Political Parties Are Like Sports Franchises

For your consideration: there is a level on which people relate to political parties like sports fans -- you're very loyal to your favorite team; you make excuses for their quarterback; you point to bogus calls by the refs; you despise all fans of your team's big rival Instantly and with Excessive Derision -- only assholes are X fans; X fans are all idiots, just like their team.

And, undecided voters? They are...non sports fans, pressured by their friends to Common You Gotta Pick a Team; the fair weather fans, only interested in the competition when it gets to the playoffs; the latecomers whose only goal is to have the right flag on their car when that team wins.

Framing it this way explains why, although political justifications are presented in the Form of a Rational Argument, they are obviously -- to someone who disagrees -- insanely biased, non-rational arguments!

Afterall, we aren't surprised, are we, when a known Huge Fan makes ridiculous arguments on behalf of his team: I mean, the guy is a Fan, what's he supposed to do? He's supposed to defend his team against all enemies, even when they So Obviously Suck. He's just unlucky enough to be a fan of a shitty team; over here, we're fans of an Excellent Team who just happens to be going through some reorganization and growth this year...

We may *act* as if policy discussions are taking place on the Rational Plain, and sometimes they are. 

But the foundation of political opinions isn't built from some kind of menu -- pick from this list of policy positions, and determine your political team; statistically nobody actually becomes a partisan that way, just like nobody picks a sports team based solely on stats.  Party affiliation is much more like supporting a team because you grew up with them, or you never had a team so you adopt the team of your friends.

When we argue about policies, too often we are *really* arguing simply Against your team or For my team, and coming up with rationalizations as needed to support the position our team has already taken -- if my team insists on running zone coverage, I'm going to defend their use of zone coverage to my dying day.

We only confuse ourselves when we think we're arguing on a rational level, when we're really arguing on a Tailgating level.

(Massive indebtedness to Jonathan Haidt for his book "The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion" for the underlying concepts absorbed and regurgitated in this post.)