Is this really a change though or more of this happened to me or someone I know so now I care whereas before it’s someone else, someone I don’t care about so I can’t figure out how to empathize with unknowns. This requirement that my life has to be personally touched, my butterflies have to be threatened before I can bring myself to care… that’s not really a change so much as an experience but the not me not my problem approach can very well still be there.
Agreed.
I can get behind this.
Also, fuck Bird scooters.
If my 15 year old son shared a few nasheeds and was caught waving an ISIS flag about (let alone wearing an ISIS flag hat) he would be on watchlists, in a special school and subject to re-education under the Prevent programme.
So why is my violent authoritarian right wing ideology different to their violent authoritarian right wing ideology?
I have somewhat less upstanding reasons for maintaining the relationship, but I will say that my parents have slowly crushed my capacity for hope as they’ve delved deeper into their hatred as time has gone on and the world and the people around them have changed.
I mean, remember, this is the same dad who decried interracial couples to me. . . while being a part of one himself :P
I recall once, a friend of mine was really struggling with homelessness and an abusive family situation. I wanted to get her some nice boots for winter at my mom’s store for Xmas, and she was happy with the idea. . . until she learned my friend was an atheist and did not celebrate Christmas.
I personally consider the GOP a hate group, and their policies and actions are why I do so. They’re anti women, anti-black, anti-Muslim, anti-Hispanic, anti-gay, anti-trans, anti-atheist. They want to grind those groups to dust and cause them harm and kill them. That is hate, and they work on a national scale to enact laws and support policies that will inflict genuine, deadly harm to those groups. The GOP is something that has to be stopped.
Alas, no one will ever elect me, so I will have to settle for watching Democrats try to compromise with people who throw brown kids in cages indefinitely, I suppose.
Or how about the time that Hitler had one element of his party murder a competing element within his party. I might look forward to Trump doing that. :)
Thank you for making this point. The fear level seems to be off the charts around here, and I think it is important to remember and keep in perspective that MAGA idiots are not the mainstream. As bad as our president is, he is not popular and the Republican party enabling him is hurting them more than it is helping. We are still a long way from concentration camps. Racism is still alive, but it has trended sharply downward over the past 50 years. We should continue to reject it when we see it and treat people as people, regardless of their skin color, sexual orientation, or what hat they want to wear. These problems get amplified so much these days but we should keep perspective about how bad things really are.
Well obviously because them brown mooslem kids is evil. These kids is just good whaaayt christin folk, yall jeebus
Yes our culture is more Saturday Night Massacre than Night of the Long Knives.
Maybe we are so steeped in republican (small r) culture and bureaucracy that even a would-be fascist just can’t break all the way through. I hope so. But I suspect there are many roads to fascism, and some could have an American flag wrapped around them…
As I understand it, and I could very easily be wrong, and also I am sure for many this would be a terrible thing, but the most the SCOTUS could do is make abortion a state by state thing. My brothers, both living in California, would still live in a state with legal abortion.
This is a valid question, Nesrie. For me what I learned was that people who think, for instance, that “the gay” is something that is somewhere out there and “other” but then actually meet people who are “the other” and realize…hey, these are people. Not just a weird thing I’ve heard about on FoxNews or Limbaugh (dating myself here). Then they see. They understand more of humanity.
I can see that as a naive view. But I saw it happen. There is a tidal aspect to this, I guess. But I do see views radically change once you actually meet someone.
I have a very conservative friend who lived out here in California and felt totally hated by Liberals because he was a Conservative. Furthermore, he saw his wife, who was a Liberal, castigated for supporting Hillary Clinton…by Obama supporters. He felt totally alienated.
Then he met a couple of Liberals who could have a decent discussion about politics and still play board games with him, without making him feel like an outcast.
I think that made a difference.
-xtien
True, overturning Roe would just remove federal protection. On the other hand, from your brothers’ point of view it’s a step in the right direction.
(As always, happy to be a Californian in these trying times.)
I believe you. I see this happen too, I just struggle with the idea that these people are changing in any meaningful way.
Why should anyone who is gay, a different race, or an immigrant or of a different faith be required to engage with bigots and people who who use Fox News to define anyone who is not like themselves in the hopes that may not be rejected face to face? It’s often not even possible to have that engagement because they’re not in that area or… or maybe they are assholes. Members of minority groups are and should be allowed to be imperfect humans, like everyone else, so if they did engage with someone, one time a black man said something mean to me so now I hate black men… is a problem. The default needs to be different. There needs to be a fundamental change or it’s just a reduction of the Other to remaining groups they haven’t engaged with or shifting it to a new scary Other that Fox News “discovered” yesterday.
Unless they actually walked away and thought hey, I was wrong about this group maybe I need to re-evaluate all the other others, they didn’t really change. They just met a couple of guys they seemed to like, and I am sure the like part is super important for this, and now they might sort of be okay with some of “them.”
Things have certainly gotten worse in many ways. And in some ways this is a victory for them. Because I want to have a relationship with them, I just don’t engage on these topics with them. Particularly on FB. Because while I might get my dander up from a post, I have to think, “What good’s it gonna do to tell my Mom she’s posting something idiotic?” I’m right to think that. But, then, I’m not really being true, am I?
So I say nothing and the needle doesn’t move. But if I said something, would it? If I cut my folks out of my life, would that help?
There is the aspect that Dan Savage talks about, that currency of attention and connection a person has when they come out of the closet, for instance. But I don’t think that’s the same thing. I cannot deny my son time with his grandparents because they have toxic political views. What I can do is teach him what is right, and then he’ll visit them, and ask why they support Trump, and hear them say to him, point blank, “We don’t really support him. But we didn’t like her more.”
Yep. That happened.
Luckily my kid is smart enough to understand how shitty that is, and can articulate it on his own.
-xtien
I think it is a start though. People don’t really change over night. They can try, but something they have thought or said for their entire lives still sits in the back of their heads even after they have that little epiphany that not all gays are evil. Seeing humanity in members of a group you have despised will remind you that your hate isn’t well founded, and maybe that will make you a better parent or mentor.
- You’d have to try really, really hard to believe that all gays are evil in this date and age, or you isolate yourself to the point where all your information is coming from one or two sources. Neither is acceptable.
And despite all that, all the work here, the requirement, is being shouldered by the minority groups. It’s pretty much a requirement that they put themselves out there and take on all the risk. Does that even show up as a consideration when people talk about these scenarios?
People believe things because some group or person has taught them to believe that.
And no, it is unfair that the burden seems to be on the minority group, but unfortunately life is unfair. There is no magic button to push and make everyone suddenly see the light.
This view can, and is, often flipped around to condemn similarities between left wing ideas and the beginnings of the communist revolutions that eventually led to millions and millions of deaths.
While things often don’t start at the extremes, that’s not a legitimate rationale for condemning members of a movement based on the fact that it shares similarity with another movement which eventually became far more extreme. It’s effectively just a slippery slope argument, or a guilt by association fallacy.
Which isn’t to say that you can’t condemn them on their own for their own bullshit. You can condemn Trumpism as racist and dumb, and should be vigilant against its fascist inclinations, but you can’t treat them the same as literal Nazis.
What hell Scuzz?
I don’t think it’s a mute point for me to point out that every time someone talks about their family, or their friend, or someone else they like has this abhorrent view that they not forget when they talk about this magical engagement happening, what they’re often requiring is someone else, who is not them, actually taking that on. And I don’t think it’s the minor throw away ask that it’s often presented to be.
At no point does that equate to a magic button.
But that is the whole trick. If you wait until you are at the bottom of the slope, you waited too long. Identifying threats to democracy is not easy, but I don’t think it’s something one should just abdicate, either.