Tim Urban on political discourse

I’ve been quoting Tim Urban a lot recently — he’s got a fascinating take on bring sanity to political discourse. The latest video that worth watching in full is Tim Urban on political discourse.

TL;DR: political discourse can be either high rung or low rung otherwise known as Disneyland politics. In low-rung political discourse it’s about grandstanding, my tribe being always being right and people’s entire political beliefs being formed along party lines.

To give a personal example, I’ve become something of an outcast among Disneyland style liberals, who form the bulk of my American acquaintances in the tech industry. I see the Covid overreaction as deeply harmful and am uncomfortable with making everything political and woke. End of story, anathema!

On the other hand, I’m clearly not a conservative in the American sense. I believe Obamacare was a huge first step in reforming US healthcare, saner gun restrictions are almost self-evident and generally fall along a libertarian line on social issues.

As far as I know, there’s not a single mainstream politician in the US that matches these viewpoints. If I want to vote for a politician that would enact better gun control, I have to vote for someone who demands that two-year-olds wear masks all day and vaccine passports.

I’m luck to live in Europe, despite the citizenship of my birth. 🤷‍♂️