Are there honestly examples where two people significantly disagreed politically and got along with each other? Life itself is hard enough, I want a teammate not an oppressor.
I’m pretty staunchly left leaning and am friends with a MAGA supporter. If anything, he isn’t an outright bad person, he’s just…really ignorant and holds some very warped and manipulated views of reality. He tends to just see headlines and not think critically about what information he accepts as fact, instead operating primarily on emotion (shocker). I feel like I’ve changed his mind on a few things, but I’ll certainly never dig him entirely out of that trench, not that that’s really my place or goal. These days we mostly just avoid talking politics, probably because he’s sick of me debunking all the crap that comes out of his mouth lol.
You’re not really wrong, but what else should I do? It’s not like I let his bullshit slide and shrug it off and go “oh you!” I let him know when he’s wrong and why he’s wrong, and we can still remain friends. That’s a win in my opinion.
You say that like I’m the problem here. As if I don’t actively resist MAGA and MAGA thinking. Should I just completely abandon my friend and let him become an even worse version of himself, or should I apply resistance to his line of thought and help him see why he’s wrong?
Further polarization of the population only makes the issue worse, but do not for a second mistake my sentiment for idle support or acceptance.
I didn’t mean to imply you were wrong, and I’m sorry if I came across that way.
That book opened my eyes to how people passively accepting fascism think, and I think it’s a great way to understand how to talk to such people. That was all.
Then, perhaps giving them such a book might be a way to give them insight and might help them realise how their own thoughts are like those who were interviewed for the book. Like hey, I found this book interesting, what do you think sort of thing.
I didn’t mean to imply anything other than it might help.
e: also, it’s not a polarising book. It’s highly sympathetic
Ah, I apologize, I read into what you were saying completely wrong. Appreciate the recommendation and the clarifying follow up, and my apologies for immediately jumping to the defence.
No worries! I’ve been trying to understand why people who are completely normal fall for these things from a sociological and interpersonal perspective for years, because they’re not different from us. It’s the nuance that matters, and I think that book was both enlightening and neutral.
he’s sick of me debunking all the crap that comes out of his mouth lol.
You have done more then to help our nation and our world than 99.90% of all the replies I’ve gotten to this comment and ones like it. It’s exactly what my prescription is.
If you can just interact and not be afraid to call out and debunk things, you are WINNING. It doesn’t matter how they react, you have to do this. We seem to all be seeking some kind of instant gratification from these kinds of interactions, but that’s not how any of this works. If you’ve made someone hesitate to spout off bullshit for fear of being called out, you have scored a massive interpersonal victory.
See, that’s the false dichotomy that’s been built into a reality, that average, normal people should have political disagreements to the degree that they can’t get along.
I don’t know how many times I can stress this, but I’m not saying “have sex with your oppressor” that some are translating my comment to mean, I suppose because everyone’s brains have melted, but it’s something we all need to know, that this isn’t natural. This CAN be turned around if we worked on it, from an individual level as well as a social level if we got more involved.
Are there honestly examples where two people significantly disagreed politically and got along with each other? Life itself is hard enough, I want a teammate not an oppressor.
I’m pretty staunchly left leaning and am friends with a MAGA supporter. If anything, he isn’t an outright bad person, he’s just…really ignorant and holds some very warped and manipulated views of reality. He tends to just see headlines and not think critically about what information he accepts as fact, instead operating primarily on emotion (shocker). I feel like I’ve changed his mind on a few things, but I’ll certainly never dig him entirely out of that trench, not that that’s really my place or goal. These days we mostly just avoid talking politics, probably because he’s sick of me debunking all the crap that comes out of his mouth lol.
This sounds like something right out of 1930s Germany.
You’re not really wrong, but what else should I do? It’s not like I let his bullshit slide and shrug it off and go “oh you!” I let him know when he’s wrong and why he’s wrong, and we can still remain friends. That’s a win in my opinion.
Read They Thought They Were Free by Milton Mayer. Then lend it to your friend.
You say that like I’m the problem here. As if I don’t actively resist MAGA and MAGA thinking. Should I just completely abandon my friend and let him become an even worse version of himself, or should I apply resistance to his line of thought and help him see why he’s wrong?
Further polarization of the population only makes the issue worse, but do not for a second mistake my sentiment for idle support or acceptance.
I didn’t mean to imply you were wrong, and I’m sorry if I came across that way.
That book opened my eyes to how people passively accepting fascism think, and I think it’s a great way to understand how to talk to such people. That was all.
Then, perhaps giving them such a book might be a way to give them insight and might help them realise how their own thoughts are like those who were interviewed for the book. Like hey, I found this book interesting, what do you think sort of thing.
I didn’t mean to imply anything other than it might help.
e: also, it’s not a polarising book. It’s highly sympathetic
Ah, I apologize, I read into what you were saying completely wrong. Appreciate the recommendation and the clarifying follow up, and my apologies for immediately jumping to the defence.
Just to give you more impetus to read this, here’s the first page (sorry about the lighting):
No worries! I’ve been trying to understand why people who are completely normal fall for these things from a sociological and interpersonal perspective for years, because they’re not different from us. It’s the nuance that matters, and I think that book was both enlightening and neutral.
You have done more then to help our nation and our world than 99.90% of all the replies I’ve gotten to this comment and ones like it. It’s exactly what my prescription is.
If you can just interact and not be afraid to call out and debunk things, you are WINNING. It doesn’t matter how they react, you have to do this. We seem to all be seeking some kind of instant gratification from these kinds of interactions, but that’s not how any of this works. If you’ve made someone hesitate to spout off bullshit for fear of being called out, you have scored a massive interpersonal victory.
See, that’s the false dichotomy that’s been built into a reality, that average, normal people should have political disagreements to the degree that they can’t get along.
I don’t know how many times I can stress this, but I’m not saying “have sex with your oppressor” that some are translating my comment to mean, I suppose because everyone’s brains have melted, but it’s something we all need to know, that this isn’t natural. This CAN be turned around if we worked on it, from an individual level as well as a social level if we got more involved.