The Twitter Files

[Lune]

Originally Posted by PRogers [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

One time in school my teacher wanted to demonstrate what a bazaar would sound like to us children.
Then she gave everyone a plastic fruit, toy, truck, item, whatever. She told everyone to try and sell this to every person in the room. Then she said begin.
Once it was over she asked if anyone made a deal and everyone said no.
Nobody could some to an agreement. Too loud. Too many people screaming.
This forum is so active! Too bad its like that day in class.

Believe it or not, back in the day, this board used to have common ground. You'd have your libertarians who would debate liberals about economics but would fundamentally agree on most social issues, and then moderates, market liberals, and socialists. Basically, more people had their own well-developed positions across a range of topics.

Things changed after 2016 when most of the people on the right became Trump fans, and their sole issue, their entire platform was: Trump. Of course this shaped the discussion and anyone on the left eventually just became de facto anti-Trump. It actually pretty well mirrors what happened in real life. All the non-Trump right-wingers disappeared afaik, and all the quality discussion went with them. For a while, they tried to contain the pages of spam, insults, and terrible arguments to the politics containment thread but then there was little to no activity anywhere else so I think they just gave up.

It was never about convincing anybody; that's impossible. But it made for good verbal sparring and clarifying/developing your own thoughts and positions.

If you removed Trump from the picture, I would actually agree with most of these people on most issues, immigration, defense, wokeness, etc. Not on economics, but that's just one thing, though people tend to focus more on where their views diverge than where they meet.