The problem is that it is a lot easier to influence people by exploiting their biases, rather than get people to evaluate evidence and make their own decisions.
Influencing the masses to do what you know is best in the short term, at the expense of their critical faculties, tends to be an easily-exploitable slippery-slope towards authoritarianism and greed - for the right and left alike. Although the right appear to be more susceptible to it.
i’m applying all of this to my personal relationships and goals. putting up w happy-talk, sports, military worship, quackspeak, and overwhelming media choices should be daily discussion. next guru please:)
Read everything, even stuff you hate; listen. America needs listeners more than ever, then talkers. Are you ready to be a talker for America? You must put politics aside. You must stand for America, the ideal, the beacon on the hill of the world, man.
Even in war, we forsake some weapons and tactics for a variety of strategic and moral reasons.
Yes there are ways to influence people. Some of them are bullshit, lies, and fear/intimidation. You can’t use those methods and still maintain a respect for truth and evidence as a (tribal? blue tribe?) value, and if you lose that you can’t arrive at accurate conclusions or effective policies. I don’t want to lose the thing that makes the left worth supporting.
Happy is the mind too small for doubt.
Well, that second part is the thing: Conservative people do change their minds all the time. When I was a kid political correctness was running amok, but the battleground was whether it was okay to casually sexually assault women, not to say racist stuff. Since then Conservatives who were trying to argue that a little grab-ass is harmless and just boys being boys have all quietly accepted that it’s unacceptable (even if some still do it).
But people keep talking about changing the minds of Trump voters and changing the minds of conservatives. It’s like they are saying, “Let’s pour all of our efforts into the very hardest cases.” Like we should be deploying million-dollar-a-shot experimental cancer treatments to areas with endemic malaria. Yes, a person with cancer in a poor country with endemic disease deserves treatment just as much as I do, but aid workers who struggle to acquire limited resources to help are right to focus on mosquito nets.
Things do change over time, and people change, but I’m really tired of people philosophizing about what the silver bullet is. If everyone’s mind was changed by the same thing, then we’d all think the same thing by now. Maybe the solution is to use argument and debate to reach people who are on the cusp of agreement, and just flat out ignoring the people who are the hardest cases because we just don’t have the resources to reach them.
Counter-example: Donald Trump (and all of those who excused his behavior).
Though to further my point: Donald Trump denied doing these things, as did the majority of his defenders. He knows it’s “unacceptable” even if he does it anyway.
Gay folks have managed to change a lot of conservative minds over the last few decades. They did it by not hiding the fact that they were gay. Over time, a conservative person goes from hating gays and not knowing any personally, to hating gays-except-for-Ron because he’s all right. And then, eventually, realizing that it’s just not that big a deal.
Instead of arguing politics with conservatives, just come out about your politics without being a scold. Let them see that you don’t sip lattes, you work and you don’t have your hand out for anything.
As Harvey Milk said, “Gay brothers and sisters,… You must come out.
Come out… to your parents… I know that it is hard and will hurt them
but think about how they will hurt you in the voting booth!"
Bigger the mouth, narrower the mind behind it.
That can be an uphill battle.
Very true.
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