Partisanship: The last socially acceptable form of bigotry?
By omnithought
@omnithought (199)
United States
March 10, 2007 3:48pm CST
Bigotry happens when a person lumps a group of people together and assumes they all share the same attributes. As time goes on and we become less ignorant, we see the complete fallacy in this, and it becomes less and less socially acceptable until the form of bigotry in question is eventually regarded by most people as sheer stupidity.
This has happened with racism, sexism, and is beginning to happen with homophobia. When will it happen for political bigotry, such as people lumping liberals or conservatives, republicans or democrats into the same ridiculous stereotypes?
Not only is this kind of bickering ignorant and inaccurate, but it distracts people from putting their heads together to find mutually beneficial solutions to the problems we face.
One things is sure: as long as people are focusing their attention on attacking each other (especially in a country that prides itself on standing united), those at the top, regardless of political affiliation, are laughing all the way to the bank.
3 people like this
1 response
@4ftfingers (1310)
•
11 Mar 07
Bloody well said, you have really made me think about how I will argue my oppinion in future. The difficulty is when people come back aggressively to comments you've made, and you are put in a situation where you can either fight on their level or rise above it, the latter being a more difficult option at the time but can actually give your argument more dignity in the long run.
I was dissucing politics with a mate at work, and we came to the conclusion that often political arguments are more about point scoring, and winning etc, rather than the actual matter being disscussed. Most of us want to win a debate, and so it turns into rather who can have the last word.
The biggest problem I see with that is nothing cn get solved, instead of absorbing each other's points of view the debators will be trying to think of their next line for retaliation, more and more how they are being percieved, and disregard what the other is saying.
Most of us do it because we are born with an ego, so the only people that are likely to gain are thsoe that didn't have an oppinion in the first place.
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