I don't want to play capture the flag
Adult conversation is largely impossible in the United States. We are so soaked in the idea that, when we speak, we speak “as liberals” or “as conservatives,” that we have forgotten what a warped way to be and live this really is.
So committed to seeing this as team red vs team blue that we don’t even notice the actual named topic of conversations we enter. It could be about, say, whether to increase the food stamp budget in a state, but that’s not what will get talked about.
Instead, people will start probing each other. They’ll start speaking “as a conservative” or “as a liberal” specifically to test the other person. The goal of this is to prod one’s interlocutor into “revealing” which color flag he’s holding onto. And the goal of that is to make a quick judgment: Good Person or Bad Person.
I would give a lot if we could, as a society, do something like this.
"Let's not tell each other our labels. Let’s not ask our conversational partners what their label might be. Let’s be firm with ourselves, and stop ourselves from trying to probe into the moral soul of the other person based on which team’s flag we seem to need to believe they are jealously guarding.
Instead, let's ask each other what we think of specifically described, named situations and policies. Let's do that so we don't feel we have to fly our team's flag instead of talking about the issue."
But we can’t.
Such an important point and one I think of all the time. I know that my interpretation of what is happening does not fit neatly at all into one of the two boxes we are allowed to check. But I have to admit that, emotionally and when I'm impatient, the urge to just label myself or others rears it head. It is amazing how well these mind games can work.
I feel like this is especially true in online interactions, but in my IRL social life it rarely manifests. Online, we're in broad social spaces, like Twitter, or in closed communities, but in either case, there's a logo and a name and we know nothing else about the person. But they're also disposable and to a degree, we treat them like a windmill to tilt at. They're just a jousting partner, so the quicker we both show our cards and get our knives out the better - if you're out on the prowl for conflict, which is what a lot of folks are on something like Twitter for in the first place.
IRL, that person isn't necessarily just some ship passing in the night; that's a neighbor, or a family member, or the person in the cubicle next to you. You have a much higher chance of being invested in keeping cordial relations, which means that difficult topics are either avoided or talked about at something other than full volume. I've honestly had some of the most revealing political discussions with one of my closest work friends. But that required trust and an investment in our relationship - that we would mutually give each other the benefit of the doubt and listen as well as repeat slogans at each other. The scaffolding of genuine affection for one another also allows you to retreat when its obvious that POVs are not reconcilable.
Perhaps this is just some Midwestern naivete on my part - but this sort of "probe for weakness" social interaction hasn't infected my meatspace (yet). But Josh is in a Liberal Ground Zero in Vermont (correct?), so perhaps the situation on the ground there is far more heated.