Almost everyone agrees there should be more compromises in politics. So I’m curious, how would that play out?
While I love the policy debates and the nuances, most people go for the big issues. So, according to the party platforms/my gut, here’s what I’d put as the 3 for each party:
Democrats: Abortion rights, gun control, climate change.
Republicans: Immigration, culture war (say, critical race theory in schools or gender affirming care for minors) , trump gets to be president. (Sorry but it really seems like a cult of personality at this point.)
Anyway, here’s the exercise: say the other side was willing to give up on all three of their issues but you had to give up on one of your side’s. OR, you can have two of your side’s but have to give up on the third.
Just curious to see how this plays out. (You are of course free to name other priorities you think better represent the parties but obviously if you write “making Joe Pesci day a national holiday” as a priority and give it up, that doesn’t really count.)
Edit: The consensus seems to be a big no to compromise. Which, fair, I imagine those on the Right feel just as strongly about what they would call baby murdering and replacing American workers etc.
Just kind of sad to see it in action.
But thanks/congrats to those who did try and work through a compromise!
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Call me naive or stubborn but these aren’t points I would compromise at all with.
Abortion rights: People have the right to bodily autonomy. Anything less means that you don’t own yourself.
Gun Control: People have a right to live safely and without fear or going to school to be shot up or at the mall. The fact that gun violence and school shootings are a regular occurrence is not a good thing.
Climate Change: Every single scientist is literally saying the next few decades will see some of the worst weather patterns in human history and that’s even if we go to 0 emissions starting tomorrow. This will affect humanity on a global scale and cause unprecedented population displacement and suffering.
Any compromise on any of these posts means you are causing some kind of demographic to suffer and die simply to appease the egos of individuals who lack empathy.
The sad hilariousness of this really comes into play when you look at the compromises of the opposite three points that OP suggested. If I try to do the same style of justification explanations you gave as to why those would be uncompromisable:
Immigration: people have a right to… Jobs? (Firmly debunked that immigrants are “taking American jobs”). People have a right to not have to see non-Americans in “their” country?
Culture war: people have a right to… Ignore racism? People have a right to be as ignorant as they please? People have a right to be saved from others confirming their sexual identity and feeling peer pressure to do the same?
Trump gets to be president: people have a right to… Fascist leadership if they willingly elect it? People deserve the “best president ever”?
It’s absurd that these are political issues if you take a half a step back and examine the 6 points in isolation. 3 of them are concerned with individuals making their own choices or the safety of humanity as a whole. 3 of them are about nationalism or controlling information and education, basically the definition of “putting myself and my beliefs above the rights of others”. How the hell did we even get into a situation where this is what we are choosing between? Or rather, a situation where roughly half our country actually thinks this is a choice and not just blatantly obvious based on basic morality.
Oh yeah, I 100% agree with you. I don’t know what OP was thinking when making this post and listing those points.
How the hell did we even get into a situation where this is what we are choosing between? Or rather, a situation where roughly half our country actually thinks this is a choice and not just blatantly obvious based on basic morality.
Easy, we compromised :). We said ok we’ll meet you halfway on things that are absolutely crucial to humans rights for the sake of progress. Over the decades the right got more and more extreme as we continued compromising. It’s not just in the US. I see it here in Canada as well. I really hate it.
What would you say are the big three priorities for either side?
Here’s the thing: you’re not wrong on what each side seems to have as priorities. It’s just absurd that anyone should think there’s any kind of equivalence between them.
Half of America seems to think so. And whether we like it or not, we live in a pluralistic society.
The point of my original comment was on how bad compromise is in these scenarios. We got to this point where we are arguing for basic human decency with complete sociopaths. When I read your post all I could think of is “this is literally asking us to choose which demographic we should screw over for the sake of appeasement and compromise”.
I know I’m coming off really bitter, and none of it is targeted towards you. I’m just really tired of this all.
That’s fair.
Lol that’s what I noticed too.
One side wants less people to die, the other side wants fascism and racism. Please help me compromise.
This is why they’re known as wedge issues because there’s no compromise.
Aren’t wedge issues for stuff that are divisive for a group of people who usually agree on most things? Something like the effective tax rates for billionaires among democrats.
Yup!
Compromise would mean you bend over to coorporate interests, and that’s a no from me as well.
There is no room for a discussion. It’s like one side saying “kill everyone” and the other side is saying “let’s not kill people” then people are like “well, let’s compromise and kill just some people, it’s only fair.” No, I’m done. Democrats have been way too tame and compromising for too long, I’m done entertaining this BS.
Ironically, that is almost exactly how the pro-life movement feels about abortion.
I’m sure they do. But the thing is science at stats don’t back their stance.
Ehhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh, that’s a pretty iffy claim when we’re getting into what counts as life.
If I push a pregnant woman down some stairs and cause her to lose a baby, we all still view it as a despicable act, much worse than if she’d not been pregnant.
I personally am all for abortion rights but I’m not arrogant enough to decide everyone else is absolutely wrong and I am the arbiter of what is and isn’t life.
So because you’re not the ultimate moral arbiter, why not leave it up to the people who may or may not get an abortion? Almost like it’s pro CHOICE.
Your example of pushing is still assault and non-consensual, pretty easy to call a difference there. The only argument I’ve heard hold any water is the cutoff time for abortion, but that’s not what pro life people are ever talking about.
Your example of pushing is still assault and non-consensual, pretty easy to call a difference there.
So are you saying that me pushing a pregnant woman down the stairs is the same as doing so to a non pregnant woman?
why not leave it up to the people who may or may not get an abortion?
Again, I’m pro-choice. But, the pro-life response is simply that the unborn child doesn’t get a say in the matter. We don’t allow people to murder their born children even though it’s their own child. The pro-life movement just argues that the definition of child should include those who have yet to be born.
I mean, try asking any pregnant mom about whether the thing kicking around inside them is alive or not…
Well at the point of kicking, I don’t think many people are saying abortion is still an option. Pushing a pregnant person feels worse, in the same way hurting any more vulnerable party does. Can’t really argue with that. Causing a miscarriage should be a more serious offense yes, but I feel like it is a difference between suicide and manslaughter. Both are crime, and both have the same end point, but one was action taken against another.
The unborn child doesn’t get a say because it doesn’t have a say yet. It doesn’t have an opinion. It doesn’t want to live. It can’t survive on its own, it’s just a parasite basically until it’s born.
Being pregnant is a life threatening emergency, until we had modern medical intervention, we had death from childbirth all the time. Like, all the friggin time. Making someone carry to term is not exactly a no-risk/no struggle situation for them, and forcing them to is just punishment for sinning for a lot of pro-life people. Same reason a portion of pro life people want to ban contraceptives.
The goal is to stop having unhappy, poor, abused, or unwanted children, and to have happy, well adjusted, wanted and loved children. The pro-life argument usually stops as soon as a kid is born. No adoption programs, no child health care reform, no handouts for struggling parents, nothing. So someone who wasn’t ready to have a kid might now be forced to either abandon them or barely make it through life with a kid, making everything harder for all of them.
Well at the point of kicking, I don’t think many people are saying abortion is still an option.
It absolutely is and was under Roe v Wade. Babies start to kick and move as early as 16 weeks. While Roe did allow states to regulate the second trimester (14 - 28 weeks) many states had no restrictions on abortions during this period:
https://www.axios.com/2022/05/14/abortion-state-laws-bans-roe-supreme-court
So again, do you think any pregnant mom who has you put your hand on her belly to feel the kid kick, would they agree the kicker is just a clump of cells or a parasite? (Actually, having had many pregnant friends scratch that last one, I think all of them at one point jokingly referred to their internal parasite.)
But the point is that even the most staunch pro-choice of us should have the decency to admit that the thing inside may not quite be a person but is certainly more than a clump of cells. Then the divergence is who has the rights, the outcomes etc. I agree with you that it’s wrong to force a woman to carry a kid to term but, as I keep trying to say, those who disagree have a point.
I know it’s super uncool these days to try and understand those with whom we disagree and even less cool to empathize with them but I promise you, it’s a worthwhile endeavor.
You are absolutely right. It’s a tough battle because they believe they are literally voting to not kill babies. It would be like someone trying to convince me to kill a toddler. How could I possibly compromise?
I don’t agree, but I can understand.
You are being perfectly reasonable and coherent by the way. Whoever is downvoting you doesn’t seem to understand the point of discussion.
They go on to argue that abortion is murder in a different comment. They’re using careful language but it’s obvious this isn’t a person who is simply “arguing the other side,” this is a conversation done in bad faith.
So are you saying that me pushing a pregnant woman down the stairs is the same as doing so to a non pregnant woman?
Imo, no. Pushing a woman is assault, pushing a pregnant woman is assault and something else (another post suggested something akin to manslaughter, which I think fits if the assault causes a miscarriage)
the pro-life response is simply that the unborn child doesn’t get a say in the matter.
Correct. An unborn child doesn’t get a say in whether they are aborted or born. They have no opinions, they have no wants. The unborn child cannot consent to being aborted but they cannot consent to being born either. The only valid opinion and choice is that of the mother, because it’s the mother’s life that is very physically (and eventually also mentally, socially, etc) affected by the pregnancy.
Which is also why I said that pushing a pregnant woman should have harsher penalties than just assault: it also endangers or destroys something whose state of being only the woman should be in charge of.
It’s like if I pickpocket your wallet that’s stealing, but if I steal the wallet from your house that’s also breaking and entering.
One side has stats that have down that Roe V Wade massively reduced crime as less children were born into the system or unwanted. The burden of an unwanted child can ruin both the parents and childs life. We’ve seen how abortion bans can lead to doctors being scared to do anything in some situations causing the mother to die.
The other side is people saying a fetus has a soul because an old book told them so.
It’s pretty clear which side should be backed. Not saying either side is perfect, but one side has a lot more supporting evidence than the other.
Let’s not forget, the pro choice side is just that, you have a choice. No one is forcing anything, the other side is. Again, the choice is clear to me.
The example of pushing a woman down the stairs is silly. The reason why it’s worse if she’s pregnant is because you took away her choice and opportunity to have that baby, after she is dealing with all that comes with being pregnant. That is not the same as a person who is a month in and doesn’t want it, by her choice.
Again, I’m not trying to argue for one side over the other. I’m just saying that from their point of view, both sides have some sense of legitimacy. I tend to agree with you that abortion should be available to all who want one because it’s not my damned decision to make.
But yet again, for the pro-lifers, murdering babies, no matter how good the results etc might be is fundamentally wrong.
The reason why it’s worse if she’s pregnant is because you took away her choice and opportunity to have that baby
To each their own I guess. I personally would feel horrible about killing a child not just removing a temporary opportunity or something. I’m not saying it’s the same as an abortion, just that we on a fundamental level do understand that the fetus isn’t just a clump of cells.
Sad you’re downvoted for pointing out the truth, it’s not even your opinion!
If there was something I give up on, it’s gun control. For several reasons:
- There’s basically no gun control anyways so it’s not like we’re giving up something.
- Compared to abortion rights (ie bodily autonomy) and climate change (ie existential crisis), not having gun control is the least bad. It’s still pretty crucial, to be fair, but comparing to actual existential crises like the other 2, not having gun control doesn’t seem that bad in comparison
I don’t pander to fascists. None.
Do you consider yourself a partisan? The pervasive notion that there are “two sides” and you must be on one of them, it results in ordinary citizens viewing one another with suspicion and fear. It’s a useful lie that serves the interests of those who would foster division in order to maintain the cultural status quo.
Not calling you out in particular. Just that I think about this every time something is posted that perpetuates this false “our team, their team” narrative because it’s a powerful, insipid tool of oppression against the common person. True, people differ on contentious issues, sometimes irreconcilably. But if we are made to view one another as dyed-in-the-wool adversaries over that, we will fail to discover our common interests much less promote them through solidarity.
Not denying that the two major political parties in the United States do hold seemingly unassailable dominance in major elections like the one we’re entering, largely due to determining winner by first-past-the-post. And yes, sadly it’s very often the case that a meaningful vote will support one of those parties. But it doesn’t have to be this way forever. In fact, I will be able to vote for city office candidates by ranked choice starting this year!
Sorry for the rant. Not an expert. Just a dude who wants to love his neighbor.
Just a dude who wants to love his neighbor.
And the big issue seems to be that the two sides have drastically different definitions of the word “love”. There was a study a while ago, which found that conservatives are more likely to have liberal friends, while liberals are less likely to have conservative friends. It sounds odd on the surface… But the reality is that if a liberal hangs out with conservatives long enough to become friends, those conservatives will eventually get comfortable. Comfortable enough to start using hard slurs, or they will call the liberal “one of the good ones” as if it’s a compliment.
It’s no wonder that liberals are less likely to report having conservative friends. Liberals have tried, and have been burned by all of the conservatives that they got close to. Meanwhile, the most offensive thing a liberal does around conservatives is just… Exist? Relatively speaking, it’s easy for a conservative to keep liberals around, because the liberal isn’t constantly trying to undermine the conservative’s right to personhood. Whether or not you can own guns isn’t an immediate existential threat to a conservative.
In this study, were the terms “conservative” and “liberal” self-applied by the subjects? People do adopt those labels for themselves, but I would urge careful consideration before doing so. Where they can be useful in describing one’s position on a specific issue, when applied directly to the person they are needlessly reductive. Exactly the sort of thing that facilitates the mental assignment of oneself or others into an imaginary camp on one side of a false dichotomy.
The essence of what you are saying makes sense to me, and I do understand those terms are routinely applied to people both by themselves and by others. But your post, though well-meaning also serves to perpetuate the “conservatives vs. liberals” view of political discourse. I realize I may be Sisyphus under the boulder here, but it’s my challenge to the United States political duopoly.
The pervasive notion that there are “two sides” and you must be on one of them
Nah, though there is an irony to arguing that the notion of two sides means we view each other with suspicion right after deciding what I believe because of the question I asked.
Just like you, I get that there are two major political parties, one of which will hold power, both of which view the other as the enemy. I asked this to see what the general consensus would be as my friends and I played a similar game and were stymied pretty quickly.
Not calling you out personally, Lauchs and I do apologize if it seems that way. Just that reading in your question the usage of “your side” and “the other side” brought to mind once again the fact that many people I know have come to view politics a team sport. Didn’t decide anything about your beliefs.
Almost everyone agrees there should be more compromises in politics
Bullshit.
Republicans want to “compromise” by getting everything they want.
Moderates politicians want “compromise” by giving them half and telling progressives to be happy Republicans only get half.
So most politicians say they want compromise, but I’d have to see a source for “almost everyone” saying it. Most voters don’t want compromise.
I mean, if you look at the responses in this thread, most folks have put their compromise as getting everything they want on the Dem side of things…
Though, you’re not entirely wrong on the compromise thing. It’s one of those things people say they want until they realize that means giving up on what they want. You might enjoy this old 538 article about it, which has this painful pair of paragraphs on the subject:
But how much does bipartisanship actually matter to voters? Americans have long said they prefer that the parties work together, and respondents in Morning Consult’s poll were no different. For instance, 85 percent of voters said it was very or somewhat important for legislation to have bipartisan support, 69 percent agreed that policies with bipartisan backing were the best policies, and 62 percent disagreed with the idea that it was a waste of time for politicians to seek bipartisan support. What’s more, there were no meaningful differences between how Democrats and Republicans answered these questions.
However, polls also show that many Americans are willing to scrap bipartisanship if it means passing legislation that their party prefers. For instance, a 2019 poll from the Pew Research Center found that despite majorities of Democrats (69 percent) and Republicans (61 percent) saying it was very important that elected officials be willing to compromise, members of both parties thought it was more important for officials from the other party to compromise than it was for officials from their own party to do so. Seventy-nine percent of Democrats thought it was very important for Republican lawmakers to compromise compared with just 41 percent of Republicans. Likewise, 78 percent of Republicans thought it was very important for Democratic lawmakers to compromise compared with 48 percent of Democrats.
https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/how-much-do-americans-really-care-about-bipartisanship/
I’m fine with getting rid of the immigrants in America but it has to be all immigrants. European, every body. Got to get a visa from the native peoples if you want to stay and work. Hopefully they reject the racists.
If you look back far enough the native peoples are immigrants.
Not that I’m opposed to an entire continent being free of humans altogether.
Human rights are not a compromise. I will not even entertain the idea of compromising those. Abortion rights stay.
Gun control is an iffy one. It really should be fixed, but it will take decades of continuing reforms and filtering firearms out of the market to really get it to where it should be. On a short term basis, “compromising” (but not giving up) on this would be OK.
Climate change will obviously just kill us all, soooo…
In a keep two, give one scenario to shut Republicans up for an election cycle, it would be safe to compromise on gun control in exchange for cementing proper human rights and getting meaningful climate action.
The Dems really should give up the party line on gun control. Red flag laws make a lot of sense, but bans on specific weapons are unpopular,
Ineffective, unworkable, and almost certainly unconstitutional.That’s fair. I come at guns with my weird Canadian perspective but I do think different classes of weapons is reasonable. Here, rifles are treated vwry differently from handguns which are basically allowed in a locked storage box at home (with ammo in, if I remember my firearms license training correctly, another locked box) or in the trunk of your car while you are on the most direct route to a firing range or coming home from one.
We have almost no gun crime. In America, I’ve had guns drawn on me twice by cops (understandably nervous cops, I would be nervous too if everyone had a handgun!) after being pulled over for speeding and one time a dude I met at a Sharks game pulled one on a guy who threatened us with a knife.
That just seems like a ridiculous way to live. I’ve had a blast shooting off guns in the bush, drunk and high in Oregon but as much fun as that was, definitely doesn’t outweigh the whole “guns are just around and yeah, school shootings happen” thing.
I’d give up any and every gun point in favor of police reform, proper election and transition of power legislation, and climate change.
Great question. Democracy is all about compromise. I am bothered by how few people seem to grasp this fact. Personally, when I hear the phrase “squabbling politicians”, I roll my eyes - to squabble is their job! They’re doing it on our behalf because people have different interests and different values and so we don’t all agree, and that is a good thing. A polity where everybody agrees - well, there are names for that kind of political system and none of them are democracy.
Over here in Europe, I just wish the progressive parties (for whom I vote) would do the obvious deal and sacrifice their dilatory approach to immigration and in particular border security. This issue is undermining all their other policy goals. The obvious allergy of voters to porous borders is not just a result of disinformation, and taking a tougher line on it does not necessarily mean infringing human rights.
I am bothered by how few people seem to grasp this fact.
Yeah, some of the responses in this thread have been predictable but still disheartening.
would do the obvious deal and sacrifice their dilatory approach to immigration and in particular border security.
100%. It just seems like the progressives are losing the war for the sake of being in the moral feel good category, witness the rise of the Far Right in Poland, Germany, France and probably others that I’m too ignorant to know about (sorry!) That being said, reading over this thread and you can kind of see why the Progressive parties are in a bit of a bind, we do seem allergic to the notion that we might not get everything we want.
Indeed. The moral purity issue has always been the Achilles heel of progressive politics. It makes compromise hard and it drives heretics - i.e. the people whose votes you need - crazy.
How many queer people deaths are ok for you? How many women dying during childbirth are you willing to give up on for your compromise? The only thing politicians compromise on is whose pockets get lined more. Compromise on rights for others is a very privileged position to be in.
Guns: A well regulated militia includes gun registration and training requirements. The fear based self defense justification is a bunch of baloney. The compromise is being able to keep guns if you are part of that well regulated militia, which should probably require not being a violent felon along with guns being taken away for other people’s safety, like when domestic violence allegations are involved.
Abortion rights: A woman and a doctor decide when and how she has an abortion. Since a doctor already has an oath to life, they won’t abort a viable and healthy fetus anyway so they can compromise on how that situation works out.
I don’t really have anything to compromise on with Republicans because they oppose basic rights that impact no one else, and compromising rights is only necessary when the impact the rights of others.
Compromise can only exist when there’s at least one coincidence of interest. A greater good or similar common value that motivates the parties to negotiate over the aisle on individual issues. The principles, values, goals and even worldview of the two party system in the US is radically polarized. Which makes it almost impossible to negotiate a compromise. Right now, the few policy issues they agree on are nonessential points (supporting Israel, e.g.) that don’t weight the balance and exist out of pure accident. It exist on either side for completely different reasons. When one side argues that some people deserves to die, it is hard to negotiate when the protection of life and dignity is above all for the other side. But compounded by the fact that they don’t even agree what life, person hood and dignity even mean.
Compromise doesn’t have to mean giving up on anything. It’s more often about finding a middle way solution on an issue that both sides can accept.
This is how I would suggest compromising on each issue without either part giving up on any:
Abortion: Religious people can give up all the rights they want.
Gun control: Ban guns in cities. Allow them in the wilderness.
Climate change: Allow industries to pollute as long as they pay for cleaning it up.
Immigration: The whole thing could be solved by not allowing employers to hire people without their paperwork in order.
Culture wars: The fear is that certain cultures get to control others? Don’t allow anyone to force their culture on others.
Trump gets president: Okay, if all power is removed from the position, then he can be the representative of the country. Not a good one but whatever.
Climate change: do they have to pay to clean it up before or after it hurts people?
Immigration: We already do not allow employers to hire people without their paperwork in order. The issue is way more complex than that.
Trump: I 100% support replacing Congress and POTUS with a Parliament and Prime Minister, and would compromise by making POTUS a ceremonial office with the only function being wearing a bald eagle costume at international sporting events, and letting Trump do it until he quits after being tackled by the Canadian in a maple syrup bottle costume.
Climate Change: they should clean up as they go. It ought to be part of the production cost.
Immigration: Why aren’t the laws enforced? The issue is that employers absolutely do hire unregistered immigrants, otherwise they wouldn’t come. Even Trump himself has Mar-a-Lago staffed with illegal immigrants. Either make them legal, or stop the employers from dumping the employment market with “they took our jobs”-employees. It’s the most hypocritical thing. It’s not complex at all. It’s just racist slavery.
I’m afraid you’re not likely to get many actual answers on Lemmy. The politics here can be wildly, wildly skewed, and it doesn’t generally create a conducive environment to calm, rational discussions. (In fairness, I’m not sure if any other site really does support truly balanced political discussion either.) I admire your attempt, however.
Another issue (which some others have already commented on) is what constitutes a “compromise”. For instance, if I have four issues which left and right-wing movements are at odds over, is it “compromise” if for each of the two I decide to go with a strongly left- or right-wing position? Or is it only compromise if for all positions we take a moderate position which cleaves to neither bloc’s position?
Anyhow, let me at least try to answer. Though I lean more left, I still find myself out of line with both major parties on some issues. For example: In the interests of addressing climate change and achieving stronger energy reliability and independence, I favor a drive to increase, not remove, hydroelectric dams and nuclear power facilities in the country.
