I'm going to make a political observation, so apologies.
I grew up in the south. I know a lot of bible-belt conservatives. I know the feeling of being embarrassed when somebody you like says something ignorant and trivializes a complex issue. It makes you want to wince.
As a third-party guy now, I'm feeling that same embarrassment for my left-wing friends. My right-wingers just shut up: perhaps they have some other site they go to and vent. Who knows? But my friends on the left, at least some of them, are insufferable. Most of the few people I've muted were on the left, posting multiple times per day from political sites, going on at length about how they hate various right-wing group X. With a couple of folks, it's to the point that I suspect mental illness.
So much of what I see on FB that qualifies as politics from all of my friends is just simple virtue signaling. It's taking 3 seconds and cross-posting an idiotic and over-simplified argument or attack against other folks simply because it's easy to do that and it lets folks publicly know that you're one of the "right people" (It's actually a form of bragging)
Facebook is a great way to have an ongoing family newsletter. It sucks as a tool for reasoned political discourse.
That question fascinates me, as I've heard it before from my left-friends. As far as I know, most of my right-friends don't have a site they go to, or commentators they follow. They just do their own thing, and politics isn't as central to their identity or lives. They value doing things, where my left-leaning friends seem to value interesting conversation & debate.
In Australia, we had a political commentator called Andrew Bolt, who I guess is like Australia's Fox News. But the only people I've ever heard watching his show were politically-left friends, who seemed to enjoy being offended & outraged at what was said, and debating it with their friends. They seemed convinced that's what right-leaning people watch, but my right-leaning friends can't be bothered with it, or most TV / newspaper discourse.
A year or two ago, I added the first newspaper editor I worked for, way back in the 80s. I didn't remember much about the guy, except he was smart, nice, and gave me a break. (I went from freelance writer to tech guy)
Once we were friends on FB? Holy cow. This man was a committed communist, seemed to hate the culture he was living in, and every day was posting the most provocative stuff. (I am fine with whatever opinions you want to hold. It's just odd to have the editor of the local business magazine declare his support for communism.)
I commented a time or two -- I got sucked in. Then I realized that this was only a sad, lonely plea for attention. He could use Facebook to tweak people, and as long as they responded, angry or not, he got engagement.
He's one of those I muted.
Contrast this to another friend, whom I had also lost touch with. Turns out he is a local businessperson and conservative.
Heck, I hardly ever hear from him. Maybe a post or two every month. It's usually bland or jocular in nature.
I guess if you're engaged in some traditional local social organization, you might lean to the right. You might also have a lot of opportunities to chat outside of the internet. If, however, you're engaged in more progressive, national social organizations, you might lean to the left. You might also view the internet as a means to stay motivated and help motivate others.
The system seems to be the most divided it's ever been.
Presidential candidates are forced to align themselves with their respective groups.
It's a shame really. Were probably missing out on a lot of good ideas from candidates who are afraid to offend their base and think outside the box.
You can't be a pro-choice republican, etc.
Group think, stereotypes, reductionism, compartmentalization. All of this makes it easy to make decisions, tough ones, without thinking hard or stepping out of our comfort zone. Even better, we get social recognition and adoration if we use the mental training wheels, isolation if we publicly don't.
We need, as a society, to avoid mental laziness in order to fix this problem. Sadly, it's built-in, easy and everyone's doing it.
PS. Not strictly saying computer mouse use is the fast-food of ui navigation. Just a metaphor.
If Donald Trump doesn't win at the contested convention (if there is one), I wouldn't be surprised if the entire party split.
The same goes for the Bernie Sanders supporters (if Hillary wins the dem. nomination, which she will), but to a lesser extent. There are many Bernie supporters who see Hillary as the same kind of person as Donald Trump, and would never vote for her.
This election is going to be interesting.
I bet the voter turn out will be similar, but I also bet that the actual people who are voting will be different. There are many people who simply won't vote, and there are also many people who are voting for the first time.
The camps are essentially a feature, not a bug - though probably not a good feature. The majority of political posts exist to reinforce that tribal identity, sending up a signal and hoping you get some back.
Actual discussion about alternative policy options and their consequences is a small-time hobby most people don't care to partake in. The adversarial behaviors re: "political discussion" make a lot more sense once you stop lumping both types of posts under that single label.
SJWs pushed out the CEO of Mozilla, made GitHub stop rewarding people based on the merit of their work, and pressured companies to hire under qualified minorities over other more qualified people[1]. Even if they don't have a strong presence in other industries, they have completely dominated tech companies to the point where people fear using a race or gender to describe how someone looks.
1. Assuming equal qualifications from each group, there will be more qualified non-minorities than minorities by definition.
For myself, I don't engage on this stuff on social media. But my mother gets all riled up arguing with her "republican jerks" and "trumps" on facebook. But in the end they all go out and drink too much and have a grand old time. It's a different mentality.
I personally have no interesting in aligning with an anti-SJW ingroup, because it seems like a waste of time, and they tend to attract people on the other kind of the spectrum, which isn't ideal either.
http://www.vox.com/2016/4/21/11451378/smug-american-liberali...
People regard these ideas as being like in kind if they're in the same group, but every party/religion/human construct is a motley assortment of dissimilar beliefs. They're just beliefs. Every belief should be held up to scrutiny.
I think understanding how to logically reason and knowing the human psychological traps that we all fall into help us avoid them. Things like being individually cognizant about the Bystander effect, Ingroups/outgroups and the Broken Window theory help me make informed decisions every day. I'm sure I fall into all kinds of logical antipatterns, and I want people to point them out, not simply nod, grimace or unfriend me.
The simplified rhetoric pigeonholes issues into bipolar ideological frameworks. As a result, political "discussion" does not reflect the reality of complex networks of opinions, people, and ideas. Instead, it reflects a shallow mask of "us" and "them." Nuanced, rational discussion does not stand a chance against the uncontrollable biases of ingroup/outgroup psychology.
Once someone forms an opinion, and finds validation of it from within a group, they have joined the ingroup. At that point, it will be nearly impossible to move them to the outgroup. Hearing any opinions from the outgroup will only drive them further into the ingroup, as they retreat to the echo chamber of their peers and emotionally reconfirm their own beliefs instead of critically engaging opposing viewpoints.
Of course, I'm mostly talking about the "ingroup" of "feminists and SJWs" (I hate that acronym because it seems hypocritical to criticize SJWs for reductionism and then give them an acronym). Right now the "regressive left" is certainly the most guilty of seeking affirmation from ingroup dynamics, and the group most unwilling to engage with the opposition.
However, I think every single human is subject to the same biases of ingroup/outgroup psychology. The "SJW" group is only the most recent example of a group whose opinions are pigeonholed, amplified, and ultimately opposed. But many of the people crusading against political correctness are guilty of the same unwillingness to consider the other side.
This dynamic has always existed, as long as humans have been a social species. It's how society evolves. But it sure is messy.
(visualization of the political polarization in congress: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/04/23/a-stu...)