Why I don't discuss politics with friends
(shwin.co)526 points by shw1n 8 days ago
526 points by shw1n 8 days ago
I consider this type of thinking to be a form of tribalism because you're essentially saying there are two tribes. Each tribe has specific values.
A person's values are not a dichotomy (i.e. republican or democrat). You simply cannot put people into two buckets that define their overarching moral compass.
A person can be transphobic but support abortion so they have always voted Democrat...or hate everything about Republican values except they got burned by Obamacare so they vote Republican. There is virtually an infinite level of nuance that can be a deciding factor in why someone votes for someone.
> person can be transphobic but support abortion so they have always voted Democrat
The term you're looking for is political coherence, i.e. the degree to which you can predict a person's views based on knowing their view on one issue. Political elites tend to be highly coherent. If you know a Congressperson's views on guns, you probably know them on abortion and corporate taxes.
In the real world, however, votes tend not to be politically coherent. Instead, what we see in a hyperpartisan polity, is that a diverse set of views collapses after an issue achieves partisan identity status. Talking about a thing through a partisan lens is what causes the partisan collapse. Hence the effects of mass and then social media on the quality of our discussions.
(And I agree with OP that the author's "I'm above politics" stance is naively immature.)
> In the real world, however, votes tend not to be politically coherent. Instead, what we see in a hyperpartisan polity, is that a diverse set of views collapses after an issue achieves partisan identity status. Talking about a thing through a partisan lens is what causes the partisan collapse. Hence the effects of mass and then social media on the quality of our discussions.
nailed it imo
not above politics, just think productive discussion can't happen if people don't know why they support things beyond "the tribe supports it"
or acknowledge when a belief is tribal vs reason-based
> Political elites tend to be highly coherent
Coherence might not the word you're looking for. The policies of political parties and groups are born out of historical circumstances and the diverse coalitions they represent. Political elites are "coherent" in the sense that you can expect them to consistently follow the party line, and thus infer all of their views just by knowing one of their views.
The party line, i.e. platform of the Democratic and Republican parties, or any other large political party in the world, is, by itself, nothing coherent though. Many of their policies and claims do not make any more sense besides each other than they would make against each other. Realignments on issues are pretty common across the world. What is left-wing in one part of the world at one point of time might be rightist across space and time.
> transphobic but support abortion so they have always voted Democrat
This is the NYT if you want a high-profile example of this existing in the real world.
I worked with a guy who was a goldmine of odd but sincerely held political opinions that subverted the usual narratives. He was (I guess still is) gay but believed that trans people shouldn't serve in the military because he saw that they didn't get the treatment they needed. He wanted everyone to have guns as a protection against crooked cops-- he was from a small town. He was against single-payer healthcare because he thought the government would use it as a political weapon. He was was in theory anti-union because he thought union benefits should just be turned into labor protections for everyone instead of just being for union jobs and supported them only as a stopgap. He was pro-solar/wind and had an electric car not for any environmental reason but because he didn't want to be reliant on the greedy power company.
Realpolitiks...
> He was was in theory anti-union because he thought union benefits should just be turned into labor protections for everyone
Uh, hmm. So weaker unions result in labor protections for everyone? I gotta say, doesn't seem like that's really how the U.S. is playing out. If weekends off and an 8-hour workday didn't exist they certainly wouldn't be argued for now.
US has very strong unions, you don't have anything close to SAG-AFTRA in Europe since such strong unions are illegal. European unions are just big, but their are reigned in by laws much more.
So yeah I think weakening the protections unions from workers in USA enjoys would lead to more people joining them, since there is less risk in doing so. Most people don't wanna work in an industry dominated by something like the screen actors guild.
i mean, his views don't sound too odd. he sounds like a communist who's got a dim view of reform or socialism as a means to communism.
You're acting as if people are saying "democrat good, republican bad" as the meaning for associating values with who someone voted for, but missing the part that you can easily associate that someone has poor values if they voted for Trump.
Sure, you need to go a bit deeper if someone didn't vote for Trump to know their values, but voting for someone who ran on a platform of mass deportations, retaliation against his enemies, obvious idiotic economic policy, homophobia and transphobia, and racism, makes you a kind of shit person, and it's not really necessary to go any deeper to know their values don't match yours.
So you're saying >50% of the USA population are objectively shit people? If you're a member of the other 50%, you aren't automatically shit but you still could be?
Seems bleak dude. Also, consider that conservative media has indoctrinated people to think like you do...except in the opposite direction. i.e. if you voted for Kamala or Biden, you're the enemy.
You could also say that someone who voted for the illegal importation of millions of criminals and murderers, targeted conservatives, used law fare to try and imprison a former president, committed astronomical financial fraud and persons responsible for the deaths caused by these criminal aliens is a shit person who needs to serve the remainder of his pathetic life in prison.
> the parties policies are aiming to realize fundamentally different visions of the world, based on fundamentally different values
This is an incorrect and cynical statement. I understand why you feel this way (for one thing, it's the exact type of language coming out of many of each party's idealists) but it's simply false.
One party supports gun rights while the other supports gun control. Those aren't values. Democrats want to pursue safety from guns. Republicans want to pursue safety from tyranny. Both sides care about personal safety.
Abortion rights is about personal liberty. Gun rights are also about personal liberty. Both sides care about personal liberty.
The competing talking points aren't always conveniently about the same issue though. For Democrats their border policies are about compassion and human rights. For Republicans their border policies are about domestic prosperity.
Do Republicans care about human rights? Yes. Do Democrats care about domestic prosperity? Yes. To pretend otherwise is to willfully push apart the tribes in your own mind, and to trivialize the perspective of the opposition.
The real problem is the one you are contributing to: the unwillingness to empathize. Empathy is the only way to come to a compromise. With a little empathy you might even find that you have to compromise less because you might actually convince someone of your argument, for once.
Imho opinion, what you are describing are republicans of the past. As parent says, there used to be shared values. Two of the shared valued were peaceful transition of power and respect for the rule of law / division of power between executive, legislative and judiciary.
Imho the values of MAGA republicans are clearly distinct from GWB republicans (even if it may be precisely the same voters). Specifically the two values described above are no longer shared values.
I believe there are more, but for the two values above we have irrevocable proof.
> what you are describing are republicans of the past
I know it seems that way but it has always seemed that way. Republicans talk about Democrats of the past (southern Democrats). Democrats talk about Republicans of the past (Lincoln). This feeling isn't new.
> Two of the shared valued were peaceful transition of power and respect for the rule of law / division of power between executive, legislative and judiciary.
Re: peaceful transition of power the Republicans insist (whether true or not) that January 6th was peaceful. The value is still there. Re: the rule of law, Republicans claim they are abiding by the law. (Are they not?) The value is still there. Division of power is certainly coming under question with the actions of DOGE, but I don't think the mere existence of DOGE is evidence that Republicans don't value the division of power. Some of these things aren't immediately obvious to everyone, especially if they are determined to be legal (whether we like the law or not).
We must resist the urge to demonize and dehumanize the opposition. That is exactly what is happening: even with our comments and upvotes we are collectively deciding that the opposition is out of their minds and are increasingly a foe to be vanquished. That is, frankly, stupidity of the masses.
If someone changes and begins to continually insists that something plainly untrue is true, does that mean that they possibly still have the values they used to? How long do you continue defending the "well, maybe..." case?
Throw out the Jan 6th example, it's now ancient history. As a party, Republicans are, at this very instant, claiming that judges are acting illegally for... using their constitutionally mandated legal powers. Simultaneously, but separately, the party apparatus is repeating on a daily basis a new conspiracy theory that the judges they don't like are being controlled by some nefarious power.
And it's a very, very well established playbook. We have many examples of countries that dismantled their systems of transition of power and division of power starting with the courts. It's a move that could pretty much make it into a "For Dummies" book.
"The value is still there." I can't see it. But maybe I'm too focused on judging on the entire scope of action and speech, rather than a very narrow bit of speech that isn't at all reflected in actions.
Compromising and using empathy to understand the opposition's views so that you can negotiate for what you need does not satisfy the base, and does not satisfy social media. The (naive) game theory of negotiation says that it is better to stake out an extreme position so that you get more of what you want when you negotiate it away. And the dynamic of primary elections also allows traitors or traders to be punished if they defy the desires of the party too much.
While you broadly make a great point, there are psychological dimensions to take into consideration. Some people's personalities are more inclined toward tribalistic thinking and will extend their capacity for empathy only toward their own in-group, while others are capable of expanding the "in-group" to include all of humanity. So while it may be true to say that Republicans care about human rights, it is more accurate to say they care about their OWN human rights, and not the rights of people outside their in-group.
If you want to remove the political labeling from this statement, about 30% of the population "thinks" (or, rather, does not think, but acts) this way, and it is important to realize that the motivating factor differs between them and the other type of human, who cares about people in the abstract.
> Republicans want to pursue safety from tyranny.
Not true. This is simply not what they want.
> Democrats want to pursue safety from guns. Republicans want to pursue safety from tyranny. Both sides care about personal safety.
Republicans wants to ensure their opponents are sufficiently tyrannized. They care much less about safety, systematically. They even openly look down on those who care about safety, not seeing them sufficiently manly.
> Do Republicans care about human rights?
Not much. Openly not much so, Musk called empathy the biggest weakness of western civilization. Trumps and Musks moves clearly do not care about human rights, republicans stand by them.
> Do Democrats care about domestic prosperity? Yes.
Yup, they do. I am not really sure about republicans anymore, given last moves.
> The real problem is the one you are contributing to: the unwillingness to empathize. Empathy is the only way to come to a compromise. With a little empathy you might even find that you have to compromise less because you might actually convince someone of your argument, for once.
These people vote for Trump and Vance and see empathy as a weakness. That is not compromise, that is capitulation to a lie. You want one side to dominate and have everything they do excused. The other one should be nice, submissive and empathetic. But this is based on lies - lies about what republicans actually do and lies about their motivation. Lies to make them sound better. And lies about what democrats actually do - lies to make them sound worst.
Hi, just want to tell you that this comment was one of the best I have read in a long time.
I think if you believe this is simply a religious issue, you’ve majorly missed the point.
Many religions do stand against abortion, but the philosophical argument can be summarized in part as “when is something a human”. There really no need for religion to argue that point, and it can settle a huge number of disagreements.
This was true a decade ago. It is no longer true.
The modern Trump controlled Republican party is not a party that cares about personal liberties. It is a fascist, authoritarian project that is toying with straight up Nazism. They are explicitly pulling from the Nazi playbook in their language and strategy of attack on the rule of law. Someone who supports that party is supporting a completely different set of values from someone who opposes it.
That said, that party is also backed by a powerful and effective propaganda machine that has successfully pulled the wool over many people's eyes such that they don't fully realize what it is they are supporting.
The left has called every Republican presidential candidate a Nazi/fascist/authoritarian since Ronald Reagan.
> In this world, asking "who did you vote for" isn't a matter of tribalism, but it is a (good) proxy for asking someone "what are your values".
I strongly disagree. In this duopoly of a political system, most people on both sides are just picking the lesser of two evils. Meanwhile, we are creating an alarmingly decisive political society by choosing not to associate with those who vote differently than us. Perhaps most importantly, we lose the opportunity to actually shift the political positions of others (and ourselves) by not engaging in healthy and non-judgmental political discussions with our friends and neighbors, ultimately increasing polarization even further.
Not everyone is voting based on their values—some are simply voting their wallets or the special interests they align with. Someone who is pro-choice, pro-LGBT, and pro-immigration may very well vote Republican because they work in the US Automotive industry, and so do their friends and families and people who they care most about. It doesn’t necessarily mean their core values are different than yours, but instead maybe simply just their priorities.
> pro-choice, pro-LGBT, and pro-immigration may very well vote Republican because they work in the US Automotive industry, and so do their friends and families and people who they care most about.
What you care most about is a statement of values.
I’d say priorities and values are pretty different, but there can be some overlap. But the problem is, folks don’t give it the required amount of nuance, and simply loop in all the horrible things the other party does and stands for with the values of that person, and it’s usually not accurate.
Sure but if you're so reductionist then you'd also be arguing that slaves were making a statement about their values and how they viewed slavery because the majority didn't immediately escape or die trying. It would be disingenuous to say or even imply from that statement that their value system was pro slavery though.
I don't have any statistical data on this, but my impression is that it's more than "some people." It may be half or even most.
You have one contingent that is anti-Trump and will vote for any alternative to Trump, even a senile old man with dementia. You have another contingent that is against Progressivism/leftism and will vote for anything that opposes this, up to and including voting for Trump despite strongly disliking him.
The root problem is that social media amplifies extreme voices, so you get very extreme rhetoric coming out of both sides. This scares people and makes them feel like their primary goal must be to vote against the scary thing.
I think you can lend credence to this theory in your first sentence by considering election strategy. Usually the focus is on the moderates, because those super motivated voters are pretty easy to guarantee.
The moderates end up being a very small portion of voters, I believe?
I would say that the partial counterpoint to that is, for most people their values are also largely tribe based, in that their values are not purely fixed, but rather tend to adapt to loosely track the tribal consensus. Very few are the ones willing to stick to their convictions under pressure.
There are clearly some (many?) shared average axiomatic values that seem to be common between very different cultures/religions (although individuals vary much more significantly), but it's much easier to obsess on the places we differ.
Where I strongly disagree is the idea that groups with different fundamental values can't necessarily find common policy ground. A good example is Basic Income, where you can find agreement between groups on opposite sides that both embrace the idea, but for very different value-driven reasons. In many cases, you can also agree to disagree, and just keep your collective hands out of it (eg. separation of religion and state).
I think the assumption that political parties represent two completely distinct sets of values is overly simplistic. In reality, there's a significant amount of overlap between them—what often differs is the style of messaging and the framing of ideas.
Personally, I find it hard to fully identify with either the left or the right. I share beliefs and values from both sides, depending on the issue. This makes it difficult to adopt a clear-cut political label, and I think that's true for many people.
Politics today often feels more like a battle of narratives than a clash of core principles / values.
p.s. my perspective is non-US one.
I reject this idea, someone voting for the "least worst candidate" does not wholly endorse everything they stand for
As someone said in this thread, in the US two-party system, coalitions are formed before the vote vs after in other countries
The whole purpose of this piece is to precisely encourage pointed discussion about values directly and skip the proxying
"someone voting for the "least worst candidate" does not wholly endorse everything they stand for"
yes but somebody voting for the "most worst candidate" is not somebody who's values should be trusted
and if someone opposite the aisle from you believes the same thing about you, there's zero chance to flip them
with direct discussion about values, it's possible
basically all comes down to "are you open to the chance you're wrong"
you could view that chance as low as 0.001%, but it shouldn't be 0
People frequently have a gap between their values and their politics, and talking about both can reveal the cognitive dissonance.
If they engage with politics as tribalism, and you talk to them about a policy their tribe implemented that conflicts with their values, this is useful.
The very idea of “least worst” is very subjective. In their eyes, if they disagree with you, it is who’s values should not be trusted.
> I reject this idea, someone voting for the "least worst candidate" does not wholly endorse everything they stand for
The thing about values is that they don't just capture the notion of what we thing is right or wrong, but also which things we value over other things. In an extreme case, two people can agree on 10 out of 10 different ideals or ethical stances and still have different values and support different parties because of how they rank those things.
In that case who you think is the "least worst" is also a reflection of values, as is declaring both sides to be the same, or opting out altogether. They all represent both what things you value and how much you value them.
> In that case who you think is the "least worst" is also a reflection of values
perceived values -- if someone has the same values and rankings as you, but was exposed to different information, then with this logic you'll never be able to find out or flip them
as I said to the other commenter, basically all comes down to "are you open to the chance you're wrong"
you could view that chance as low as 0.001%, but it shouldn't be 0
> For the last 20 years at least, the leadership of the two main political parties in the US have largely invested in messaging around the values that they represent.
The largest two U.S. parties have been heavily minmaxing the propaganda they release to divide districts on the most effective issues they can convert into election wins. Their values are "get elected to office" but the propaganda can't be so straightforward because there aren't a lot of voters who are easily converted by that directness.
Voters have values; political parties and candidates have propaganda. Game theoretically the winning move is to compete on comparative advantage of an issue within a voting district; because (for example) Democratic voters are split on the death penalty it's a very useless propaganda point for the party as a whole [0]; sticking to one side or the other would lose more elections than it would win. Note that this is very different from ranking the importance of values and focusing on the most impactful to real people; the (implicit) hope is that by focusing on effective propaganda issues then some values may be preserved through the election process. In practice politicians also horse-trade for future party political capital in preference to espoused values.
One fundamental problem is that without a parliamentary style of government where coalitions are required to form a functioning legislature the usefulness of values in elections is greatly diminished. If I may say, the Republican party has done the best at shedding the illusion and explicitly transferring power to the party itself to enforce the values held by one man, which is the ultimate game-theoretically strong position for a political party. Disconnecting the ultimate value-judged outcomes of elections from the political machinations that win them has been incredibly damaging to democracy.
[0] https://www.salon.com/2024/08/31/the-end-of-the-abolition-er...
<< One fundamental problem is that without a parliamentary style of government where coalitions are required to form a functioning legislature the usefulness of values in elections is greatly diminished. If I may say,
This is may be where I personally have a problem. It used to be, in the olden days, that each congressman/senator was responsible to his/her constituents. That no longer appears to be the case. They are responsible to their own tribe ( party ). This is a major issue that would need to be corrected before anything substantial could be even considered. In other words, we used to 535 parties, but those have consolidated heavily to the detriment of the actual people they are supposed to represent.
I hate to say it like this, but the coming recession ( depression if we are not as lucky ) may actually piss people off just enough to point their pitchforks at the political class. It will not be pretty, because average American already holds their representative in very high regard ( that is, if they know their name, which is another conversation.. but when things go south, I am sure they will learn their name real fast ).
I had a longer rant, but I decided to trim it down.
> leadership of the two main political parties in the US have largely invested in messaging around the values that they represent
I'd say they invest in messaging around the values they want voters to believe they represent.
i.e., marketing and ensuing reality diverge regularly with politicians, regardless of affiliation.
> For the last 20 years at least, the leadership of the two main political parties in the US have largely invested in messaging around the values that they represent.
Except that the "values" each promotes are often inconsistent with other "values" they promote, sometimes to the point of absurd irrationality, e.g. marijuana vs tobacco or alcohol.
And other "values" are completely independent, but correlate so highly that "tribalism" is a much better explainer, e.g. abortion and guns.
> and into a world where the parties policies are aiming to realize fundamentally different visions of the world, based on fundamentally different values.
That's not new.
On a very high level, the two major parties do want everyone to be healthy, wealthy and wise -- the issue is that they disagree on what those words mean, and what should be sacrificed (and by whom) to achieve it, which means the two major parties have always had very different visions of the future.
> If you discover that someone has completely different values from you, then discussing policy isn't going to be useful anyway, because there's no way you'll agree on a single policy when you have different fundamental values.
And that right there is a call to tribalism: Don't bother with Those People, They Have Different Values, They Aren't Like Us.
> Don't bother with Those People, They Have Different Values, They Aren't Like Us
I didn't say that you shouldn't bother with people. I said that discussing _policy_ is not useful if you don't agree on _values_. It's the wrong level of abstraction. To put it in a plain analogy: discussing the best route to get to your destination isn't useful if you don't agree on where you are going.
If you want to engage with someone with different values, then the values are where you need to start. If you want to engage with someone on the best way to get somewhere, you need to start by making sure you both agree on where you want to go.
"It is better that ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer" is a value statement; in the US, some folks agree with it, some do not.
Under your argument, folks who disagreed about that value statement shouldn't bother discussing criminal justice policy; I think that's erroneous and part-and-parcel of Don't Bother With Those People.
Yes, _some_ policy conversations might be futile if folks have completely opposed values, but I don't think we should apply that generally.
We MUST work with people who hold different values than us, without trying to change their values so that they become part of Us.
I think there are parts of the policy that people wouldn’t be able to agree on because of differences in values.
To look at another example, some people view the purpose of prisons as being primarily for causing suffering and to punish people. Other people don’t care much either way about suffering and see prisons as a way to remove people from society. Some people think the purpose of prisons should be rehabilitation, and see suffering as practically counterproductive. Some people don’t believe that if the state is taking someone’s freedom they have an ethical obligation to minimize that persons suffering. Some people don’t believe in the concept of prison at all.
There are a lot of views there, and while you might be able to get some of the people with differing views to agree on policy some of the time, the goals are significantly different and that’s going to be a significant obstacle in shaping a meaningful policy in all but perhaps a few isolated cases.
This makes 0 sense. Democrat and Republican "values", to the extent they are even real, no way represent the full spectrum of values one can have.
Further, the Democratic party has a 27% approval rating and the Republican party had like 47% and I bet its falling. So even within your narrow framework this is a bad proxy because both are clearly unpopular.
> "who did you vote for" isn't a matter of tribalism, but it is a (good) proxy for asking someone "what are your values"
You should test this hypothesis by talking to someone for 10 minutes, then guessing who they voted for.
My hypothesis is you wouldn't do better than 50/50.
"If p then q" does not imply "If q then p."
Besides, there's a ton of easy ways to beat 50/50 odds without explicitly asking who they voted for. You can ask whether they graduated from college, and that will get you to something like 55/45 or 60/40. If they're white and they did not graduate from college, or if they're not white and they did graduate from college, your odds of guessing right are something like 2:1.
Studies have also found (somewhat weak) correlations between some of the Big Five personality traits and political identification: people who score highly on conscientiousness are more likely to be right-leaning, while people who score highly on openness to experience are more likely to be left-leaning.
> "If p then q" does not imply "If q then p."
My original comment is challenging whether "p then q" is valid in the first place by asking if the inverse would be true as a thought experiment. (Neither is true IMO)
Just because someone has certain values doesn't mean they vote a certain way.
Just because they vote a certain way doesn't mean they have certain values.
"p" (who you voted for) and "q" (your values) are largely independent for a large percentage of voters.
Eh, if you get to 1k people, probably, but you would be surprised ( maybe dismayed ), how messy the process would get as you try to shoehorn various flags into excel tracking spreadsheet for future analysis. Not to search very far, based on the factors presented, I should be in one camp, but just by virtue of not having been born here and not imbued with early childhood propaganda, I am, at best, not what you would expect politically.
edit: exceptions test the rule and so on
It’s not like I said it was 100%. 55/45 or even 67/33 is pretty noisy and will fail a lot. Still beats 50/50.
The hypothesis is that knowing a person's voting activity helps one to predict that individual's values. I don't think the parent is claiming that the values that might be revealed by a 10 minute conversation are a predictor for voting activity. I think there's a distinction, since people can - and, in my perspective, often do - misrepresent or misidentify their true values in their conversations with strangers. I am assuming that people act on their true values, not necessarily those that they advertise, when they fill out ballots.
The is a really good, IMO, Saturday Night Live skit about this where the contestants try to guess Republican or not of various people. Some of the bits do a great job of pointing out how some of the values people claim to believe in are only applied selectivity when it benefits their side.
I was talking to a very drunk Republican girl the other day. We were having a small argument about why we would send medical support to Africa for AIDS. Her argument was something about fixing America first (I was also drunk).
I asked if she regretted her vote for Trump after several people she knew lost their government contracting jobs, and she said "No, fuck that guy, I didn't vote for him."
> In this world, asking "who did you vote for" isn't a matter of tribalism, but it is a (good) proxy for asking someone "what are your values".
Only if you ascertain the (inverse of the) mapping of values -> vote correctly, and it's definitively not what the parties or the tribes themselves profess.
For myself [0], I sympathize with many of the issues Trump ran on while finding most of the Democratic platform cloying and hollow. But I value effective policy, being accountable to intellectual criticism, and a generally open society far far more. (And at this point in my life, a healthy dose of straight up actual conservatism, too!)
[0] and while it might seem needlessly inflammatory to include this here, I think it's unavoidable that people are going to be trying to read partisan implications from abstract comments regardless.
You make a great point about values. It's potentially the biggest issue with the linked article. You got a weirdly large number of dissenting replies, so I just wanted to say that. I think it's irrelevant whether or not there are "two mutually exclusive" sets of values. What's relevant is that one's values can point you more in one direction than the other.
> In truth, values and ethics are fundamental to effectively discussing politics.
People generally haven't formed strong opinions on most issues, and defer to party or a leader they like for the remaining. They'll still happily argue about it for the post part, unfortunately.
You can see this effect after some elections where people "fall in line" with their party's new presidential candidate on some issue.
> People generally haven't formed strong opinions on most issues, and defer to party or a leader they like for the remaining.
I call this "politics as religion".
Remember you cannot reason someone out of a position they never reasoned themselves into. Route around the damage and make them irrelevant.
Values alone leads to supporting solutions that sound good but don’t work. “Free money for everyone” speaks to values of equity, fairness, and empathy… while creating all kinds of side effects like inflation.
If you are going to focus on values, apply them to a rigorous analysis of what works.
That's why I love claiming to be a third-party voter so much. It breaks their brains and their response informs whether or not they are worthy of my respect.
The two sides dont actually have different values, they have small wedge issues that unscrupulous individuals/groups over-exaggerate for their own gain. Im center left but still see myself in Trump supporters, were basically the same people who basically want to live our lives
> The policies are different too, but over time we've gone from a world where there were at least some cases where the two parties had different policies for how to reach the same goals, and into a world where the parties policies are aiming to realize fundamentally different visions of the world, based on fundamentally different values.
What difference do the parties have? They are both the 'corporate party' maximizing shareholder profit at all costs including killing brown people overseas or murdering Americans at home if they cant pay for healthcare.
Even the language that the different parties use is targeted at certain sets of values; Arnold Kling wrote this short book on the subject ("The Three Languages of Politics"): https://cdn.cato.org/libertarianismdotorg/books/ThreeLanguag...
"The Righteous Mind" by Jonathan Haidt is another, more nuanced (and complicated), but extremely interesting take on the subject of how values drive political affiliation.
Framing has always been used in political debate just to target certain values; what may have changed (or not) is as a deliberate tactic to keep people divided: folks who do not speak the same language cannot communicate.
On a lot of issues, I think 80% of folks are in 80% of agreement, but the partisans (whether politicians or activists) are framing the issue to prevent that consensus, because the partisans want something in the 20% that 80% of folks don't agree with.
I've listened to Haidt speak about it and his book is in my tall stack to read; I don't think I'd heard of King but I grabbed the PDF. Thank you.
Values are largely posturing. Push comes to shove most people don't really care about what they say they care about. Tribal heuristics of trust are way more important.
I think most people care about some things. Most people don’t have the capacity to feel strongly about every issue, but there are some overarching ones that tend to hold along political lines, and people will tend to have pet issues as well.
> to realize fundamentally different visions of the world, based on fundamentally different values
I think your use of the word "world" is telling.
Trump, the Republicans, and the global right are focused on their citizens.
The Democrats and the global left are more focused on the world and their role in it.
It's no longer just two approaches on how we can have the strongest economy. Each party has a weighting for how much to consider every issue across the world.
For example, there are people who would be happy with less growth, lower income, but more action on climate change.
I'll provide an opposing viewpoint. In the last 10 years, I've lost friendships and family because people in my life have voted for candidates that stripped rights away from women, minorities, etc.
Having a vast difference between opinions is fine, but some of their decisions are fundamentally against my core beliefs and have done literal harm to many people I know.
For that reason, terminating family and friendships has been absolutely worth it for me.
Until we can live in a world where fundamental rights are protected and respected, we have no common ground, and it's pointless to tiptoe around these insanely harmful beliefs while maintaining a facade of friendship.
I think essentially tolerating other peoples opinions and trying to understand where they are coming from is more useful than applying purity tests to your friends and family.
I’m pretty sure that they weren’t voting for those candidates for the express purpose of stripping away those rights and there were other policies and values that they were voting for.
I’ll be honest that I’m Jewish and certain posts about Palestine where friends or non Jewish family have specifically expressed values that I find anti-myself I have completely cut out of my life. (not all beliefs about pro Palestine are anti-semetic, but most are) But I believe that most views at the party level are just different priorities or different view points and tolerance is necessary, because they are not directly in conflict.
> I’m pretty sure that they weren’t voting for those candidates for the express purpose of stripping away those rights and there were other policies and values that they were voting for.
I thought the GOP was pretty clear throughout the election cycle, from President to local office, that their desired world can only come to be through a drastic restructuring of the Constitutional status quo ante.
I don’t know that “I only voted for (e.g.) tax cuts, everything else is collateral damage and I’m not culpable for it,” is a defensible moral stance.
> I’m pretty sure that they weren’t voting for those candidates for the express purpose of stripping away those rights and there were other policies and values that they were voting for.
Voting for a party explicitly demonstrates at least acceptance of if not outright support for its platform. You don't get to absolve yourself of support for kicking puppies because the FooBar party also includes a modest tax cut in its policy agenda that you really want.
It doesn't matter if the opposing party advocates for raising taxes or even eating kittens.
That's true even if realistically, there are no other parties capable of winning. You can support a third party, abstain out of protest, or even begin a grass-roots campaign to start yet another party. You can even try changing the FooBar party from within, so long as you don't vote for them until sufficient change has occurred.
Voting for a party explicitly demonstrates at least acceptance of if not outright support for its platform. You don't get to absolve yourself of support for kicking puppies because the FooBar party also includes a modest tax cut in its policy agenda that you really want.
Virtually no independent thinker is going to support either major party's platform, for the simple reason that both parties have a collection of inconsistent policies that are an incoherent ideological mishmash. Therefore you do not so much vote FOR a party as you instead hold your nose and vote AGAINST the other one.
I disagree, but I think moral purity is a less ethical way of living than practical action - best exemplified by the story of the Good Samaritan.
Similarly to “silence is complicity.” Refusing to oppose a party by choosing the other is indicating acceptance of what they will do.
This is a fundamental difference with how people on the (American) left and people on the right view politics. Those on the right frequently vote based on a single or a few issues, ignoring the rest of the platform that may be unpalatable. While those on the left frequently view voting as an endorsement of the whole person. Any unwanted policy tends to be a turn off. It's why you say "you don't get to absolve yourself of support for kicking puppies" while the right does just that. You would be better served understanding the values and motivations of your opposition rather than projecting your values onto them and judging them based on a strawman.
> than applying purity tests to your friends and family
It's more about watching people pivot towards unquestionable evil. "Empathy is a sin" is such a deep, dark line in the sand. I'm not going to just stand there and watch you cross it.
I think there is value in trying to understand the other "tribe". If for nothing else, then for practical reasons in figuring out how to defeat the other tribe at the next encounter.
I also think especially in today's political environment, political beliefs at least partially reflect an individual's core values. In some cases I may not want to associate with people that have fundamentally opposing core values to my own. For example this guy's interviews with his parents: https://www.tiktok.com/@thenecessaryconversation
> I’m pretty sure that they weren’t voting for those candidates for the express purpose of stripping away those rights and there were other policies and values that they were voting for
I don't know, man. If they're really your friends, those should be non-negotiable.
Didn't these friends and family essentially apply purity tests to us?
I've cut off my aunt who still claims the 2020 election was stolen. The data I worked with to support fragile communities was removed/altered in the transition (CDC Social Vulnerability Index). I've already lost my job in the federal purge. I have a [former] coworker who was born intersexed that cannot be legally recognized by the government. I'll likely lose my right to marry due to my aunt's beliefs. My boyfriend will likely lose access to lifesaving medication with cuts to funding. My grandma is paying for hospice care with social security and claiming Trump is fixing the country. I'm renewing my passport; several friends have already left the country.
> I’m pretty sure that they weren’t voting for those candidates for the express purpose of stripping away those rights and there were other policies and values that they were voting for.
Well, Alabama outlawed abortion except for life of the mother. A federal judge had to rule that the state can't prosecute doctors and reproductive health organizations for helping patients travel out of the state to obtain abortions. The Project 2025 plan is for the Republican controlled Congress to at some point pass the most restrictive federal abortion law they can get away with.
That is stripping away the rights of women to choose. There are many religious conservatives who support this.
That's one possible framing. But from their perspective, they are defending the lives of innocents from those who wish to do them harm. If one accepts their framing of the issue, that's a righteous cause indeed. Why is your framing accurate, and theirs inaccurate?
You're doing what so many people do in the abortion debate, and begging the question. You can't simply sidestep deep differences of opinion on moral issues by declaring your position to be right and theirs wrong. It's wilful ignorance of a whole lot of nuance that exists on this topic, nuance that must be engaged with if one wishes to be effective in having a discussion.
Their framing needs to acknowledge that the fetus is part of the mother's body, not an independent life, and that child birth has risks. Thus the autonomy of the mother over her own body has to be part of the discussion. Their framing can't depend on a soul entering at conception, or God/their sacred scripture telling them abortion is murder. That's not a rational or legal basis for compelling other people who don't believe that way.
If they want to enter a scientific discussion on viability and neural development for when to start placing limits on abortion, and how making victims of rape or incest carry to term is ethical, then we can have a meaningful discussion.
Otherwise, they can feel free to go have their own theocratic community in the wilderness where they don't choose to have abortion. Also known as Alabama these days, unfortunately for those stuck wandering the wilderness with them.
> I’m pretty sure that they weren’t voting for those candidates for the express purpose of stripping away those rights and there were other policies and values that they were voting for.
I'm sure there were people who voted for the Republican party in the last USA election for purely economic reasons. However, "anti-woke" policies were absolutely the most important issue for a lot of people. Just this week the attorney general in my state posted an "April Fool's Day Joke" where the "joke" was him standing next to a LGBT flag.
Most views on Palestine are just different priorities or different viewpoints too. You can equally say that not all support for Trump is rooted in misogyny and xenophobia, but most is. Perhaps you should not recommend that other people engage in such tolerance when you won’t.
> I think essentially tolerating other peoples opinions and trying to understand where they are coming from is more useful than applying purity tests to your friends and family.
Most of the time this is just being an enabler, who excuses, makes up rationales and blames "the other side" for not being nice enough to extremists. Especially when we talk with about fascist close groups. People who say this achieve only limitations on the opposition to extremists. They rarely or never manage to move extremist into the center.
> I’m pretty sure that they weren’t voting for those candidates for the express purpose of stripping away those rights and there were other policies and values that they were voting for.
Why are you so sure? There are plenty of conservatives who openly talk about it. It is not being tolerant when you decide that no one is allowed to do that observation. You are not being neutral here, you are biasing the discussion toward the extremism when you do it.
> I’m pretty sure that they weren’t voting for those candidates for the express purpose of stripping away those rights and there were other policies and values that they were voting for.
In some markets, about one third of the entire Trump campaign advertising was fear-mongering about how dangerous LGBTQ people are. They wouldn't have spent so much on this if they didn't think it was a uniquely important to their constituents.
I think you're unequivocally wrong if you don't think that Conservatives in the US are above voting for a single issue.
I don't know enough about the Palestine/Israel conflict to be able to make an informed opinion on it, so I won't comment on that.
> I don't know enough about the Palestine/Israel conflict to be able to make an informed opinion on it, so I won't comment on that.
Wise, given the guilt & political climate. But, see also:
Progressive except Palestine (also known as PEP) is a phrase that refers to organizations or individuals who describe themselves politically as progressive, liberal, or left-wing but who do not express pro-Palestinian sentiment or do not comment on the Israeli–Palestinian conflict.
The issue is that I feel like there's an awful lot of opinions on this, and it's difficult for me to find objective information on this stuff.
I tend to be pretty progressive, so it's probable I would be more on the Palestine side, but I try not to express strong opinions on things that I haven't done at least a cursory amount of research on, and I also don't really want to be labeled an antisemite or racist or anything like that.
> I’m pretty sure that they weren’t voting for those candidates for the express purpose of stripping away those rights and there were other policies and values that they were voting for.
Sure. But this is that age-old meme: You know those people (most people?) in 1930s Germany who supported the Nazi party but they perhaps weren't really for annexations and genocide. You know what they call those people? Nazis.
People who voted for Trump are responsible for the fate of Ukraine, the demise of Nato, the fallout with Canada and Mexico, the inevitable inflation and economic turmoil of tariffs etc. And that's of course even if they only voted for Trump because they hold "traditional republican values", or because of single issues like gun rights, migration or taxes.
> tolerance is necessary
Tolerance stops at intolerance. You can never tolerate intolerance. Apart from that, politics also relies on a few fundamental things like the reliance on facts and experts, and respect for the rule of law. Obviously you can't ever tolerate "politics" which starts to tamper with either of these. Luckily I can keep a tribe which consists of people who agree with this, which can vote for any party in my parliament, and is 98% of the population. I'd hate to be in the US though where the tribes cut down the middle of the population.
I actually agree, I don't think people should merely dismiss differences on issues that strike at core values -- I think it's okay to cut friends/family off on huge differences in values. I have actually done this to both left and right-leaning friends.
But what I'm arguing is that most people do not actually come to these values by way of thinking, but rather by blindly adopting them en masse from their chosen tribe.
And when they choose not to be open to the possibility they might be wrong, then they have a religion, not a intellectually-driven view.
This is okay if acknowledged imo, as per this sentence in the piece:
"If someone is self-aware enough to consciously acknowledge their choice to remain in the bubble, that’s totally fair. I respect it like I’d respect anyone who chooses to participate in a more traditional religion. My issue is when this view is falsely passed off as an intellectually-driven one."
I can appreciate comparing these immovable political stances to a "religion".
One thing I've noticed, as people get more entrenched in their viewpoint, is that they stop accepting the possibility that they're wrong, and this flawed thinking starts to extend to the wildest corners of their position.
"Well, if I'm right about the person, the person is right about everything too. And anyone who disagrees with me is therefore wrong about EVERYTHING."
It's a very shallow viewpoint, and some people just refuse to accept that they're wrong sometimes.
One way people keep themselves in bubbles is by dismissing counter opinions as being tribal or trendy. Some opinions may appear that way because the people that have them seem similar. But it could also be due to them having similar backgrounds that led them to those opinions. For example, most doctors believe in vaccines, but that's not group think, it's based in evidence that they have studied. From the outside, it might seem like group think.
My method to discern between beliefs with intellectual backing and those from the community is by presenting them with some bizarro counterargument. If they copy/paste specific phrases and keywords, it's from the community. If they engage with the argument and refute it, then they have given them proper thought.
> For example, most doctors believe in vaccines, but that's not group think, it's based in evidence that they have studied. From the outside, it might seem like group think.
I'm willing to bet that in most cases, that is groupthink. It's hard to tell, because the conclusion is identical to one based on evidence, so you can't infer from the opinion whether it's groupthink or not.
Sometimes you can tell by how someone holds a belief. Defensiveness, unwillingness to consider ways in which their chosen belief is not 100% wholly good, or shouting someone down are evidence of groupthink. For example: if someone brings up that in the past some inactive virus vaccines contained live viruses and a doctor claims that it never happened and could never happen, that's either groupthink or just a doctor sick of arguing with uninformed patients who has given up bothering with explaining the intellectual basis of his beliefs.
My personal suspicion is that the 1% don't exist, that everyone's opinions and beliefs are a mishmash of tribalism and intellectual conclusions, it's just that the balance is very different in different people. I try very hard to make my stances intellectually based and evidence-driven, yet I continually discover that more and more of my deeply held policy positions aren't as clear cut and the real world is more nuanced than I thought.
It's not like nuance is a binary thing (by definition!)
Ah, for some reason, this is the comment that reminded me specifically of Nietzche's Master-Slave Morality[1].
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Master%E2%80%93slave_morality
If you remove yourself from a group, how will they change their minds without a dissenting opinion? I had to do it myself eventually, for my own sanity, but I believe this is still a real problem I am no longer addressing among my loved ones.
In my case, my goal isn't to change anyone's mind. It's to preserve sanity -- I can't in good faith "pretend" to get along and have normal conversations when people are actively engaging in behavior that directly harms myself and others.
Could you give an example of behavior that "directly" harmed yourself or others which caused you to sever ties?
Politics is almost always indirect, usually with multiple levels of indirection.
Elsewhere in this thread I've said that you can have non-judgemental, solicitous conversations with anyone, just to learn how they feel or think about something.
But I agree with parent that it's perfectly justifiable to draw lines that limit potential relationships. You're not obligated to welcome everyone or tolerate views in others that have unbearable consequences for yourself. Vote with your feet.
I'm jealous of you. I've got a limited number of family members and friends and find it difficult to get more of either. I don't think I'm in a position to burn them on politics so I'll just have to take them as they are.
Wow. This is well put. Thanks. I wonder how those so quick to write others off will reflect on it at the end of life.
+1. I had to cut a lot of people out of my life after seeing the Democrats' response to October 7th. I cannot be friends with anybody who votes for candidates that support exterminating Jews.
And I say this with all sincerity: I'm also disappointed in my friends continually voting for Democratic candidates after Obama, as it's clear the DNC will do nothing as long as they can rely on these votes. They put up losing and awful candidates while supposedly our democracy depends on it.
If I were to cut them off as friends for being part of the problem, that sounds unreasonable right?
Why does it sound unreasonable? If it's problem that affects you deeply enough, if you sincerely believe that they're a core part of that problem, then I don't see why the person you replied to would be opposed to it.
The question then becomes how to convert a member of a tribe to ones own correct tribe. It's a very tough question to answer.
It's like spycraft during the cold war. A double agent must pass as being in both tribes for the good of their country. They literally isolate themselves from their homelands tribe to embed themselves in another. They are forever changed. They can't go back. In other words: to change another changes oneself too. It weakens ones own group identity.
Almost all people would never want to risk their identity to change another person for the good of their group. It's very risky and very painful.
Another way that the article suggests is to let people change themselves.
Lol. "Liberal" people create an echo chamber by eliminate opposing opinions and then are surprised that people elect far-right candidates.
> Until we can live in a world where fundamental rights are protected and respected
It wasn't hiding from uncomfortable things, opinions and people, that created the world where you can even think about women or minority rights, or even know how to write to express your opnions. So this approach will not create the world you described.
indeed. This kind of attitude is contrary to what is needed to produce the sort of world desired.
The conceptualization of what fundamental even means is very much subjective, so posing such a condition to dialogue is, in principle, the negation of possibility of improvement on either side.
this is the core kernel of what a tribe even is in my opinion: pose a subjective condition, divide people based on it.
The subtle art of not giving a f** had a great chapter on the importance of deciding your values, that is, what's important to you. The parent advice clearly stated what's important: living in a world where fundamental rights are protected and respected.
Clearly defined values are fine until we get more specific though. What values? Whose responsibility? And what's holding is back from achieving what we want even if our party is in charge? Is it a matter of excluding people who disagree with us? More money? Or is the utopian vision we're attempting not presently achievable?
So is an agreement on fundamental rights for everyone what you want to live your life on? Or do you have other priorities in the meantime where you can agree with people on more immediate matters?
How does having less friends actually benefit you though? It just seems dumb, because presumably you were friends for some reason.
I don't see how cutting them out creates a positive. It's like "Javy thinks men can become women", now I have one less person to play disc golf with.
What's the point of that? People can have different opinions, it's not their only character trait.
I don't have friends for the sake of "having friends". I choose the people I want to hang out with because I enjoy their company and like/respect them. Being around them makes me happy.
Similarly, people I dislike (rude or mean people, for example) make me unhappy when I'm around them. Cutting them out of my life is a net benefit there too, because I'm happier without them.
It seems to me that when some of your friends want to imprison, institutionalize, or straight-up murder some of your other friends, not taking a side and standing up for the latter group of friends is being a shitty friend.
And maybe "How does this benefit me?" isn't the right question to be asking in this situation.
"Moderates" always like to speak in vague terms as if it's not literal murder being proposed by one side. I literally know a guy who is accumulating firearms, has bumper stickers that say "kill your local pedophile", and thinks all trans people are pedophiles. This is not a person I am going to be friends with just because we play the same kind of guitar music.
> how does having less friends benefit you?
Quality over quantity for a start.
> people can have different opinions
Not every opinion deserves the same level of tolerance, respect or acceptance. If someone I know starts goose-stepping I’m not going to write it off a “just a difference in opinion.”
The other comment I made here was flagged, though it very clearly doesn't have anything in violation of the rules. It's clear that people here are using flagging to try to censor opinions they don't like.
I haven't talked to my grandmother since Trump won the first time in 2016.
It wasn't just that she voted for him, but the fact that she actively supported all of his policies around immigration, including mass deportations that would have included my wife (who was on DACA at the time). She has also said some extremely disturbing stuff about what should happen to gay people that I don't even know that I can post without breaking some form of TOS, which would be horrible already, but slightly worse to me because my sister is gay.
It's easy to say "just be neutral and don't talk about politics around her", but there are some issues with that.
First, you don't know my grandmother; no matter how much I try and avoid any political subject she will keep bringing it up. She will divert a conversation about my job as a software engineer to somehow a rant about how Mexicans are stealing American jobs (this actually happened). I could just roll my eyes and bite my tongue, but this brings me to my next point:
Second, neutrality isn't neutral. I don't really know who started this myth that somehow avoiding the subject is "not taking a side", it's just a lazy way to endorse the status quo. If I keep trying to be amicable with people who actively want my wife to be deported, then that's sort of signaling to my wife that I don't give a shit about what happens to her. I don't want to signal that, because it's not true. At that point, my only option is to either stop talking to my grandmother or talk to her and constantly push back she says something racist or horrible, which isn't productive.
Before you give me shit over this, all of you do this. You all draw the line somewhere. You probably all draw it at different points than I do, but you absolutely do draw the line. If your best friend suddenly joined the Klan and became the Grand Wizard, you probably wouldn't continue being friends with them, even if you could avoid talking politics, because that would signal that you're ok with their racism. You also probably wouldn't be friends with Jeffrey Dahmer even if you could avoid the whole "killing and eating people" topic.
As it stands, I don't really feel bad for cutting her off. I absolutely do not make a concession for age on this. If you're going to live as a grownup in 2025 then it's not wrong to judge someone by 2025 standards. I don't give a fuck what the world was like when you grew up, you have to live in the world as it is now.
Whataboutism is outsider tribe X also does thing B therefore B is not to be argued about.
Instead maybe consider that it's thinking in tribes that's the issue at root.
Personally I think it's impossible to stop being in a tribe. One should, if free, only be able to choose the tribe to join. We can't choose not to join a tribe. Most people either are not free to choose or not willing to consider that they can choose. Freedom to choose a tribe is very scary.
Looking at how other countries do politics might help. For example did you know that conspiracy and paranoia is a characteristic strategy used in American politics? It's not used as much in other parts of the world.
It's incredibly difficult for a person to see themselves as being paranoid or to believe in a conspiracy theory. But paranoid people who believe in conspiracy theories make great tribe members. It is literally a way to make people think of things as "us vs them"
> The only people I have seen preaching moderation and apolitical discussion are those who voted for a particular candidate and either regret it and are too proud to admit it or are in peak cognitive dissonance.
Hello. I preach moderation and apolitical discussion. You were vague about what "particular candidate" you meant, but if you meant Trump I didn't vote for him. In fact I did not cast a vote for any presidential candidate this year because none of them was someone I wanted in office. So, you now have seen at least one person who does not match your description.
I preach moderation and apolitical discussion because the toxicity of political discussion is tearing our country in two. It is the single biggest threat our society faces today. If we cannot learn to resolve our differences (which starts with genuine attempts to reach each other even when others' actions seem reprehensible to us), this country will die. People do not, as a rule, choose evil. They are often mistaken about what is good, or disagree with each other on the best way to achieve good ends. But to round that off as "they are evil" is intellectually lazy and toxic to a civilized society.
> You cannot not discuss politics when the political scene that dictates your daily life is governed by objectively evil people and subjectively less evil people on the other side of the aisle.
If people were objectively evil, they would be considered evil by all. The fact that this has not happened is by itself proof that these people are not objectively evil, and that their evil is a matter of subjective views. If you wish to change others' views, the first step must be to recognize this so that you can formulate a plan of persuasion. Blasting people as "objectively evil" feels good, but accomplishes nothing.
> I preach moderation and apolitical discussion because the toxicity of political discussion is tearing our country in two. It is the single biggest threat our society faces today. If we cannot learn to resolve our differences
No, MAGA led by Trump, assisted by the Heritage Foundation and the tech billionaire Yarvin disciples are the biggest threat, because they have power and are in the process of implementing an autocratic takeover. It's crazy to me how many moderate, apolitical people don't see this. But I was that way a few months ago and started paying attention.
> They are often mistaken about what is good, or disagree with each other on the best way to achieve good ends.
I don't think there is any agreement to be had anymore. They don't care about the Constitution, they just want a king/CEO to force things through. What can you say about a president talking about a third term, making Canada a 51st state, claiming Greenland will 100% join the US, saying allies have been ripping us off, deporting people without due process because they had suspicious looking tattoos, calling for impeachment of judges because they ruled against Trump. Refusing to pay agencies what Congress already approved. Forcing big law agencies into making deals.
Rand Paul gave a speech tonight about how the president doesn't have the power to tax the American people, which is what tariffs are. MAGA is out to win the culture and political war. Permanently. Wake up.
Have they eaten two plates of food and enjoyed two drinks and then announced, “I’m a proud republican and support Trump 1000%?” Because that’s what we’re getting and we’re banning neighbors and friends we’ve had for 25 years over it.
For all of the author's bloviating and self-congratulating navel gazing, the article manages to largely overlook values, the only mention of them being to dismissively reduce them to irrational tribalism.
In truth, values and ethics are fundamental to effectively discussing politics. After all, all political decisions are ultimately about how we want to shape the world that we as humans live in. There can be no agreement about economic policy without a shared understanding of the ultimate goal of an economy. No agreement about foreign relations without a shared understanding of the role of nations as representatives for groups of humans, and how we believe one group of humans should interact with another group of humans through the lens of nations.
For the last 20 years at least, the leadership of the two main political parties in the US have largely invested in messaging around the values that they represent. The policies are different too, but over time we've gone from a world where there were at least some cases where the two parties had different policies for how to reach the same goals, and into a world where the parties policies are aiming to realize fundamentally different visions of the world, based on fundamentally different values.
In this world, asking "who did you vote for" isn't a matter of tribalism, but it is a (good) proxy for asking someone "what are your values". If you discover that someone has completely different values from you, then discussing policy isn't going to be useful anyway, because there's no way you'll agree on a single policy when you have different fundamental values.