Believe it or not, there are lots of awful ways to say awful things and be civilized. That does not make what is being said okay.
But hey if being confrontational has become the worst crime here maybe you and Timex should sticky that somewhere.
I think that civil discourse is the most likely way to change his opinion in this case.
Civilized discourse does not make someone’s opinion correct. Civilized discourse indicates a potentiality for logical discussions that can lead to change. If we want to just yell at people who say bad things, we can do that, and that feels good and maybe our side is the loudest and we win. But that just validates their view it’s an “us vs them” world, and they’ll do everything in their power to ensure we lose, even if it means cutting the nose to spite the face.
If i want to change someone’s mind i have to give some credence to their positions and concerns. It’s not a didactic exchange where one person has to simply accept as a first principle they’re wrong, and then teach them the error of their ways. I don’t start my conversations in Texas with “Religion is wrong, oil and gas industry are ruining the world, conservatives are stupid, Texans are gun toting crazies, and everything about small town America (including sports) is the devil” because they’re not going to sit around and listen to me badmouth everything they believe in. Why would they? Would I? Would you? I have to listen to their opinions and address those. If they really are AM radio crazies, i move along because there is nothing that can be done. If they’re just the typical badly misinformed conservative, i have some footholds to start laying out criticisms that they can accept.
But also it’s just Forum Toning. Trolls troll, we call those out quickly. Many people who are conservative genuinely “don’t get” why their positions are bad, or how their positions are offensive/threatening to other groups, or themselves feel threatened by other groups. We should be able to have discussions with people like that.
I think it’s being generous to think that someone who literally quaking in his boots due to all the liberals around him is genuinely open to any kind of change. It’s not a realistic viewpoint at all. Also, I’ve met a lot of really nice racists and bigots. The idea that you can kill them with kindness usually comes from someone who is not a target of that racism and prejudice i Note: I am not suggesting Malathor is either, just pointing out that being non-confrontational and hoping things will just work it out why we’re fighting the Civil War again today.
So is just being conservative a bad thing now?
Let’s be honest i can lay out a conservative platform that makes sense. That’s not what most conservatives are doing today. In fact in most cases there are two sides to a political position. I try to get conservatives to see the other side when there is another side to see. If it’s something like abortion, there really is no middle ground, and all i can do is sort of nibble at the extreme edge cases.
For years, decades really, conservatives were able to be exclusionary and reactionary, but liberals were not; they were the ones supposed to have the big tent, lovey dovey platforms. In the wake of Bush 2, this consensus has withered, and now liberals are as intolerant of conservatives as conservatives have been of they since the 60s. And it kind of freaks conservatives out. They’re talking shit about us wtf! Saying we’re horrible people! Nevermind that’s what conservatives have been saying about liberal positions for decades. That’s not the way this is supposed to work! To be told you’re a horrible person for holding a certain view is what we tell those stupid kids in their Che Guevara tee-shirts and Little Red Books; i’m just a Midwestern American that goes to church every week?! But that’s what happen when those Midwestern Americans vote for the most divisive President in living memory, when they don’t understand why he is divisive. They’re just voting for Team Red like they do every election. Why is it wrong now? Isn’t this just my team vs your team, like always? Why suddenly have i done something wrong?
For some people, they are bad prime and believe bad things. But I don’t think Malthor actually wants to do bad, and as a result, I don’t think he wants to support things like gerrymandering if we really take the time to talk and think about it.
Except pretty much said it was okay because it’s for his side, and anything that helps his side is aok which is pretty much how the GOP has been running their plays for a few decades now. They want to make rules they don’t want to hold themselves s accountable, and he actually said that right above.
So yeah, Malathor has lots of hand-wringing going on, just like the rest of his political party, but what he says is not what he votes for or holds anyone accountable so what he says means… nothing.
So we’re taking about it. You don’t need to participate if you think the conversation has no point.
Well I responded to you because you responded to me talking to Enidigm. If you don’t like that conversation you don’t have to participate either.
Being conservative isn’t bad. Republicans are not conservatives , and Republicans are bad now, period. It’s a party where the majority of the base are now fascist in character, and the ones with principle are in the minority.
The victory of Trump in the Republican primary wasn’t proof, but the level of support for Trump remaining strong despite Trump’s actions, to me that is proof.
I think there are many conservatives that believe underneath all that paranoia, the give me an easy target to blame mentality, and I don’t care if I am in bed with literal Nazis is a group that deeply cares about laws, or rules or conservative values beyond trying to force social norms on others… but there is very little evidence of that. These people knew what they were voting for, and they did not care. The fallout was not going to be their problem, but hey at least they can talk about their morality and their regret while… you know, still voting and supporting the things they say they oppose.
There are a lot of conservatives who voted against it.
If only I used the word many instead of most or all… which I did. And if the majority of the party actually voted against him, he wouldn’t be there… so many is the proper wording.
It’s worth noting that conservative and republican aren’t the same thing.
The ends justify the means is a very slippery slope to travel.
The situation we have in this country, where somewhere just under half the population refuses to believe in facts, relies on Fox News as their least hardcore news source and is shifting over to the likes of Breitnbart while deciding a lot of women and most the minorities are automatically the enemy did not happen over night. This occurred after years of cultivated and isolating their voter base until suddenly they realized their not the harvesters anymore. We had a ton of conversations about this already, and those people who sowed the field and then fled it, those were conservatives, on NPR and in elected seats and now they’re fleeing the mess they made. Those people were conservatives and Republicans who allowed the rotten to grow around them and turned a blind eye so they could get a few more votes. And now, in the Liberal Stupidity topic we have someone trying to proclaim the the Democratic party trying to push their Democratic choice ahead of a person running on their Democratic ticket who is not, in fact, a Democrat is somehow some giant conspiracy just unleashed while also claiming that as armed Nazis and White supremacists march down the street with literal weapons hanging where ever they can manage to hang a weapon is somehow just as scary as it is for black individuals, or women, or any other group realizing that there is a part of the country that wants a redo on the Civil War, want to push back rights all while trying to systemically destroy the social safety nets that keep people from dying in the streets. j
But yeah, yeah I should sit here and not “join the conversation” because someone who isn’t a troll continues to talk nonsesnse and like the decades past, everyone is just here to be all nice and civilized while they systematically dissect the core of democracy. And let’s not forget, this group that we’re supposed to be so civilized to put their representatives in the our government who are anything but courteous to any group that is an easy political target so they can get the votes of actual Nazis and KKK members.
This is the point of a lot of the extreme and continuous fear-based “news”. The more you make your constituents worry about the bottom of their Maslow hierarchy, the more radical the means they will adopt.
Is “crypto-Trumpist” the new “alt-right” which was the new “Fascist”? Language is evolving so fast these days!