On Friends and Politics

I’ve recently been wrestling with the fact that some of my closest friends and I don’t align on our political beliefs. For a long time I couldn’t comprehend how kind reasonable people could not subscribe the same politics as I do.

In part I blame the media, the prevailing narrative is that anyone with an opposing political view to yourself is inherently evil and should not be given your time, I’ve come to realise this is bullshit and that at the end of the day politics largely come down to what any given individual believes the government should be doing in order to help others succeed.

It’s worth noting that this thought is predicated on the idea that most people are good and want to see others do well and that where we as individuals disagree is often on the implementation details as opposed to the underlying goal.

Lets take the left, from my standpoint I see the left as the party that largely attributes an individuals success to the environment in which they came from. This boils down to the idea of privelage, individuals with more wealth and resources or less obstacles are far more likely to succeed than others.

The logical conclusion then is that best way to improve the likelihood of success for others is to improve the environment in which they exist whether this is removing existing obstacles or increasing access to otherwise inaccessible resources the idea here is that with this support individuals are more likely to thrive.

Now lets consider the right, from my standpoint again I see the right as the party that largely attributes success to the individual. The idea here being that when someone is successful it is a result of their hardwork, determination, and guile and while privelage may come into account it is far less impactful that the individuals own efforts.

The logical conclusion then is to lower the barrier to entry for individuals who wish to become self made. Any individual who goes above and beyond to better their own position should be compensated accordingly and the correct infrastructure should be put in place to support these individuals.

Now if we step away from the implementation details and look specifically at the underlying ideals we can see that both the left and the right are aligned in that they both believe that the government should be improving people’s lives as much as it can. The point of contention is solely around the process in which we use to get there.

Considering my earlier struggle through this new lense it is much easier to understand how good people for whom I have the utmost respect for can hold such polarizing beliefs. If I can set aside my own biases and acknowledge that the end of the day political preference is preference there is no right answer because if there was the political spectrum wouldn’t exist it is much easier to make peace with this conundrum.