Comment by keybored

My read is that talkingtab’s agenda here is to focus the conversation on what politics is. Rather than being this thing you discuss with people (or not) it’s about injustice against the majority. So why does that get brought up? Because with the OP it’s easy to end up concluding that politics to the average person is something you choose to idly or deliberately or max-brainpower chatter with other people about. Then it can be easily thought that it’s just about differing policy positions. But talkingtab is saying that it’s more confrontational than that.

So why are the questions “loaded”? Because as you can see with your own eyes, they have their own political agenda. Part of politics is defining what the the agenda should be—and what should be considered political.

As you can imagine, people who think they are arguing or fighting on behalf of people making a living wage etc. want to put that message out there. They are not discussing abstract concepts or competing in some open-mindedness competition or some rationality contest. It matters to them.

> If anything, talkingtab's post just highlights to me the author's specific point about political "tribes" vs political views, and if anything has convinced me more that the author's view is spot on here.

You are even more convinced. Yet there is nothing here that suggests that talkingtab is tribal in the sense of what the OP is talking about. None. Is this received opinion or opinion born from studying like a monk for 10 years? You don’t know.

You also say that talkingtab is presenting what the “correct” answer is. Yes, according to them. Again, is it really tribalism? Or is it conviction as well as the polemic tone of the whole comment? And having conviction doesn’t mean that you cannot conceive of people having other opinions, or being intellectually unable to present counter-arguments to their own position. Again, no proof of tribalism is presented.

And this focus on tribalism presupposes that the end goal is to find your tone. Alternatively you can look at their arguments. Maybe they want to change the flaws they perceive in the world.