zlacker

>>tosh+(OP)
I think this comes down to a lack of trust in good-faith debate. People don't trust that someone "from the other side" will actually have the empathy and generosity required to have a good-faith discussion on a topic.

Also, I believe that we're constantly hearing so many voices trying to convince us one way or another, that our own discussions on those topics end up being attempts to convince others. That would explain "safe spaces" to some degree -- people don't want the pressure of having someone else try to convince them of something they don't agree with.

Some of it just the two-party system. The points don't matter, just which side of the line each person is on. I wonder if more parties would help depolarize the situation. I'm really not sure.

>>lallys+0r
> That would explain "safe spaces" to some degree -- people don't want the pressure of having someone else try to convince them of something they don't agree with.

In my experience, it's more that people don't try to convince. Hell, the people who need safe-spaces, and the people they're trying to be "safe" from, don't even share the underlying epistemic assumptions that would allow them to "convince" each-other of anything less clearly observable than the sky being blue. The latter group, the people who other people need to be "safe" from, usually just scream, berate, harass, and often resort to violence.

(Note that I've avoided identifying "which side" is which. The answer is: it depends which side is dominant in your particular area. Boston and San Francisco and Brooklyn are left-dominant. Middle America is right-dominant.)

>>eli_go+nx
No place in the US is left-dominant (this is true of most of Europe as well). There are right-dominant areas and centrist-dominant areas. Left discourse (think Chomsky) is extremely rare and almost never accepted in the media.

>>tsimio+NR
I wasn't talking about "the media", but you're just being silly if you can go to a meeting of the Cambridge or Somerville City Councils (a majority of the latter are DSA members or allies, IIRC), or get involved in San Francisco's local politics, and think the Left (ie: the kind of Left that references Chomsky) is an insignificant force in those local contexts.