So many people have zero intellectual humility when it comes to politics. For the life of me I can't understand why - it's not like political diehards are a bunch of economists, lawyers, sociologists, historians, and businessmen with special expertise and insight into public policy. We're all just citizens with different life experiences, moral priorities, areas of interest and expertise, levels of intelligence. Almost everyone just wants the best for their fellow citizens and the world, but we're all working with limited information that we filter through our own personalities and beliefs.

So much of political discourse just amounts to slandering the opposition. They're either incompetent, malicious, self-interested, or some oft-contradictory melange of all three. People live in increasingly homogenous communities and get their news from like-minded sources that keep them in an echo chamber. They rarely have to experience the cognitive dissonance of having their caricature of their opponents challenged by talking and interacting with them in real life, and finding out that they're decent, ordinary people for the most part.

When I was really into politics my main exposure to the thought and arguments of conservatives and libertarians was reading liberal blogs and seeing posts that basically amounted to "HEY, check out the crazy bigoted / factually incorrect / medieval shit so-and-so said" and then reading some liberal blogger's snarky commentary on said gaffe. On Reddit entire active subreddits are dedicated to this - shit reddit says, shit statists say, enough libertarian spam. During the Bush presidency there was a rich vein of idiocy to mine, and in the run-up to Iraq it seemed like mockery was a cathartic way of dealing with a political and media establishment that was almost universally jumping on-board the war and anti-terrorism bandwagon. But, of course, conservatives did the same thing. They were wingnuts, we were moonbats. What stupid insults. Everyone just talked past each other and only saw their opposition at its worst.

Ultimately I'd rather have no politics at all than that kind of politics. It's tribalism with bread and circuses, like sports fandom combined with reality TV. But at least the home team's fans don't delude themselves into believing they're making the world a better place with their cheers and jeers. That at least keeps them from being too vitriolic, as people can justify some pretty nasty behavior when they're directing it against people they see as impeding progress or ruining the country. Against heretics.

The last time I checked out what was once one of my favorite blogs, the outrage-du-jour was Shirtgate. Some scientist from the Rosetta mission wore a shirt with sexy ladies on it to a press conference and people were OUTRAGED. "This is why women don't go into STEM", he was a "misogynistic dudebro", "I wouldn't want my daughter working with him" - all paraphrases of comments I saw. A couple people offered tepid opposition to the prevailing sentiment but were shot down. The next day, that man offered a tearful repentance for the cameras. This is the sort of inane triviality that gets people worked up to the point where the offender in question was painted as an immoral bigot for his wardrobe choice (a shirt that was made for him by a female friend of his who was into pinup art to whom he wanted to pay tribute by wearing her creation for the cameras...but nevermind that). Never fucking EVER do you see that kind of emotion generated for mandatory sick / maternity leave, childcare assistance, universal pre-k, job training, or any other public policy proposal that might actually improve the lives of women. Tabloid politics ruled that day, and many others.

The shitty thing is, I know that by stepping aside I'm leaving politics to the diehards and true believers, but they're the only ones with the fortitude and the intellectual hubris to keep at it when the whole scene turns to a mud-slinging fight. There's a reason the number of people who identify as political independents is at a record high while people's trust in many political, economic, religious, and media institutions is at an all-time low. Cynicism and apathy is a sensible reaction to a politics dominated by mean-spiritedness and triviality. Sorry for rambling, there's a good chance I failed to make any point in this wall of text.