Realistically, what do you think people "with horrible politics" actually want?

[Person Man]

I don't want you blaming anyone, calling anyone names or trying to demonize the opposition. What do you honestly think your opponents ultimately want and what do you ultimately want? Do you feel you have a chance of seeing it in your lifetime or in the lifetime of the last descendant born in your lifetime?  I also want reasonable specifics, not this "disciplined, but tolerant" or "kumbiyah" crap. 

[Taco Truck 🚚]

There are all kinds of people with "horrible politics".  I mean ultimately most people want a job, a place to live, a family, and just to be somewhat comfortable.

For example I don't think in the 1930s most Germans wanted to kill Jews.  They just wanted all the previous things I mentioned.  The problem is Hitler told them killing Jews was the only way to get those things.  That's the way demagoguery works.

That's why even when shown statistics that Mexican migrants are actually less likely to commit crimes than US citizens people still follow a man who calls them gang members and rapists.  The demagoguery just eventually completely removes any attachment to the real world and the people just live in this permanent fantasy world where rapist Mexicans and blacks are going to climb the walls of their gated community and murder their whole family and take their job if they don't build a wall, buy a gun, and abolish affirmative action.  Totally irrational but no more irrational than Germany in the 1930s.

[Person Man]

There are all kinds of people with "horrible politics".  I mean ultimately most people want a job, a place to live, a family, and just to be somewhat comfortable.

For example I don't think in the 1930s most Germans wanted to kill Jews.  They just wanted all the previous things I mentioned.  The problem is Hitler told them killing Jews was the only way to get those things.  That's the way demagoguery works.

That's why even when shown statistics that Mexican migrants are actually less likely to commit crimes than US citizens people still follow a man who calls them gang members and rapists.  The demagoguery just eventually completely removes any attachment to the real world and the people just live in this permanent fantasy world where rapist Mexicans and blacks are going to climb the walls of their gated community and murder their whole family and take their job if they don't build a wall, buy a gun, and abolish affirmative action.  Totally irrational but no more irrational than Germany in the 1930s.

You brought up some good points but this is also what I am talking about. You made a derogatory judgment about the other side. Maybe  you could have said that with constant change in their community, they would no longer be able to rely on familiar surroundings. They would be wondering where the cheese was and who are these other mice that snuck into the maze. Do they have my cheese?  Enough about that. What is it that you ultimately want?

[Antonio the Sixth]

Generally speaking, the worst kinds of political ideologies tend to arise from a lack of empathy. People who espouse them don't necessarily wish ill to others - they just can't or don't want to understand how it would feel to be in a given situation.

[Taco Truck 🚚]

You brought up some good points but this is also what I am talking about. You made a derogatory judgment about the other side.

There is no "other side".  Mexican migrants are less likely to commit crimes than US citizens.  That is a fact.  Regardless of what political party you are a member of if you keep insisting these people drive up crime rates you are wrong.  That has nothing to do with me or judgments.  That is just a fact.  If you don't have facts you don't have a discussion.

What is it that you ultimately want?

The vast majority of us regardless of party want the same thing.  In my first post I listed those things.  It's just we all at times and to varying degrees get demagogued into various irrational thought processes.

[Person Man]

You brought up some good points but this is also what I am talking about. You made a derogatory judgment about the other side.

There is no "other side".  Mexican migrants are less likely to commit crimes than US citizens.  That is a fact.  Regardless of what political party you are a member of if you keep insisting these people drive up crime rates you are wrong.  That has nothing to do with me or judgments.  That is just a fact.  If you don't have facts you don't have a discussion.

What is it that you ultimately want?

The vast majority of us regardless of party want the same thing.  In my first post I listed those things.  It's just we all at times and to varying degrees get demagogued into various irrational thought processes.

I am just saying that you were a little judgmental with your assessment of Trump supporters. This exercise totally removes any form of judgment of other people's viewpoint. You are correct in stating that people who are here illegally generally commit fewer crimes per captia than those who are not. 

[Virginiá]

Generally speaking, the worst kinds of political ideologies tend to arise from a lack of empathy. People who espouse them don't necessarily wish ill to others - they just can't or don't want to understand how it would feel to be in a given situation.

I somewhat agree, but the question OP asked is so broad that there is no one answer. It varies from person to person. Take voting rights / voter id for example. A lot of folks think it sounds reasonable at face value, and when told many don't have an ID, they immediately relate their experience to the other people and say, "well if I could get one easily, they should be able to." Likewise, if they had a difficult time but did it anyway, they might say "I put in the effort, so they should to." It's not that they necessarily want to block people from voting, it's just that they are either oblivious to the fact that there are many different issues that prevent people from easily getting an ID, or that they think people should "put effort into it", or that they are simply unable to comprehend what life is like in other people's shoes. THEN, most people don't even stop and ask, "is voter ID even needed?" The answer is no, but again, at face value it sounds reasonable. I rarely see pro-ID people questioning if it is even necessary. Often times their intention/motives are benign, but they are 100% unsympathetic or even oblivious to the issues it presents. It's a failure of logical thinking and a lack of empathy for the issues of other people.

But again, this question is far too vague. Many people want jobs and a nice life, some want to watch it all burn, some want to expel all minorities, and it goes on and on and on.

[Person Man]

Generally speaking, the worst kinds of political ideologies tend to arise from a lack of empathy. People who espouse them don't necessarily wish ill to others - they just can't or don't want to understand how it would feel to be in a given situation.

I somewhat agree, but the question OP asked is so broad that there is no one answer. It varies from person to person. Take voting rights / voter id for example. A lot of folks think it sounds reasonable at face value, and when told many don't have an ID, they immediately relate their experience to the other people and say, "well if I could get one easily, they should be able to." Likewise, if they had a difficult time but did it anyway, they might say "I put in the effort, so they should to." It's not that they necessarily want to block people from voting, it's just that they are either oblivious to the fact that there are many different issues that prevent people from easily getting an ID, or that they think people should "put effort into it", or that they are simply unable to comprehend what life is like in other people's shoes. THEN, most people don't even stop and ask, "is voter ID even needed?" The answer is no, but again, at face value it sounds reasonable. I rarely see pro-ID people questioning if it is even necessary. Often times their intention/motives are benign, but they are 100% unsympathetic or even oblivious to the issues it presents. It's a failure of logical thinking and a lack of empathy for the issues of other people.

But again, this question is far too vague. Many people want jobs and a nice life, some want to watch it all burn, some want to expel all minorities, and it goes on and on and on.

This exercise can be seen as vague but the ultimate question is how would they describe a world where they are no longer upset? How do they see it working? Why do they see people getting in their way? What happens to all the people who oppose them?  Do they actually think they will succeed? And also, what about yourself? Is there a world that you can imagine where your own butthurtedness is at least 50% alleviated? How long do you think they will take to get it? How long do you see you taking to get yours?

[Associate Justice PiT]

Generally speaking, the worst kinds of political ideologies tend to arise from a lack of empathy. People who espouse them don't necessarily wish ill to others - they just can't or don't want to understand how it would feel to be in a given situation.

I somewhat agree, but the question OP asked is so broad that there is no one answer. It varies from person to person. Take voting rights / voter id for example. A lot of folks think it sounds reasonable at face value, and when told many don't have an ID, they immediately relate their experience to the other people and say, "well if I could get one easily, they should be able to." Likewise, if they had a difficult time but did it anyway, they might say "I put in the effort, so they should to." It's not that they necessarily want to block people from voting, it's just that they are either oblivious to the fact that there are many different issues that prevent people from easily getting an ID, or that they think people should "put effort into it", or that they are simply unable to comprehend what life is like in other people's shoes. THEN, most people don't even stop and ask, "is voter ID even needed?" The answer is no, but again, at face value it sounds reasonable. I rarely see pro-ID people questioning if it is even necessary. Often times their intention/motives are benign, but they are 100% unsympathetic or even oblivious to the issues it presents. It's a failure of logical thinking and a lack of empathy for the issues of other people.

But again, this question is far too vague. Many people want jobs and a nice life, some want to watch it all burn, some want to expel all minorities, and it goes on and on and on.

This exercise can be seen as vague but the ultimate question is how would they describe a world where they are no longer upset? How do they see it working? Why do they see people getting in their way? What happens to all the people who oppose them?  Do they actually think they will succeed? And also, what about yourself? Is there a world that you can imagine where your own butthurtedness is at least 50% alleviated? How long do you think they will take to get it? How long do you see you taking to get yours?

     The reason the exercise is seen as vague is because all of those questions are extremely context-dependent. Different people "with horrible politics" would have very different answers to all of those.

[Person Man]

Generally speaking, the worst kinds of political ideologies tend to arise from a lack of empathy. People who espouse them don't necessarily wish ill to others - they just can't or don't want to understand how it would feel to be in a given situation.

I somewhat agree, but the question OP asked is so broad that there is no one answer. It varies from person to person. Take voting rights / voter id for example. A lot of folks think it sounds reasonable at face value, and when told many don't have an ID, they immediately relate their experience to the other people and say, "well if I could get one easily, they should be able to." Likewise, if they had a difficult time but did it anyway, they might say "I put in the effort, so they should to." It's not that they necessarily want to block people from voting, it's just that they are either oblivious to the fact that there are many different issues that prevent people from easily getting an ID, or that they think people should "put effort into it", or that they are simply unable to comprehend what life is like in other people's shoes. THEN, most people don't even stop and ask, "is voter ID even needed?" The answer is no, but again, at face value it sounds reasonable. I rarely see pro-ID people questioning if it is even necessary. Often times their intention/motives are benign, but they are 100% unsympathetic or even oblivious to the issues it presents. It's a failure of logical thinking and a lack of empathy for the issues of other people.

But again, this question is far too vague. Many people want jobs and a nice life, some want to watch it all burn, some want to expel all minorities, and it goes on and on and on.

This exercise can be seen as vague but the ultimate question is how would they describe a world where they are no longer upset? How do they see it working? Why do they see people getting in their way? What happens to all the people who oppose them?  Do they actually think they will succeed? And also, what about yourself? Is there a world that you can imagine where your own butthurtedness is at least 50% alleviated? How long do you think they will take to get it? How long do you see you taking to get yours?

     The reason the exercise is seen as vague is because all of those questions are extremely context-dependent. Different people "with horrible politics" would have very different answers to all of those.

And if what they say and they claim for themselves is similar, then it means you understand the discourse.

[Cassius]

I don't begrudge people holding views and beliefs that are the diametric opposite of my own (to the extent I have any fully formed views or beliefs - I'm a changeable sort when I comes to that type of thing) - people are entitled to and will do so, because they obviously have a very different background to my own, and correspondingly different priorities and goals. I mean, who am I, a white middle class man, who holds no position of authority, to tell a poor person of colour who believes in a radical readjustment of the way our society works that their views are wrong - it may not be good for me, but it may be good for them, and I'm not going to tell anyone they should subordinate their aims and goals to my own because I have some right for that to happen. Nonetheless, I think it only fair and proper that the same should not be expected of myself and people of a similar profile. As far as empathy is concerned, I think most people are perfectly capable of exercising empathy - I mean, my whole position is that I understand perfectly why many (most) people do not share my views and I don't begrudge them that.

However, empathy is not the same thing as sympathy, and indeed sympathy is not always an emotion that should be acted upon. We should recognise that whilst we can empathise and even sympathise with almost everybody (I mean it's possible to do this even for the people generally considered the worst in our society, such as murderers and rapists), that does not mean we should simply bend our own desires towards theirs - if we did that we'd all be dead paupers. Ultimately, there are many competing interests in society, none of which are necessarily 'right' or 'wrong', and as ordinary individuals we should seek to strengthen those interests which are our own and those of those close to us before seeing what can be done for the rest.

[Taco Truck 🚚]

This exercise can be seen as vague but the ultimate question is how would they describe a world where they are no longer upset? How do they see it working? Why do they see people getting in their way? What happens to all the people who oppose them?  Do they actually think they will succeed? And also, what about yourself? Is there a world that you can imagine where your own butthurtedness is at least 50% alleviated? How long do you think they will take to get it? How long do you see you taking to get yours?

The problem with your questions is most people don't really know what they want.

[Antonio the Sixth]

However, empathy is not the same thing as sympathy, and indeed sympathy is not always an emotion that should be acted upon. We should recognise that whilst we can empathise and even sympathise with almost everybody (I mean it's possible to do this even for the people generally considered the worst in our society, such as murderers and rapists), that does not mean we should simply bend our own desires towards theirs - if we did that we'd all be dead paupers. Ultimately, there are many competing interests in society, none of which are necessarily 'right' or 'wrong', and as ordinary individuals we should seek to strengthen those interests which are our own and those of those close to us before seeing what can be done for the rest.

My assumption is that someone who is truly capable of full empathy (which obviously no human being can), would know what's right and what's wrong, because they would know when their own happiness is coming at the expense of someone else, and thus what they ought to renounce to for the sake of being fair to others.

[ag]

They are quite clear about it: revenge on the "elites". Envy, combined with class, race and ethnic warfare.

[Cassius]

However, empathy is not the same thing as sympathy, and indeed sympathy is not always an emotion that should be acted upon. We should recognise that whilst we can empathise and even sympathise with almost everybody (I mean it's possible to do this even for the people generally considered the worst in our society, such as murderers and rapists), that does not mean we should simply bend our own desires towards theirs - if we did that we'd all be dead paupers. Ultimately, there are many competing interests in society, none of which are necessarily 'right' or 'wrong', and as ordinary individuals we should seek to strengthen those interests which are our own and those of those close to us before seeing what can be done for the rest.

My assumption is that someone who is truly capable of full empathy (which obviously no human being can), would know what's right and what's wrong, because they would know when their own happiness is coming at the expense of someone else, and thus what they ought to renounce to for the sake of being fair to others.

But then, of course, if it is the case (and I believe this also) that no one can attain full empathy, then the concept of knowing what is (as opposed to 'could be') right and wrong is meaningless, and carries no authority by which to morally compel people to take certain courses of action. I mean, fairness means different things to different people, there's no objective definition of it - on the one hand, it could be perceived as unfair that someone lives in a magnificent house with servants and great wealth, whilst others have little or nothing. On the other hand, it could be argued that if this person were to sell his house and move to a modest property and disperse the vast majority of his wealth to those who have little or nothing, he would be doing a disservice both to his family and those dependant upon his house and wealth for their occupational livelihood, and this could equally be considered unfair. So in a world of imperfect information (to use an Economics 101 term) and no real fixed, authoritative, moral principles, one cannot know what is truly right and wrong for everybody, and that's why my belief is that we should, as best we can, stick to promoting our own interests and those of people we know as best we can because we have a good idea of what is good for ourselves, whereas generally speaking we don't on a society wide basis. This is especially the case if, like me, you wield no influence in society and don't have the power and authority to make wide ranging changes anyway.

[Antonio the Sixth]

We might not fully know right or wrong, but we can constantly strive to improve our knowledge of them by practicing empathy as much as we can, and act according to the limited knowledge that we're able to gain. That's what it means to be moral IMO.

[hopper]

These people with horrible politics just only want their opinion to be heard and not anybody elses.

[PresidentSamTilden]

Well I think most of us really want the same thing. And that's for America to be a good place for our citizens to live in. We wanna see the economy be strong, communities doing well, and for us and others to have a good quality of life. Some people just don't care but they probably don't discuss politics much/don't vote.

Where the difference really lies is in how we believe that can achieved. I think we have to work hard on protecting the environment and that we have to change our society's outlook in many ways. We have very serious and dire problems facing us this century, and if we can't adapt, we're gonna fall apart, straight up. Trying to take things back to the 1950's isn't gonna work.

[Lyin' Steve]

Honestly I think for the majority of these people it's just that they don't want the system to change in a way that they see as unfairly disadvantaging them, and they convince themselves that the people who do want to change it in that way are doing so for malicious, stupid, or political reasons rather than because it makes sense.  For example, a lot of people are against affirmative action not so much in principle but because they think it's taking jobs and opportunities away from them to give to black people, and that the reason it exists is largely because Democrats use it as a prop to win the black vote.  Illegal immigration is the same case, many Republican voters feel that Democrats don't actually want amnesty so much as they want that Latino vote.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

On 'economic issues', foreign policy, and issues like immigration and race relations, most people just want to get what they and their loved ones can out of the system while the getting is good. They don't really want to exploit individual other people unless they feel they have to for some reason, and I do think that even the worst among us do generally default to caring about and wanting to understand people who aren't like us, but it's easy to override that through assigning blame to the Other, through socialization or demagoguery or whatever other means.

People with unacceptably right-wing views on 'social issues' I think are generally acting out of sincere religious conviction, although the content of that conviction is often itself motivated by fear of the Other in some way or another. People with unacceptably liberal views on 'social issues' only really care about fairness, freedom, and a fairly facile but easily apprehended and applied understanding of harm/health/safety, and don't understand why anybody would care about other things too.

[Orser67]

I think a lot of people (in both parties) seek to (re)-create a country that was never quite how they remembered, but which were happier times for them personally.

I would say that older Republicans in particular miss the "innocence" and prosperity of the era between 1945 and the mid-1960's.

[muon2]

I think a lot of people (in both parties) seek to (re)-create a country that was never quite how they remembered, but which were happier times for them personally.

I would say that older Republicans in particular miss the "innocence" and prosperity of the era between 1945 and the mid-1960's.

This is the thesis for The Fractured Republic by Yuval Levin. He details where both the right and left draw their imagined past. In particular he gives examples of how both derive from the historically unique circumstances of the decade after WWII.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

I think a lot of people (in both parties) seek to (re)-create a country that was never quite how they remembered, but which were happier times for them personally.

I would say that older Republicans in particular miss the "innocence" and prosperity of the era between 1945 and the mid-1960's.

This is the thesis for The Fractured Republic by Yuval Levin. He details where both the right and left draw their imagined past. In particular he gives examples of how both derive from the historically unique circumstances of the decade after WWII.

Can you elaborate on this? Is this an expansion of the notion that 'liberals want to go to work in the fifties, conservatives want to go home there'?

[muon2]

I think a lot of people (in both parties) seek to (re)-create a country that was never quite how they remembered, but which were happier times for them personally.

I would say that older Republicans in particular miss the "innocence" and prosperity of the era between 1945 and the mid-1960's.

This is the thesis for The Fractured Republic by Yuval Levin. He details where both the right and left draw their imagined past. In particular he gives examples of how both derive from the historically unique circumstances of the decade after WWII.

Can you elaborate on this? Is this an expansion of the notion that 'liberals want to go to work in the fifties, conservatives want to go home there'?

The end of WWII was the beginning of the Boomers. He see much of politics since then defined through the lens of the Boomers. So their view gets disproportionate weight in both the Left and Right.

In the first half of the 20th century he describes an American experience of increasing consolidation and cohesion, and added dynamism at mid century. Since that point America has moved back towards deconsolidation and decentralization, but that balance point at mid century corresponded with the beginning of the Baby Boom. That era provided the best of both left and right with little of their worst.

Subsequently Boomers on the left saw the pinnacle of the 1960's with social justice at its apex, just when they were rebellious teens. Boomers on the right saw the pinnacle in the 1980's that coincided with the time they were establishing families and stability was the principle most valued. Neither see how both came out of that unstable equilibrium between Right and Left during the postwar decade.

I hope I did the thesis justified with the above description. The book itself is only about 200 pages before footnotes, so it's a quick read.