And this is how the US left and right view things. Each honestly viewing the world about them, yet each seeing different things as important.
Understanding that your political opponent is not an enemy, or a bad person, is key to resolving differences between you. And disrupting that ability is a way to destroy a country from within.
Adversaries such as China, Iran, Russia, and others know they cannot physically destroy the US or the collective West. Yet they can, if done right, cause self destruction. They can spread lies, misrepresent, spew distrust, and entice youth's natural dissatisfaction to grow and flourish.
Destroy the US from within, and they succeed without a shot fired.
It matters not what actor is currently on the stage. Whether left or right, this president or next or prior, the hostility exists. And it exists in large part, thanks to our enemies seeking our doom.
When you hate your political opponent without knowing them? When you blindly follow political dogma without questioning? When you take a stance because a party does?
You become a useful idiot.
And sadly?
In this day and age, we all are idiots.
Seek that part of the picture you are missing. Work to get your opponent to do the same.
You may still disagree, but even the tinest expansion of view is a victory for you both. Even the briefest glimse of otherness, a win.
it's very funny how the experiment is about how us people overestimate their importance globally and this is the first comment
> You may still disagree, but even the tinest expansion of view is a victory for you both. Even the briefest glimse of otherness, a win.
But this view is also a win for "them". A society that cannot look to itself, see its failings and divisions and address them and move past them is doomed to stagnation and failure.
The thing about divide and conqour strategies, is they don't create the divisions out of nothing. They exploit what is already there. Suppressing the divisions without resolving them is like surpressing an emotion. Eventually the pressure builds until there is an explosion. It is as much a losing strategy as letting differences spiral into animosisty and hatred.
Sucessful strategies (such as stoking division) usually don't have an easy answer of what you can just do to defeat the strategy. If they did, people wouldn't have been using such strategies for thousands of years; People use them because they are hard to counter.
I love the irony in the pitting of the US vs China, Iran & Russia, whilst talking about stoking division.
Don't corollaries to your comments also apply at a higher level globally, or is there something special about considering countries as a grouping vs political parties?
Surely they're all just games we play in our minds and people kind of arbitrarily just agree that countries most definitely exist and this is my in-group, whereas others are enemies.
Some political opponents are literally trying to harm you. Trying to pretend otherwise is not just naive, but actively damaging. They are literally passing or trying to pass the laws that are literally harming "me or my close ones" and then celebrate the harm.
> Understanding that your political opponent is not an enemy, or a bad person
J.D. Vance, Donad Trump and Putin are bad people. They are all my political opponents.
Yea, like... One side wants us to be a little kinder to each other (while selling us out to corporate interests) and the other side wants to create a quasi-fascist religious state and detain, enslave and execute some of us (while selling us out to corporate and Russian interests).
What a difficult challenge to determine which one to support.
The real answer is of course "neither", but unfortunately the US's politics are broken into two parties, and nobody will be truly satisfied with their choice.
While that's true, you also can't opt out of politics/government/society (unless you have the means to expatriate yourself), so the lesser of two evils is still less evil. IE, votes still matter. Yes, even if your district is gerrymandered to hell and back.
> Even the briefest glimse of otherness, a win.
ah yes, understanding the people who want to kill people like me is a great win.
They cannot imagine that my political opponent is actually my enemy and it's not my choice that made it so and no choice I make can change it.
not to open a can of worms that I'll immediately run away from because I have work to do, but that is exactly what privilege is, no? Women, LGBT people, visible minorities, disabled people, etc. can't just treat politics like a sport.
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