The main point is that one party in particular is pushing discriminatory legislation against a minority group and demonizing them. That counts as oppression to me. People who vote for said party are therefore voting for those things - voting for despite not supporting such policies is still enabling said discrimination.

Your response seems victim blamey. Yes, the post is ascribing the worst motives at times. The cynic in me sees the anti-trans campaign as a political distraction from other issues that actually affect the voting base's lives. Doesn't change the fact it's hurting and likely taking human lives.

You compare the situation to Hutus and Tutsis. In this case she is a Tutsi, warning about the increasing threat of Hutus - whose rhetoric becomes more violent by the day - and is asking for help.

The genocide was the culmination of a hundred-plus years of power shifting from one group to the other. When the Tutsis were in power, they made life hell for the Hutus, and when the Hutus were in power, they made life hell for the Tutsis. Each group came to see the other as deserving of that punishment because of the way they had been mistreated when the other group was in power.

But my broader point is a criticism of the major-party duopoly, where every single social issue, economic issue, military issue, civil rights issue, etc. gets boiled down to these two choices. And often the philosophy that underpins them is inconsistent. So it's no wonder that each party is able to point out the inconsistencies and evils of its opposition; our political system is designed to make that as easy as possible. And the politicians who run within those parties benefit from that polarization.

In the end the analogy is flawed either way you spin it. Democrat and Republican voters are not ethnic/cultural groups in a country recently ravaged by colonialism.

But again, I am noting that someone is complaining about increasing oppression against their minority group, and you are lamenting about them playing into party politics.

Human rights are more important than the issue of having a healthy political culture. I thought it was inappropriate and out of touch to focus on the latter in this context.

It's actually the opposite, they're trying to speak to the people who might vote Republican and who may not realise what they are voting for.

I had been willing to believe that they simply put other issues first, which was merely selfish and short-sighted -- the kind of thing a democracy can be moderately robust for. But the culture war is front page news every day in every medium, and I simply cannot believe any more that it's not a deliberate choice.

I'm not sure it even matters currently. I've got friends who vote Republican, knowing stuff about their party/candidate which makes the uncomfortable (or worse). They still keep voting Republican, mostly because "democrats will kill babies and take away my guns and social security!". They've had more than a decade of "worst motives" ascribed to the opposition.

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Republicans: decades of "they'll take away our guns!"

Democrats: "that's not going to happen."

Decades later, doesn't happen.

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Democrats: decades of "they're going to take away your access to abortion/contraception"

Republicans: "meh... nah... why are you so paranoid?"

Decades later... access to abortion heavily restricted, on track for total bans in many regions.

Since Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act of 1965 and the Republican Party decided to seize the opportunity it had failed to exploit in previous splits between the Democrats’ White supremacist faction and the rest of the broadened post-New Deal party by offering the former a new partisan home that would focus on the issues the Democrats had become inconsistent on.

Decades.

It's really hard to put a starting date on it. I think of it as beginning in the 1990s. But that's a follow-in from the late 60s, when civil rights caused the re-orientation of the parties. And before that, the anti-communist movement which upset the post-Civil War alignment.

Regardless... I have memories of the 80s and early 90s when it felt competitive and rude but not utterly hopeless. Since then it has seemed to me that it has grown monotonically worse -- and I see no reason to think that the direction is going to change.

Pretty much nailed it: the 1990s is when the new partisan alignment had pretty much shaken out, the 1960s and particularly the Civil Rights Act of 1965 was the trigger for the second part of the double realignment leading to that new alignment from the one that had held basically from Reconstruction; the first trifger starting with the Great Depression and more specifically Roosevelt’s New Deal coalition.

I hate to risk Godwinning the argument; it doesn't (yet) look like that. And you've already said that you don't want to draw false equivalences. But I think it's worth considering that sometimes the motives are the worst possible motives, and it's not up to the victims to reduce polarization.

This isn't just about "people who don't vote like me". It's about people who are actively voting to oppress me, to make harmless behavior illegal and to diminish my voting power to prevent it. Voting isn't harmless; it's ultimately a matter of compulsion.

That can often be benign. We'll never be unanimous and sometimes minorities on any issue will be compelled. That works when it's not done with malice. But malice is a real thing, and it only takes one side to have it. And it really looks to me as if it's being done out of malice in the US, right now. Maybe not genocidal... but I don't think it's up to the trans people or any other group to avoid inflaming Republicans just by existing.