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U.S. Election (Day?) 2024 Megathread

With apologies to our many friends and posters outside the United States... it's time for another one of these! Culture war thread rules apply, and you are permitted to openly advocate for or against an issue or candidate on the ballot (if you clearly identify which ballot, and can do so without knocking down any strawmen along the way). "Small-scale" questions and answers are also permitted if you refrain from shitposting or being otherwise insulting to others here. Please keep the spirit of the law--this is a discussion forum!--carefully in mind.

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people with different politics than you as enemies, and see their policies as threats?

SteveKirk is clearly talking about a specific policy, right?

every member of our society learns when they grow up that their mother once had the fully legitimized option to have them slaughtered

telling Mum "thanks for not aborting me", and her not being super-reassuring about it (I don't think she seriously considered it, but I'm damned sure that during my adolescence she often wished she had). It's a bit creepy.

I actually remember learning what abortion was in 5th grade and being so repulsed ... just an instant angry threat response: "this is an attack on us kids"

The policy in question, is abortion. The 'threat', is the 'threat' of being aborted.

The angry threat response and instant friend/enemy distinction

The directionality is clearly, your policy is a threat to me, and so, I see you as an enemy. Not, your policy is different from mine, so I see you as an enemy, and as such, your policies are threats.

I am honestly flabbergasted, can you include quotes from the rest of SteveKirk's comment and the rest of the comment chain, to help show how you arrived at the interpretation that you arrived at, I can't even imagine how you are parsing these comments to end up where you did.

Thanks for explaining. That makes a lot more sense.

SteveKirk is clearly talking about a specific policy, right?

He was in the first part of his comment. Then the words “my political identity” made me think he was using the last sentence to generalize to his overall perspective on politics, as opposed to keeping it specific to that one topic. The words “stable” and “valuable” further made me think that the emotional response is a core and cherished foundation from which all his other political beliefs are based on.

The 'threat', is the 'threat' of being aborted.

That’s another reason I interpreted it differently. It doesn’t seem to me like the threat of being aborted is still relevant as an adult, so it didn’t come to my mind at all that “angry threat response” might still refer specifically to the feeling he had as a kid, even after all these years.

Then he says the phrase “friend/enemy distinction” — I mean, who’s the friend or enemy in a discussion like this? I can only assume the enemy is the person he disagrees with politically, because it certainly can’t be the person he agrees with. And that fits with “threat” — the threat presumably comes from this enemy person he’s discussing politics with, because where else would he be feeling the threat from?

In short, I started out parsing “The angry threat response” in a generic rather than a specific sense, and I read the rest of the sentence in that sense as well. So it sounded to me like he had this emotional way of responding to the topic of abortion as a kid, and now as an adult he still not only responds to other political issues in that same emotional way, but he considers it to be a core part of how he approaches politics, to the point where he instantly identifies other political participants as either friends or enemies. Which of course sounds ridiculous, so I had to ask.

I can't even imagine how you are parsing these comments to end up where you did.

Hahaha, does that help?

you instantly identify people with different politics than you as enemies

is very different from,

your policy is a threat to me, and so, I see you as an enemy

Failing to see this seems to be the core area of confusion. The assumption in your post, which is 'ridiculous', is that any political difference is threating. The idea that someone who is threatening you politically, could be viewed as an enemy, is far from ridiculous.

The idea that he might generalized the principle from the specific instance, is totally anodyne. It's just his conflict theory origin story.