Comment on Am I crazy, or are Americans going insane?
CommanderM2192@lemmy.world 11 months agoWhy does everyone think this?
I think this because I’ve spent over a decade of my life trying to understand where people come from and getting nowhere with helping them. I’ve read the scripture they share with me and they just ignore rebuttals and tell me I have “an unteachable spirit” or I “can’t understand their gospel”. I’ll listen to the podcasts of political thinkers they listen to and hear absolutely nothing of substance, nothing that actually provides a foundation for their beliefs beyond “wouldn’t it be nice if we had X”.
The only progress I’ve ever made is by recently telling people they have no clue what they’re talking about and calling them a dipshit or asshole where appropriate. It’s insane. They don’t care about studies, stats, facts, whatever. No attempt at rational debate changes their mind in any capacity. But having the “quiet and patient” person in their life snap at them seems to do something at least.
Sounds like you’re talking to koolaid drinkers and religious, not the politically motivated. Only religious morons and the painfully immature treat “the truth” as an absolute thing you know or don’t know. ESPECIALLY in polotics, where EVERY choice has positive and negative consequences to balance.
Trying to get an informed political opinion from a religious zealot is about as useful as getting your calculus homework finished by toddlers…
Sure, but they’re still the people I grew up with in life. I won’t let them be part of my life if they truly believe that the January 6th seditionists did nothing wrong. But I still care about them and try to talk them down from this.
They’ve been through years of programming fed to them by professionals. As just some schmuck that doesn’t understand their beliefs, you’ll never be able to undo what has been done. It’s sad, but they need a LOT more than “Wait. You mean Trump REALLY DID LIE?!? I had no idea! This changes everything!”
I mean, I grew up in the same church environment. So I do understand their belief system intimately. The problem isn’t any understanding on my part, it’s their mindset. They want to make their current beliefs right, not to find the truth and be right. Recently, verbally insulting and degrading them has actually given me results. So maybe their tendencies to do the same to others out of hate is just projection.
catreadingabook@kbin.social 11 months ago
First of all, nice bait, looks delicious, think I'll chow down.
This mindset sounds closer to the problem than to the solution. Do you truly believe that the best way to interact with an extremist is to blindly judge them, then assume that they will question their entire worldview because one person, who has made no good faith effort to understand them, decides to call them names?
Many extremists, though perhaps not most, feel the way they do because they honestly believe they are doing the right thing. They listen to the lived experiences of people they trust and discount the words of people they do not. The blind judgment of others only 'proves' to them that it's all one big conspiracy, everyone else are sheep, and that they are the only ones who can think for themselves.