Bipartisanship - Getting along with people you disagree with

[melty]

Gridlock and lack of compromise have been a staple since the Obama administration began. I was talking to my father in law and he mentioned how it seemed, decades ago, that politicians were a lot more likely to be friends across the aisle. I'm not really sure about interpersonal relationships in Washington nowadays - I do watch Oversight Committee investigations occasionally and the Chairman (R) and ranking member (D) will occasionally refer to each other as friends, etc. I don't know how much of that is just being diplomatic but I do know the ranking member and former chair blatantly fucking hated each other.
Getting along with people you disagree with is also a huge problem in our personal lives. In recent years, there have been a lot of trends where people will announce they will defriend anyone who supports ___ issue. This usually seems to come from liberals, for what that's worth.
It's often mentioned that people on this site are all over the political spectrum but (mostly) get along.. well some of us anyway... I personally don't mind so much if someone is alt right or whatever, but I have a lot of friends who probably wouldn't talk to anyone with at least some SJW issues. I guess I tend to avoid engaging SJWs, but it's less because of their specific views and more because they are fucking nuts and toxic as hell. Overall I think I've gotten a lot more moderate and open-minded to other views over the years.
So I guess in general, what are your views on this in general? Do you get along really well with people with different political views, or not so much? Anyone who knows more about politics, are there some people in congress (or your countries government) who are BFFs across the aisle?

 

[autisticdragonkin]

I think that bipartisanship is a good idea but it needs to involve more than just 2 parties in order to work. This is why I think proportional representation is the way to go since it facilitates such cooperation and will allow more people to get a say in government.

But in American politics I have noticed that most bills with bipartisan support tend to be shit bills like the PATRIOT ACT and no child left behind which everyone hates

In Canada there are bipartisan bills during minority governments and they seem to do everything right. When there are majority governments the parliament does whatever the PM wants and they do everything badly

 

[Male Idiot]

While this is a good idea for personal relationships, in politics it tends to have a bad side effect.

It raises corruption. If all politicians are buddies, than the opposing parties know that they have the secret handshake and they can get away with any corruption they want to get away with, because even if they are ousted from power the other side will never, ever persecute them.

This is depressingly common in eastern europe at least, and is one of the reasons why people have no faith in democracy.

So opposing parties hating each other at least provides you with something at face value. Politicans already lie a lot, bastards they are.