The atmosphere is so heated, and the statements are getting more and more extreme. Let’s just assume Harris wins the election. After a campaign like this, how could you ever have a normal relationship with your pro-Trump neighbor/father-in-law/Uncle/Barber or what ever again?
After a campaign like this, how could you ever have a normal relationship with your pro-Trump neighbor/father-in-law/Uncle/Barber or what ever again?
You’re assuming those relationships survived the 2020 election. For many, myself included, they didn’t.
I was willing to overlook 2016, but after 4 years of horror culminating in a (failed) coup, and those people still supporting him, I just cut them out of my life.
That’s understandable. It’s also, in microcosm, the reason your country is so divided. If you want to continue living in a democracy, you’re all going to have to talk - and listen - to each other.
I don’t disagree at all. However, that is a whole lot easier said than done when one side is so far gone in an alternate reality of lies and hate.
We’re going to need a mass cult de-programming or something. I just don’t know how we come back from where we are.
The usual way to fix these things is civil war. Don’t worry, you won’t have to start it, the racists and fascists will do it for you. And then they’ll get annihilated, like always.
This is because they may be loud, aggressive, greedy, hateful and boastful which all help them start and ramp up wars. But they are also stupid, cowardly, irrational, week minded and a minority, which make them loose these wars.
What you think about them, they think about you. They’re not evil, they’re not idiots. If they lived nextdoor you would probably find each other very pleasant.
I just don’t know how we come back from where we are.
It looks pretty simple from where I’m standing. You talk to them. You listen to them. You find things you agree on, beginning with the smaller things. They’re not automatons, they’re people.
Update. This avalanche of supposedly tolerant progressives who are openly against the idea of talking to their fellow citizens proves to me that America deserves everything it gets. Good luck.
No. It’s called the Paradox of Tolerance. “Discussing” rationally with the intolerant only serves to justify their position in their own eyes and thereby embolden them.
In other words, putting up with them simply gives them more ink
Turning the other cheek only works if the person doing the slapping has a sense of shame. Trump and his ilk have long since proven they have none.
Yeah. Although what if half of the country is intolerant? What then? Divide the country into two?
In all seriousness, how does one listen to and communicate with people who have slid so far down a misinformation hole to a place where science is fake, every expert who disagrees is part of a global conspiracy, and the only people they listen to literally can’t stop lying?>
I still talk to and value my mother, and believe she is a good person, but she’s fallen prey to insidious propaganda and believes that Trump is just a flawed tool for God and the Republican platform is the only way to save the world from the forces of evil.
As an aside, my favorite conspiracy theory was how all the governments of the world were collaborating on the COVID lockdowns so they could control the people and take power. The governments capable of national lockdowns could take power. 🤦🏼♂️
I don’t need to talk to those who are openly racist. I’m not talking about some political double speak. I have trump voters in my community that openly use racist slurs in their discussion of immigrants, and minorities in town.
You are the company you keep, and those folks aren’t part of my life. Trump was just the vector to illuminate their position that was previously kept in hushed tones behind doors.
Yes, it’s our fault that fear-addicted racists have refused to listen to reason for decades and particularly during the last eight years when an obviously unfit clown was committing scandal after scandal. We should be inviting cultists who refuse to listen to us back into our lives and calmly discuss why it is good for the country to be a Christofascist dictatorship.
I get where you’re coming from. Unfortunately, it’s not really that simple. Sometimes a relationship is so toxic that there’s no way to restore the basic trust that’s needed in order to function as a unit. This is no different. Pre-Trump, we might have been able to talk and salvage things; at this point, they’re just as broken as a relationship full of cheating and domestic abuse. My fear is that the only way forward is breakup (ie civil war) or some other equally deep trauma.
