[wittynickname]

Originally Posted by CorsiHockeyLeague

I was really clear about this. It's frustrating to have to just keep repeating it. I think we live in a constant state of choice between conversation with people we disagree with, and violence. So, to answer your question, we respond to these people with facts, reason, evidence, and we don't respond in kind. Win the war of ideas.

Have you ever tried using facts and reason with an American conservative Fox News viewer?

They could not possibly care less about facts and logic. Their "feelings" about what's really happening in America are what they look at, no matter how much data, how many statistics you show them.

Ideally that's a wonderful option, but I just had this exact discussion with a Trump voter last week. Despite every single thing I mentioned about the flaws in his campaign her response was "well I just feel like he's right about..." "well I just feel like that's not true..."

Fox News has made "feelings" fact and facts irrelevant. So if we can't have a reasoned discussion, if these people won't listen to fact and reality and actual science, what's the answer?

This is a fantasy caricature of the Trump voter that doesn't really reflect reality, I don't think. Which I recognize is a bit of an irony since I just a page ago created a caricature of the well-meaning blue collar family man, but I think this is a pretty superficial analysis of the motivations of "rural America", whatever that means.

Really now?
How many American Trump supporters from the heartland have you interacted with lately?

I deal with these people every single day. Just Friday I had a woman in our salon raving about how Trump was going to bring back coal, and how we had to go back to manufacturing and Trump was going to fix it, because those damn elites have totally forgotten about those small towns.

This isn't a caricature, these are actual people that I interact with on a daily basis. I think that's where this goes sideways, I actually deal with these small town, coal miners' daughters and sons on a daily basis. My mother's family is from Appalachia, they all worked on the railroad. My mom's family literally came from those small town, coal mining communities. I'm not looking at these people in the abstract, I actually know these people.

Again, a caricature. They're not telling conservatives that they need to broaden their world view and be more accepting. They're telling conservatives that their world view is, in its entirety, evil, and that they're terrible, immoral people for subscribing to it. Full stop.

If you're going to accuse me of using caricatures, I'm going to need you to stop doing the same. By and large the left is not saying "you're evil awful people and everything you do is wrong." The left is saying that gay people are also people and deserve equal rights, that blacks are still being discriminated against, that Muslims are not inherently bad, that women are still treated as secondary to men, and that perhaps conservatives need to look at themselves and their worldview and see if they're exacerbating the problem.

Just reflect on this statement. You really think that tens of millions of Americans went into the voting booth and thought this to themselves? You really think these people are, at their core, bad people?

This is why I'm cynical. That sort of cultural fracturing can't be repaired.

I think that tens of millions of Americans cannot possibly grasp what a gay latino male immigrant is feeling. I think that tens of millions of Americans have no idea what it's like to be a black woman with sons whose lives she's worried about on a daily basis. I think that tens of millions of Americans can't possibly imagine themselves being denied a job or an apartment or a damn wedding cake because of discrimination.

It's not that they're bad people, it's that they just don't care enough to worry about others. Inherent selfishness, inherent victim complex. Basic human reactions, we all care about ourselves first, we all feel like we're the good guy in our own story. Life is hard for them, and that's all they can see, regardless of who else might have it worse. I never said it made them bad, but it does make them careless, and it shows a lack of empathy.