Date Machine: Rate My Politics

political leanings as criteria for a date. wow. i don't think you'd ever get that in the uk. shows how polarised the politics is in the States. for us it's hard to distinguish between the different parties. few people feel passionately about one leader or the other. and on dating sites it's just not cool to talk about your politics; about as attractive as saying you spent half of last year in a nut house. if you're into politics you probably wear a dodgy suit, spout statistics when asked about your love life and can't laugh at yourself. all of which may be unfair, but it would be most people's perception in the arena of dating online. english women are much more interested in your money and celeb status. politics is just background noise.

I'm right with you amboabe -

I'm one of those people who is pretty interested in politics and loves to share their ideas.

My experience is there is a significant group of people who are functionally incapable of dealing with disagreement.

I think it's because a lot of people just assume they are right and can't really defend what they believe. If they only hang around people who believe the exact same thing, they can all agree they are right all the time. Presumeably, this is a comfortable habit for them; we all agree we are smarter than those guys.

The other group is dehumanized and cast as the villian - "Voldemort", as you say. Very clean, very easy - and of course devoid of any intellectual merit.

That is my theory anyway. Personally, I think this says a lot more about the speaker than it does the subject - almost as though someone said "Yeah I don't have any black friends". One might say it is a "consipciously close minded" world view.

Who advertises that?

Worse - these people just seem angry to me. Some people are so obsessed with politics they let it make them miserable.

I love hanging out with people who are fun and interesting and can shoe me new ideas and cast things in a new perspective. People who yell, scream, and berate? Not so much.

Totally identify with you amboabe -

I agree to an extent. I think it's important to date somebody who shares your values. But what I think you are hitting on is the fact that people often don't know the difference between politics and values, and that they cannot be summed up as simply as "red" or "blue". I have a straight-line democratic voting record and I'm one of those people that waited 4 hours in freezing weather to get into an Obama rally and canvassed for him in swing states. I tend to align with liberal or leftist politics because I care about things like educating children, helping low-income families, not fighting stupid wars etc.

Those are my values and I believe that they are best represented in Democratic politics. (although far from perfectly so.) But I have friends who share a lot of my ideas but have very different voting records because they genuinely believed that voting the way they did was the best way to advance that agenda. I can strongly disagree with them, I can even feel like bopping them on the head and asking "what are you thinking??" sometimes but I'll take somebody who actually cares about people but has different views on which political policies best reflect that value over someone who votes like I do and doesn't even know why. There are plenty like that around where I live. And, on the flip side, I have some pretty strong disagreements with well-informed people who vote like I do.

There's much more subtlety in these things than a lot of people want to acknowledge and, honestly, I think this is one of the inherent problems with internet dating. It's not necessarily always a good idea to only meet people who fall within your pre-set parameters of what you want. When I meet people organically, they often don't meet the kind of criteria I would post on a profile, but I like them anyway. As a result, I've dated a couple very nice, very morally grounded guys who I might have walked away from if I'd just seen their politics displayed on a profile. I think that, when it finally comes down to serious or long-term relationships, I really do need to be with someone who aligns more closely with my politics and voting choices but, all the same, I think it's valuable for people to get out of their bubbles and see that people are more complex than "red" or "blue", that there can be common ground, and that not everyone who didn't vote like you did is a "voldemort". I live in the Eastern United states (but didn't grow up there) and, even though I tend to agree on policies with a lot of people around me, I hate how they demonize "red staters" like they have scales or something. It's not helping anyone be happy and it's not making this country any better either.

Well, as someone whose politics are totally Potteresque, I don't think it's irrational to want a person who is on your side.

I do think it's weird that she had to spell it out (and maybe suggests that she isn't as fundamentally different from the other side as she thinks.) Generally, I find the Republicans steer clear of me without my having to issue a warning.

lydiasarah: Thanks for the articulate comments, I enjoyed reading it :) The problem with politics is almost always over execution, and not simply ideas. Any idea can be made into something positive if one is realistic enough about how its executed (just like an arranged marriage -- swoon). The problems come when people fall so irrevocably in love with their ideas that they fail to let anyone else join them on the playing field. You're right, it's human beings underneath the team jersies and the self-righteous rhetoric.

z: You lick assholes, so I assume saying republicans suck is a compliment in your world, no?

In a "normal" political clime, I'd agree with Amoeba here, and those who say it's best to have discourse with both sides. But this isn't normal. This is not even post-Bush yet! The most destructive force in modern history has been this Presidency, and anyone who labels him/herself a Republican at this point in history is not of sound mind. Undatable! Simple as that. They -- THEY -- are awful people. Period. The 25% of this country that still believes in Bush Jr. can go fuck themselves. I don't read no Harry Potter. But I know a dangerous asshole when I see one.

This just isn't the time for even-handed politics. It's time for a long, hard push to the left, to right the ship.

Now, what's that chick's profile URL?

My fellow is a liberal-minded man, strict constitutionalist, and finds any political shenanigans an assault on our civil liberties. I am a Washington vulgarian thrilled with the gaudy horror of it all. I revel in the scandals and whoop it up when five guests are all screaming at once on Hardball! I am informed to an absurd degree, but find people who are easily offended by policy and the polis slightly retarded (but cute!)

"Nobody likes to talk about things that are difficult to explain"

It's sad that you think that.

Zeitgeisty and PO--If it makes you feel better to believe that a sizable fraction of this country are "horrible people" than you may. But I personally am suspicious of any point-of-view that writes off that many people in such extreme terms.

You will get no argument from me that the Bush presidency has been one of darkest periods of our history. But when it's over, the people who voted for him are still going to be here sharing our country with us. We might as well try to see them as something but exaggerated monsters. (Besides the fact that, as amboabe pointed out, "republican" and "Bush supporter" are not the same thing. I know several republicans but no Bush supporters at this point.)

I currently live in Boston, where identifying yourself as liberal or left doesn't make you particularly stand out. But I grew up in the blue-leaning but much more swing-y Great Lakes and, I have to say, I don't find that there's a particularly higher occurrence of ignorant douchebags there than there is in my current home. Identifying yourself as left-of-center does not mean necessarily mean that you are righteous and enlightened, or not a hypocrite. Here, I know "socialists" who are regularly nasty to waitresses, cashiers, and other Noble Proletarians that they supposedly champion. I know guys who support a woman's right to choose and treat women like crap. I know people who identify as "liberal" because they hold liberal social views, yet couldn't give a rat's ass about poor people. ("Why should my taxes go to support people who are too lazy to work?")

On the other hand, one of my friends, who identifies as a moderate republican (she voted for Bush in 2000 but Kerry in 2004) opposes welfare, but because she genuinely believe that it is not a good way to get people out of poverty. She works as a counselor with troubled, low-income teenagers and doesn't come from a particularly stable background herself. I disagree with her views, but they do not come from a place of ignorance or a lack of compassion.

I know people who supported the war in Iraq initially, because they thought that it was the right thing to do, they thought it was going to help people in Iraq be free of a terrible dictator. I can call them misled or gullible, but I'm not going to call them "horrible".

Once more, this isn't necessarily to suggest that we all start dating people with whom we have major disagreements on important issues, or that we all start going to Sarah Palin events and start hugging people or something. I just think it's ridiculous and counterproductive to paint people who don't think like you as bogeymen. Some republicans are assholes motivated by greed and prejudice. Some are not. You can have strong political convictions (believe me, I do) and still give people the benefit of the doubt and recognize that there motives may not be as simple as they appear.

Personally, I would love it if some of my fellow Eastern urbanites got out of Boston and New York and took a road trip between the coasts. A lot of them would be surprised to find out that people don't have horns and tails.

PO: The nomenclature is so variable though. Liberalism in america is more closely alligned with conservative politics in europe. Republicans are closer to the liberal spirit than democrats, in most historical applications of the term in politics. People tend to use the phrase as some catchall for goodness or evil, but it's meaning remains subjective.

It isn't just about ideals. Don't forget about reproductive rights and gender roles. Sure, you'll find Republicans and conservatives who are exceptions to the rule, but as a women a man's beliefs about reproductive rights and traditional gender roles are a pretty darn important part of a relationship. For someone liberal in both of those areas myself, the quickest way to weed out a lot of disappointments or frustrations is just to eliminate Republicans from the dating pool...