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Small-Scale Question Sunday for October 20, 2024

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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It's more civil than war.

I'm serious, that's the baseline. That's the floor to which things can fall. The default method of conflict resolution is where team A and team B kill each other until one of them wins and then that side imposes its will and/or enslaves and/or genocides the other. Politics allows us to decide who gets their way without doing that. Modern politics is nowhere near as civil as it ought to be, and contains a lot more violence and death than it ought to, but it's not literally war. We're heading in that direction, but very slowly, and we're far enough away that there is time to course correct before we get there. Hopefully.

The takeaway from History so many people fail to learn is that things could be so much worse, and how easy it is to get there. We should participate in politics to avoid getting there any faster than we have to.

American politics is still more civil than a lot of places. There are plenty of countries that aren’t currently at civil war where it’s still commonplace for all major parties to have officially organized armed wings.