Personally I think those who think politics are a mindkiller are just guilty of a jilted hubris; it's easier to claim other people can't change their minds than to accept that your arguments aren't as universally compelling as you thought.
I can't speak for everyone here, but I've had the experience of partially deconverting myself from a certain political philosophy, which was extremely... well, difficult is the wrong word, it usually didn't take much effort or willpower or courage, but it did involve unwinding a tremendous amount of rationalization and defensiveness. I'm not trying to claim perfection now, either, but ever since then I've found it useful to remember how dogmatism feels from the inside when I'm feeling defensive about one of my current beliefs or when I'm tempted to try to convert someone else.
And that seems to generalize fairly well. "Politics is the mind-killer" doesn't just mean everyone else's politics. It means that your thinking on anything you have an identity stake in is automatically suspect, and that you'd better be damned careful if you want to make major decisions based on it. This does imply as a corollary that partisan (or otherwise identity-bound) discussions on the Internet are spectacularly unlikely to be productive, but "my politics are perfectly rational, it's all the fault of those guys over there" is exactly the wrong message to be taking from it.
This does imply as a corollary that partisan (or otherwise identity-bound) discussions on the Internet are spectacularly unlikely to be productive, but "my politics are perfectly rational, it's all the fault of those guys over there" is exactly the wrong message to be taking from it.
Orphan's point is that this is precisely the message the OP seems to take.
I was thinking about the hazards of bad government, and wondering if there was a way for the LW community to do something to oppose them, and it occurred to me that we might be picking up the problem by the wrong end.
The usual way of thinking about political action is to start with one's political identity (progressive, libertarian, whatever), and that's likely to put one at odds with people who have opposed identities.
Instead, I believe there are projects which could appeal to rationalists across a wide range of the political spectrum. A couple I can think of are opposing the war on drugs and improving judicial systems. Any other suggestions?