Crossing the aisle

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I realize that the political polarization in my country are not pervasive globally, but we've got a liberal wing and a conservative wing - and lately, the two wings can't coordinate and the darn bird keeps crashing into things. A feature of tribalism that I find interesting is that members of a tribe might dislike folks from the competing tribe, but they reserve their hate for those who are seen as disloyal or traitors. i.e., An Evangelical from Kansas might have nothing but disdain for those Catholics attending mass across the street, but they absolutely hate Ezekiel since he left their church and became an agnostic. As a result, people in a tribe tend to toe the line on their tribe's rhetoric and platforms - the more polarized the competing groups are, the more likely an errant opinion will be treated as heresy.

So with that in mind, I'm asking folks to consider sharing something that the tribe you most closely associate with holds dear, that you disagree with. Or even something you agree with *gasp* the other side on - even if you don't agree with their reasoning. Typically, I keep this sort of stuff to myself because really, who needs the practice having people tell you your wrong? Or who among us needs help becoming more isolated? But we're online - it'll never be safer.

For instance, I'd be considered a liberal. For liberals in my part of the world, abortion is like the Holy Grail of obvious. You can't be a liberal and be against abortion. ~shrug~ To me, it's murder.

^^^
I'm also a liberal, but my sympathies tend to be prolife. I just hold most of the politicalized prolife movement in contempt.

the liberal and the conservative wing agree that neoliberal capitalism is a good idea. The liberal wing just wants to be slightly less brutal in forcing it on everyone.

from overseas, and I dare say likely also from South America, US politics looks like two guys fighting about the caliber of the gun with which to coerce the rest of the world.

I had to struggle to identify anything I associate with that could rightly be called a tribe. Mostly the people I spend time with are a broad church with quite a lot of difference between the opinions of its individuals, yet they don't see each other as traitors to the left wing politics they (kind of) support.

I'm aware, though, of something out there called "the left," who might see me as a traitor if I were silly enough to join them. My own views on most issues is heavily nuanced, which is bound to annoy anybody with an axe to grind on a political issue. I'm always the one to awkwardly point out "but we don't really know that, do we?" or "on the other hand I see some merit in the other side of the question."

An example might be my views on immigration. I strongly dislike the UK Home Office's hostile policies, which apparently includes telling the lifeboat people to stop rescuing would-be illegal immigrants from sinking boats in the English Channel, deporting the Windrush Generation for not happening to have kept a paper trail proving they've not been out of the country for too long over the past 50 years, etc., but I'm not impressed either by the way an element of the Left seems to think that if you don't applaud every instance of immigration as a beautiful thing, you're a witch and must be burned.

I guess it's obvious that nuanced thinking can upset people who have highly polarised views. But I have no experiences of what happens to somebody in a tightly-knit group who begins to fly in the face of the party line, because I'd be horrified if any of them thought I was a member. I have my own ideas on what I approve of and what I don't, and wouldn't want anything much to do with a group that wanted me to sublimate that to any homogenous belief system of theirs.

I can't cross the aisle because I wouldn't be allowed inside in the first place, so I'd be protesting outside.

I live in a country (Denmark) with 11 parties represented in parliament (Denmark).

Here, there is no crossing the aisle, but instead attempts to navigate this blindfolded in reverse with a broken GPS: