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Notes -
I'm long someone who has argued that a lot of the conflict regarding the culture wars is actually a personality difference between people with externalizing personalities and people with internalizing personalities, and along that spectrum, people are just going to react to things differently, and in a way that's a lot of the time inherently incomprehensible. Because talking about this, looking at it in this framework, and when talking about both your sister and your father (and note: I think there's a LOT of externalized bigotry out there. And this is a good thing. Not that the bigotry exists, but that externalized bigotry is a hell of a lot better than internalized bigotry. People just don't all that often treat individuals all that badly IMO, at least not nearly as much as you'd expect if you just looked at the discourse) those are both views that are high in the externalized part of the spectrum.
But what about those on the other end? The people with highly internalizing personalities? I think we're (and yes I'm one of them) going to generally avoid strong political messages of any type, largely because those strong messages are personally unworkable. There are exceptions of course, and it's fundamentally unhealthy, and it's going to lead to some....out-there behavior.
It's not that these things are not beliefs. It's just how different people interface with their beliefs, more than anything. Ideally, we'll get a sort of balance on these things. Truth is, we want moderates on the Internalize/Externalize spectrum running things. But I'm not sure that's usually the case, and I do think Externalizing mindsets are very effective in gaining and achieving power. This is to me a big fundamental part of the problem. It's why, as other people have mentioned, politics often does turn into this culture war without any sort of empathy or room for pluralism. And maintaining power is important...because I do think everybody can see the hypocrisy. And at the end of the day, there's always the threat that the rope of power that's preventing the sword from falling will eventually break.
Truth is, I think this is why people need to lead with workable, material models AND a concept for when it goes too far. To me, this is how you reign these things in. Keeping it vague, I think, is just playing into these personality conflicts.
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