It’s not easy, but the sister I knew is gone. She was always a fearful person, afraid of cities and uncomfortable around people different than her. She kind of has embraced that fear and found a space where one doesn’t conquer one’s fears, but scream them from the rooftops.
It’s been said many times during Trump’s presidency, but I’ll repeat it here: if you ever wondered what you would have done in Germany during Hitler’s rise to power, whatever you’re doing now is what you would have been doing then.
I’ll break bread with those with different morals than myself.
Trump has approximately 50:50 odds of victory. If he wins, I’ll be dusting off my copy of Timothy Snyder’s On Tyranny, starting with this article sized version. On this message board I’ve concluded that mockery - a form of social distancing - can move the needle ever so slightly provided the target has some investment in your opinion. I think liberals need to develop declarative statements that engage with conservatives better. “You are immoral”, is not one of them. “Fox News molds its coverage to reassure and consequently screws up its facts.”: well maybe. I’m not a great wordsmith.
I trust your once-friend’s vote is beyond recovery. But Fox News’ whole shtick involves insinuations about liberals. Kevin Drum:
as anyone who’s watched Fox knows, its fundamental message is rage at what liberals are doing to our country. Over the years the specific message has changed with the times—from terrorism to open borders to Benghazi to Christian cake bakers to critical race theory—but it’s always about what liberal politicians are doing to cripple America, usually with a large dose of thinly veiled racism to give it emotional heft. If you listen to this on a daily basis, is it any wonder that your trust in government would plummet?
Moving the ball back to the land of, “Fundamental disagreements about the role of government in our country”, (or better yet, “Managing government with a healthy respect for empirical reality”) is a very heavy lift. I’m not saying that you should never break off with a friend or acquaintance. But saying that your morality demands that you break off your friendship does little to counter Fox News’ agenda: indeed it reinforces it.
that sounds horrifically rigid and unproductive. Instead of trying to understand why someone did something and try to help them see the issues with it, you simply cut them off without recourse. With that kind of binary mentality, somehow I suspect they probably haven’t terribly regretted your decision either.
One can’t help but wonder what the results of an SDMB poll might look like, asking who has tried that particular approach with their MAGA friends and relatives, and with what degree of success.
I would second this. The common denominator I see in nearly all Trump voters that I know is a raging desire for justice. Now, their desire may be warped (tilting at nonexistent windmills or a blatant double standard when their side is unjust), but it’s there.
To the ears of many Trumpers, telling them to stop supporting Trump comes across as, “You need to stop pushing for justice, and start being OK with injustice.” That would never persuade anyone.
No, he doesn’t claim he developed a proof of RH. Rather that he was asked to look at a paper submitted to a journal (likely the Canadian J. Math.) by an editor who happens to be at his University (Calgary) and, unlike past such cases where he was able to find an immediate error, this time he couldn’t and is searching for referees who would be closer to the methods than he. Perfectly reasonable. And, as it happens, one of my colleagues would be perfect. That colleague was involved in the Fermat LT paper.
But I am reluctant to get involved in further correspondence with my “friend”.
I’ve also had the experience of conservatives responding to verifiable facts–e.g., ‘the deficit went down every year under Obama, and went up every year under Trump’–with content-free namecalling and Gish galloping. What does anyone gain being around people like that?
If this person has voted twice to support a rapist and believes that the rules don’t apply, then in my opinion your statement should be “I had a friend”.
If you decide he’s not a friend any longer, then he is automatically downgraded to ex-colleague. Any reason why you can’t connect an ex-colleague with a colleague to review the paper? Why does him being a friend matter for a professional situation? Or just ask your colleague what they want.
Dollars to doughballs the paper is bunk so it probably doesn’t matter either way.
I guess let me put it another way. Who is more worthy of disdain, a person who voted for Trump because Fox News told them to or a person who votes for Harris because Taylor Swift told them to? Neither really has an clue what they are doing but I wouldn’t say one is a “worse” person than the other. I can agree that a person voting for Trump is making a bad choice, and yeah, maybe they are an amoral and vile person. But also possible, maybe they aren’t really a horrific person, maybe they are just incredibly misguided and listened to the wrong person. The position on this board that any person that has voted for Trump, without any other context or any other consideration of that person, AUTOMATICALLY makes that person an outcast who should be summarily excised from your life forever is really bananas. People are not one dimensional, one issue entities. Who someone votes for should be just one more data point you use in making an evaluation of that person. WHY they voted for that person should be another. But neither, by themself, should be sufficient reason to casually discard a friend or family member.
Actually, Swift didn’t tell anyone to vote for Harris. She said that after seeing the debate, SHE will vote for Harris, and encouraged her followers to do their own research. I thought her commentary was excellent:
Like many of you, I watched the debate tonight. If you haven’t already, now is a great time to do your research on the issues at hand and the stances these candidates take on the topics that matter to you the most. As a voter, I make sure to watch and read everything I can about their proposed policies and plans for this country
One data point: no effect. My idiot brother in law is an armed “border patriot” that hates “Obamacare” but only has insurance through ACA.* After years of trying, we have cut him out completely. And when he dies (he’s in poor health) and his wife calls to report it, I’ll hang up on her. With my wife’s full blessing.
That is definitely true. There have been other nearly convincing attempts. And remember, Wiles’s first proof of the FLT had a big gap (which my colleague made a suggestion that eventually worked, although it was a long haul).
I thought I was the only person with a BIL that I loathed. An abusive drunk, he finally got sober, but his mental abuse of his family continued his entire life. His comments about minorities and Democrats kept me away from my sister’s house on holidays, and his son and I quietly rejoiced when the fucker died.
Not to nitpick, but there is zero chance that Swift wasn’t already full onboard the Harris train before the debate. I don’t believe that she was in any way not fully already had her mind made up before the debate began. It’s not like Swift was an undecided on-the-fence voter and Harris’ performance made her decide on Kamala.
