In the Scott Alexander blog post "In Favor of Niceness, Community, and Civilization" he writes about when and why he chooses his battles:
"Creationists lie. Homeopaths lie. Anti-vaxxers lie. This is part of the Great Circle of Life. It is not necessary to call out every lie by a creationist, because the sort of person who is still listening to creationists is not the sort of person who is likely to be moved by call-outs ... Everybody who wants to discuss things rationally has already formed a walled garden and locked the creationists outside of it....
"And so our community grows. And all over the world, the mysterious divine forces favoring honest and kind equilibria gain a little bit more power over the mysterious divine forces favoring lying and malicious equilibria."
This column in the Guardian is titled: "End the odes to political 'civility'. Do you really think Republicans will reciprocate?" The writer makes mistake of assuming the worst impulses are representative of the entire GOP. The better question is to ask which Republicans will reciprocate.
If I follow the logic of Scott Alexander, it makes more sense to form a walled garden locking out people like Mitch McConnell and cultivate a garden with people in the bipartisan Problem Solvers Caucus. Ignore the "send her back" republicans and cultivate a garden with those who like your message if not your politics.
The point of a liberal democratic society to maximize and empower the number of people who agree to civility even when it benefits the other team. Those Republicans do exist. Give them the key to your garden and invite them to join you in locking out the illiberalism that makes a lot of noise but always ends up losing in the long run.
In my post on salience I quoted a New York Times story about a writer insisting on not engaging with Republicans. After the 2016 election, he reached out to Trump supporters in good faith, tried to change their minds, then gave up after seeing on TV other Trump supporters on their worst behavior.
Instead, I admire this story of a homosexual student who was bullied at school.
"I called him and asked him why he attacked me. He explained that he does not agree with my “lifestyle” and said I made him uncomfortable. He also stated that his father was a conservative pastor. It seemed as if he never had a choice to have modern opinions.
People will always be angry at individuals’ choices surrounding self-expression. Yet a way to combat this anger is through conversation, communication and education.
He appreciated that someone finally listened to him, rather than just judging him and his beliefs. This inability to be heard was what seemed to have provoked his anger and lack of respect for others."
Here is how I propose to cultivate my garden with people like Braver Angels. It looks like this:
Is anyone archiving these Trump sycophants for when they try to downplay or deny their complicity in the future? I foresee decent probability of many deleted Tweets, writings, photos in the future
— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) November 6, 2020
... only the exact opposite. I want a list of the 27 Republicans who acknowledged that Biden won the election. I want to publicly call them out, and to thank them. I want to invite them into my garden of people who agree to play by the rules, even when we disagree on policy.
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