Quotes

In my experience*, vibes-based politics can have a distinct western form (which is not to say it's exclusive to westerners).

Repeating patterns I see look something like:

• Giving an answer even if one does not have a well-investigated answer to provide (being afraid of looking ignorant, uninformed, or incapable of doing political analysis and/or feeling a need to demonstrate one's intellect for the sake of it).
• Being quick to be judgmental, hateful, or dismissive toward those in other countries (racism), or the flip side of this, toward those in western countries (self-hating).
• Elevating debate as having intrinsic importance that it doesn't have and acting out debate as a game of winner/loser with elation for the winner and humiliation for the loser (rather than viewing debate as a means of testing and sharpening perspectives from the same side).
• Getting caught up in "pet issues" over a more holistic perspective on change. Whatever one feels most passionate about becomes the driver rather than an analysis of contradictions (which can be difficult to do, to be fair, and may require multiple people to work out properly along with experimental practice to understand better - and that's if you understand dialectical materialism in the first place, which itself may not be straightforward).
• Assuming universality of things that aren't universal (such as faulty views on "human nature" that leads people astray).

*Part of it's from me, now or in the past, and part of it's from looking at patterns in others. Not excluding myself from being susceptible to this.

I always hate writing anything like this because I don't want it to come across like I'm trying to be holier-than-thou judger person (which goes back to the third point and how winner/loser perspective can cause so many problems). But anyway, that is what comes to mind when I reflect on the subject.