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This site was created as a civic action project for a POLS C1000 course at Foothill College. It is written from the perspective of a student at Foothill, but it is meant for everyone who is tired of political disagreements turning into personal attacks.
Too often, political conversations stop being about ideas and start being about identity. Calling someone a "Nazi" or a "fascist" because they hold a different policy view doesn't only end the conversation, but it also treats an entire group of people as inherently evil or dangerous. That's not disagreement. That's dehumanization. And it makes it almost impossible to actually talk to each other.
Research on party identification backs this up: political disagreement is rarely a simple disagreement of policy opinions. For many people, party identification functions like a group identity, similar to identities like religion or ethnicity. When that's true, an attack on someone's political views can feel like an attack on who they are, and that helps explain why disagreements get heated really fast.
This project was created by a student at Foothill College as part of a course portfolio on cross-party empathy.