Party affiliation, like religious affiliation and what sports team you root for, is often based on emotional rather than rational appeal. Logical calculation often doesn't enter into it.

I think what you have said used to be more true in the past than now. Political identification is fracturing, and it is a global phenomenon. Political systems are in more turmoil because of it. Whether you think this is good or bad depends on where you stand on traditional political structures. The indisputable fact is that politics has become more volatile and less predictable.

Maybe for many it is. But for others, like myself, I refuse to join a 'party' because i want to vote my conscience and not someone else's platform. I have lived on the margins all my life and am uncomfortable with joining and losing my independent thought.

I call out Democrat Party bullshit just as much as I call out Republican Party bullshit. That's how it should be.

I was thinking about this recently. It gets even more twisted when you factor in the antivote that many party loyalists cast. As in, whoever has the best chance of defeating ones percieved enemy. Honestly, for the first time in my life I'm beginning to fall into this trap with the increased power the evangelical right has in the GOP. The religious liberty task force sessions is taking about, for example. I'm considering antivoting until this evangelical / GOP marriage is dissolved. I'm a progressive independent, with a tinge of fiscal conservatism. I'm trying to sway myself from falling into the antivote mindset, but with theocracy poised to take root and bear fruit, the stakes are getting high.

Group identity politics is detrimental to cicizens' well being.

I never gave My Word to a political party and a political party never had a word to give to me.

Not for me. I am a political advicate and social justice warrior. No group affiliations. Don't need a sense of belonging to help others.

I think that this is all reinforced by a sort of self- approved system of selective cognitive dissonances designed to create a quasi- facade of plausible deniability .
An internalization of an almost but not quite subconscious unknowing of everything not wanted to know , much like what occurred in Lester Loborsky's findings that we can actually avoid seeing or acknowledging things without even consciously trying...pre- conscious discrimination.

Many white Americans vote against their own interests for the ethnic identification they find in the Republican party.

I'm really glad to do not subscribe to that particular insanity.