book to show how nasty the South was towards blacks. You can't even ask if some of the gender differences in STEM is not just due to discrimination against women.

kellyb said:
I think it's actually about how you believe the "other" should be treated.

Liberals might feel just as angry at conservatives as conservatives feel towards, say, minorities, but we actually believe in improving the lot of everyone, in spite of our anger.
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I don't really believe that. After all, we've got folks talking about marginalizing those voters and having no common ground with folks on the other side.
 
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ahhell said:
The current research does not support this. Most likely, though there are exceptions, you are bigoted against people who are not in your in group, and you have found reasons to justify that. Even if your reasons are pretty good, they probably aren't why you are bigoted against those people.

There is literally research showing people are bigoted against others based on completely arbitrary and meaningless groups. The most commonly mentioned study told people the were either good or bad estimators. They then started showing bias against the other group.

https://youarenotsosmart.com/transcripts/transcript-tribal-psychology/
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Does not support what? It certainly doesn't contradict what I said, and I've never denied being human. This is a political discussion group, not psychological (except one thread), so I assumed we were talking politics and the "common ground" OP. I assumed, that is, that we were talking about public policy, which in my mind is how we treat each other. If you're making the trivial point that all people are biased, not intending to draw a false political equivalence, then excuse me.
 
kellyb said:
They didn't do that stuff because they know they're in the minority; they did it when they were a majority to lock it in perpetually, because they're ruthless.
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As to gerrymandering, it has been used by both sides. That the right has been using it more aggressively, and to greater effect more recently may be looked at as more of an act of desperation than ruthlessness ( or , if you prefer, ruthlessness born of desperation ).
The end of the Republican Party being right around the corner is something that has been wrongly predicted for decades.
How are their stepped-up efforts to game the system to their advantage in light of these predictions any different from suggestions in this very thread to lock in political marginalization of the other side once "our side" has the upper hand again?
 
ahhell said:
I don't really believe that. After all, we've got folks talking about marginalizing those voters and having no common ground with folks on the other side.
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Uke was apparently just meaning "out-vote" with the word "marginalize."
 
ahhell said:
You can't even ask if some of the gender differences in STEM is not just due to discrimination against women.
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Yes you can. Who has actually gotten in actual trouble for asking that?
 
WilliamSeger said:
By the dictionary definition of "bigot" you may be right, but that usage hides more than it reveals, as your false equivalence shows. Yes, I am bigoted against people who hold to ideologies that I find repulsive because they hurt people, but that ideology is of their own choice, and it's something they can change.
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WilliamSeger said:
Does not support what? It certainly doesn't contradict what I said, and I've never denied being human. This is a political discussion group, not psychological (except one thread), so I assumed we were talking politics and the "common ground" OP. I assumed, that is, that we were talking about public policy, which in my mind is how we treat each other. If you're making the trivial point that all people are biased, not intending to draw a false political equivalence, then excuse me.
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The research inidicates that you are more likely to find the ideology of people you are bigoted against to be repugnant because you are bigoted against them than to be bigoted against them because of their ideology.

For the most part we make decisions for reason we don't really understand ourselves then look for reasons to justify our decisions. We are more loyal to our tribes than to ideology. There are pretty easy and petty ways to demonstrate that too. During the election Dems and Reps favorability ratings of Russian switched. With the Reps become more positive towards Russian and the Dems more negative. A change that was more pronounced among Reps.

After conducting many studies like this, Kahan and his team concluded that if individuals are members of groups who have become polarized about a particular issue, and that polarization puts the group’s opinions at odds with scientific consensus, people will almost always go with what their group believes over what the preponderance of the evidence suggests. In another of Kahan’s studies, people were told they would be making sense of the raw numerical results of a separate bit of research that tested the effectiveness of skin cream. Now, the results were fake, and for half the subjects the cream was shown to be effective, and for the other half it was shown that it wasn’t. Kahan found that the better subjects were math, no matter their politics, the better they performed when it came to determining the effectiveness of the cream. But when those exact same numerical results were relabeled, and subjects were told the research tested the effectiveness of gun control, the better subjects were at math the worse they performed — but only if the political party they belonged to was openly opposed to what the numbers suggested. If the results suggested that gun control was effective, Republicans who were good at math became bad at math. If the results showed gun control was ineffective, Democrats who were good at math became bad at math. If their party favored the results, then once again math skills alone determined the subjects’ performance, the same as it had when the exact same results supposedly measured the effectiveness of skin cream. Kahan says that the better you are with numbers, the better you are manipulating them to protect your identity-connected, and in this case politically motivated, beliefs. Of course in the study none of the subjects had any idea they were doing this. They didn’t think their tribal loyalty was affecting their math ability. They all felt they were doing their best.
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https://youarenotsosmart.com/transcripts/transcript-tribal-psychology/
 
ahhell said:
For the most part we make decisions for reason we don't really understand ourselves then look for reasons to justify our decisions. We are more loyal to our tribes than to ideology. There are pretty easy and petty ways to demonstrate that too. During the election Dems and Reps favorability ratings of Russian switched. With the Reps become more positive towards Russian and the Dems more negative. A change that was more pronounced among Reps.
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I'm going to say that was more the result of extremely well-orchestrated propaganda campaigns than anything else.
 
uke2se said:
My point is that the wrongheadedness of these people is doing real damage to society. We can't afford to sit and hope that they'll change their minds. It would be nice if they did, but until then, we ought to make them marginalized.

As for liberals being as bigoted, bollocks.

As for AGW, the people swallowing the disinfo campaign are politically driven to do so. That's why you see it exclusively on the right.
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PhantomWolf said:
It'd actually rather sad to see. Here is NZ there is a lot of common ground between the main two Parties, they both agree that Public Health Care is important to the country, having a strong public education system, making sure that people have a place to live, that they have security when out of work. In fact there are few big things that the parties don't agree on, there is even pretty much a consensus on Abortion and Gay Marriage, with our "Right Wing" Party having introduced the later.

Where the disagreement happens is over the details. How should schools be funded? Should people on the dole be dope tested? What age limit should be on 100% subsidized Doctor Visits? Should people be moved out of high value State Homes so they can be sold off to pay for building several lowers cost ones? Should we focus more on rehabilitation and education of prisoners in Jails?

We don't have the fundamental disagreements of what is right for the people of the country, just on how we're going to achieve that. In the US the split is so big that the sides can't even agree on what the fundamental requirements to create a good society are, let alone getting into how to do them.

It's like, here, we're arguing about the colour of the hire car we want to have while on our holiday, while you lot are still arguing about who, if anyone, even gets to go on the holiday, and even if the holiday is a good idea at all.
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This.

One can seek common ground with someone who shares some values.


It is difficult if one side has abhorrent values. Or refuses to believe in what are easily verifiable facts.
 
ahhell said:
Its a broad question. Kind of depends on the time frame. We now talk about homesexuality and race relations in polite company for instance. Those where changes that occurred in the 60s, 70s, and 80s. On the other hand, the way do is often very circumscribed. Its a good thing that some terms are generally forbidden but you can't even say the N word discussing why we can't say the N word. You get folks objecting to Huck Finn on account of the N word even though its kind of the point to in that book to show how nasty the South was towards blacks. You can't even ask if some of the gender differences in STEM is not just due to discrimination against women.
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We agree.

I don't really believe that. After all, we've got folks talking about marginalizing those voters and having no common ground with folks on the other side.
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One potential problem could be, that not all the voters need to marginalize, are non-bigots. In other words, we bring out the vote by attracting another kind of bigots and end up being the same. Of course history shows that it is always the right that are the true bigots.
So the dogma is that we on the left are always a majority of non-bigoted liberals and we can control all the aspects of being on the left, because we as liberals are rational and live in the real reality.
There is then that if we truly politically marginalize 20-40% of the people, who know what they might come up with.

Great plan.
Now as a former professional soldier, it was hammered into us that any complex plan will break down the moment it meets reality.
But that doesn't apply to rational non-bigoted liberals, who live in the real reality. :D
 
jimbob said:
This.

One can seek common ground with someone who shares some values.


It is difficult if one side has abhorrent values. Or refuses to believe in what are easily verifiable facts.
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theprestige said:
Why does Rice play Texas?
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Can you elaborate, because I literally have no idea what that means in context (or indeed out of context).
 
ahhell said:
The research inidicates that you are more likely to find the ideology of people you are bigoted against to be repugnant because you are bigoted against them than to be bigoted against them because of their ideology.
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Well, I don't see that the research you cite supports that particular contention or refute what I said, which was not that "libs" are not "bigoted." I'll go play pool tonight with a "tribe" that's about half trumpers, and in a couple weeks I'll be going to a family reunion where most of the tribe are trumpers. I'm sure I'll enjoy both as long as politics doesn't come up, because I am not "bigoted" against them unless and until we get to politics. I am "intolerant" of their political opinions, not the circumstances of their birth or economic status. If you didn't intend to draw an equivalence, then I misunderstood what you were getting at.
 
I’d say the biggest reason why compromise is currently impossible is that Republicans have adopted a political strategy of splitting the difference between the Republican position and the Common Ground. Instead of negotiating Democratic ask vs Republican asks they insist on taking the common ground points and saying “we’ll agree to these if you agree to Republicans positions you oppose”
 
LSSBB said:
It's from Kennedy's speech about aiming to land on the moon. Good one to look up and understand.
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Fair enough, I was only familiar with the answer.

However, I don't think it makes sense in this context.

Understand why and how people hold their values, but sometimes it is difficult to meet them halfway. Maybe work to persuade them (which will involve understanding) but that is not the same.

For example how does a black-latino meet a white supremacist halfway?

Some people can convince them of the wrongness of their view - see this inspiring video, however that is not meeting them halfway.

 
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