Mac1958
Diamond Member
Really. What kind of person are you really here? Do you spout partisan crap or do ya try to be fair? How hard do you try to be fair, or do you think deep down you need some help on it?
Yeah, I wonder about this quite a bit -- I never really know what to believe here -- and started a thread on it a while back: http://www.usmessageboard.com/politics/257728-the-psychology-of-partisanship.html
The current approach taken by politicians, politicos, pundits and partisans (hey, the "4 P's"!) is to push their "side" of any argument to the absolute extreme, and to absolutely avoid/ignore/deny/minimize any and all reasonable, contrary arguments. Binary. Black & white. 100% either/or. Surely these people realize they're doing this -- or do they? Are they now so committed to and submersed in their ideology that they don't even realize what they're doing?
There appear to be many intellectually lazy, incurious people who are really not interested in honest discourse or debate, and I think they get their cues from the "division pimps", the radio and teevee pundits who have a vested interest in keeping people angry and closed-minded. This all appears to be a game to them, there's just no way of knowing what they're really thinking.
The problem is, while these folks represent a minority of the electorate, they're much louder and can therefore control the conversation. For the most part, I've given up trying to communicate with many of them. American partisan politics is really more of a sociological/anthropological study for me at this point.
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