TheSP wrote:CoolBreeze44 wrote:
This is way too important to worry about what is being posted on a message board. If you're a believer, thank God people are willing to discuss this anywhere. This isn't some sacred place - give me a break. The censorship going on today should scare the hell out of anyone regardless of your own ideology. No free elections, no free speech. You have to be able to see past the end of your nose.
I'll only say I think it is vital, especially in these times to have a place where we can just be people, friends, and/or fans without having politics involved. I share many of your concerns, but I think there are better places to vent them where we don't risk the friendships that have developed over the years around this board. Having a place devoid of politics allows us to see each other as human beings, as friends, something politics is guaranteed to destroy. If this country is going to pull through this mess it's only gong to happen if we start relating to each other as individuals again, rather than opponents.
Go Wolves, or something!
I don't want to risk the board community either. I've been reading and posting going back to well before they shut down the ESPN board that migrated here. I remember starting around 2001-2002. I do wish it was actually more of a community than an ongoing conversation. I wish we used our real names and could actually watch games in person together. There's no substitute for real, in-person friendships. Still, the personalities and discussions on this message board have been an important and dependable part of my life for nearly two decades. SP, I can see you value that too, and I'm sure there Cool and most of the guys here feel the same way.
However, I do think it's worth engaging in political discussions in isolated threads on this board despite how much I value this community. In fact, I think it's specifically
because I value you guys and this community that I think it's important to talk politics.
By politics here, I mean any kind of discussion about how communities make decisions that affect them and what sorts of decisions they make in terms of policies. That can be national politics on issues of guns or elections, but it could also be about state, local, or international issues as well.
SP, you are right that talking politics often divides people and too many people dehumanize each other when talking politics. And whenever that happens, I feel a strong urge to get away from that. Actually, when I moved to Germany almost 7 years ago, one of the things I was most happy about was getting away from the political divisiveness in America. I remember feeling even then like I was moving out of a dysfunctional family household. And from a distance, over the years, I've seen that dysfunction get much worse and it's broken my heart.
But I think the problem here is not so much politics as a topic, it's the
way we talk about politics. The resentment, the dehumanization, the divisiveness, that doesn't just come from the issues themselves--it comes from us. We need to do a better job of really listening to one another, trying to see things from their perspective, trying to really figure out honestly for ourselves what we think and what we value, and ultimately accepting that others will disagree with us and that sometimes we'll get our way and sometimes we won't.
We have to be able to disagree with people politically, even on the most important issues, and still respect them and even see them as friends. If we can't, how can we ever come together to make decisions that affect us all?
I know what it feels like to want to withdraw. But my fear is that by doing that, we're actually making the situation worse. Over decades, we've essentially been going through the process of politically segregating ourselves in the real world and online. Lots of studies show that Americans today are much more likely than just a few decades ago to live near, work with, and be friends with people who agree with them politically, and the internet has basically turbocharged that into the political echo chambers we all live in. In that context, if we avoid political disagreements, I fear we're just making the situation worse.
Crazy as it sounds, this Timberwolves message board offers a chance to make it a little better. It's another specialized place on the internet that brings people together with a shared interest. And because that interest has nothing to do with politics, what we actually have here is a community that probably reflects a range of political views rather than the platforms on which people usually talk politics and which are usually politically segregated--liberal echo chambers and conservative echo chambers. Because this board reflects a range of political views, it offers an opportunity to try to have healthy political discussions and disagreements, which we obviously need to learn how to do better.
In the case of Cool's post about the election, I think it's particularly important to try to understand one another because the issue seems like more of a disagreement about reality than an opinion about a certain policy. The question here is whether elections were stolen, which is either true or not. That's even more fundamental than a question like what gun policy should be, which is a matter of opinion. In this case, the question of whether or not these elections were fraudulently stolen is a question of fact. It happened or it didn't. We're really debating reality itself here, and that, frankly, is disturbing. I think Cool's a smart guy. I hope he thinks I am too! Yet one of us must be wrong. I'm sure we both hope you all consider real evidence carefully and come to a decision yourself. But this is not a case where you can split hairs and say "well, maybe they both have good arguments." And on top of that, whichever one of us is wrong is arguably undermining democracy as well as reality. Either I'm wrong, these elections were stolen, and I'm legitimizing a decades-long conspiracy involving enemies foreign and domestic. Or Cool's wrong, these elections were legit, and he's legitimizing a conspiracy-theorizing President and his followers as they've tried to overturn the rightful will of the people.
I'm not sure if it's possible to bridge this gap between Cool and I, or between all of us on both sides of this divide. Honestly, probably not. But we don't have a choice to opt out. That's kind of what I've learned even after moving out of the country. Like it or not, we're stuck with each other, even if it is a dysfunctional family right now. But as least by by listening, empathizing, trying to lay out the evidence as objectively as possible, and showing respect for each other, maybe we can at least fight against the dehumanization that SP is right happens all too often in political discussion. Maybe we can help make the family a bit less dysfunctional.
