Has it occurred to you that the people who feel rage fundamentally understand the situation, and you may be undereducated in this area? What do you think are the root causes of that “senseless partisan drive”?
I’d suggest starting with Rick Perlman’s book “Nixonland” if you’re interested.
> Has it occurred to you that the people who feel rage fundamentally understand the situation, and you may be undereducated in this area?
Regardless of how justified the rage is or not, being very emotional about things usually have one of two effects on people A) people gets taken aback by someone's strong emotions or B) people get inspired/taking with the emotion, even feeling that emotion stronger themselves. Sometimes also C) they don't really care either way.
What probably isn't helpful, is calling someone is "undereducated" when they're clearly saying that they're person (A), and just because they may or may not agree with you (although parent didn't even clearly say they disagree, just that they're "taken aback" a bit).
Some people are calm regardless of what's going on around them, even if the world would be on fire, they'd try to describe what's going on around them with careful words and consideration. It isn't wrong or right, just like the people who feel rage and very emotional aren't wrong or right, it's just a showcase how we're different.
But we should aim to at least understand each other, not by trying to provoke, instigate or look down on others, but by asking questions to clarify and to better understand.
You're doing the exact same thing he is addressing in that statement above. He's not belittling anyone's rage, he's speaking about people who incite others to feel the rage with them. Now let's turn your question around.
Has it occurred to you that the people who feel rage fundamentally misunderstand the situation and are completely undereducated in this area, and are only fuelled by sensationalism and Media manipulation? And then I suggest you go read Dirty Politics by Kathleen Hall Jamieson if you're interested, because that's what people who want to sound more intelligent than the other half of the conversation always do.
Given the two of you probably have different models of reality, perhaps you two can try and figure out which is correct by seeing which model gives better predictions?
So try to come up with some sort of future observation that can be made where you think the other person's model would give a different answer to yours about what you would be able to objectively observe.
Over what time scale, how do we agree on facts, and how do we evaluate things that require a common value system to determine whether the facts are good or bad?
The idea would be that the two of them collaboratively agree on some observable prediction they differ on. E.g. level of officially reported government spending in 4 years time or gdp growth rate next year or number of plane crashes next year or what have you.
Just some observable metric.
If they literally can't come up with a single observable predictive difference then the predictive aspects of their models are actually equivalent and they are only narratively different and don't "really disagree". Like Copenhagen interpretation vs many worlds.
Many things don't have quantifiable metrics like that. For example, is USA still a democracy in 4 years? Are people more or less free?. You know, important questions that aren't just economic numbers. Even semi-quantifiable stuff like "are Americans better educated" is debatable on many topics if you can't agree on truth. Oh, and that GDP growth rate number? That relies on a lot of trust as to who's doing the reporting. For example, many people don't believe China's reported GDP numbers. What makes you think the USA doesn't devolve to such a distrust as well.
If "democracy" is just metaphysics then it's irrelevant. But if it has actual tangible effects such as "can you vote?", "can you protest the government?", "is the leader of the opposition arrested?", "do most people think they live in a democracy?", "how popular is new legislation compared to previous years?", etc...
Then you can make predictions about it and test them!
You can even do local predictions if both can agree, such as "will the combined incomes of my family be higher or lower in 4 years time?" as low coupling proxies for gdp. (Ideally one would use probabilities for loosely linked proxies like that and use the probability differences the two theories assign to give bits of evidence to one over the other, so you'd want many many such proxies, ideally uncorrelated ones)
> can you vote? can you protest the government? do most people think they live in a democracy?
Was Jan 6 a protest of the government or an insurrection? Can Russians vote or are elections a sham? Do the majority of Russians believe they live in a democracy if they’re afraid of whose conducting the polling (or the MAGA non response to polling)? Those are values question that require you to have an agreement on reality.
> You can even do local predictions if both can agree, such as "will the combined incomes of my family be higher or lower in 4 years time?" as low coupling proxies for gdp
Your personal income has absolutely no predictive value on gdp. It’s more predictive of whether you personally made successful bets or even if you’re better at sucking up to the current power structure. It tells you nothing about population level metrics if you have no way of conducting reliable population level surveys. For example Donald Trump’s personal net worth sky rocketed under Biden because he won the election while as the leader of the opposition to the democrats was looking at jail time and whether that was legitimate or not depends on which political lens you look through it.
> If they affect your life they can be observed.
Ah, but if either side distrusts the other about whether the observation made is truthfully reported, how do you solve that? It requires some amount of trust and right now there’s a very clear divide there.
There are definitely tangible predictive differences in the case of, say, Russia vs USA. Things like "If you go to the capital with a bunch of friends carrying placards saying '$LEADER is corrupt and evil and should be replaced by $OPPOSITION' how many of you end up in a jail cell in the next day?".
If there is literally no tangible difference then it's just label games and metaphysics and doesn't matter.
> Your personal income has absolutely no predictive value on gdp.
It actually is correlated (admittedly in most day-to-day cases it's just a lagging indicator, but things like natural disasters hit both). It's not the strongest correlation but it would still be evidential. Definitely under 1.0 bits though... One would need a LOT of such observations and having them not screen each other off to start getting a convincing number of bits.
Probably not realistic to have humans manage these sorts of numerous tiny updates though...
/nitpicks
> Ah, but if either side distrusts the other about whether the observation made is truthfully reported, how do you solve that? It requires some amount of trust and right now there’s a very clear divide there.
Yeah, it gets much trickier like that. But I do think two reasonable people from the opposite political sides could agree on some sort of observable to the extent their disagreement is anything other than narrative.
> Things like "If you go to the capital with a bunch of friends carrying placards saying '$LEADER is corrupt and evil and should be replaced by $OPPOSITION' how many of you end up in a jail cell in the next day?".
If the other side calls it a violent riot does it still count as people getting put in jail? Cause the Jan 6 insurrection and BLM protests occurred at about the same time and are viewed very differently depending on which political lens you put on.
> If there is literally no tangible difference then it's just label games and metaphysics and doesn't matter.
You’re discounting feelings as if it doesn’t matter. But if people believe or feel like they live in a dictatorship, what quantitative data are you going to use to disprove that. Moreover, why aren’t feelings valid when talking about politics which is fundamentally an emotionally driven human activity and not a data driven one? By the way the left believes they live in an authoritarian dictatorship under Trump while the right believes they lived in an authoritarian dictatorship under Biden. And political power literally is the power to emotionally manipulate others because you individually can’t actually accomplish anything by yourself.
Has it occurred to you that nothing is more powerful for coming up with intellectual arguments than a strong driving emotion?
Yes, rage might be the appropriate and response given the situation. But it’s often true that it starts with an emotion, and then people just argue from there. Even while being wrong. Just look at all the people with contradictory opinions in history, both with strong, emotional rage, and and equally certain of their connection. Throwing the fact that people actually has a tendency to want to be angry.
Rage is the fuel of the internet, but it’s fundamentally useless when it comes to seeking truth. Social media platforms are engineered to maximize engagement, and the most engaging emotion is anger. This isn’t accidental—outrage drives clicks, shares, and ad revenue. The internet has long been called a “hate machine,” and there’s plenty of truth to that.
This creates an environment where misinformation and emotional appeals spread faster than facts. When discussing complex, non-trivial topics, logic and reason are the only tools that can cut through the noise. But in a system designed to reward outrage, those tools are often drowned out.
I highly recommend Sam Vaknin's talk about Social Media toxicity.
As a Historian (and a German historian in particular) - I've spent a reasonable amount of time educating myself on the nature of fascism and in particular the break down of democracies (Wiemar, France, and also the erosion of civil liberties during the great depression in the United States).
I have also been a delegate to both the RNC and the DNC at a state level.
This is not a appeal to authority, but rather a honest response to your request for my education level.
IMHO, The root cause of the "senseless partisan drive" is the fact that he founding fathers could not come up with a way to restrict parties (they called them "interests") and left them unchecked. This is a constant "sin" of the American political system, and is a key reason Slavery survived as long as it did, why separate but equal became the law of the land, why America shot itself in the foot several time with the Banks of America and why we are looking at the wrong side of history now.
The parties now act to destroy each other as their prime directive, rather then to better the country. I liken this to Wiemar Germany, where the increasing radicalization of both the Nazis and the Communists led to political instability and eventual violence that destroyed the government. That erosion of democratic norms, as well as the "other side must be destroyed for us to survive" messaging is the true threat, IMHO.
I would strongly suggest Richard Evan's three part history on Nazi history to understand Fascism. Don't worry, you can still hate and worry about Trump and think he is the next coming of Hitler afterwords - it will just be for better reasons.
I’d suggest starting with Rick Perlman’s book “Nixonland” if you’re interested.