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Dialogue, or the pretense of dialogue?

[Post by Dan T]

Are Trump supporters capable of (or interested in) genuine dialogue with those who oppose Trump? The evidence to date is grim.

Germaine has been exploring the possibility of dialogue with folks from the right. As part of this experiment, he invited MC to post here on Dispol. I welcomed MC, but noted that “I've become skeptical of even the possibility of meaningful right-left dialogue in our current climate, except in cases where the people on the right have broken cleanly from Trumpism.” I promised I would be respectful but blunt. 

After a little back and forth, I noted that when I’ve tried to engage respectfully with Trump supporters who aren’t outright trolls, the person “disappears when I start presenting uncomfortable facts. So I'm wary of proceeding further, but conditionally willing to give it a try.”

MC asked me, “How is the rule of law threatened by Trump?” I provided an answer backed by facts. I tried to make it long enough to have some meat on the bones, and not so long as to be overwhelming. After two days without a response, I asked him for his view. Another day has passed. 

Crickets.  

Yesterday, MC posted a provocative post about supposed “black and brown supremacy,” but the only fact it contained is that Joy Reid was fired.The rest was vague accusations of ill-defined racism. I asked, “Please (a) define what you mean by "black and brown progressive supremacists" and (b) show evidence that Hakeem Jeffries is one.”

Crickets.

MC has not explicitly said what his goal is in coming to Dispol. At this point, it doesn’t appear genuine dialogue is among his goals. MC, prove me wrong. I would love to hear what you think about my argument that Trump threatens the rule of law, and what facts and reasoning underlie your view. I would love to have you engage in reasoned dialogue with us. I would welcome that--but I'm not going to hold my breath.

Regarding high intensity American politics

This morning a reasonable, rational Canadian commenter here asked to be taken off the Dissident Politics invite list. I complied. His reason for leaving wasn't exactly what I feared, but it was related and possibly partly what I thought. Here's the dialog.

Hi Germaine, please take me off the invite list here.

OK, will do. Is it because of MC's posts? I'd like to know if that's the case. Sorry to see you go.

No, U.S. politics is just no place for a rational Canadian anymore Germaine. It's not just yours, it's any dedicated U.S. politics site that I am leaving for now.

Thanks. I am sorry you need to go. But I do understand your feelings. What is happening here is insane and unpleasant. Our political situation here is going to get very bad in coming months. I'm not sure our democracy is going to survive. I am very frightened about what is coming down on us. Best wishes. It's been an honor having you here.

What is happening to us and our democracy is very scary, threatening and emotionally draining and frightening. Little about Trump, and MAGA's authoritarianism and deep corruption is close to normal. We have mostly lost our country. The question now is how bad is this going to get? I just don't know. Nor do I have a feel for how likely this can be mostly stopped and at least partly reversed. We are under deadly radical right authoritarian threat.

I am beginning to see why echo chambers exist. Disagreements across the gigantic left-right gulf are ugly and deep. I see why probably most MAGA politics sites flat out banned dissenters and critics. That has spread to left-wing sites, which don't want to hear radical right demagoguery. Are most of the left or liberal politics sites more or less equally demagogic? 

Obviously, neither side has a monopoly on demagogic behavior. But manifestations vary. At least for some topics, there asymmetric echo chambers. A study analyzing COVID-19 discourse on Twitter found that right-leaning users form significantly more isolated echo chambers. Random walk analysis showed right-leaning echo chambers were denser and smaller, with information rarely flowing in or out, while left-leaning communities had more distributed engagement with neutral users. 

An empirical study examined content moderation and found more content removal from conservative users, but primarily because they share more misinformation from low-quality sources. Research published in Nature analyzed 9,000 politically active Twitter users during the 2020 election, finding pro-Trump users were more likely to be suspended, but also shared far more links to low-quality news sites even when quality was determined by Republican-only groups. This pattern held across 16 different countries and multiple platforms from 2016-2023. 

Research data shows significant differences in content moderation preferences. When shown identical false headlines, Democrats had a 69% probability of supporting removal versus 34% for Republicans. Republicans were more than twice as likely to consider content removal as censorship (65% vs 29%). Even when Republicans agreed content was false, they remained half as likely as Democrats to support its removal. Apparently, for a lot of the political right, removing lies and slanders amounts to censorship. 

It seems fair to say that we're in an asymmetric propaganda war of democracy vs radical right authoritarianism.

Blog note

Since connecting with and posting a few times at MC's conservative politics blog and responding to MC's posts here, I've been overwhelmed. My inbox is running at ~200 unanswered responses. I can't come close to keeping up with that volume.  

This experiment has turned out to be a lot more productive and better than I had expected. I'm surprised. My level of understanding of perceptions of right-wing American reality, reasoning and tactics has gone way up compared to a few weeks ago.  The good news is I understand a lot better. The bad news is the mess is worse than I thought. 

I need to find allies to align with. Pxy is starting to help me find them. Not sure if that is going to go anywhere, but trying can't hurt.

I'm more convinced than ever that our best shot at democracy and long term well-being lies in pragmatic rationalism and aggressive use of it. I'm trying to learn how to be more aggressive. I need a lot of help, but am not sure about how to go about getting it. Gawd forbid going back to social media.

Maybe writing and posting a pragmatic rationalist politics engagement handbook is a way to train allies. There's not much to it.

Q: Is Germaine off his meds again? Been listening to Pxy too much? Does he need a reality whap?