It's a very complicated topic as you note, but one thing I'll note is that I almost never have a problem getting along with people who have different politics than me. I think it's because I'm just not very partisan. I'm a liberal/progressive Democrat and always vote that way while largely supporting policies that would follow under that umbrella.
However.
I'm not on a team. It's not about my side winning or losing any particular argument on any particular day. I think our side has better policies, but sometimes we're just wrong on something. One thing in the past week that I like is that the Left course corrected in the S.F. election. We want criminal justice reform, but we saw what Boudin was doing and had the gumption to say, "Ok, no. Whatever that is is bad, and there is no reason for us to defend this."
Of course, out of partisanship, some people are still defending it into the ground.
But it was a rare instance of saying, "Nope. This isn't working. It sounded good, but in practice this is insanity."
However, because the team always has to win, the admission that we've gotten something wrong can be incredibly difficult to manage. People won't even have the discussion. And we set up little words and phrases that are like landmines. If you step on one, forget it. Discussion over. You are now the bad guy. The end. I win the argument because you said the word!
It often devolves into the world's most tedious game of Taboo, and the verboten words or ideas are shifting on the daily.
Once you decide you are all that is Good and Righteous in the world and the other side is all that is Evil and Mendacious, you're done. There is no discussion possible much less cooperation. Everyone retreats to their bunkers and throws monkey shit at one another.
But the world doesn't work this way if it is to work. I think about my neighborhood. I have Trump people around. I've talked with them. I know their politics. I don't ring their doorbell and scream at them then run home to brag to my partner about what I've done. If there's a problem in the neighborhood, you have to come together and start talking about, "Well, what do we do about this."
I do not egg their houses and then post my wins about it online.
But that's the equivalent of how many of us behave. It's not productive or constructive. It's not even adult. It's corrosive, toxic, and as we do all this winning, the neighborhood falls apart around us.
And I'll say the other side has these same team-minded people. Everything I said above goes for them, too. So I'm not picking us out as special in this regard. But social media have aggravated this. It's all about getting those clicks, those likes, those retweets and social approval. "I have struck a mighty blow against the Enemy!"
It's shitty behavior. I don't know what will change it.
But as long as we think having a discussion or even entertaining verboten ideas is wrong, there can be no progress. I know there are some topics I will not touch. I will not discuss them, because we are not allowed to discuss them as rational, reasonable adults who are thinking their way through situations in search of solution. We are put into corners by internet mobs and would be authoritarians who have decided Wrong Speech and Wrong Think must be forever prosecuted.
Well, ok. But things don't get better that way. The road to progress is not an arrow always pointing up. When backlash and course correction comes, they get ugly. When you have no place for people to let out pressure and allow for equilibrium, things have a habit of exploding.
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