burst my balloon

Shankar Vedantam, writing in the WaPo, has gone and taken all the fun out of the nasty partisanship out of in the blogosphere and beyond—by clarifying what exactly gives it that nasty edge. His piece is called “Disagree about Iraq? You’re Not Just Wrong — You’re Evil” [e.a.]

A wide body of psychological research shows that on any number of hot-button issues, people seem hard-wired to believe the worst about those who disagree with them. Most people can see the humor in such behavior when it doesn’t involve things they care about: If you don’t care about sports, for example, you roll your eyes when fans of one team question the principles and parentage of fans of a rival team.

I’ve gotta say that as amused as I am by the battling in the blogosphere, and as helpful I find it in working through my own passionate (and sometimes overheated) feelings about hot-button issues, I am sorta stunned by the meanness that goes on in every day life these days.

There is not a corner of my life that hasn’t been touched by the hysterical politics of the day

“We are really bad about putting ourselves in other people’s places and looking at the world the way they look at it,” said Glenn D. Reeder, a social psychologist at Illinois State University who recently conducted a study into how supporters and critics of the Iraq war have come to believe entirely different narratives about the war — and about each other. “We find it difficult to grant that other people come to their conclusions in good faith if they reach a conclusion that is different than ours,” he said.

That’s the creepy thing: that friends, family members, colleagues, business associates, and neighbors can turn one one another in an instant; that people can simply begin to think the worst of one another … over politics. There is no end to the troubles that begin when people use politics as a weapon against one another.

Can’t we all get along?