Shades of yellow? Maybe brownish? Just a guess.
What it really boils down to is that we live in completely different worlds and we can’t even agree on basic facts. My MAGA mother has been pro choice her entire life, but places 100% of the blame for the overturn of Roe v. Wade on the Democrats, she believes the January 6th protests were peaceful and Ashli Babbitt was murdered, she believes Russia went to war with Ukraine because the United States had biological weapons labs there and we promised NATO would never expand.
It’s tough to understand people who look at the world through such distorted lens.
I live in a deep red state, in probably the reddest part of the state.
Everyone, except my immediate family are Republican, possibly. I say they are til I know differently.
I don’t discuss or engage in political discourse with any one. Especially a stranger.
An acquaintance wouldn’t bring it up. I’m sure.
Friends I have, well, I don’t ask. I leave it be.
Just not worth it. I’d be fighting on multiple fronts. I’m not a fighter.
I’m a live and let live kinda person.
I won’t bother you and you won’t bother me.
Best let sleeping dogs lie.
I’m sorry you are going through this Doc. It’s so hard to watch. Try not to take away their dignity, because the more you do, the harder it is for them to ever leave the cult. Leave them room to admit their mistake without being humiliated.
In a couple of cases, I was able to make small breakthroughs by sending this video from the Reagan/Bush debates. In both cases though, they did eventually succumb. Still, I understand your need to try.
The best thing you can do is ask questions. Ask about what the believe that made them become Republicans in the first place. Ask a lot of questions and really get them talking. Let them feel heard before you make any counter arguments, and never interrupt.
Then just gently ask about the contradictions. “You say you joined the GOP because you believe in State’s Rights. How did you feel when President Trump tried to wrest the California National Guard from Governor Newsome?”
That sort of thing. Remember being forced to confront one’s cognitive dissonance has been proven to produce a mental pain similar to a stabbing. So slide the knife in gently.
Good luck!
But deeply,
It’s not weird at all. Belief in Trump is literally a cult. It’s not cult-like. It is literally a cult, with Trump at the center. Intelligence has nothing to do with it. Smart people can fall into cults too. It short-circuits rational thinking.
Cult deprogramming is difficult and arduous and requires specialist training. You cannot remove someone from a cult by reason, by offering rational argument.
Walk away. They are lost, just as if they’d been sucked into Scientology or the Unification Church.
Even here in distant SA, I’ve lost one longtime friend because his pro-Trump rant at dinner brought some previously-well-hidden racist attitudes to the surface.
Said friend is a Philosophy PhD. It did nothing to innoculate him.
@DocCathode Just a question - are your friends also big supporters of Israel?
Sadly, you saw the last election as a choice between rescuing kittens from trees and torturing them to death with blowtorches. Your friends saw it, instead, as a choice between the party of good-hearted fecklessness and the party of unprincipled pragmatism, and they saw the latter as a legitimate choice. You get to be disappointed, but not surprised. Your outrage might be better directed at the Democratic party’s poor leadership.
I think they are secretly bigots and racists. So secret that they don’t even realize they are bigots and racists. Trump trips their trigger, because they recognize a fellow traveler.
Yes. Stephanie is Jewish. While I can’t remember all the details of her position, she is definitely pro Israel.
Bob was born and raised in some variety of Christianity. He has largely abandoned it. He is also pro Israel.
I don’t see how. As I said to Bob and Stephanie before the election, at worst Harris is a politician you disagree with. Trump is an evil man who ran on a platform of bigotry and impossible economic promises. I warned that if Trump got a second term, it could well mean the end of democracy in this country.
For most of my life, which candidate and which party were the moral choice was largely a matter of opinion. Then, Trump happened. As somebody else said on the Dope, your choices were fascism and not fascism. Bob agreed with me. He said he could not in good conscience vote for Harris. He never told me why. Now that all the horrors I predicted are coming to pass, Bob is denying that they are happening or that there is anything to worry about.
Was Harris a perfect candidate? No, of course not. Are the Democrats perfect? No, of course not. Was this a normal election with normal consequences? No, of course not. Again, the choices were fascism and not fascism. When those are the only choices, anybody who doesn’t vote to prevent fascism is entirely responsible for the consequences of their choice.
There’s the party that wants to deport Latinos, and there’s the party that wants to dox you and get you fired for misgendering a nonbinary teenager. So maybe it’s more like fascism and Jacobinism.
Your perception of what the Democratic party advocates for is laughable.
Maybe this is just something stupid people believe? People like you, for example.
Then maybe they bought into the propaganda that Harris was anti-Israel, and that’s what they didn’t want to discuss with you.
Nobody turns MAGA. They’ve been MAGA the entire time (in philosophy at least until the term was coined). They’ve just realized they can be open about it now instead of hiding under their rocks.
Oh go fuck yourself.
Here is the story. You know, in case you think I’m making it up.
Not anywhere near fuckin’ comparable. Don’t want a labor lawsuit? Just stop misgendering the very first time you’re called on it. Stupidly easy. How does someone just stop being Latino or LGBT?
What about the party that wants to dox you and get you fired for your sincere religious belief that Black people are not human, what about that oppression?