[mikema63]

https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics ... servatives

One consistent finding in Kinder and Kalmoe’s research is that party identification bests ideological identification. Most people are a Republican or a Democrat before they are a conservative or a liberal. And most people will stick with their party long after they’ve abandoned their ideology.

It's always nice to read when someone stumbles on something you thought was patently obvious for years.

Obviously this focuses on US politics but is also something that applies outside of it and to ideologies beyond liberalism. If you want to change someone's mind, infiltrate their social group.

[Victoribus Spolia]

For most Americans this is definitely true; however, Intellectual boarding houses focusing on diverse ideological and academic communities is easier than infiltration, but maybe that is because I was just too lazy to go and do under-cover proselytizing....but hey, I am a millennial.

[mikema63]

You don't have to be under cover though. You don't have to pretend anything, because people don't care about any of that ideological stuff.

They just want to know what colors you wear and what side you root for.

[Victoribus Spolia]

but wouldn't "infiltration" require pretending to root for the side you actually oppose? Otherwise, what sort of infiltration would that be?

[mikema63]

Rooting for a side costs you nothing, it's like being a fan of the Dallas cowboys.

The point here is that you are one of the weird people who are concerned about their ideological integrity in rooting for a team. If you and like minded people get up in the system then most people will root for you just as much as the people you find vile and whose ideology you oppose utterly as the worst filth.

Most people will follow you anywhere if you just wear the team jersey while doing it. Put yourself outside that though and you are an enemy to be viciously crushed.

[Rugoz]

One would expect party identification to be low in a system where people vote first and foremost for candidates and not for parties.

[Rich]

Party identification has been incredibly strong in America. You might have thought that it would be a problem for the Democrats being on both sides in the Civil War. Not a bit of it.

politics, as a practice, whatever its professions, had always been the systematic organization of hatreds

I realised this myself with out reading Henry Adams quite some time back. This is why I'm fanatically pro free speech. And fanatically opposed to the filth within our political establishments who want to ban hate speech. Banning hate speech is always a cover for hate. Always! I support free speech for Nazis, Commies and Muslims, even though I wouldn't want to live in a society ruled by any of them.