this post was submitted on 26 Nov 2024
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[–] [email protected] 307 points 3 weeks ago (6 children)

They don't think we're open minded and understanding.

They think we're ignorant of how the world works, condescending, and irrationally judgemental.

I'm not saying this is how we ARE, this is just how they view us, and because they view us like that from the very start, there is no opportunity for meaningful dialogue.

It is bi-directional prejudice, and only by acts of understanding and patience and wisdom can that be overcome.

[–] [email protected] 140 points 3 weeks ago (2 children)

Agreed, for the most part. I'm never going to be impartial and seek understanding with a racist Nazi. They will have to understand my fist.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

That's fun to say, but where they balk is they think you draw too big of a circle around groups to label them "nazis."

So to them, you may as well think anyone who likes guns is a nazi.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

Well they should stop actingike nazis if theyre gonna be so fragile about it. No amount of you explaining their mindset will make that mindset okay

[–] [email protected] 0 points 3 weeks ago (2 children)

What if the angle would be that you understand the underlying needs and feelings that are being expressed as support for Nazism?

[–] [email protected] 5 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago)

“Historians have a word for Germans who joined the Nazi party, not because they hated Jews, but out of a hope for restored patriotism, or a sense of economic anxiety, or a hope to preserve their religious values, or dislike of their opponents, or raw political opportunism, or convenience, or ignorance, or greed.

That word is "Nazi." Nobody cares about their motives anymore.

They joined what they joined. They lent their support and their moral approval. And, in so doing, they bound themselves to everything that came after. Who cares any more what particular knot they used in the binding?”

― A.R. Moxon

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 weeks ago

What if you showed us evidence for that actually working in any meaningful sense, in order to stop people enabling fascists?

[–] [email protected] 67 points 3 weeks ago (2 children)

Pretty true, obviously most racist biggots don't see themselves as racist biggots. They don't see us as "open minded" they see us as close minded to their views.

[–] [email protected] 76 points 3 weeks ago (3 children)

Depends on the person. I've been told to my face without a hint of irony that "you're so open minded all your brains fell out".

[–] [email protected] 25 points 3 weeks ago (2 children)

I spent most of my childhood being repeatedly informed by my incredibly Republican family that I lack common sense.

Yet, I have the common sense to know that if you let people do whatever the fuck they want to do with their own bodies and lives then they'll stay the fuck out of your body and your life.

Perhaps that is an uncommon sense. However, it should be a common sense but the people who claim to have common sense fail to understand that consistently.

Maybe common sense is not all it's cracked up to be.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 3 weeks ago

Common sense is a thought terminator. It’s just “everyone who’s smart agrees with this”. It’s common sense you shouldn’t inject any aspect of a disease causing pathogen into people. It’s common sense that you can’t burn so much stuff you make the whole sky smoky or permanently warm the planet. It’s common sense that you don’t share an ancestor with an oak tree. Now none of that is true. You should get vaccines, uncontrolled combustion creates smog and contributes to global warming, and all eukaryotic organisms share a common ancestor. But if you phrase things right and say it’s obvious people will agree with your false statements and think people are over educated idiots for being right.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

The bigger obstacle the left and right have to finding common ground is the hypocrisy of body autonomy. Vaccines, women’s rights, trans rights, drugs, health choices and more derived of things like this all boil down to an individual decision to do what they want with their own body and no one has any consistent logic. This is just one source of disagreement.

We’re way past the point of needing ranked choice voting to allow people to truly support the ideas the most identify with without being lumped in with other groups simply to avoid loss of voting power in a first past the post environment.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 3 weeks ago

No. It is consistent. Bodily autonomy for everyone. You don’t get to go into the populations as a plague rat and kill others with your idiocy, though. That impinges on their freedoms.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 3 weeks ago

Being convinced to give a shit about other people just shows that you’re gullible, to them.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 weeks ago

Back in my teens, a Seventh Day Adventist said that to me. I got the better deal in life.

[–] [email protected] 27 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

And, their views typically do not include the things that most of the people I know hate the most about the platform that they ascribe to.

They just think being Republican will make them wealthier or fix problems in the country or make the world a better place.

The single issue voters have an opinion on a single issue and everything else doesn't matter compared to that one thing.

They don't care about all of the bad as long as the single bit of good can be accomplished, and they don't care if you think that single bit of good is a bad thing.

They don't care to talk to or be dissuaded by their family members who are not approaching them with a spirit of love and care for them.

Beside that, it's not mentally or emotionally healthy to live spring-loaded with ontological traps that can be fired off with a single phrase to bring down judgment and the fires of hell on the people you meet.

They're not going to want to hear you if that's what you're bringing to the table.

[–] [email protected] 27 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

Of course, after Trump in the white house, it's kinda irrelevant.

Historians have a word for Germans who joined the Nazi party, not because they hated Jews, but out of a hope for restored patriotism, or a sense of economic anxiety, or a hope to preserve their religious values, or dislike of their opponents, or raw political opportunism, or convenience, or ignorance, or greed.
That word is "Nazi." Nobody cares about their motives anymore.
They joined what they joined. They lent their support and their moral approval. And, in so doing, they bound themselves to everything that came after. Who cares any more what particular knot they used in the binding?

[–] [email protected] 36 points 3 weeks ago

Yeah, 'compassionate and nonviolent' is translated to "judgmental cuck" in their language.

[–] [email protected] 22 points 3 weeks ago

They think we're ignorant of how the world works, condescending, and irrationally judgemental.

Lol. Yep Though in fairness, I am genuinely judging them so fucking hard.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 3 weeks ago (2 children)

Hi,

Person struggling to still call self conservative. I don’t like lefties either - they hear the world “conservative” and thing MAGA Nazi shitheads immediately. And they are constantly condescending and judgmental, yes.

But that doesn’t change the fact that if you voted for Trump, you are either a piece of shit or you’re stupid.

It also doesnt mean that we who can understand Trump has now determined he can and will abuse his power shouldn’t try to dialogue with Trump voters without being shitty to them. You’re not going to turn a vote (if there still is one next time) by being an asshat. Just make sure they’re not hardcore Trump diehards because time is precious.

[–] [email protected] 32 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

Hi!

A while back I myself made the sometimes painful journey from a conservative to the progressive I consider myself now. I know you didn’t ask, but here’s some stuff to keep in mind.

The internet has no place for subtlety. People desperately want the dopamine rush that comes from righteous fury, defending one’s viewpoint and crushing those who disagree. It’s true of a lot of people, and I’ll be honest, I’m guilty of it on occasion. It just feels so damn good to be right.

But in my experience, most people in life don’t really act that way. I mean, in high school I occasionally got shit on by people who were “lefties,” but I was usually asking for it. More generally, people were much more likely to ask me questions and discuss our differences. They may have been judging me, but I never got that vibe. It’s just easier to see the person you’re talking to as a fellow human in person. And those people were integral in helping me realize that a lot of the stuff I was seeing online about feminazis and whatnot was simply more rage product, designed to get that part of the brain pumping and let me feel good and superior to someone else.

Removed from the left vs right rage online, I found that it became increasingly difficult to call myself “conservative.” Not because I was worried about how people would think of me, but rather because the more people I met and the more I learned about the world, the harder it was to reconcile what I knew with the views I had held. And when I would try to provide context or data to my fellow conservatives, they refused to listen. Anything that didn’t reinforce the views they held, they didn’t want to hear.

So much of what I thought I knew about “lefties” was from online takes and screenshots that others shared, but none of that matched my experience with real people in real life. And I’ve been so grateful I had the chance to spend time with people with significantly different lived experiences from my own who didn’t shun me for my views but were friendly and helped me become a more empathetic person.

Of course, this goes both ways. The average conservative doesn’t want to kill gay people or black people. They aren’t represented by the extremes either. Generally speaking, people just want to live their lives. I truly think one of the biggest differences between progressive and conservative mindsets is about how many people whose lives are different from your own you’ve gotten to know. It helps us be less afraid of one another. It’s part of why densely populated areas tend to be more progressive, I think.

Anyway, I wish you luck in your journey. Hope you didn’t mind my musing here!

[–] [email protected] 29 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (1 children)

Here's my problem with the "not all conservatives" mind frame: Nazis and maga have security attached themselves onto conservatives, and conservatives who "aren't those guys" aren't doing anything to eradicate those parasites.

If you have 10 conservatives and 1 Nazi at the dinner table, you have 11 Nazis.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

I agree with the Nazi statement.

I did try to eradicate them. I voted Harris. The fact that so many people voted Trump after seeing what he did is what makes me question calling myself a conservative.

But I’m just some person in a some county in some state. I’m not a registered Democrat or Republican. Other than voting, I’m not sure what I /can/ do

[–] [email protected] 9 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

The fact that you’re trying to figure it out is the important part. It’s important to self-reflect and define your ideologies, not by what others have told you to believe, but by what you personally believe.

Also, it’s okay to not take a label. It makes sense to want to identify yourself as an individual before attempting to identify yourself as part of a group.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

The thing is, I don’t think my fundamentals have changed at all:

  1. The purpose of a government is to better the lives of its citizens
  2. The constitution is a living document and was intended to be modified as time passes
  3. Nobody is infallible. We can all misunderstand things
  4. We shouldn’t change things unless there is evidence that things need to be changed (this is the conservative part)
  5. You should strive for a moral viewpoint that everyone can apply equally. There is no us vs you.
  6. Political parties are a detriment to the people
  7. You should be able to vote for whoever you want. (George Washington’s viewpoint)
  8. Compromise is generally good.
  9. We should have the freedom to choose ideas
  10. Work within the system to find what needs to be changed. Then, change the system to accommodate
  11. Conservatives and liberals should agree on the end goal, even if they disagree on the me tbh is to get there.

I’m a bit of a centrist. I think we should always take the middle ground, after passing the options through a moral filter. In other words, the moral middle ground between genocide and don’t kill people isn’t to kill some people. It’s to not kill people at all.

I don’t like things like feminism, black history month, and pride month. However, I understand their importance. To me, female, black, and LGBTQA+ are just all people. They should all have human rights.

Don’t like feminists? Join them. The point of feminism is to create a world where feminism doesn’t exist. We’ll just all be humans. Black history is American history and it should be included year round. LGBTQA+ is fine so long as everything about it is consensual - and it is.

Don’t like the gays? Don’t be gay. You don’t have the right to infringe on other people’s human rights. We don’t need to make a big deal about it, or have a month of celebration. They should be able to just exist. My only objection to LGBTQA+ is porn. I should be able to choose between penis and not penis, but that is easily rectified behind the scenes.

I have viewpoints liberals hate: it’s okay to address the adverse side effects of marijuana (ie. Disproportionate imprisonment of a distinguishable subgroup — not subclass — of people). It should be okay to research marijuana. It is not okay to legalize it before the experts have sufficient data and have evaluated such data. The best way to battle climate change in transportation isn’t electric vehicles. Lithium ion batteries are unstable. The best way is to let me drive whatever car I want, and provide places to do so (ie. Race track that’s a toll road), and install public transportation. Then, you slowly take away lanes until there is only one lane and the shoulder to get by in case of an accident.

I have views Republicans hate. While I enjoy firearms, I think the second amendment interpretation ignores the precondition of the militia. The president should not be immune to criminal prosecution of any kind. Fascism because your “team” is on top is still not OK. Don’t like abortions? Don’t get one. Religion should not guide government policy.

Like, isn’t it better if things are data driven (and filtered for bias)?

Universal healthcare makes sense by the numbers. The more people you represent, the more leverage you have during negotiation. Sure, your taxes go up - but that’s how government works…

Fighting climate change makes sense. If climate is change is real and we ignore it, the world becomes nigh unlivable. If climate change is real and we do something about, life is better for all the organisms that live on earth. If climate change is false and we do nothing, cool. If climate change is false and we fight climate change, we can all breathe better. What’s the downside here?

Fines should not be a fixed amount. It should be based on percentage of income. $300 fine for some making $8/hr for 8 hours a day is, assuming average of 30.437 days a month, is approximately 15.5% of gross monthly income. Whereas if you make, say, $60,000/year assuming an average of is just 6%. And the actual spending power goes down drastically more, the less you take home.

Etc etc etc

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

I'm a pretty progressive guy and I don't think there's much in here to disagree with. The only nit I would pick is that inertia isn't a great argument to keep things the way they are. That is, "we've always done it this way" isn't a great reason to do anything.

Your framing of conservatism is in line with the Eisenhower era when we weren't linked into this existential crisis about the concept of governance. But for the last twenty years (at least) the American right has been against the very idea that the government should govern.

The left is trying to argue about who it should serve, taking its existence as a precondition, and the right is trying to dismantle it without regard for who it serves. As a result, we're pretty much irrecoverably talking past each other.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 weeks ago

It’s not so much that it’s keep things the way they are because we’ve always done it this way.

It’s more, maintain order while we figure out if the system works. If it doesn’t, change it. I don’t think it’s as much inertia as it is there are a lot of things on the agenda. Let’s change what changes would be more effective first

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 weeks ago

It is bi-directional prejudice, and only by acts of understanding and patience and wisdom can that be overcome.

Those acts need to be bidirectional too. And guess what?