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I once had such an experience with a compassionate, highly intelligent friend of mine (mid 6 figures earner as an engineer, frequent donator to charity, would gladly give the shirt off his back to someone in need).
It started off with him posting some milquetoast meme in the groupchat supporting some ridiculous rent control policy, and me replying with another milquetoast meme referencing the economic problems with rent control. This kicked off an extremely long argument, debating the relative merits and demerits of rent control, which concluded with him admitting that the proposed policy would almost certainly raise housing prices in the long run.
At this point, as I see him continuing to type, I think I've convinced him to stop supporting the rent control policy; but instead he writes "even if you're right on a utilitarian level, I just can't morally support increasing the rent of people in need".
With this masterstroke, he's depicted himself as the empathetic deontologist chad and me as the cold-hearted utilitarian soyjak, and all I'm able to do is agree to disagree and slink away with my tail between my legs.
I think that fundamentally the vast majority of humans are wired to prefer policies and actions that have obvious, visible benefits, even if on aggregate, they're net negative in a way that's difficult to explain. It's really only EA's (extreme autists) that can bite the bullet and advocate for policy wonk solutions such as means-testing welfare or UAE-style guest worker visas, with aggregrate net-benefit but that look evil on the surface.
To be honest, I'm pretty blackpilled on the future of politics in the age of a low trust society permeated by internet and social media. It seems almost certain that politics are going to become Latinized, a pendulum between left wing socialist populism and right wing strongman populism.
But what is there to be done about it?
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