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Discussion (66 Comments)Read Original on HackerNews
And then all that’s left is game theory.
Point being: you're dreaming up edge cases, presumably as a justification for... what? Refusing to engage with people who don't wear their political views like a badge on their chest?
If your stance honestly is "we cannot be friends unless I know your political views", then those who keep their views to themselves in the face of that are wise.
Are you saying that bigots are edge cases?
Xenophobia and racial (or religious ) animus are hardly edge cases. On the contrary, they are the default setting for our species, as evidenced by (flips through history book) the last few millennia.
You would have liked my grandmother, who shared your opinion that kindness between neighbors can heal political rifts.
Unfortunately it didn't work out so well for her, as despite her kindness, the neighbors sent her to Dachau anyway.
Modern politics is fundamentally different from the way things used to be. The right-wing political parties in america today have almost nothing at their core besides hatred for marginalized communities. Demonizing trans people, immigrants, muslims, "communists"- that's it. Everything else is just the whims of an impulsive imbecile - the tariffs, the war with Iran, kidnapping the president of Venezuela, the belligerence towards _greenland_ (?!?!?), etc...
And the purpose behind demonizing them it to energize a shrinking demographic base to compensate for how many reasonable people they've driven away. So at this point, the ones who remain under the maga umbrella have been exposed to so much vitriolic propaganda that they are just at a fever pitch of hatred at all times. I've seen it countless times in my own life- People who used to say that Obama was naive and inexperienced and that his policies were misguided, but who now say he's a muslim jihadi who wanted to destroy america. And so on with many other political issues.
I have several close relatives who used to be like bob, or van- but MAGA has changed them. They are just completely dripping with hate, now. And if I was a member of one of the communities they've been frothed up against, I don't know if I'd feel safe trying to engage with them like the person on the OP.
Your conservative neighbor is no more evil than someone who thinks their conservative neighbor is evil because they are conservative.
Then you are uniquely placed to show them you're not the baddie they thought you were. Say hello, introduce yourself, smile and wave, bring cookies or stuff from your backyard garden once in a while, be personable.
Great idea! If only we had thought of this sooner. We could have avoided Jim Crow and segregation if only black people had thought to be friendly to racist whites!
/s
But at the same time, it is true than many white kids had racist parents but chose not to be racist themselves, largely because they rubbed shoulders with black kids and learned they had a lot in common with them. Don't underestimate the power of patience, kindness, generosity, and general personability to win, eventually. It took a generation of integration before racism disappeared from most US neighborhoods.
It used to be easier to tell when someone was a nutjob based on their appearance, but these days not so much.
It’s still good to get to know your neighbors, but some caution is warranted.
There has been the predictable blowback, then the blowback to the blowback, which he alludes to in the post: "should I be condemned for not publicly condemning them myself?" [1]
Ultimately, everyone needs to do what's workable. If you find X's owner repugnant but you feel you need to be on the platform, that's a choice you have to make. If your audience revolts, that's a consequence of the choice. Each audience member also has to do what's workable for them. There is no "right" or "wrong" response.
[0]: https://ticci.craft.me/explanation
[1]: TFA
What I have found is that, accepting the inevitable human flaws that we are all prone to, they are all pretty good folks.
I don't recognize the things the author describes here - awareness of hot takes, opinions about coffee shop owners... they strike me as features of the online world, but not the offline one I inhabit.
This would then let you see your neighbors as people. What you claim are core values are nothing of the sort. They are misconceptions invented by your in-group to dehumanize the out-group. In reality people's core values are: their kids, their health, love, belonging, a sense of purpose. The rest is just a puppet master hijacking these core values for organizing a crowd.
Core values are about how you treat people who are NOT close to you, how you believe limited resources should be allocated, how and by whom you think decisions should be made, what the relationship between individuals and society ought to be, and specifically between individuals and government.
That's less true IRL if you just talk to people and be personable. There's something about seeing someone face to face and chatting that helps you intuitively understand you have a lot in common with them (or not) - and regardless of their political opinions either way.
I find that the sorts of life choices people make and the character they have as a result is a far better discriminator of what they actually have in common (or don't) with others.
Maybe the healthier past wasn’t one where nobody talked about politics. Maybe it was one where disagreeing about politics didn’t automatically make someone your enemy.
As someone from the Netherlands, I find this especially strange. You can call the leader of the party your neighbour voted for every name under the sun, preferably involving some kind of disease, because that’s our style, and still have a beer together afterwards.
Try having a beer with someone who thinks your daughter in law should have her drivers license revoked because she "lied about being a woman", in a society where a drivers license is a critical part of life.
I think that the gap between the MAGA crowd and, say, Santa Fe progressives, is much deeper than the one between Wilders and some progressive NL equivalent. It might be as wide, but depth matters too.
The USA contains a lot of people who simply don't agree that the government has much of a role to play in anything. Wilders might sound quite MAGA in a number of areas, but he's still a Nederlander.
If your friendships can't handle a debate that's a skill issue.
Never heard a "conservative" call a protester a "libtard" right before rolling coal at them?
Never heard of a friendly Southern town doing anything they can to keep out people of the wrong skin color, or to encourage them to leave?
Oh.
Maybe you should read some history and not rely on your personal anecdata.
I have personally seen family members disown their parents. Siblings not speak for decades. A friend call another racist and cut off communication not for any racist behavior, but because the friend (who has a multiracial family) didn’t support the same cause.
And likewise, maybe you should experience the real world instead of believing sensationalized things you read.
I think it's good to exchange views on the world. That's a stronger better species, society. People receive different information, and talking about the world and what events we see and what they mean to us helps broaden that base and provide context. A lot of it is bad wrong and annoying. I want to hope though that socialization and seeing that oh we are humans together is a great relief for many of the narrownesses that afflict our hearts and souls and which cause strife, which is terrible for our welfare economically, socially, spiritually, politically.
Is there some way of reading the moral of his story such that it is not defending projects and people like Omarchy/DHH against criticism?
"If I learn today that my neighbors have political views that my “side” considers unacceptable and unforgivable, [...] Should I be condemned for not publicly condemning them myself? [...] I don’t want to associate with any community that would insist on either of those. [...]
"The town coffee shop was just a coffee shop. We weren’t publicly shamed for going there because one of the owners was an ass."
He says this, while implying his conservative neighbors, who did nothing but be wonderful neighbors to him and his family except have different political opinions, should, in fact be publicly shamed by people he agrees with. But now they’re not shoveling his snow anymore, so maybe it’s time for a mea culpa.
Did he feel this way when he shamed Y Combinator? When saying alternative political stances are reprehensible, regressive, and aggressive.
The world he helped create is uglier. Now he’s not happy that he crapped in the sandbox and no one wants to play with him.
I don't think Tumblr was particularly influential on the neighbors aspect. It never reached that kind of broad base. Twitter did though. Unless you just mean social media broadly?
I wasn’t referring to social media or his role in it at all except as a participant.