Thread by @interfluidity

@rplzzz nothing to apologize for! i don't think you'll be surprised i see it differently. if we're in a game with two sides, they are better characterized as "activists" and "everyone else" than left vs right or trumpist antivaxxers vs the rest of us or all of that. 1/

@rplzzz most of the unvaccinated are not diehard (they die too easily) political intransigents. yet most are either attached to minority communities or trumpish political communities. but most of the unvaccinated attached to trumpist political communities are not politically motivated 2/

@rplzzz intransigents, but when they are surveyed express a broad range of hesitancies not dissimilar from those of minority communities — prefer to wait and see, don't want to be guinea pig, not so worried about COVID, can't afford time off for side effects — etc. 3/

@rplzzz the correlation with trumpist political communities is an effect at the margin. in blue communities, political conformity pushes people on the margin (a lot of people, who don't like shots and don't have time and don't follow this stuff so carefully!) towards vaccination. 4/

@rplzzz in red communities the same conformity reinforces the hesitant's inertia. so we get a strong net differential between communities, but a small fraction of the unvaccinated is politically motivated intransigent refusal. most is wait and see i dunno maybe next week. 5/

@rplzzz taking the negative partisanship of grifters and electeds (the venn overlap there is large) as representative of the communities they "represent" is deeply mistaken. politicians are broadly disliked by ordinary humans, their side as well as the other. 6/

@rplzzz our political parties (both of them) rely for stability of incumbency and power on a public segmented to dislike the other side more than they dislike (most of us profoundly dislike) their "own". 7/

@rplzzz some stories (an effective tactic, in part because we play into it) red grifters currently use to make sure blue is scary are stories about authoritarianism under "science" pretext (they sure love talking up Australia these days!) attached to predatory 8/

@rplzzz motivations (pharma, pedophilia). the second amendment is so necessary precisely because sanctimonious predators who claim the banner of science mean to disarm you so they can do with you as they will. 9/

@rplzzz obviously, this is turning certain germs of truth (there really is a lot of greed-motivated overmedicalizing) into a vast conspiracy to which school teachers and middle management professionals somehow become attached. 10/

@rplzzz but it is more credible, and more frightening, in red communities that blue stories of racist authoritarianism deriving from their friends with firearms. all of these stories are pretty terrible, and most people just try to ignore them and be nice to one another. 11/

@rplzzz but electeds pay to the very narrow group of motivated voters who participate or might be moved to participate in primary elections. that is representative of almost nobody. a red elected in a red district does not fear defection to blue, because negative partisanship is 12/

@rplzzz strong and party ID is stable. he worries about primary challengers, and so seeks to outloony any comers. 13/

@rplzzz in my view the problem we face is almost entirely a side effect of the structure of this political game. "real americans" — red and blue! — hate it all, try to live, try to be nice to each other. 14/

@rplzzz the game that you describe, where some mass blue and red engage in tit-for-tat decentralized social unpleasantness with one another is not the game we're in, but it's the game we risk falling into if we let the clowns our politically system structurally elevates stand-in for 15/

@rplzzz and poison our regard for fellow citizens. i am desperate to reform our present politics out of anything like their contemporary existence, these risks are truly existential. 16/

@rplzzz but they don't derive from your neighbor who voted for Trump and worries about being a guinea pig when you ask why he's not vaxxed (or has been persuaded that it's gene therapy, or whatever). this is all collateral social damage from a game of thrones. it is our great fortune 17/

@rplzzz that the broad masses still see it that way, and try to avoid politics in every day life and just get along with one another. it would be a very terrible thing if those masses really adopt with a sense of personal grievance the identities politicos and grifters are working 18/

@rplzzz desperately to attach to them. Encouraging people not to be kind to one another, to view their neighbors through and then shame them because of their political affiliations and inchoate correlates like vaccination hesitancy is a tactic that invites this kind of catastrophe. /fin