# No common ground left to stand on? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [November 19, 2019, 2:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/no-common-ground-left-to-stand-on/843639 "2019-11-19T02:58:00Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 1\ **Showing post:** 165
**Author:** ![Budget\_Player\_Cadet](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/budget_player_cadet/32/205_2.png) [@Budget\_Player\_Cadet](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Budget_Player_Cadet)\ **Post date:** [November 25, 2019, 2:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/no-common-ground-left-to-stand-on/843639/165 "2019-11-25T14:03:18Z")
As for the main topic of the thread… What common ground is there to stand on? Republicans don’t hold the same beliefs as democrats. They also don’t hold the same facts. Any attempt to communicate with them requires a preliminary phase where you try to get straight what the actual facts are, and are forced to slog through a miasma of insane conspiracy theories - insanity that [congressional republicans are intentionally spreading](https://www.motherjones.com/impeachment/2019/11/trump-keeps-pushing-his-ridiculous-crowdstrike-theory-not-even-fox-is-buying-it/), mind you - just to be able to get to the point where we discuss what the president is actually doing - let alone what effects it might have, or what context is involved. I will continue to hold up, as an example, a post in this forum from my thread on the concentration camps that Trump is running near the southern border. > [@What Effect Will Trump's Concentration Camps have on his reelection campaign?](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-effect-will-trumps-concentration-camps-have-on-his-reelection-campaign/835738/292): > > I’m aware of some of the reports of conditions in the “camps”. I don’t generally find those sources terribly credible. I think they, like you, have an agenda they’re propagandizing for and pushing, and they’ll pick a couple of anecdotes and try to pretend / imply that those exceptions represent conditions generally. This was after seven pages or so of sources backing up that the conditions in the camps were both horrendous and intentionally horrendous. His response, boiled down to two words: “fake news”. The actual facts don’t matter - if they’re inconvenient, they’re fake. (And I will continue to say that such a viewpoint is fundamentally incompatible with “fighting ignorance”. And that’s not even the worst thing he said _on that page_.) This is what Ian Danskin refers to as “postmodern conservatism” in his video, “[The Card Says Moops](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xMabpBvtXr4)”, a crucial document for understanding conservatism online. One key takeaway: “if you that they don’t believe what they say and instead are simply trying to win a game with you, you get very useful results.” The beliefs they hold are malleable… But, more importantly, _so are the facts_. The camps at the borders aren’t that bad, it’s just a few fake news outlets trying to make the president look bad. Russia didn’t interfere to help get Trump elected, but Ukraine was involved with Hillary’s email server. And so on and so forth. How do you argue with that? How do you find common ground with that? How do you, in any way, shape, or form, form a society with someone who not only disagrees on moral precepts, but fundamentally will not acknowledge facts or reality? Even leaving aside that a great many of them hold some truly fucking heinous beliefs (example: **Ditka** ’s post in the same thread cracking wise about the horrendous conditions under which we are keeping children which he would later call fake news). There is little of value to be gained from talking to high-information Trump voters. They know what he does. They know what he’s about. They support it, either openly or hidden behind concern trolling about how much worse the democrats are, and no amount of banging on about how fucking evil the Trump administration is is going to change their minds, because they are _just as evil_. There is little of value to be gained from talking to low-information Trump voters. They don’t know… But they also don’t care, and they’re pretty sure whatever you want to show them is fake news anyways. No amount of banging on about how fucking evil the Trump administration is is going to change their minds, because they are part of a media ecosystem that teaches them to ignore anything that could change their minds. So… yeah. What do you expect? --- _[View the full topic](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/no-common-ground-left-to-stand-on/843639)._