Emotion, bias, perception, all drive wrong minded attitudes toward others.
President Trump says he wants to Make America Great Again, MAGA. Some will say America was already great. I will go along with striving to Make America Greater thru facts, evidence, and truth that leads to finding common ground to solve the hard issues.
I once told a friend who supports President Trump vociferously, "I know you will find the truth in time, as I will thru a continuing search with people like you. I assure you, you have no monopoly on the truth, no monopoly on what is right versus what is wrong, no one does even as you said you do."
I invited my friend to leave his "echo chamber" and open his intellectual aperture.
Americans need to unite. America has potential for evil and good, which will we yield to? We can improve what we are, our values, our national character, if we want to.
We are not a "happy" people as of March 2019.
I'm taking the approach that there are extremists everywhere. Frustrating folks. I try to avoid, not always with success, using terms that inspire people to recoil, and argue senselessly, like the word "sides," "left," right," even "liberal and "conservative." The words have lost their original meaning. Now these words are almost use as slander, and place us in tribes. It's "othering," it's tribal, and it can be self-defeating if we have a goal of improving the dialogue. It won't move the rock, so to speak.
Yes, there plenty of folks who aren't thinking, who lie and misinform, use select data and evidence to misstate or mischaracterize situations, actions, or policies. These folks are "Soldiers" looking for evidence to support their pre-disposed narrative. There are a lot of people who want only talk to defend their viewpoint at all costs. I saw a t-shirt at a Trump Rally that said "I'd rather be ruled by Russia, than be a Democrat." It's devoid of thought, and crazy, and, ironically for these folks, it is un-American. We can disagree without destroying our country I hope.
There are Democrats that say and do wrong things, I agree. There are Republicans who say and do wrong things also. Maybe, as Mitt Romney once said, we can't reach the "47%," so don't try, write them off.
In my few remaining years I can't do that. I have to "Scout" the data and evidence that leads me to find, use, and share the truth in all I think and say as long as I can.
Take a look at those three Ted Talks when you are not so busy, have 30 minutes to spare (all three-15 minutes or so each).
They are brief and they opened my intellectual aperture . . . .
Julia Galef - "Why you think you're right - - even if you're wrong" -Soldier and Scout mindsets, all based on emotional thinking
https://www.ted.com/talks/julia_galef_why_you_think_you_re_right_even_if_you_re_wrong?language=en
Ted Talk by Alex Edmans - "What to trust in a "post truth" world"
https://www.ted.com/talks/alex_edmans_what_to_trust_in_a_post_truth_world?language=en
Chad Frischmann - "100 solutions to reverse global warming"
https://www.ted.com/talks/chad_frischmann_100_solutions_to_climate_change
Important concern for finding truth; am I right to distrust Thomas Sowell?
Confirmation bias
"Confirmation bias is the tendency to search for, interpret, favor, and recall information in a way that confirms one's preexisting beliefs or hypotheses.[1] It is a type of cognitive bias and a systematic error of inductive reasoning. People display this bias when they gather or remember information selectively, or when they interpret it in a biased way. The effect is stronger for emotionally charged issues and for deeply entrenched beliefs. Confirmation bias is of particular current interest because of the increasing polarisation between left-wing and right-wing political viewpoints, and the gullible acceptance of the current rapid spread of fake news.[2]
People also tend to interpret ambiguous evidence as supporting their existing position. Biased search, interpretation and memory have been invoked to explain attitude polarization (when a disagreement becomes more extreme even though the different parties are exposed to the same evidence), belief perseverance (when beliefs persist after the evidence for them is shown to be false), the irrational primacy effect (a greater reliance on information encountered early in a series) and illusory correlation (when people falsely perceive an association between two events or situations)."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confirmation_bias
