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Can you date folks with different politics?
I watch this stream yesterday and i find it quite interesting. Im actually kinda in this situation now, i took a girl on a date, she made it obvious she was a progressive. I often dont share my own views on these things in real life, due to how toxic these conversations can be, so i just try to listen and empathize with where the person is coming from. Though im planning to open my mouth a little more about things on the 2nd go round, as to not give a misleading representation of who i am.
Whats interesting is that the streamer in question distinct "politics" from "human rights", she gives a pretty weak example with Roe V Wade. However i think the distinction between "politics" and "human rights" is shaky to begin with. No one really agrees on what human rights even are, per her roe example, gun control (constitutional arguably, but still) being another one, & there are still societies/people that arent accepting of LGBT although thats been on the decline over some decades. My guess is she is taking this to mean, "you probably shouldnt date a nazi", which is perfectly fine. But there arent a lot of those guys around in this day and age. For myself, i dont really believe any idea is above criticism, so i dont see how having a different idea of what constitutes human rights is much different from just having different politics.
According to pew research, most people, (myself included) are fine with dating people across the political aisle {note that many people wouldnt date a trump voter, but many would date a republican, but i suspect many people might view trump as a fundamentally immoral individual, and thus that makes him distinct from just mere disagreement}. I also find that peoples political beliefs arent good measures of how moral they are in real life. There are many progressives ive seen who were cheaters, liars, lazy, ect & conservatives who were kind hearted, hard working, & loving ect (& vice versa). But i want to know what you guys think.
This isn't a problem even if people say it is a problem for them. It's like how in job descriptions they want you to know 78 different programming languages to manage a wordpress blog.
Most people, including those who are explicit about their politics have a very shallow understanding of it. I dated a girl who on the face was very progressive. Her political knowledge was skin deep, it was just fashion. She probably learned more about progressivism from me than her progressive friends, many a times I talked about X progressive idea which she had no clue about.
So for the practical minded guy, there is a very simple solution to the problem. Just lie. "Ohh I don't date right wingers", "ohhh cool, I'm a centrist/apolitical/{whatever gets the coochie}".
However, things get muddy if you come into conflict with someone who is actually serious serious.
It's possible that this is an effective strategy. But it's also possible it isn't. I know many young progressive women who know "libertarian" and "centrist" and the like are crypto-right-wing dogwhistles. I don't know how common that perspective is. Maybe that perspective is what "a deep understanding" entails.
Whatever it is that is causing normies to be shallowly progressive (Cathedral?) could add "centrist is a crypto-right-wing dogwhistle" to the doctrine, couldn't it? What would your strategy be then? "I'm no centrist; I'm a moderate-to-strong leftwinger." Doesn't exactly exude enthusiasm.
I've started making shit up that's nonetheless descriptively accurate. "Fedora-tipping Atheist" or "Techno-Conservationist"
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"A centrist by any other name would smell as [foul, from hanging out in the middle of the road with the dead skunk]"
But seriously, changing the term people use is comparatively much easier than changing the actual underlying situation. It may become taboo to say "centrist," but the population that word used to describe will still be there, and there will be another term on the euphemism treadmill, for sure.
I would call it a "Kolmogorov Treadmill" or something. Centrists can't be the only group. I wonder if "Classical Liberal," if not the same cluster, is at least a related one and also has undergone the treadmill. By that, I mean a few years ago I heard a lot of people self-describing as it, but I feel like recently, people have caught on and I've only heard "classical liberal" be used sneeringly.
"Free Speech" is probably another such term, where originally it's this unobjectionable, nice-sounding thing that someone can describe themselves in good conscience. Now some people do still call themselves supporters of free speech, but it's definitely a Bingo square now.
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“Centrist” is naturally resistant to getting labeled as crypto-not-centrist. This is separate from any drift of the Overton window.
Even though it would be rhetorically useful, the process of making that association is non-trivial. Whether this is people noticing the contradiction, or acquired cultural immunity from previous attempts at consensus-building, it doesn’t usually fly under the radar.
If that was true, "I'm not a racist, but..." would be resistant to being labeled racist.
I think you and me must have very different intuitions on what the overton window is, and what "normies" believe. Many of these things are heavily regional, and even more importantly, I'm probably a mentally ill hermit (I won't speak for you).
That one raises Suspiciously Specific Denial flags. See also: apophasis.
A better example would be the Kendi-esque definition of antiracism, which I don’t think is widely accepted in normie circles.
Centrist sounds an awfully lot like a "Not-Rightist" to me. While it's true that "Centrist" doesn't use "not" or any derived root, it's well-trod ground that centrism is one of the few "ideologies" thats defined by what it isn't. S.S.D. doesn't feel like a good rebuttal to me.
What is Kendi's antiracism a better example of?
The reasoning on “not racist, but...” is that whatever is after the “but” must be racist, or they wouldn’t have bothered with the disclaimer. Saying “centrist, but...” would have a similar if lesser effect. It’s the “but” that raises red flags.
Without a “but,” there’s not an obvious point of attack. Previous movements have tried to make one via with-me-or-against-me arguments. “The personal is political” attempted to frame inaction as patriarchal. Nixon’s appeal to a Silent Majority was an assertion that no reasonable centrist would be into the counterculture. Kendi’s definition of antiracism, as argued in a previous thread, is this sort of excluded middle tactic. You’re either fighting the good fight, or you are actively the enemy.
I don’t think these attempts have had lasting success in tarring perceptions of centrists. If I had to guess, it’s because most people aren’t concerned with the idea centrists as a class. Those who are have already signed up for the culture wars. But it could also be inoculation by cultural awareness—maybe by the time movie villains are making an argument, it’s broadly recognized as bad. Regardless, there’s bunch of normies out there who aren’t going to jump on the “hating centrists” train easily.
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