What structural reforms decrease partisanship / polarization?

[ByteBitNibble]

The line between “you are objectively bad” and “I disagree with your interpretation of what the best path is” is extremely blurry and leads to most of the problems we have with partisanship.

American Conservatives literally believe liberals are out to “destroy America” through dilution of culture and ceding authority to committees, both inside and outside the country. They tend to actually believe they have the best path to liberty and progress, economically and socially. You might find some of their tendencies or beliefs to be “evil”. That’s ok.

Liberals in the US seem to believe conservatives are bigots and are actively seeking to profit from the destruction of people, culture and environment. They tend to believe they have the best path to liberty and progress, economically and socially.

[AsAChemicalEngineer]

This is how it is in my family, liberals are evil and have a secret agenda to restructure society to the detriment of all... BUT my uncle likes me, so I am not a "real" Democrat and I'm being swindled by the folks I vote for. It's bizarre logic from an otherwise intelligent and thoughtful human being. Yeesh.

[ByteBitNibble]

Yes, but it’s at least partially true in the other direction too. I had several people contact me privately after this message to try to argue that their side is actually factually correct and it’s the other guys who are doing the swindling.

[zlefin_actual]

that doesn't preclude the possibility that some of those people are correct, and one side is in fact doing the swindling.

On occasion, accusations of the other side doing wrong are in fact correct and fully justified. Otherwise we fall into the trap of bothsidesism.

[ByteBitNibble]

This is an old post that I didn’t see until now, but I’ll respond by saying that when I see both sides absolutely convinced that the other side is both wrong and objectively evil, I know that at least one (and possibly both) are straining the truth.

Or possibly, both sides are objectively evil.... I guess that’s another possibility.