Keep Your Identity Small (2009)
If people cannot argue fruitfully about questions that are part of their identity (and I agree with this premise), then it follows that for one to win politically (or convert them), the trick is not to convince people that your views are correct, but rather to convince people that their identity is threatened and that them maintaining their current identity (whatever that identity may be—and perhaps vagueness is key here) depends on you winning (or joining your group).  Let them fill in the blanks on your views, wherever possible, as the specifics aren’t  that relevant anyway.<p>This is what I perceive our political discourse has been reduced to.  Maybe it never has been more than that.<p>I like the author’s conclusion that to keep an open mind, don’t make stuff your “identity.”  Yet the instinct of many is just the opposite, so that not religion and party affiliation but even the most trivial things are stated as identity: “I’m a coffee person, not a tea person.”  “I’m a dog person, not a cat person,” and other such bizarreness.  Why are people seemingly so drawn to identifying themselves as anything at all?