There can be no fruitful political discussion with people who are insincere or hiding their views [View all]

[CreekDog]

If people claim to support gun control, but don't, you think you're arguing with someone who just needs to hear the right kind of gun control, but you aren't. Except you can't know that.

If people claim to support Medicaid expansion and Medicare because it sounds good, but in reality they are for shrinking those programs, you can't discuss areas of agreement, because the areas are just "stated" areas of agreement, not actual areas of agreement.

I can deal with, reason with, argue productively with almost anyone if I know what our differences actually are and where we agree.

If someone is pretending to hold certain positions, however, and doesn't, then when you or I attempt to agree with them, they will find a reason to disagree, and it won't be logical, nor will it be sincere.

This is why trolling, not just on the internet, but in media in general is so destructive. It's designed to not just get you to think your ideas aren't popular with the opposition, it's designed to get you to think what should be commonly held ideas are actually unpopular with your fellow liberals and progressives. It's pernicious and insidious.

Now before I close some caveats about what I am *not* complaining about. I am complaining specifically against a wholesale attempt to portray one's sincere beliefs as nearly the opposite of what they are. This is not the well intentioned person trying to find common ground by minimizing differences. This is not the well intentioned idealist being unwilling to compromise certain beliefs held sacred in response to other liberals who are more pragmatic.

This is about your opposition pretending they aren't your opposition, not in a forthright way as the liberals sometimes fight the pragmatists, but those who actually oppose both sides, but pretend not to.

There may not be a solution, but there's nothing wrong with refusing to be a chump when you're being lied to. That's all.