I know global warming is real, I've checked the math personally.
Help me out.
You'd be far better off thinking about questions like, how come when places are run under the policies that Democrats seem to favor, African Americans aren't making any economic progress? Why does my 25 year old child have to still live with me? Why am I paying for a college that seems more interested in indoctrinating my child than educating them? Why are several demographics seeing significant rises in suicide rates? Why does the government count me as no longer unemployed because I haven't been able to find a job in some number of years? Why did my mandatory health care cut its benefits and go up in price by 50% this year?
Why is it when I raise these concerns people just mock me for wanting to put gay people in jail? Why is it that the response to my every concern is to be called racist?
Something I think the HN crowd needs to remember is that while we are not really in the "elite", we are at least in the low elite. We make money and stock options. When someone comes into our industry making $60K a year we ask them what they're doing wrong to make merely 50% over the median wage. Thinking that all this cultural conflict is over whether gay people are sent to prison is just another way of distancing yourself from the real problems, and ensuring that this electoral result keeps happening. Many of these people are making less in a year than I keep in my bank account as my rainy day fund. Many things matter to them that you or I would just spend our way around.
I'll also suggest that it doesn't do much good to say something like "Well, sure, the people I elected may be in charge but I don't actually agree with what they're doing" or some dodge like that. I said "policies that Democrats seem to favor" up above carefully, because it may be the case that you don't favor them yourself, but it doesn't matter, because you (collectively) are voting for people who do. I see HN frequently disagreeing with what you might call the establishment liberal consensus on things like surveillance, but that's not terribly relevant to understanding what's actually going on out there in the world because the SV liberal deviations are not electorally significant.
Where's my incentive to "help you out"? You ask, but you don't really want to know. You've already made up your mind. That much is obvious in how you phrased your question.
So that the media elites aren't out of touch with half the population, and 90% of the land area of the country.
What good will that do?
To some degree, it will make it so that we no longer have "two Americas", where one part feels completely alienated from the other part.
What good will that do?
Hopefully, politics becomes more sane, more connected with what people in the country actually need, and more able to actually solve problems. (Though if this election taught us anything, it ought to have taught us that hope isn't going to come from the government. And if you think hope would have come from the other side winning: Did you really expect hope from Hillary? Or just "not Trump"?)
I don't see how you got there. What about simply understanding the right's position magically brings the two sides together? Wouldn't both sides need to agree? That seems unlikely, considering BLM's motto these days is 'kill all whites'. I don't know about you, but as a white man, I find it unlikely that I would ever sympathize with a sentiment that means I no longer exist.
> Hopefully, politics becomes more sane, more connected with what people in the country actually need, and more able to actually solve problems.
Again, I don't understand how you got there. Let's say the right is exactly as racist, sexist and homophobic as the left currently thinks and that more than 50% of the American people actually, truly want a return to the days when homosexuality was outlawed, blacks were slaves and women were property. How does understanding that make politics more sane?
That's why I said "to some degree". Let me state it in reverse: Knowing only a strawman version of the other side's views will make it less possible for the two sides to come together.
There is some hope that, when you see your opponents as having a position that makes some sense, even though you don't agree with it, you can regard them as something other than ignorant hicks who are too stupid to understand how much smarter everyone else is. You can lose an election and not feel that ignorance and propaganda defeated the side of the right. You can stop hating.
> Let's say the right is exactly as racist, sexist and homophobic as the left currently thinks and that more than 50% of the American people actually, truly want a return to the days when homosexuality was outlawed, blacks were slaves and women were property. How does understanding that make politics more sane?
Let's not say that. Instead, let's say that someone could vote for Trump (or at least against Hillary) without being racist, sexist, and homophobic. Understanding why they voted for Trump might make politics more sane. (Or again, take the opposite - saying that they're all racist, sexist homophobes and therefore can be ignored and treated with contempt certainly does not make politics more sane.)
> ... considering BLM's motto these days is 'kill all whites'. I don't know about you, but as a white man, I find it unlikely that I would ever sympathize with a sentiment that means I no longer exist.
Obviously, no compromise is possible with such a position. But is that really BLM's motto these days? Can you document that it is? Because I've never heard that.
But even if that is BLM's position, and you can't compromise with it, then what? Then you can't do anything but oppose BLM, and explain why as clearly as you can. The proper response, though, is not to say "Therefore clearly BLM has no legitimate grievances" or "Therefore all blacks are irrational killers".
How? This is the part where most of these conversations break down. Those on the left can't possibly fathom that those on the right don't consider being racist, sexist or homophobic to be a capital offense. The number of people who believe exactly as I suggested they do are far more than you're comfortable admitting, even in a hypothetical. And that's before we even get into the shifting definitions of those words since their introduction into American politics.
> But is that really BLM's motto these days?
Google "BLM kill all whites". I'd provide specific links, but HN doesn't really accommodate that very well.
> Then you can't do anything but oppose BLM
That's not the tactic most of the left are taking, though. They're still supporting BLM, even though they're inciting violence and calling for the death of white babies. Same with Antifa, who have attacked peaceful demonstrations.
You seem like a reasonable person, but the people you're aligning yourself with are not, by your own definition.
Who do you think I'm aligning myself with? I'm calling for the media to get out of their bubble and actually listen to and understand the rest of the country. Who does that make me "aligning with", and how does it do so?
> Hang out more on subreddits you don't agree with.
> The divide is bridged one person at a time.
It's amazing to me how such seemingly smart people can see what's going on and completely miss the point. You still think it's just a matter of educating the dumb, racist rednecks that reside in the rural flyover areas. It's not. Those "idiots" understand your point of view. They reject it completely. It doesn't reflect any reality they recognize, which is why none of you saw it coming. You pay too much attention to ideology and how you wish things were instead of reality and how things actually are.
You can reach out all you like. It won't "bridge the divide." It'll create more opposition. More divide.
You need to start thinking hard about whether your positions are as accurate as you've always believed them to be.