What the president of Y Combinator learned from interviewing 100 Trump supporters

I recognize your position and I think its valid.
I would make the observation that the thing to resist here is normalization, since people who don’t care about politics pick their choices from the zeitgeist then it is important to make sure that reasonable ideas are openly discussed.
Yes, people who are ideologically invested in a stupid idea are likely to be threatened by rational discussion of that idea and this is where we may get into a discussion about what actually constitutes berating someone and yelling facts at them, but I do think that there’s a point where feeling yelled at and further retreating into a stupid idea is not really a natural reaction to being attacked, but a tactic to ignore whatever challenges a person’s preconceived notions.
So I would make a distinction between yelling facts at people and openly discussing ideas in public, some people will feel threatened by both, but you can’t protect a person’s feelings if they insist on using them as a shield.

4 Likes