Quote:
Originally Posted by wittynickname
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 ofacts 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?
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.
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.
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 aboothers. 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.
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I have to say that witty's posts are an accurate description of what I've seen at my workplace.
A few of us have tried to reason with Trump supporters over various issues and have been essentially met with bullying, yelling and screaming when we have stated our points calmly and in context.
The group I'm thinking of had been lifelong outspoken Democrats.
I'm not sure how they feel "unheard".
We are paid very well for sticking mail in a mailbox. Of course it's harder than that, but jeez.
It's true that postal workers aren't considered the "intellectual elite", but when did that become their concern?
Sorry, if your main activity outside of work is worrying about "the game" or going to the casino, what do you expect?
In a sad way I do mean this to somewhat humorous.
I remember a few months ago I was talking about Christopher Hitchens, and only one person besides me, out of a group of 40+
people knew who he was.
Does that make me an elitist in my workplace?
How hard is it to know who he was?
My take on this particular group of people is that they are bitter about not having done something "better" with their lives, and it issomehow everybody else's fault.
When I see how people with far fewer advantages than I've had do glorious things with their lives, I feel a huge amount of self loathing. Freedom comes in realizing it was my fault.