One thing that staggers me in today's day and age is the total and utter loss of truth, the destruction of reasonable debate, and the forfeiture of integrity for political gain.
I follow equally left/right Twitter accounts and the juxtaposition of both narratives and stories consistently amazes me. Both sides are meant to balance each other as there is rarely one 'correct' point of view, not drown each other out among the frenzied cries of tribalism.
Are you a strong believer in total freedom of speech and expression no matter the costs? You're a homophobic, xenophobic, transphobic Nazi. Do you think minorities should be protected from bigotry and hate? You're just a safe-space liberal snowflake.
Do you think abortion is morally wrong and is ending a life? Wrong, you're a woman-hating, human-rights-denying, ovary-controlling piece of shit. Do you think women should have a right to plan their family life and control their body? You must love murdering babies.
Maybe you think people shouldn't be able to be accused of a sexual crime and judged guilty without any evidence. AKA you endorse rape and sexual assault you misogynist frat-boy woman-hater.
Maybe you think women shouldn't immediately be cast as liars for speaking out about sexual assault, and sexual crime allegations should be taken as seriously as other crimes. So you just want to throw all men in jail for simply saying a woman has a nice dress????
Reasonable views do not exist anymore, holding views outside of your partisanship do not exist anymore, you're now a representative of your group in every aspect. It is so incredibly rare to see people on the same side of the coin disagree with each other on virtually anything.
It only seems to be getting worse over time, @JonHaidt says in 'The Righteous Mind' that expressing extreme partisanship releases dopamine, people flying a political flag to signal to their allies that says 'yes, we agree on everything, we are right' is literally addictive.
In my mind, this is due to the medium of social media. Only following those who agree with you, easy and quick political signalling, condensing nuanced arguments into broken fragments, using click-bait headlines as sources rather than trying to find out the truth.
Every day I see media outlets, celebrities, public figures, and people of every spectrum engage in this narcissistic partisan hatred. We love those who are similar to us, and we hate those who are different. Neither side seems very tolerant of differences at the moment.
I write threads as I like exploring concepts and problems outside of the typical grand-standing holier-than-thou tweets we see every single day. I rarely get political on my Twitter, but at its root this isn't even a political thread, it's a 'WE'RE ALL GOING CRAZY' thread.
