Irrational beliefs and behavior seem to be the norm these days.
I'm suspect in my liberal neighborhood just because I'm conservative and fly the American flag.
I blame it on media. They've fostered a severe case of us-vs-them.
I totally agree with you, even to the point of avoiding mainstream media. Nightly News is simply, every few seconds advertisement followed by what that particular station wants you to hear.
At least being conservative, "We know we are correct
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It's good this site has balance...
Several years ago I read following one persons an explanation of us and them...
F. Scott Fitzgerald famously said that the "test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposing ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function." Whether it's a question of intelligence, psychological maturity, or emotional capacity, there's little sign of such activity on the current political front. Instead, our parties encourage us to take refuge in one of those two opposing ideas and reject the other. Complex, ambiguous perspectives are shunned in favor of absolute, simplistic and immutable beliefs about right and wrong, good versus evil.
As the neurologist Robert Burton has noted , ambiguity or confusion is so difficult for many of us to bear that we instead retreat from it into a feeling of certainty, believing we know something without any doubts, even when we actually don't and often can't know. Those of us who have trouble with such discomfort often resort to black-and-white thinking instead. Rather than feeling uncertain or ambivalent, struggling with areas of gray, we reduce that complexity to either/or.
Black-and-white thinking reflects the psychological process known as splitting. When we feel unable to tolerate the tension aroused by complexity, we "resolve" that complexity by splitting it into two simplified and opposing parts, usually aligning ourselves with one of them and rejecting the other. As a result, we may feel a sort of comfort in believing we know something with absolute certainty; at the same time, we've over-simplified a complex issue.
In politics, to the extent our parties rely more on splitting and hatred than appeals to thought, they create a wartime atmosphere on the domestic front. We are good, the other side is bad, and we hate them. Preoccupied with vilifying the opposition, we're unable to perceive both sides of an issue and find a way to accommodate them both, albeit imperfectly. Pursuing total
