Off-Topic to be aptly renamed "Political Rants Too Verbose for Facebook"

Here's my input: http://www.vox.com/2015/8/27/9214015/tech-nerds-politics

 

didn't click, was amused anyway

 

Did click, was amused anyway.

 

Stellar article! 10/10, would read again. Way too much there for me to comment on now. That was a long 'un, after all.

 

Though I rather doubt it's a purely American problem. Take the modern history of Greece for example, which has largely been shaped by "right wing" vs. "left wing" though of course that was also largely influenced by the US and the Cold War in general.

On a related note, I think it's interesting the other subtext of it. It assumes that "the middle ground" between two political ideologies is necessarily "the most rational" view. While compromise is of course an important part of politics, it is not always in the best interest of a either a nation or its government to always seek the "middle" path.

There's also the idea of the "Overton Window" and how it can be "moved." Which is basically redefining "centrist" policies by advocating a more extreme version of what you actually want to make what you want seem far more reasonable a compromise.

 

The US has a two party system of which both are different shades of right wing. Your political spectrum is nonexistant. With anything more left than the moderately right wing democrats you apparently can't win a flowerpot in the US.

 

I think it's also interesting how certain political views have become associated with each political tribes. That, for example, environmentalism, becomes a 'left wing policy' and anti-immigration becomes 'right wing'. Sometimes these are consistent with a wider philosophy associated with left and right, but often it seems pretty arbitrary.

Once this happens I think people stop considering specific issues on their own merit, and their views are automatically prejudiced against anything associated with the opposite tribe - which is obviously bad for finding solutions, or even having a rational argument.

 

I was making this exact point the other week. Why, when I give talks on sea-level change, am I considered left wing because I work in the field of climate change? (They are correct, but that's not the point).

Why is a branch of science, considered in terms of the political spectrum?

 

Because one side has made denial of this part of scince a part of ther program and thus politicised it

 

In that particular case I would guess that it is because the idea of climate change is opposed by certain business interests (as it impacts their profits), who lobby against it and put out their counter arguments.

Because 'the right' is already associated with big business, and the idea of business generally, it is easy for right leaning media to disseminate their arguments and for right leaning people to accept them.

It also seems more partisan in the US than in my country, and i wonder how much of this is due to the American lobbying system (which I'm not well versed in).

In the UK we don't have quite the same blatancy about how business interests influence government, so despite having some of the biggest oil companies, they don't have a platform to openly argue against climate change.

I wonder if it is because of this, that the link here between environmentalism and right/left is less well defined - though it is definitely more left than right, a Tory prime minister can campaign on environmental issues.

In fact, the main anti-environmentalist influence seems to be from right leaning middle class people who don't like wind farms spoiling their views of the countryside.

 

Funny, I was going to suggest they rename off topic to 'the water cooler'.

 

Your name is David Roberts? Huh, I never would have suspected it was something so.............mundane lol.

 

I didn't actually write the article. (Damn, I wish) My name is more mundane than that.

 

Interesting article, but it seems to have little to do with nerd or tech culture and more to do with popular simplifications of the current state of the two-party system in America. I haven't read the end yet so maybe he wraps it all back up later tho.

 

It's widely applicable, but painfully relevant to particular sub-cultures. Maybe if you think it applies to the entire populace, it's because you're heavily immersed in nerd or tech culture, and there it's a much larger portion of your personal experience of culture than it may be for someone else.

 

Of the demographics he refers to in the article, I would probably fall under artist/academic/minority/lgbtq. I was just referring to the phenomena of fallaciously viewing America's parties as two mirror images and of assuming centrist = logical = moderate

 

Ah, yeah, I think that part goes for a whole ton of different groups.

 

I'll take this opportunity to announce that I'll be running for president in 2016