Conservatives are only capable of empathy if their ideology directly affects someone they care about. Good on them for finally getting there, but they're a day late and a dollar short
this post was submitted on 22 Jul 2024
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Only sometimes capable of empathy if someone they care about is affected.
So rare that it gets a news article when it happens!
Not everyone changes even when those close to them are impacted, sadly. I share your frustration and your point stands that it shouldn't take someone close to you being impacted to show empathy but this is a good outcome.
We need more stories like this and we should always be encouraging of people who turn away from bigotry even if they should never have been going that way to begin with.
Should be encouraging these acts instead of pointing at how slow they are.
No, fuck 'em. Positive reinforcement when conservatives finally accept LGBTQ+ family members hasn't worked and conservatives have only leaned into their bigotry and hatred.
Stop acting like you live in a perfect world where the vast majority of voters are Left.
In 2024 we need every vote we can get, and if that means treating latecomers nice, it's better than getting four more years of the GOP.
Slow motion is much better than no motion.
"Keep doing the counterproductive thing" is a terrible argument.
Acknowledging their change is fine. Celebrating it and plastering it on the news gives reasonable people false hope that most conservatives can be reasoned with when it is apparent conservstives have a tiny chance to change when it happens to them directly.
Tell me if I wrong but if you show that won't there also be a positive effect for people who need that last bit of push to finally see it?
You are thinking of reasonable people.
Only changing when it personally affects them is confirmation that positive reinforcement doeson't work on bigots. Shame barely kept them from being publicly shitty for a couple of decades, but that was more than positive reinforcement.
molly coddling republicans' sensitive feefees for the last 20+ years is what led to a world where a trump presidency is possible. TWICE
no, those "i'm all of a sudden open minded and tolerant" people can eat shit. fuck them
A lot of conservatives stick to their ideology in circumstances like this. It's nice to see when they don't, even if they should have left earlier.
Listen, I get your point but...
They're not some different animal that has foreign feelings to you. They are humans and they are as you are. They are deceived, they are mistaken, they are perhaps brainwashed. But they're people.
When we start using the word "conservatives" the way you just did, to identify the "other", it permits all kinds of inhumane behavior because "they're not like us." Even when they do something objectively good, they're only doing it out of selfish interests, and not because of enlightenment. It's an ugly perspective.
Try substituting the word blacks, or Jews, or transgenders when you say conservatives next time and see if it sounds as good as you think it does. And if it doesn't, maybe back off the rhetoric a little.
Are you attempting to liken the condemnation of conservatives with the historical atrocities inflicted upon the black, Jewish, or transgender communities? All three of which groups are persecuted by conservatives?
Identifying people as the other does lead to all kinds of problems. However, discussing the behavior patterns of adherents of a vile and malicious belief system is just observation. This is a belief system that destroys us all and should not be tolerated. People who support the modern Republican party in the US or the Nazi ideology anywhere don't get to keep their people card until after they give up their toxic ideas.
We quarantine people with an illness to prevent them from harming the whole. We should be doing the same thing conservatives and Nazis. If they get better, wonderful! If they die out, not a significant loss to humanity.
But who will choose which ideas are good and which are bad? Every person makes that choice in how they live their lives. If one Nazi sits down at a table of nine people who do not immediately leave, then you have ten Nazis. The same can be said of American conservatives and the Israeli Defense Force and their supporters.
We should not seek to understand abhorrent ideologies outside the context of history while studying their origins as a means to prevent them from rising again, and we certainly shouldn't look upon their advocates in modern times as anything other than infected and dangerous people who need to be isolated and removed.
Look, I'm arguing for a reasonable perspective that treats people as individuals rather than labeling them as a group. You're answering me with hyperbole.
I think you would have gotten along well with senator Joe McCarthy.
You're answering me with hyperbole.
[…]
I think you would have gotten along well with senator Joe McCarthy.
People who support the modern Republican party in the US or the Nazi ideology anywhere don't get to keep their people card until after they give up their toxic ideas.
Not hyperbole. The mindset is the same.
The difference between black people, Jewish people, or transgender people and conservatives is that you choose to be ~~an asshole~~ conservative. You don't choose to be black, (ethnically) Jewish, or transgender.
And comparing the systematic abuse those groups have suffered under to the complete lack of abuse conservatives haven't suffered is honestly disgusting. The conservatives helped cause that abuse. Don't compared the abused to their abusers.
If you think that I am here defending conservative point of view, you have entirely missed the point.
I am arguing against a point of view that judges individuals by the groups they belong to rather than their personal actions, to the point where EVEN IF THEY REPENT AND CHANGE THEIR POSITION, they are still subhuman and are only doing it for some selfish motive and cannot ever gain humanity again.
I think many Democrats would rather that conservatives would DIE than that individuals would change their heart. And I think that's really sad.
If they want to change their positions, great! Fantastic! Love it!
Just don't expect me to immediately believe you. Or to immediately embrace you because you suddenly care now that it affects you and your family.
And that still doesn't make comparing people with a chosen political position with groups that have experienced actual physical harm and systemic abuse not absolutely disgusting amounts of BS.
This is a bad argument, and you know it was. Referring to a group who identify with political beliefs, at their own discretion, as that group, is not the same as "othering" based on ethnic or sexual traits that are predetermined. No where close.
I do not agree. I feel like it's plain and simple. Thinking can be changed, but ethnicity can't. Yet even though the possibility exists to reform them, we blame them for being "different" somehow rather than trying to understand and change their position.
I have defended my statement enough. If some of you want to argue that hating conservatives is justified, and even if they try to reform they're still doing it for selfish reasons, then I have nothing to say to you.
I do not agree. I feel like it's plain and simple. Thinking can be changed, but ethnicity can't. Yet even though the possibility exists to reform them, we blame them for being "different" somehow rather than trying to understand and change their position.
you can’t reason someone out of a position they didn’t reason themselves into. they are getting their beliefs from their religious authority; how are any of us supposed to compete with that?
I have defended my statement enough. If some of you want to argue that hating conservatives is justified, and even if they try to reform they're still doing it for selfish reasons, then I have nothing to say to you.
what else do you call it when your mind only changes on a topic when it directly involves people close to you?
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A father jumped in a river to save his children, succeeded, but then drowned.
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A few years ago I risked a felony to save a life because there was no one else.
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These grandparents had empathy for their grandchildren.
None of these deserve accolades. Each met their obligation to provide basic human responses to the given situation.
Grandparents that, without trans family, recognized the hatred they'd been sucked into, perhaps even recognized it as counter their religious ideology, rejected the system in wider scope on principle, then quietly tried to keep running their ideological race: That's my hero.
Yeah, all of these deserve accolades, because we want to encourage empathetic behaviours. Minimizing someone's actions when they do the right thing implicitly sends the message that it's not important or valued to do the right thing.
2. A few years ago I risked a felony to save a life because there was no one else.
Story time?
The only people I've told were individually rationalized as part of them understanding the potential risks, benefits, and expectations associated with the magnitude of presence I had in their life. In general, most are better off if I don't communicate freely, including myself.
If someone provides an acceptable-to-me explanation of why it'd benefit society for me to tell this audience that story, then I will.
The only people I've told were individually rationalized as part of them understanding the potential risks, benefits, and expectations associated with the magnitude of presence I had in their life
We’re strangers on the internet, what are we going to do? Track you down and get you arrested for a potentially embellished to fake story?
potentially embellished to fake
Imagine my perspective knowing such the audience's perception.
Some nuance is better kept outside the digital world and individualized.
You could just say "I made it up because my parents starved me of attention when I was a kid", it's shorter
Nailed it. Homeboy here thinks nobody deserves accolades for doing the right thing... his own "story" is as real as Santa Claus.
booo