Askthepizzaguy
08-24-2020, 12:11
I haven't read this entire thread, but I have experience with talking someone out of political radicalism and genuinely crazy beliefs.
It's my birthday today, and this is what I've learned in 37 years on this Earth.
Basically, it turns out to be a lesson in kindness and tolerance and having respect for all people even when they don't respect you at all.
You have to show respect to get respect.
The following is a massive wall, but it's all leading up to the same one story, with the same one conclusion. And I cite example other than myself to back this up as a genuine method of combating racism, extremism, and conspiracy theories. The garbage of the brain.
How do you combat it? It seems like there is absolutely no way to get through to these people.
There's a way. And it might have taken me close to two decades to finally understand how. So forgive me, but I gotta tell the whole story.
Spoilered to not break your scroll wheels.
I can't say that I've ever managed to budge an avowed Nazi, but certain "beliefs" are similar to certain other extremist religiously motivated "beliefs", in that no amount of argument or evidence would ever budge a person. Not all political ideas are the same, some are rooted in evidence or at least, a belief that they produce good results. Such opinions can be budged if someone has an open mind and patience and is willing to learn. Other political ideas are never based on evidence, but on belief in, for example, the inherent superiority of a genetic mutation that produces lighter skin, and the lighter the better. A belief I obviously do not share, but a belief that exists in certain people nonetheless and I have to deal with it.
If someone believes with fervent zeal that a brick wall is actually a tree, no amount of evidence will alter their opinion, because their opinion is not rooted in definition, evidence, or results. Some beliefs are by their very nature irrational and if someone chooses to be irrational, nothing will move them, because they have chosen to live irrationally.
However, not everyone who falls into these beliefs or similar belief systems is immovable, because sometimes people fall in with the wrong crowd.
Some grow up and have extremists or cultists as parents, they live in a community that fosters extremist viewpoints and only ever hears from propagandists. It's like when the rural bar only ever has Fox News on the TV. If you only ever hear one side of the story, and the story tellers aren't particularly honest, then you aren't able to properly weigh the options.
So sometimes, someone who is inherently rational ends up believing stuff that is objectively not true at all.
I don't mean to only speak in generalities, this post is about a specific personal experience. I will get to the point but I must caution you that this will be a wall regardless.
If you want to skip to the point, scroll down until you see it.
In 2015 or so, I was getting seriously very tired with how nasty, bitter, and divided my country was getting. I had a friend at my job who I got along famously with, I respected him as a fellow worker, he had a lot of great personal qualities.
His opinion on politics was not one of them. And he had genuinely disgusting views of the black Americans that worked with us. If they were not within earshot, he would often pull me aside and say something demeaning about them, which I never encouraged or condoned and I frequently tried to talk him out of such thoughts by citing counter example.
These beliefs were coming from somewhere and it wasn't personal experience, because the folks he was calling lazy were working just as hard as he was. Come to find out he's big on AM talk radio, Fox News, conspiracy websites, things like that.
In every other aspect of life he was competent and a perfectly likeable, ordinary human being. But just like a perfectly likeable, well adjusted, ordinary human being can get caught up in a cult, so too can they get caught up in politically radical extremism.
You'd never have guessed it. Otherwise intelligent, hard working, genial, and with what seemed to be a functional system of morality outside of the racism, the more I got to know this person, the more normal they seemed. Especially outside of work, when there weren't any black folks around, or anyone he could scapegoat for his problems or the nation's problems.
When removed from the scapegoat, the target, the people to blame, all of that faded away and what you were left with was an ordinary human being that was not radicalized.
Put this person together with the target of blame, and the radicalization came out. And it wasn't against a particular person or because of a personal experience (like sometimes, your first experience with someone of a different skin color is a bad experience, and then you start to fear and mistrust... but that didn't happen here.)
The scapegoating and blame was being absorbed by this person from the various sources of his belief system, the radical speakers on the radio, such as Michael Savage, a host of a particularly awful radio program I myself listened to for many years delivering pizzas because I can't stand commercial music-based radio stations. Had to listen to something and the only thing remotely political on the radio was the talk radio stations that would always line up exclusively far right fringe nutter butters.
After some years of listening to that and no rebuttal given, even I started drifting rightward.
Then I started reading rebuttals in the form of books, and quite frankly, they should be required reading if you listen to the know-nothings who spout garbage on the talk radio stations. If you listen to filth, you should clean your ears once in a while with soap that kills germs, in the form of hearing a valid counter argument.
By the second half of the Bush administration I was done with that. I had heard what passes for a right wing viewpoint and it wasn't for me. And to be clear, someone can be conservative, Republican, and favor right wing economics and limited government involvement in our lives except for police and military and criminal justice system reasons, and have a strong argument for those opinions. They wouldn't find a strong argument for their beliefs on these propaganda outlets that pander to the casually interested person with political opinions that aren't well informed by facts, statistics, results in real life, or a cursory knowledge of history.
I'm reminded of a young earth creationist thread I just read here on the .Org that is a couple years old, where all the sources were propagandist websites, the arguments were cut and pasted from elsewhere, and the person posting the thread wasn't interested in rebuttals, learning, or even very capable of arguing their own opinion on its own merits, and bits and pieces of the argument proved it wasn't even his own opinion, because he supported contradictory statements.
The objective of the thread was to evangelize and spread the "truth" as this person understood it, and therefore, the conclusion was everyone else was wrong by default.
That's not how you learn things. But this person was clearly impressed by post length, and verbosity. Put this person in a mafia game with me and I'd have been able to convince them that the sun doesn't even shine, it's a conspiracy by the elf-goblins that live inside his eyeballs to convince him of such. All I really needed to argue was putting one word after the other ad infinitum, and that would have been enough.
Such is the level of argumentation on these propaganda outlets. It is a steady stream of endless, one opinion. An unbroken chain of relentless reinforcement, said by a dozen hosts of a dozen shows, all arguing the same way, simply shouting down the audience and not interested in facts or counter-arguments, with the host able to screen guests, cut their mic, and even use a delay to erase anything damaging. The host can shout you down, doesn't have to give you equal time, and can pack the show with people who don't understand what they are saying, to present the weakest possible counter-argument. It's like how Tucker Carlson pretends to be open minded and rational, and then see how he reacts and how he argues when he accidentally books someone competent to argue against him. He gets angry, shouts them down, and gets really hostile, while pretending to be polite until he can't pretend anymore. Or he will try to defame or attack the credibility of this person, to muddy the waters.
Any veteran of mafia games will recognize this as open wolfing. Same techniques, same disingenuous and agenda-driven arguments. And these techniques work because people don't recognize them for what they are.
They fool me sometimes, and I'm an expert on doing this to other people in a game. Even if you know how it works it can still fool you.
People who buy this garbage are not necessarily stupid.
What they are are people who trust other human beings to not be lying to them constantly. You have to trust SOMEONE in this world, and if you choose the wrong person, you're screwed.
You grow up and are raised by parents who teach you most of the stuff you know from your formative years. Even if you later realize they're dumb and didn't know what the heck they were talking about, you trusted them and something of what they raised you with is still stuck in your brain. And sometimes, you never realize they were dumb.
You had to trust them. You were incapable of feeding yourself at one point. This is biologically wired into your brain to trust these people.
You are taught by teachers, sometimes they are religiously or politically extreme and you're in a religious or otherwise private school that teaches you most of science is a lie by the liberals and that "goddidit" for everything under the sun and soon, even the public schools will finally openly say so, and religious freedom will exist again, and it doesn't now, because "atheists and secularists and liberals".
You can either ignore 12 years of schooling or you had to trust your teachers to be telling you the truth.
You go to church to worship God, and the person in a dress who reads to you from a book you can read yourself tells you "the truth" and then starts implying their political opinions are what God approves of. (Or you go to a proper church where the priest or pastor doesn't do such things)
You either trust the pastor or you don't.
You go to work and your buddies all agree, liberals are the devil. You either trust your close friends or you don't.
Again and again, you have to trust someone. And if everyone or most everyone in your community, family, religious circle, work friends, and the news all tell you the exact same things, eventually, you start to believe them.
It's like the lies we learned about American history. The school taught me Christopher Columbus discovered America. I believed it, even when on the same page they would talk about Native Americans. You can't discover something if people already live there. And there were viking settlements that may not have lasted in modern day Canada. And you get the sanitized version, where you never heard that Columbus was a brutal tyrant. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Columbus#Accusations_of_tyranny_and_brutality)
What you got was the kiddie version. Lie-to-children. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lie-to-children)
Nothing controversial or unclean or politically undesirable was discussed. At least in the USA, in the public schools I went to.
You trust the version of reality you're given.
And however clever I may be when it comes to detecting or crafting lies, and regardless how well read and politically active I am, I am one of the people who started to fall for this propaganda myself.
So it's rather easy for me to personally understand how someone can form these opinions based on the radio box and the tv box and the computer box all saying the same thing, all his buddies saying the same thing, and constantly being buttered up and being told you're the only REAL American, you're the only patriotic American, you're the only smart American, the only loyal American, the only hard working American, and everyone else is a liar, a conspirator, a useful idiot, a corrupt Hollywood elite, Wall Street elite, or paid bureaucrat.
It's easy to be told this narrative where you're the only saintly and pure, correct, intelligent kind of American, and everyone else is dumb, corrupt, criminal, or out to steal from you.
That narrative is compelling. It frames you as the struggling hero, the rebel pitted against the Empire, who brought the war to you, a war you never wanted to fight and couldn't be more disinterested in. But don't worry, just donate to Joe Jimmy Bob Whitney III and he will straighten out Washington. Sign up to our mailing list, we'll send you lots more donation prompts. Join our exclusive donors club and we'll send you special gifts and constant reassurance that you're saving America.
It's very seductive.
And the deeper into it you get, the more you only want to hear this message, and no other.
Everyone else is a liar, or naive.
Only you know the secret real truth behind everything.
That's how cults work. They convince you that everyone else is dumb, in need of rescue by your group, in need of being saved, utterly doomed and lost without your special wisdom, and that most other people who argue otherwise are part of a big conspiracy to crush the real truth and are untrustworthy enemies.
Once you believe even half of that, facts, reasons, arguments, sanity, all that goes out the window.
Everything anyone says could be a "liberal lie".
All mainstream and reliable sources, even the official numbers our government produces, even when our own party is in power, all of those numbers are bogus.
All facts and all neutral sources are compromised. It conflicts with the Narrative, and the Narrative is the only reality.
That forms the complete bubble around your head that protects you from a counter-argument, and all counter-arguments are the devil and his lies.
Once you're sold, it's hard to get you un-sold.
Now, I told you about the work buddy who was otherwise a nice, normal guy, but had wacky extreme political opinions and a none too compassionate viewpoint toward anyone who wasn't white.
I sincerely believe he got that way by falling into what is basically a cult. Not because he was inherently an evil person. Doesn't matter, he was basically openly racist, so there's only so much sympathy I can extend here. Not excuses for his actions, just reasons why I understand how he could end up that way.
If you believe the completely false "meme" images that quote fake statistics about how violent black Americans are, then you start to think "wait, I'm not being racist, these are the hard, objective facts! These people really are dangerous and it's not because I'm being biased! What, check and see if those facts and figures are real? Why would I do that? I trust the source, my friend on Facebook. Always reliable, that guy."
It's just like that young Earth creationist guy. "I trust the source, world net daily. Creation.com. Everything science says is a lie.org. These people would never lie to me because they believe in the Bible like I do, so they must by extension be completely correct about everything and morally pure. I gotta save the wacky evolutionists from the lies the college professors, scientists, and knowledgeable people told them. I'm smarter than all the experts. I can lecture to an actual geologist about his own field I know nothing about."
I get that mindset. That mindset is a very commonplace mindset.
Every ordinary human being wants to be extraordinary. They want to be right, they want to be thought of as morally upstanding. They want to show the world how morally upstanding they are, and how smart they are. So when they get it into their heads that they're smarter than educated experts in their fields, based on the lies of propagandists, they go off on a damnfool crusade to prove science wrong.
How they get there is not by being evil and corrupt and not giving a shit about humanity at all.
They GOT THERE by being loyal, trusting, kind, and wanting to be a good person, and trusting the wrong people to tell them the truth.
They got taught false lessons by other folks who also think they're speaking the real truth. Who in turn got their false lessons from other people speaking "the truth".
It's all a giant trust exercise. Everyone believes their parent, their spouse, their friend on facebook, their pastor, the nice man in a red tie on the TV box, the passionate man who obviously loves his country on the radio box, and the very informative people who tell you totally true except that they're made up statistics, facts, and figures, or cherry picked actual information.
Everyone in your life that you like, and know, and trust, they're telling you "the Truth".
So, you come across someone who doesn't share your viewpoint online. Are you in a listening mode? Nope. You're either at war, or you're lecturing.
They're either the enemy, or they're dumb and you need to educate them.
Except, you're not a teacher. So you don't know what you're doing when you debate them, and you get frustrated when they prove surprisingly resilient and argumentative in the face of your "facts" so you decide this person is a lost cause. Move on to the next pupil.
Don't worry, you'll save America from the Leftist Lies, eventually. Just gotta find the right person to persuade with your argumentation you got from Michael Savage and Sean Hannity that you sorta half-remember, which was ironclad logic to begin with.
The point: (made in large text because I seriously took my sweet time getting here)
You can't reach someone who is at war with you. They're busy defaming you and calling you a traitor to America or whatever.
You can't reach someone who is busy posting 10,000 word screeds copy and pasted from their young earth creationist website. They're not listening. They're lecturing.
But they listened to someone at some point.
This is not someone who is simply incapable of listening to a thought that didn't originate in their own head.
Someone taught them all that crap they're hitting you over the head with right now. They listened to that person.
WHY did they listen to that person?
They listened to that person because that person was their Friend on Facebook.
They listened because that person was their friend, spouse, relative, or parent.
They listened because that person was their trusted pastor who has never steered them wrong on any other subject. Why not politics, too?
They listened because that person was their drinking buddy. Their work pal that they respect.
Who the hell are YOU? Why in the blazes would they shove the opinions of all of the above people into the toilet in favor of you, random stranger they don't know, automatically don't like because you're a stranger who disagrees, who they're convinced is the devil?
WHY WOULD THEY EVER TRUST YOU OVER THOSE OTHER PEOPLE???
You are nobody to them.
They will never, ever listen to you.
They're already the type of person that wants to fit in with their social group, their particular tribe.
They're an avowed _________, whatever it is. Religious cultist, political extremist, partisan for life, or telemarketer. They're calling you to tell you why you need their product. They are not interested at all in your product.
You try selling the telemarketer something, they hang up or talk over you. I also have experience being a telemarketer, by the way. I know of what I speak.
For as long as they're busy telemarketing, they don't give a crap what you say.
You have to get them off of their script.
Religious cultist, political extremist, partisan activist, telemarketer, someone who wants you to join their cause, whatever it is, they have their arguments prepared in advance, they have something to say, they have something to sell, and the conversation is meant to be one way.
You're supposed to listen while they talk.
If you deviate from that, you're being rude. You're being arrogant. You're being dumb. You're spreading lies.
So, you're supposed to hear their script, and nod and agree. If you argue, you're evil.
So, you have to get them off of their script. That's the only way to get through to "the telemarketer."
The telemarketer is an analogy. If someone is telling you Jews are the devil, black people are evil, socialists are out to get you, it's all a big liberal secularist leftist conspiracy, they're on a script, they're not listening, they're selling their product.
They need to convert 100 stupid dumb idiots who believe the lies of the Evil Liberal Left, by the end of the week. They have a quota.
You are supposed to be converted to the truth in just a few paragraphs and carefully crafted arguments.
So shut up and listen to the presentation.
https://media2.giphy.com/media/3oz8xGg2h40nLk3Bi8/source.gif
Okay. So.
You sat patiently and listened. They posted their timeshare presentation about how Jews are evil and liberals are destroying America and the blacks really do commit all the crimes, and how you know, you'd probably look great in a white hood. Come to my barbecue next week, we will have beer and pork ribs and there will be a little meeting afterward. You'll love our group, we're great people. We honestly are, except for the racism.
Now that you sat and listened to their presentation, you just talk to them. Not about the politics or the racism or the extreme beliefs.
1. Get to know this person.
2. Talk to them all the time.
3. Become someone to them.
Now you are not anonymous internet moron who needs to be saved from the evils of socialism and secularism. Now you are Steve, or Bonnie, or Hank.
Now you're someone this person cares about. Not more than beer drinking buddy, or spouse, or pastor, but you're not nobody anymore.
Now it is possible to talk to this other human being and be respected at all as an acceptable other human being.
It wasn't possible at all before now.
You've given them the floor. You've treated them with respect. You didn't automatically reject them as a social paraiah like everyone else who has ever strongly disagreed with their politics has done.
You're getting to know them. They like you, at least a little bit. Now two-way communication is possible.
Now there's a chance in hell that they're no longer on their script. Now there's a chance in hell they'll hear you out if you approach them right.
One of the ways I did this was I answered every question that this person had for me. In a kind, respectful, tolerant way, citing the best neutral sources I could find.
This person was convinced Obama was a communist, atheist, Muslim, socialist, fascist Jew-hater who was probably a Jew himself, he was black and also probably born in Kenya, and he was married to a transvestite closeted gay man presenting as a woman.
And all of this was their SINCERE belief, that they believed was 100 percent true, unironically.
And because this was on Quora, a question and answer site, I went through all of this person's questions one by one, and answered them all as if we were not at war. Not enemies. This was after answering one and then getting to know this person a little bit, by being kind and respectful and having their back when someone was flaming them.
I became a friend.
That's how this person formed their opinions in the first place. They heard all their opinions from someone they considered a friend.
The nice man in a tie on TV. The radio box. The internet. The friend on facebook. All the kind people at their church, who were convinced liberals were evil.
So I became this person's friend.
Once I did that, I answered all her questions. Respectfully, sympathetically. I cited my sources. I explained why someone could believe differently. I explained what morals and values I had, most of which were the same as hers. I explained how I could arrive at a completely different answer with basically the same fundamental respect for human life and value of human society that she had.
And we got to talking outside of Quora. About things that weren't politics.
And guess where we connected?
Facebook.
I became the "friend on facebook".
Her other friends on facebook were saying one thing, I was saying another, but we were both her friends.
We both liked, respected her, and listened to her.
However, only one of us was giving her good information that seemed to be true, after a while. It was because I refused to cite bad sources, I refused to sanitize the data. I called a spade a spade. If stuff was bad for my own point of view, I'd say so. If stuff was good, I let her conclude that.
I presented my position as neutrally as possible, and let her decide if it made any sense.
The point was not to convert anyone, or sell her.
She was listening to someone else sell a product now, instead of asking push questions like "why do liberals want criminals to destroy America?"
Believe it or not, the question was sincere. She GENUINELY believed that folks like me were out to kill and corrupt and let wanton violence run rampant, to satisfy our desires to sin, or whatever.
As absurd as the questions were, I answered them as if she wasn't crazy to think so. As if she wasn't listening to just insane propaganda. I didn't insult her intelligence or her beliefs.
Now, instead of telling the world why I was wrong, she was listening to Facebook Friend A tell her liberals were evil, while Facebook Friend B (me) would simply explain why I wasn't evil, and what I thought morality was, and why certain things done by the government are immoral, and why liberals and moderates and even moderate conservatives believe certain things.
It wasn't "You are wrong for believing Obama was married to a drag queen and is a Marxist Kenyan communist Muslim atheist, which isn't even self-consistent, let alone true."
It was "Well, it sure sounds like someone wants you to think Obama is a deeply unscrupulous man who fakes being godly, and secretly worships evil things. I think someone wants you to just hate the guy, based on that description. Can I tell you why I don't think he's a terrible person? Since you're wondering why I don't also think he's evil, or why I voted for him, you might be curious."
That's a lot less lecture-y and condescending and full of myself.
I present myself and my opinions as being equally valid as hers. Even if I don't personally consider some of those opinions to be very valid, for the obvious-to-me reason that they're blatantly false.
I'm also a friend, and I have a history of treating her with respect and kindness, and hearing her out.
Now she does me a solid, and hears me out.
And I show her some non-propaganda-biased-against-him pictures of Obama hanging out with his family, with random kids who visited the White House, and she could see the genuine joy on the faces of these kids.
She saw pictures of the man being a good dad to his two daughters. I showed her excerpts of speeches where he said something morally uplifting or profound.
That's the "side" of Obama that I saw, and why I liked him.
I didn't directly state that no, Barack wasn't married to a drag queen. I let her come to that conclusion on her own. It was too absurd to argue, and I wasn't about to lift up Michelle Obama's skirt and show her.
I explained why I supported things like social security and medicare, and as an older person, she did too, in fact. Those were "left wing" ideas.
I explained how the national health service works in Norway and how much cheaper it is, and how I was able to see a doctor for my myriad real life health problems, that I couldn't even pay to get diagnosed in the USA.
I told her about my car accident that happened while I was at work for Pizza Hut, at a red light, while my car was stopped, and I had a seatbelt on, and I was obeying all the traffic laws, and I was insured.
And how the insurance company paid me almost nothing for the vehicle that I had only just finally paid off, and how they didn't cover much in medical costs, and how those medical costs were a year's pay just to see a doctor, get my head scanned to make sure my brain wasn't bleeding and I wasn't about to die overnight, received no other treatment, was at the hospital for just over an hour, and it cost me more than I make in a year.
Something like that never, ever, ever, ever happens here in Norway. It would cost me about 200 bucks out of pocket, if I could afford that much. And the doctor would get paid. And the taxes I paid to make this system work was like insurance, except it costs less, because the government doesn't need to make a profit, or advertise, or pay billionaire CEOs and owners their cut. And the system wasn't rigged to deny as many payouts as legally possible, to save some bucks.
Wow, that system sure sounds too good to be true. And I agreed, except I personally live in Norway, and I spent 32 years in the USA, and I can confirm to you, the difference is staggering.
I'm now a source. I'm the Friend on Facebook, I gotta be telling the truth here. Except, in this case, the Friend on Facebook was correct.
Wow, suddenly, Bernie Sanders isn't completely crazy for talking about expanding medicare to all. Medicare is certainly better than not having Medicare. Even right wing person who is elderly believes this.
Now my foot is in the door. Sure, Fox News and Right Wing Talk Radio and the computer are all still telemarketing to her about how evil socialism is, but she put all those other people on hold, and was hearing her liberal friend in Norway talk about his personal experiences with the "evil socialist" healthcare system.
And her liberal friend was someone with an established history of treating her with respect, always telling her the truth even when the truth was unkind to the liberal position, and never, ever suggesting her beliefs were absurd or she was stupid for believing them.
And the entire reason why I was talking to her was because I genuinely wanted to understand why someone might support Trump after all he's said and done even before he got elected.
I wanted to hear her point of view genuinely, not convert her.
I wanted to answer all her questions to sate her curiosity, same as she did for me, and my curiosity.
We were "enemies" politically, but not personally. We wanted to get to know each other in a manner that didn't involve spittle-flying invective and hatred and shouting and endless arguments about who is correct, with no one listening to each other.
We listened to each other. It went both ways.
I never asked her to change her mind. Ever.
I never encouraged her to change her mind. Never, not directly. Only presented my beliefs and my reasons as factually and honestly as I could, and let her make up her own mind.
That was almost 4 years ago. We still talk to this day, at least once a week.
She now supports Biden for President and will not vote for Trump, she's convinced 10 of her friends to become Never Trumpers.
She supports most of the same ideas I do.
She no longer believes most Muslims are out to kill her. Or even a large minority of them.
She no longer believes black folks just wanna mooch welfare or commit crimes.
She no longer believes Obama was a communist, a fascist, a dictator, or that Michelle Obama was a transvestite man.
She no longer believes that liberals are crazy, sick, evil people who just wanna sin against God.
She no longer believes secular or even non-religious people (like myself) are out to destroy religion and morality.
She no longer believes someone in a different political party is evil.
She doesn't turn around and hate on Republicans and conservatives and right wingers, and even the kooks who believe crazy conspiracy nonsense like she used to, because she knows treating them like they're crazy and evil will never work.
She knows, because she used to be just like them. And she wasn't evil then, either. Just supportive of it, accidentally.
If you believe Nazi Germany happened because Germans were just inherently worse people than we are, you learned the wrong lesson from a historical period where people believed certain nations were superior to others and just had inherently better people in them.
It can happen to good people.
It can happen everywhere.
It can happen to smart, moral people.
It can happen inside your own head.
If you were brought up to believe certain things, or are constantly surrounded by friends and family who support certain ideas, and you never hear a well argued alternative.
If all you ever read is extremist opinion, if all you ever listen to on the radio is extremist opinion, if all you ever watch on TV is extremist opinion, if all you ever hear in church is extremist opinion, if your parents taught you extremist opinion, if your work buddies all spout the same extremist opinions, guess what?
Those extreme opinions seem like they're the center of the political compass. They're the sane, normal people, and everyone else is insane.
That's how it happens.
100 friends on facebook, who are all kind to you, all tell you how liberals are evil, and out to get us, you start to believe it.
There was a brief period in my life where I started to believe it.
I never got as deep into it as my friend on Quora / Facebook. I never believed the racist shit. But I did believe for a time liberals were immoral and had no values, and didn't know how to manage an economy.
But there's a slide, and some people slide to the bottom instead of halfway there, and start to believe the craziest things, because everyone sane around them believes those crazy things.
They share memes where Obama looks like an ape. And Michelle looks like an ape. And it's funny, because we hate those people.
It doesn't stop being funny until you start seeing them as fellow moral, rational people, then the memes stop being funny. Then the meanness, racism, and cruelty suddenly becomes visible.
You genuinely don't see it when the caricature is of an enemy that it is socially acceptable to outright hate, among all your cherished friends and family.
Not only acceptable, encouraged.
You're a good person BECAUSE you hate these people.
Once you link hatred of this other group of people with your identity as a good, moral, patriotic, godfearing person, it becomes a core aspect of your identity that can never be challenged without it being a direct insult.
And the only way to challenge it and avoid the insult is to remove all the other cards that are supporting the house of cards, and let the belief collapse on its own.
You don't argue that stuff away, the truly insane stuff. You let the person's rational mind decide that, after all the supporting cards are removed, the upper level of the house of cards cannot stand on thin air.
It collapses on its own.
You talk about the stuff that it should be neutral to talk about, like whether or not the results of a particular policy have good effects or not, objectively. Look at the numbers, hear the testimony. It's not personal. It's curiosity.
Why do liberals support it? As opposed to "YOU MUST SUPPORT THIS OBVIOUSLY CORRECT THING OR YOU'RE EVIL".
Now, I wouldn't say this person was ever.... a Nazi. No.
But they did hate liberals, the left, had a poor opinion of immigrants, minorities, black persons, the Obamas, you name it.
Go down the racist Nazi playbook, and how many boxes did this person check? A lot.
I never, ever once called her a racist or a Nazi.
She no longer believes those things. She doesn't trust Fox News anymore. She does not believe the stuff that comes out of the AM talk radio box, not blindly, not anymore.
She doesn't think I'm evil or folks like me are. She doesn't think we're all saints either. She doesn't think her former political beliefs are motivated by hate, but they were spread around initially by people who did, and it spread to people who don't, and just don't realize what they're spreading is poison that hurts good people.
They all think they're good people doing a good thing by calling out what they think is evil.
Evil spreads by convincing good people to hate other good people.
The world is not a bunch of good people, and a bunch of evil folks out to kill and corrupt and destroy.
The world is a bunch of good people who sometimes hold false beliefs, trying to convince other good people who sometimes hold false beliefs that their beliefs are false, and then when they don't convert each other, they hate each other forever, don't trust each other, and stop talking to one another.
And they tell other people how dangerous these "others" are and how evil they are and that everything they say is a lie, and nonsense.
That's how factionalism, nationalism, tribalism, and political and religious extremism spreads.
It is all cult behavior, and it happens naturally, without even a cult leader emerging. It's just how human beings behave.
It is a result of the human desire to fit in, and find a social group that accepts you, and likes you and respects you.
Some people will do anything they see as reasonable to fit in to that group, even if it means spreading around offensive and poisonous memes and stuff that might not be strictly true, but who cares? The liberals all lie, so obviously, we can lie to hit back.
Some people will go even further and commit violence in the name of what they think is right.
Sometimes people want to be seen as good so badly, they're willing to do bad things just to win the approval of their peers.
That's how people become Klansmen, Al Qaeda religious extremists, Westboro Baptists Churchgoers, street preachers telling everyone that they're all doomed to hellfire unless they join this particular cult.
That's how people become partisan hacks, loyalists who only ever consider one party to be always correct, or close enough, always trustworthy, always moral, and everyone else is evil or dumb.
The desire to be loved by friends is almost as strong as the desire to have sexual intercourse, for some people. Maybe even stronger.
That desire can make you say and do dumb things. Crazy things. As long as you get the validation and satisfaction of being someone's beloved and respected friend.
Being accepted.
That's the weakness of the human mind, the desire to be loved.
I am not at all immune to this. I am as much a victim of this as everyone else. I'm not better than you or anyone else for realizing these facts about humans erring.
I am one of those humans who erred. I convinced another fellow human who erred that she erred, by showing her why it was an error, and she decided on her own that she made a mistake.
People make mistakes when trying to be accepted. People also trust too much, believe in flattery too much. The comfortable lie is preferred over an harsh truth.
No one likes to be told they're wrong. Or supporting an immoral man or his bad policies. No one wants to hear such bad news.
It's the worst news you might otherwise hear in your life, akin to losing faith in God. Akin to losing a friend or a loved one.
No one wants to be that wrong. Hearing so, means you reject that shit right away.
Your ego demands it. You have to protect yourself against the social consequences of making a faux pas that terrible. And you also don't believe it is even true.
It is just more lies told by The Enemy.
The only way, the ONLY way, to counter-program that, is to become The Friend.
The only way around that mental block is to be allowed inside the gates of the fortress as a trusted friend. And always stand up for your friend, even when she is wrong.
When the enemies come and attack her castle, you have her back. Even though you disagree.
And then, quietly, after the assault is over, and you've won, back in the keep, she asks you....
Why do you not think Obama is a crazy Muslim atheist communist who hates America?
And then, you get to tell your friend why that's probably not true, and she actually listens this time.
That's how you get inside that fortress. Only as a friend, never as an assaulting force. The mind is too powerful, it can repel any attack, no matter how logical.
The only way inside a closed mind is to be welcomed in as a friend.
That's the only way in.
If you don't believe me, ask the guy who turned a bunch of Klansmen into ex Klansmen, even though they started off believing he was inferior to them in every way.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daryl_Davis
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ORp3q1Oaezw
Now, not everyone has 4 freaking years to befriend a political extremist, get to know them, and find them to be genuinely decent underneath, or else they never would have ended up shedding their racist robes or their hateful beliefs once they realized those beliefs were wrong.
If these people were pure evil, that "heel realization" never, ever, ever would be possible.
You have to reach out to the good human being inside, who is wearing those horrible beliefs like a cloak.
They believe that cloak is protecting them from you, and that you're the danger. They think the cloak is the truth, and that it keeps them safe, and beloved.
Those cloaks and robes and symbols of hate aren't evil, to them. They are like the cross, or the rebel flag, or a Jesus figurine, or a statue of the Virgin Mary, or the American Flag, symbols that might mean either nothing or something hateful to you, but to them, they're sacred, and proof that they're on the side of good.
They believe those symbols mean they're The Good Guys.
And when people believe they are The Good Guys and that everyone else on Earth who doesn't believe the same way are The Bad Guys, that's when good people become dangerous, and hostile.
There is no evil in the world but the outcome of our stupid and misinformed actions. People are good or have the potential to have their good be expressed. Bad outcomes can be called evil, if you wish. They're deadly, disastrous, undesirable, and destructive, is what I call it. I don't really believe in "evil", but sure, a rape is evil, a murder is evil, hatred and racism is evil, sure. If you wanna call it that, that is the closest analogue to evil.
People don't turn from racism, political extremism, religious extremism, hatred, xenophobia, nationalism, cults, or other antisocial extremist viewpoints, unless they believe those viewpoints are bad for humanity, and therefore "evil".
People don't turn away from evil unless there was something good about them all along.
Now, not everyone will. Some people might genuinely be a jerk right down to near the core of them, and whatever good inside them has been turned away from for too long, and they're too pig headed and stubborn, to listen to anyone else.
Maybe you can't save everyone, or even lots of people. Maybe you don't have the time or the patience or the social skills or the time invested in being knowledgeable about the subject matter to turn someone away from political extremism.
Redemption isn't for everyone, and not everyone has the character needed to admit when they've been wrong. Some people let pride get in the way of that, and can never admit fault.
They're too afraid of their former family, gang members, klansmen, to ever openly admit these people were wrong. Maybe all they can ever do is leave that group. Maybe they never leave.
But it is possible to reach many of these people. You have to have a lot of character flaws to be completely unreachable.
Most people are better than that, regardless of their current belief system or how nasty it might be towards its perceived enemies.
And the lesson here, if there is one that I have to spell out, is that at the end of the day, I am not a better human being than these former racists.
I am not smarter. I am not a saint. I am not superior to them. I shared all their same weaknesses. I fell for some of the same lies. I trusted some people too much and others not enough. I felt I was smarter than people, and that was a flaw. I felt pride in who I was, as opposed to what I do, and that was a flaw. I felt superior because I was on the right team, and that was a flaw. I believed in things without checking if they were true, and that was a flaw. I wanted to be loved more than I cared about telling the truth, and that was a flaw.
I was the enemy. I became the friend. But I didn't get there by hate, and I didn't get there by showing up to random forums and telling everyone there how dumb and wrong and insane they were to believe the stuff everyone around them also believed.
You don't change minds that way.
You don't change minds at all. Minds choose to change on their own if they are open to change, and you've presented them an option they like better.
Minds sometimes make decisions in an amoral way. What's best for me, what's most pleasing to me, what has the most style.
Sometimes, substance doesn't matter.
Sometimes, having a slick, multi billion dollar propaganda channel with millionaire pundits in fancy suits and nice ties, who flatter you constantly and tell you how good you are as an American who loves God and Country, sometimes that matters to you more than the facts.
Sometimes simply feeling validated, loved, and welcomed, and accepted, that matters more than morality, in some part of your brain.
We are social creatures sometimes BEFORE we are moral creatures.
And sometimes, we also believe we are so moral, that we can give ourselves permission to be anti-social to those we don't care about as much.
And we all have the flaw of trusting people we know and like, more than a stranger.
That is not an authoritative source of truth, being "someone you know".
Sometimes the stranger is right. But you don't like them, know them, or trust them.
Because we are social, tribal creatures. And the tribe comes first, and the stranger is a danger.
That's how Nazism and racism and extremism festers. Through the flaws in the human brain that we all have. Evolutionary flaws that served as strengths in the age when every other tribe was likely hostile, and every sound in the forest was probably a predator we needed to be afraid of.
Those thoughts once had a use. They now are usually more of a danger than the imagined dangers.
Evolution and biology and sociology is not the same as morality. Those things came before morality, and they sometimes supersede morality, and honesty, and integrity, and facts.
Sometimes we gotta be a tribe before we gotta have our facts right. And that's why this shit exists at all.
It's not because we're evil. Or because we're good, and they're evil.
It's because we're human, and human beings are animals first and civilized second. Our instincts are to keep us and the tribe alive, before we give a shit about being moral.
Ideally, it should be the other way around, but we never would have survived to today if that were the case.
Sometimes killing the stranger who is a threat kept the tribe alive back then. That's why we gotta deal with the detritus still laying around cluttering up the human mind like "he looks different from me, he might be a danger".
That's wrong to think. But it's part of who we are, and we gotta outsmart that thought through experience and wisdom. Those things are superior to bad instincts.
But you'll never convince someone of that. They have to conclude that on their own, when confronting some neutral facts they don't feel threatened by.
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