It feels, especially online, that more and more people are falling into a manichean trap—imposing a false dilemma fallacy upon themselves (and others)—not by categorizing others as being not on your side but by categorizing your side as not being the other. There seems to be a knee-jerk need to take an oppositional position to justify the other side being always wrong and you yourself being always right, even if it means taking a position that you know is wrong. If they have a point, you can’t admit it without feeling like you’ve conceded everything.
becomes worse on a group level where tribalism takes over. No matter what cromulent point they other side make—heck, even just people who generally agree with you but just disagree with you and agree with them on one point or another—you have to deny this in solidarity with your tribal political group. Similarly, you have to refuse to deny if not be forced to outright agree with something you personally thing is a bad point just to remain in solidarity with your own tribal political group.
This is a problem because it raised group think above your own reasoning and subsumes your mind to the collective will of your tribal political group. It is a self-fulfilling antipodal divide.
But perhaps a more eloquent and simpler way of saying all this is to say that “[c]urrent year politics is a cesspool, everyone knows that but what people don’t want to acknowledge it has become a matter of being defined by the opposite of what you are and believe without giving credence to anything that might actually be true because gods forbid, someone said it that you don’t like…”
I remember some years ago now I had an informal and open talk with a new convert to Marxism where we openly explained our positions and asked honest question meant to inform each of ourselves without some need of scoring political points or knee-jerkingly defending/attacking one political side or another.
Unsurprisngly, this was a discussion in person with someone I then went on to enjoy a common hobby.
It may be a trope to say so, but please, touch the proverbial grass.
