I don’t consider myself a conservative. But then I also don’t consider myself a liberal. Rather than aligning myself with one set of policies or philosophies my approach is to take it all one issue, or one candidate, at a time. I’d probably call myself a “free thinker”, but I’m afraid that term has overly-liberal connotations to those on the right.
One of the things that this recent election cycle has made crystal clear is the existence of, and the dramatic impact, of what we’ve come to refer to as the “echo chamber”. By exposing ourselves to only those ideas and ideals with which we agree we deny ourselves the opportunity to objectively evaluate opposing views and values. If you lean liberal, for example, not only are you more attracted to like-thinking opinions and sources of information, but social media – specifically Facebook – reinforces that environment by showing primarily things that agree with its perception of what you “like”, and are thus more likely to interact with.
This isn’t good. This isn’t healthy. This isn’t how rational and reasonable discourse happens.
This is how polarization happens.