On 1, both candidates suck, and not because someone on the margin votes or doesn’t but because of a thousand upstream causes: the personality type required to succeed in politics, the voting system that ensures a two-party lock in, the inability of citizens to comprehend the complexity of modern nation governments, etc.
On 2, let me make my general argument very particular:
1. Polls show that polarization on politics (“Would you let your child marry a Democrat?”) is stronger than polarization on any other major alignment.
2. Unlike other things, political party affiliation is mostly a symbolic thing with few physical implications (compared to a job, a sexual orientation, or even being a rationalist). This makes one’s interaction with political parties consist mostly of signaling virtue and loyalty by vilifying the other party.
3. Unlike other things, there’s an entire industry (news media) that fans the flames of political party mind-kill 24⁄7.
Some people are willing to die on the Batman-v-Superman-was-better-than-Avengers hill, but not a lot. On the other hand, the Romney-was-better-than-Obama hill is covered in dead bodies ten layers deep. Myside bias and tribalism are bad everywhere, but party politics is the area where they’re observably already causing immense harm.
I’m a huge Sixers fan, but I don’t hate Celtics fans. We bond over our mutual love of basketball. That’s not how party politics works.
On 1, both candidates suck, and not because someone on the margin votes or doesn’t but because of a thousand upstream causes: the personality type required to succeed in politics, the voting system that ensures a two-party lock in, the inability of citizens to comprehend the complexity of modern nation governments, etc.
On 2, let me make my general argument very particular:
1. Polls show that polarization on politics (“Would you let your child marry a Democrat?”) is stronger than polarization on any other major alignment.
2. Unlike other things, political party affiliation is mostly a symbolic thing with few physical implications (compared to a job, a sexual orientation, or even being a rationalist). This makes one’s interaction with political parties consist mostly of signaling virtue and loyalty by vilifying the other party.
3. Unlike other things, there’s an entire industry (news media) that fans the flames of political party mind-kill 24⁄7.
Some people are willing to die on the Batman-v-Superman-was-better-than-Avengers hill, but not a lot. On the other hand, the Romney-was-better-than-Obama hill is covered in dead bodies ten layers deep. Myside bias and tribalism are bad everywhere, but party politics is the area where they’re observably already causing immense harm.
I’m a huge Sixers fan, but I don’t hate Celtics fans. We bond over our mutual love of basketball. That’s not how party politics works.