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Originally Posted by politicophile
One driving force behind ideological bipolarization is the refusal by people on virtually all sides of the debate to take seriously the positions espoused by their opponents. We all know that there are legitimate arguments against and in favor of pretty much every political position and pretending otherwise is a form of self-deception.
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This is a very true statement, politicophile. There is too much of the "Gotcha" game in politics. Making one misstatement leads to the deductive (or is it inductive? I can never remember) reasoning that if one is wrong in this statement, then we can dismiss all other statements made by said person as also being wrong. This makes a person very unwilling in many cases to retract a statement. It also causes us to spend too much time looking for every semantic bumble in those we oppose.
Also, we are often unwilling to accept the statements of our opponents because by doing so, we somehow feel as though we give more credence to their other ideas which we may find abhorent or just simply objectionable.
However how wrong someone may be with one idea does not necessarily make them wrong with every idea. We need to give more credit to the good that others do. When was the last time we watched a political debate between two people who expressed a genuine mutual respect for each other? Or, when was the last time we saw two political opponents who were very good friends demonstrate their friendship during a campaign?
One of these days, politics may move in a more dignified direction.