On the positive side, I knew a Canadian couple where she was an evangelical Christian home-schooling their kids and he was a massive conspiracy theorist. They were both suspicious of vaccines and “mainstream medicine”, and he strongly disbelieved in the moon landings. 15 years ago there was no way to persuade them out of any of this. But over time, with the rise of the far right, QAnon, the antivax movement and MAGA, both of them realized they want nothing to do with those people or their insanity. She correctly identified the church as a bad influence and left it, she stopped preaching at people, they sent their kids to regular schools, they all got their vaccines, and he abandoned his conspiracy theories and now accepts that he was an idiot about the moon landings and laughs at his former self. Now you can have a perfectly normal conversation with them. So it is possible to travel in the other direction.
Yeah not only in the USA for sure. Here in Europe too. What irks me most is that it’s often people who claim to be unpolitical. But they aren’t really, they just don’t bother to inform themselves and react on gut feelings instead. Those gut feelings can be dumb anger or dumb “Peace & Love”, but if they lead to someone saying that “Putin does not seem like he wants to harm Europe” it doesn’t really matter anymore, it’s just dumb. What can you say to such people? “Inform yourself”?
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On the positive side, I knew a Canadian couple where she was an evangelical Christian home-schooling their kids and he was a massive conspiracy theorist. They were both suspicious of vaccines and “mainstream medicine”, and he strongly disbelieved in the moon landings. 15 years ago there was no way to persuade them out of any of this. But over time, with the rise of the far right, QAnon, the antivax movement and MAGA, both of them realized they want nothing to do with those people or their insanity. She correctly identified the church as a bad influence and left it, she stopped preaching at people, they sent their kids to regular schools, they all got their vaccines, and he abandoned his conspiracy theories and now accepts that he was an idiot about the moon landings and laughs at his former self. Now you can have a perfectly normal conversation with them. So it is possible to travel in the other direction.
I keep hoping people see the insanity and turn around like this but it never seems to happen. We’ll see if it happens this time.
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Yeah not only in the USA for sure. Here in Europe too. What irks me most is that it’s often people who claim to be unpolitical. But they aren’t really, they just don’t bother to inform themselves and react on gut feelings instead. Those gut feelings can be dumb anger or dumb “Peace & Love”, but if they lead to someone saying that “Putin does not seem like he wants to harm Europe” it doesn’t really matter anymore, it’s just dumb. What can you say to such people? “Inform yourself”?
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So yes, inform them. I do that. More or less - time permitting. And take care that their eyes don’t glaze over.
But the technology to fake it clearly could? Idiots…