At some level, we’re all working with incomplete information and limited perspective. That’s why you go into historical and material forms of analysis, rather than relying on a silly arbitrarily assembled ideology graph.

But once people have the words “Libertarian/Authoritarian” and “Left/Right” stamped into their brains, it becomes increasingly difficult to have a conversation outside of those terms. So then the graphs do make sense. It really is just Biden and Trump arguing over policies, because these are ultimately the people wielding all the political power. We also know that media regularly transforms the perceptions of the individuals that consume it. And so a media that constantly blasts out a Left/Right dichotomy will inevitably produce the cohorts that it describes.

The political compass then becomes a method of describing modernity. As our history is erased and revised to fit the modern understanding of politics, people connect the dots that they’re provided until…

Political education becomes a form of induced neurosis. And I suppose you could describe people inside and outside of said neurosis as having a “difference of opinion” of sorts.