Doubt I’ll ever get the opportunity, but I’ll take it if it presents itself.
If you do, don’t push. Instead, pull. Ask them questions, ask them “What do you want at the end of the day?” “To get the illegals out!” “Yeah but why? What is that a step towards?” Fact checking doesn’t work, lecturing doesn’t work, understand that they know no better than you know better than them. At least then there’s a fighting chance of having a conversation, seeing eachother as on the same side, and agreeing on who the real enemies are.
Good luck, it’s not easy, study their common arguments and give it only so much benefit of the doubt in so far as there’s a rational human being that has come to those conclusions. The ones who care enough to be swept up by populism are ironically some of the good ones, they’re some of the biggest victims of fascists as well. The truely evil ones, the ones that keep fascism strong, are the ones who won’t even engage in the discussion, who don’t really care, who are “too busy taking care of myself to pay attention to politics,” who donate xx.x% of their salary to charities but can’t take 20 minutes to read Albert Einstein’s “Why Socialism?”** or even less time reading the communist manifesto.**
** This is less an advertisement for socialism/communism so much as how lazy one must be not to be able to digest those small pieces of leftist perspective by people who claim to be “balanced” or “centrist” while being anti-communist and pro-capitalism.
All in all don’t bother trying to have a discussion with centrists, they’re the most hopeless and selfish people with no code, no morals, no higher belief, just “I’m a mechanistic robot chemical bag trying to survive, the world is a zero-sum game, I get mine and if you don’t it’s your fault.”
Doubt I’ll ever get the opportunity, but I’ll take it if it presents itself.
Fuck…
If you do, don’t push. Instead, pull. Ask them questions, ask them “What do you want at the end of the day?” “To get the illegals out!” “Yeah but why? What is that a step towards?” Fact checking doesn’t work, lecturing doesn’t work, understand that they know no better than you know better than them. At least then there’s a fighting chance of having a conversation, seeing eachother as on the same side, and agreeing on who the real enemies are.
I’ll take your advice to heart. Thank you :D
Good luck, it’s not easy, study their common arguments and give it only so much benefit of the doubt in so far as there’s a rational human being that has come to those conclusions. The ones who care enough to be swept up by populism are ironically some of the good ones, they’re some of the biggest victims of fascists as well. The truely evil ones, the ones that keep fascism strong, are the ones who won’t even engage in the discussion, who don’t really care, who are “too busy taking care of myself to pay attention to politics,” who donate xx.x% of their salary to charities but can’t take 20 minutes to read Albert Einstein’s “Why Socialism?”** or even less time reading the communist manifesto.**
** This is less an advertisement for socialism/communism so much as how lazy one must be not to be able to digest those small pieces of leftist perspective by people who claim to be “balanced” or “centrist” while being anti-communist and pro-capitalism.
All in all don’t bother trying to have a discussion with centrists, they’re the most hopeless and selfish people with no code, no morals, no higher belief, just “I’m a mechanistic robot chemical bag trying to survive, the world is a zero-sum game, I get mine and if you don’t it’s your fault.”