The Conflicts Good for Democracy

From Aeon Magazine I found a ways back, What types of conflict are good for democracy? 

The problem for democracies with conflicts is stated as:

This exclusion of difference arises, according to the political philosopher Robert Talisse, due to too much democracy. He argues that political polarisation is a ‘loop’ such that, once we are in the ‘trap’ of politics taking over our lives, we struggle to escape from them because it leads us to polarised beliefs – like the 40 per cent of Americans who at one time believed that Joe Biden was not the legitimately elected US president. The result, as Talisse puts it, is that ‘[w]e become enamoured with the profoundly antidemocratic view that democracy is possible only among people who are just like ourselves’.

 That sounds pretty familiar. We might not be so familiar with these ideas - at least, as formally, baldly stated here:

According to Lewis Coser’s Continuities in the Study of Social Conflict (1967), conflict comes in two sorts: realistic and non-realistic. Realistic conflicts are when something undeniably real is at stake. This is when there is a substantial element to the conflict, such as a disagreement over something in which two individuals or groups cannot both have their way. When a union and management conflict over the content of a contract, there is something very real at stake.

These conflicts democracies need:

The way that realistic conflict functions in democratic life is that it can eliminate exclusions, hone and develop positions for the group, and bring about the change to individuals that makes them suited for living among each other. Excluding conflict from democratic life, then, not only risks giving into authoritarian tendencies to exclude, expel or annihilate, but also fails to recognise the subjective changes that are part of participation in democratic life. Fundamentally, atomised versions of democratic life fail to see how participation in the collective project of democracy also affects changes on us, via the process of conflict. One cannot simply remain unchanged by one’s experiences with others (who present new challenges and new information). This feature of conflict is the function of integration that is necessary for democratic legitimation.

It seems to me these are the essence of democratic politics, the conflict between individuals as to what they see as being necessary for life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.  Democratic institutions exist for the persuasion, not the battering, of the different viewpoints. Battering one's neighbor into submission for the sake of submitting seems to fit into the following:

Non-realistic conflict, on the contrary, has a psychosocial function. It’s being quarrelsome for the pleasure of annoying or, as it may be, annihilating, your enemy. Many popular types of trolling are versions of non-realistic conflict. There’s no specific disputed content to it. Rather, the content is just reflective of a desire for psychological satisfaction.

I think those who keep engaging in non-realistic conflict are sociopathic, or using the noise generated for the purpose of gaining/maintaining power rather than seeking the public good, or both.

sch 10/17/22