He Who Shall Not Be Named might be aggressively driving over greens and taking endless mulligans in South Florida, but the rage-addicts he unleashed on the Capitol are unfortunately NOT confined to a relative handful of bellowing horned pelt-wearers, crime-selfie enthusiasts and would-be lynch mob participants. We’re stuck not only with at least some of the coup-fomenters in Congress but also tens of millions of people who sympathize with the insurrectionists. How do we solve that problem?
Since November 2016, it’s been an article of faith with me that people who traffic in wingnut lies should be confronted. Prior to that, I mostly deflected arguments with wingnut family members by reminding them we had a “no politics” rule at the holiday table. But after that, I started calling them out on their bullshit.
It went about as well as you’d expect. I’m at varying levels of estrangement with some relatives, and this has been exacerbated by the pandemic, which they think I’m using as an excuse to avoid them. (Confession: they have a point, probably.)
But to shift from family drama to the broader implications of toxic politics, the coup attempt in DC earlier this month signals the possibility of a full-blown insurgency. That it was centered on a ludicrous orange carbuncle who seems to be rapidly fading from relevance shouldn’t blind us to the lesson that millions of our fellow citizens are okay with domestic terrorism as a political tool.
So maybe it’s time to consider other solutions for reconciliation, interpersonally and on a national scale? An article in The Atlantic by Anne Applebaum explores how people in other countries that found themselves coexisting with a violent insurgency coped:
Here’s another idea: Drop the argument and change the subject. That’s the counterintuitive advice you will hear from people who have studied Northern Ireland before the 1998 peace deal, or Liberia, or South Africa, or Timor-Leste—countries where political opponents have seen each other as not just wrong, but evil; countries where people are genuinely frightened when the other side takes power; countries where not all arguments can be solved and not all differences can be bridged. In the years before and after the peace settlement in Northern Ireland, for example, many “peacebuilding” projects did not try to make Catholics and Protestants hold civilized debates about politics, or talk about politics at all. Instead, they built community centers, put up Christmas lights, and organized job training for young people.
If you think that sounds like policymaking to let the passive insurrectionists off the hook after they supported an unforgiveable break with our social and political compact, Applebaum feels you:
I recognize that this is not what everyone wants to hear. Even as I write this, I can hear many readers of this article uttering a collective snort of annoyance. Quite a few, I imagine, feel that, having won the election, they don’t want to pay for a bunch of happy-clappy vaccine volunteers, or new roads in rural America, or mental-health services and life counseling for the MAGA-infected—let them learn to live with us. I can well imagine that, like the Colombians who hate the reintegration of FARC, many will resent every penny of public money, every ounce of political time, that is spent on the seditious minority. Some might even prefer an American version of de-Baathification: track down every last Capitol-riot sympathizer and shame them on social media, preferably with enough rigor that they lose their jobs.
I know how they feel, because I often feel that way too. But then I remember: It won’t work. We’ll wake up the next morning, and they’ll still be there.
She’s not wrong. But I’m still convinced that dropping the argument and changing the subject creates a permission structure in which people who’ve lost touch with facts, reason and reality itself can act out violently or at least tacitly support those who do.
In his inauguration speech, Biden called for unity and said it was the only way forward, but he also explicitly called out the dangerous nature of lies. And don’t lies have to be called out for the truth to prevail? I’m just thinking out loud here, but that concept seems at odds with the approach Applebaum outlines.
As Steve M. said, the real silent majority is the 81 million who elected Biden and Harris without a single fucking boat parade. We’re strong, but I’m not sure we have the combined might to drag the 74 million-member screeching and aggrieved minority down the road to redemption without confronting the lies, and that means NOT dropping the argument and NOT changing the subject.
Maybe January 6 will fade. Maybe a competent administration will get the pandemic under control, revive the economy and see that prosperity and justice are more equitably shared. Maybe that success will beat back the forces of demagoguery and inspire greater civic participation so that the will of the actual majority is more frequently carried out. That is my hope.
Anyhoo, open thread.
Baud
Way to change the subject.
WaterGirl
Confront the lies. Call them out. Let there be consequences.
Then we start to move on.
WaterGirl
@Baud: Never change, Baud.
Miss Bianca
I was in Belfast in 2015 with a dear friend for the Festival of Fools, organized by the Belfast Community Circus. My friend Jenn had been its director for a couple years. It was formed with the explicit purpose of bringing Catholic and Protestant kids – and their families – together in a nonthreatening, noncompetitive way, and get them working and playing together. It was a large and to this day largely unknown factor in those efforts to bring the community together across religious/political lines – efforts that culminated in the Good Friday Agreement.
These efforts can work. I know that I am still too enraged by the MAGAts in my community to extend any kind of hand across those religious/political lines right now. Maybe in a year or two.
WaterGirl
@Miss Bianca:
Confront the lies. Call them out. Let there be consequences.
Then extend a hand.
BruceFromOhio
The only way to shut down a bully is to slam his fucking face into the cement, in front of a crowd.
Figuratively or literally.
Sebastian
We cannot turn the believers of lies but we can punish the spreaders of lies. That’s a much easier task and also very satisfying.
Baud
Although all 74 million Trump voters engaged in a rotten act, it’s incorrect and unproductive to view them as a single monolithic bloc that will remain unified for all time. A single approach will not work.
Our side tends to want to accomplish things all at once, but big projects have to be tackled piecemeal.
schrodingers_cat
With their Orange patron saint in exile and no longer in the WH this so called insurgency will peter out. There will still be McVeigh like people but I doubt that without the WH patronage the comfortable and well off folks we saw on Jan 6 will repeat their performance.
Especially if they are made to pay for what they did. If they get away they will come to power in say a decade or more. That’s what happened in India.
BJP’s murderous rage propelled it to power in a little over 20 years.
Immanentize
The frame of 74 million versus 81 million is completely false too. Sure, 74 million voted for Trump but only a fraction of those believe he should remain president. Even the 75% of Republicans polled believe there was wide spread fraud does NOT mean 75% of 74 million believe he should remain President.
As I’ve said before, we should not forgive the insurrectionists, they should be punished! but at the same time we should fight the “America is so divided” lazy talking point.
Baud
@schrodingers_cat:
What’s your thought on Biden’s immigration proposal?
burnspbesq
This may be short-sighted, but I care less about what people think than what they do. Long, and heavily publicized, prison sentences for the insurrectionists will go a long way toward deterring future bad acts.
Let ‘em stew in impotent rage for all eternity.
Jeffro
Unity requires a shared commitment to the rule of law. The rule of law requires justice, and justice requires accountability.
Or to put it another way: every thing that we let slide benefits the Republicans, whose only standard is double standards.
Immanentize
@Baud: ok, I took longer to type my version of
“What Baud said.”
Doug R
Al Qaeda had some success in Southeast Asia. Until the Boxing Day tsunami. I guess seeing bags and bags of food and other aid from the great satanic west kinda knocked the wind out of recruitment.
Expanded Medicaid and a public option in the exchanges and rural broadband internet and a robust public health system and jobs rebuilding the green new infrastructure will all help.
Foreign amplification of falsehoods needs to be rooted out and outright lies done away with and countries of origin revealed.
Major Major Major Major
I think I agree with the Atlantic piece. We should pursue policies that temper populist impulses, while we work on developing communities that people feel at home in. It’s good for everyone and defangs Trumpism. As for the individuals, a lot of them are just marks, not always very fine people, but like, I don’t think arguing with my in-laws who got snookered by VOA and stuff is going to work, compared to Biden’s detrumpification at VOA, and general pursuit of America First policies in trade and manufacturing. (Whether economists think those policies are great is sort of immaterial.)
It’s not about deprogramming everyone, just deprogramming enough people.
Jeffro
@BruceFromOhio: 110% this.
eclare
@schrodingers_cat: Some are already pissed off that He Who Shall Not Be Named didn’t pardon them before he left office.
Kent
I think she is right to an extent. Time goes by fast and you capture the next generation and let THEM work on the olds. Elections are won on the margins in this country. We will never convince the rabid MAGAts of anything. They don’t want to be convinced. But peel off 5% of the most ambivalent from the back end and suddenly they are a rump party.
Get in and do simple good shit for people and then talk about it. Don’t make it mind-numbingly complex with endless means tests and and sort of thing. Just simple good things, and then promote them.
p.a.
Do those examples of successfully “changing the subject” have examples of 24/7 Fux ‘News’, OANN, Newsmax, hate radio polluting their discourse? Not a rhetorical question, I honestly don’t know.
schrodingers_cat
@Baud: I haven’t looked at all the details but so far I like whatever I have seen. And getting rid of “alien” to refer to immigrants is indeed a welcome change. That always bugged me.
Adam L Silverman
@schrodingers_cat: This insurgency began in the 1790s. The one chance to put it down for good, after the Union had achieved successful battlefield termination in 1865, was squandered. It will not dissipate. It will not fritter away.
Adam L Silverman
There’s a reason Applebaum is advancing the argument she’s advancing: she’s in completely, inexorably, 100% professionally and personally connected to the conservative, whatever that actually means today, thought leaders, movement leaders, and politicians in the US, in Britain, in Poland, in Hungary, and in Israel that have turned peddling these lies into a lucrative political and business model. Her husband got elected to the Polish legislature as a member of one of these parties and it was only after his colleagues turned on him and her that she got the burned hand lesson.
It wasn’t until the political party her husband was an elected official of started putting wanted posters up with her face and his name declaring him a race traitor because he married a Jew that she started changing her tune at all. She needs the conversation to be diverted because if it isn’t someone is going to ask the question of why, exactly, Applebaum supported all of this without any issue, and profited off of it, but only until it started to threaten her personal safety?
Immanentize
@eclare: The Shaman of He Men is one of the pissed off at no pardon. Mom will have to knit him organic food for years.
eclare
@Immanentize: Hahaha…
schrodingers_cat
@Adam L Silverman: Perhaps, but their importance can be marginalized. Totally agree about AA.
Paul T
I usually shut up my moron friends by telling them go ahead with the insurgency and dissolve the government..blah blah blah……and then wonder when your next Social Security check or Medicare appointment or VA Hospital visit will happen? Where will Grandma and Grandpa live when the checks stop.
I can then see the faraway look in their eyes. They think it is a football game or something. Except if they win, the game is done forever.
MattF
I’m in the lucky situation that my immediate family and friends are unanimously true-blue, so maybe I can approach this in a semi-objective fashion. I think the people who committed provably criminal acts in the Capitol insurrection should pay an actual price for their actions, and that includes you-know-who. Beyond that, there’s spectrum of bad behavior and I suppose you have to draw a line somewheres.
WayneL140
MAGAstan describes the nation within a nation. It perfectly describes the one-third of the country that does not live in the US. They don’t understand the Constitution, don’t live by the law. Since they overwhelmingly approve of taking the capitol by armed insurgents what laws do they follow? And they simply refuse to change their minds on anything.
Wait, they say, we change our minds all the time! Yes, but, you only get worse. You changed your mind on destroying the whole country.
If the armed insurgents had succeeded, and taken hostage all the Democrats–Mitt Romney and Mike Pence, too–what would have been the outcome? What if they had hanged Mike Pence? What if the numerous police and military had supported them, and they had taken state capitals? What if they had managed to put Donald Trump back into office? What if this wasn’t a movie? What if you were the bad guys?
This would no longer be America. Think about this phrase: You have broken all laws. Every single law we have is now wiped out. How could you possibly think we could go back to the way we were, at any point?
Spend five minutes thinking about what the US would look like. What happens next? The Trump Administration could not get the vaccines delivered at all. There was no plan. Imagine these clowns–along with the leaders of the mob, who now think they have a right to a seat at the table–imagine for five seconds this group organizing a country of 300 million people. If this does not blow your mind, Welcome to MAGAstan. Good luck.
Kent
@p.a.: You have to battle it with simple and relentless messaging. Trump understood this. That’s why he was so obsessive about shit like getting his name on the stimulus checks. Dems are pretty bad about it. I remember all the signs that went up in 2009 about the stimulus recovery infrastructure projects back then but they were muddled and poorly done. And even then, the GOP whined about it.
Amir Khalid
I’m no fan of Anne Applebaum either. But she has a point. Debating who’s right and who’s wrong, what so-and-so’s just deserts should be, is still continuing a conflict. The idea here is that you can use a constructive distraction to get people’s minds off the axes they would otherwise be grinding and on to something mutually beneficial; something in which they’ll be on the same side instead of at each other’s throats. Not the worst idea anyone’s ever had.
sab
@Miss Bianca: I think I’ll go halfway. I’ll be somewhat friendly again to the evangelicals across the street I’d been friendly with for 20 years, but no way in hell am I ever going to help push their next door neighbor’s car in the snow.
BruceFromOhio
@Immanentize: Is that the “Dances with Karens” guy with the horns?
condorcet runner-up
there is the other paradox that a lot of us fall into, where we end up in situations where you’re sort of playing whack-a-mole taking on and defusing one bad faith argument after another.
but the whole point of a bad faith argument is that it’s not meant to be debated, it’s there to troll and to provide cover for some abhorrent views (which, over the trump years, we saw that previously unconscionable views became more and more okay –in their minds– to state publicly).
what i’ve found is that when people are engaging in public – either in person or over social media – and you realize they’re engaging in complete bad faith, it may be useful to quickly deflate the argument but much more important to immediately ridicule and shun the person making these arguments. it’s more of an engagement via lack of engagement, and people who i don’t really care about can sit and shout into the void as much as they want.
it took me a long time to accept that i don’t have to have the last word on these things. even as some moron thinks they “won” whatever argument (“a ha! your lack of response PROVES I’M RIGHT AND YOUR LIBRUL PLAYBOOK WONT WORK ON ME ARGLE BARGLE”). but all a lot these people want is validation and attention. i realize that a lot of them end up retreating to like-minded people that then prop up and propagate these things, but there’s not much you can do for someone who is unwilling to find their own way out of it.
the calculus changes, of course, if it’s a love one or someone who you care about a lot. in those situations, i just let them know they’re wrong and that it’s not a matter of opinion, and that i’ll be there for them when/if they want to re-join reality, but i’m not going to go along with any bullshit and until then there will be consequences in our relationships such as not seeing them, not talking to them, etc. more like how you’d treat someone who has fallen into a cult. no humoring (as hard as it may be), and no actual contact besides a periodic check-in to see if they’re still full on Q (or whatever) or not.
Evil_Paul
It’s probably worth pointing out that the Democratic platform IS outreach and reconciliation. Unlike the Republicans, you guys don’t have “hurt the other guys” as a specific policy goal. When Obamacare was passed, it was meant for all Americans (it took direct effort by Republican governors to oppose it). Meanwhile, Trump actively denied Blue States their fair share of PPE, brutalized Immigrants and refugees, etc…
I’m not sure how you guys can get it through their thick skulls that you’re actually not trying to destroy them, but it terms of actual policies and legislation, not much has to change. Democrats are trying to govern America while Republicans are trying to hurt non-Republicans.
Brachiator
We are the majority, and we are not set on punishment and retribution of those who voted for Trump. This is why I get annoyed with prattle about “healing” and “unity” and how can bipartisanship happen.
It’s up to the Republicans to decide if they want to get sane.
I am not all that hopeful, based on a BBC news interview with a number of Republicans. Many of those interviewed still want what they want. It was disheartening to see how many insist on kicking 11 million undocumented people out of the country, even though Trump was unable to do much about people already here except make their lives miserable.
Still, I agree that it might help to try to change the subject and to distract these folks. We still have to deal with the pandemic and the economy and other matters. I would hope that we all agree on the goals even if we prefer different paths to the destination.
MattF
[deleted]
Bruuuuce
Consequences before reunification.
No justice? No peace.
Kelly
I got a head start on confronting my wingnut relatives way back in the runup to GW Bush’s Iraq war. One of my aunts forwarded a full page “the evil Muslims are gonna kill us all” email rant. Kill’em all let God sort them out flavor. I did a change all Muslim to well um that unpleasant n***** word, added “reads just like this to me”. A few days of acrimonious emails regarding collective guilt, religious hypocrisy, cowardly bullying, etc flew about and none of them contacted me about anything for 10 years or so. Communication has been restored but none of them mention politics or religion to me anymore.
GregMulka
Chuck took to the twitters to tell Mitch to get fucked.
schrodingers_cat
No. I dropped the JS voting friend and her Orange bigot voting husband instead.
And like BC @ top I am in various stages of estrangement with my Modi-loving family members and only recently been able to talk about politics with my father who agrees with me that the fluffing of T that Modi did was terrible.
Kent
@WayneL140: The problem is that it isn’t state by state. it’s rural vs urban. Here in the liberal Pacific Northwest we have rural counties in the eastern half of OR and WA that are 80% red, as red as deepest red Wyoming. By contrast, New Orleans in red state LA is about 80% blue. As is all the larger cities in the south.
The thing that makes states red vs blue is not so much geography, but the percentage of the population that is urban vs rural. That is the only real difference between OR and ID, or say CO vs WY.
condorcet runner-up
@schrodingers_cat: this is the way.
people need to understand that if they really want to sign onto abhorrent beliefs, one of the consequences is that their real life friends may no longer want to be friends.
Evil_Paul
Just to be clear, I’m not saying “Don’t worry, be happy.” I’m just pointing out that Democrats don’t necessarily need to make any major sacrifices to their legislative agenda in order to reach out. They just need to sell it better.
Cameron
I agree with Anne Applebaum; I notice that the types of unifying projects she mentions are local, community-based ones. I think people tend to join these authoritarian/fascist/whatever movements because they feel powerless and believe they’re absorbing the Great Leader’s power through some sort of wingnut osmosis. Local projects that they can work on and see positive results from offer one way of letting them feel they have more control over their lives. Now, as far as the leaders of such movements go, they’re going to have to be confronted, since they’re not going to want to settle for local community stuff. I’m not very hopeful on this front. I think we’d need a de-Nazification program, and I’m not sure that can be pulled off in this country.
Delk
Still not going to watch any Sarandon movies.
JCJ
@schrodingers_cat:
I remember when I was a kid watching TV when they would air these announcements that “aliens must register” or something like that. It always frightened me until my mother told me we did not need to worry about that. Before my wife became a citizen she was a “resident alien” which always kind of amused me. She is from Thailand, not some far off solar system.
CarolDuhart2
The counterpoint to this is our own experience with Reconstruction. Forgetting let millions linger in poverty and violence and unremitting resentment. Even the example of Northern Ireland hasn’t created enough of a groundswell to kill sentiments of sectarianism or the attitude that Protestants should rule Catholics. Think of the Orange Parades in Northern Ireland and Scotland.
What does work is what the conservatives fear: integration where people mix, mingle, marry-and immigration that brings in people who aren’t invested in the grudges of the past. I believe this is really why Republicans fear immigration. A lot of the racist narratives rests on the resentment of losing to the North and the fact that new people scramble that sort of thing. One reason that New Orleans can now take down the signs is that it sees itself as a world city, and the Lost Cause seems immature to people who come from elsewhere. Enough of them in a city, and there’s no political price to take down increasingly irrelevant and immature statues.
schrodingers_cat
@JCJ: Yes. If you are on a long term visa then you are non-resident alien and if you are on a GC you are a resident alien. I wonder when that terminology was adopted.
Wayne
I’ve got 2 family members that are losing their shit over gas prices going up, no cots for the NG, enraged over the democrats wanting to give $1400 checks instead of $2000 (not good with math), blasting the dems for not doing enough, then blasting the dems for wanting to do too much, happy “he’s” not attending the inauguration and then a few pages up blasting the dems for what they “did” locking him out of it, etc. etc. etc. blaming it all on the radical left socialist commy bastards. There is NO reasoning with them. NONE. Their entire FB thread is total politics. They are perpetually angry, cannot walk in anyone else’s shoes, and brag they tune in to Fox in the morning to learn what more the left has done over night. One literally screamed in all caps that if you voted for any democrats she did not want to EVER here from you again and please unfriend her, delete her phone number and so on. Just Wow. It’s very distressing. And we did.
Sloane Ranger
I do not know the background issues in all the places mentioned but I do know that in South Africa and Northern Ireland the divisions were political, policy and, most importantly, fact based. Using apolitical means of trust building, of showing that people who look different or believe something different aren’t ogres, can be effective.
What we have now, however, are divisions stoked by outright lies and these lies continue to find a place in the public space. Ways can be found to get people to co-operate across divides but their benefit will fade once those who believed the lies return to their normal lives, relatives, friends and preferred media consumption.
I honestly don’t see how anything can be achieved until Fox News, OAN, Alex Jones etc. and the politicians who repeat their lies are denied a platform. Sorry to be a bit of a downer.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Adam L Silverman: you confirm what I was thinking about Applebaum, though I didn’t know the Face-Eating-Leopards had gone after her personally. I may or may not get around to reading her piece, I keep meaning to subscribe to the Atlantic, because I need to pay for more articles I’ll get around to reading one of these days (twitter squirrel!), but does she meaningfully address the racism underlying trumpism?
I’m all for those things, and those vaccine volunteers should be paid employees. I have no idea how we begin to address the mental health crisis that, the last few weeks, and Q-Anon, have showed, is even more widespread than I thought.
Windpond
My brother and I are an example of the 74/81 million split. When we talk politics, I ask him what he’s hearing in the news (Fox). Often it’s words like ‘stack the courts’, ‘defund’ the police that trip him up. If I substitute expand the courts because of the increase in population and changing demographics, he says, ‘well when you put it that way, I agree’. When I say restructure funds for the police, I get a similar response. Somehow we’ve found a way to communicate mainly because we respect each other’s opinion even if we don’t agree. It’s difficult to compete with Fox repeatedly looping news filled with outright lies that incite.
Punchy
The problem with “build them roads in Ruralville” and “improve their healthcare” activities is that it only works to soften their longstanding Dem-hatred if they are living in Actual Reality World(TM). I’m sure new highways will be OAN-spun as “driveways to re-education camps” and Newsmax will suddenly claim better healthcare is about forcing abortions, Hg-vaccines, and Bill Gates’ tracking chips.
When so many will simply believe everything these sites spew, there’s really no way of affecting change that allows for a softening of their mindset.
West of the Rockies
Turns out that while America’s worst may be full of passionate intensity, Biden supporters do NOT lack conviction. Now, if we can hang some convictions around some Trump necks, all the better.
Karen
150 people in Portland vandalized the Dems’ headquarters. We can’t take our ball off the ball. They and the Insurrectionists are determined. How can we stop them short of militarizing?
Brachiator
@Kent:
One of the many reasons I could never be a Fox News watching Republican is that I react very badly to simple and relentless messaging. It also causes me to distrust the messenger. Lies and bullshit are lies and bullshit, even if supposedly well-intentioned.
Sometimes I need information. And yeah, some things need a bit of publicity and marketing.
Not sure what a good middle ground might be.
HumboldtBlue
Hall of Famer Henry “Hank” Aaron dies at 86
Ruckus
Think of the entire shitforbrains maladministration as a wounded animal striking out. Because in many ways that’s exactly what they are. Was Ireland really any different? People form groups of like minded people and they usually are polar opposites with a different group. When countries form opposite political groups, those usually fester until there is a war of some kind. We had our civil war, but we really have not ever healed from that. We have been having a war of the very wealthy against everyone else for about the last 60 or more years. And the two, power money and racism have joined forces. It’s taken 165 yrs that we tried to underfoot the racism, to move past it, and that obviously hasn’t worked. It’s been probably longer that we’ve been not trying to get past the wealthy running the country to their benefit, massively over the needs of everyone else. And I think if you look at history over the last at least 400 yrs, those two issues are the cause of war, and all it’s repercussions. Probably much longer than that. We have developed segments of science devoted to the superficial differences in human beings to justify that racism, as well as complicated financial laws and dogma to attempt to govern the greed that is a human trait, and then questioned why we do that, without really getting to the heart of the matter. It’s survival. Taken to the extremes of any possible logical fallacies.
We have to actually look at the real reasons that we are separated in dogma, and what if anything we can do about it. Here in the US we have, as people in most nations have done, glossed over the rationals that people use to justify their almost addiction to hate and greed. And part of that is that it is basic to humans to do this and it never actually does anything to solve the problems that always arise. We are group animals, and religion, politics, and money are the major groups that always effect how we live together – or don’t. How we govern – or don’t. How we solve our differences – or don’t.
We always talk about differences and how to live with them and eventually it all falls apart and someone always says maybe we need to just not talk about it, and it never gets better if we don’t.
I doubt I need to go over the last few years of our painful and unnecessary political/economic bullshit, but if we cover this over with the concept that we can’t coexist with discussion and openness and yes pain, we will never get past the issues. We fought an uncivil war over racism and then did what, we glossed over and appeased the losers so as not to tear apart the country. How well has that worked out over the last 165 yrs? That rug we’ve been sweeping stuff under is lumpy as fuck, smells like bullshit and is worn through in way too many places. Hiding the crap isn’t working, and in the end it never works.
Kent
@Punchy: Yes, but most people living in Red America don’t watch Newsmax or OAN, or probably even know what they are. Most people don’t even watch Fox news. I’ve lived for long stretches of my life in Red America. Most people are just going about their ordinary lives, paying very little attention to any of that.
gvg
The active leaders need to be held accountable. The sheep are more complex. The young are easier to lead out of hate I think.
Efforts at reintegrating schools and ending privatization which is partly segregation IMO will reduce future problems . I went to school with a significant black population but still majority white. It was the normal I grew up with so that later on I was bothered if I noticed something was too white. All of my jobs had a mixture. I think a childhood normal helps in the long run. Schools though are really significant and need to be watched carefully.
I don’t intend to put up with racists contractors or businesses in the future though. The small bigots need to be taught to hide it again. There used to be a rule, never talk religion or politics at work or with clients that was pretty wise anyway. The last 2 decades I have been running into more small businesses that flaunt their version of religion and sometimes politics as a sales plus. That really needs to be stopped somehow. Also this type all impress me as poor quality Christians as opposed to the ones I know who do good charity like elder care, feeding the poor or helping clean up after hurricanes.
Nicole
There is value in community-building work, though probably more for younger kids than adults. I attended a lecture on microaggressions a few years ago and what stuck out to me was that the lecturer felt the only solid solution against biases was chronic, positive encounters with people of other backgrounds. And that’s backed up by research- the white people most likely to have biased opinions of people of other races are the ones least likely to actually have any contact with anyone who isn’t white. And that’s probably easier to do with kids.
For the right-wingers who are set in their ways- I dunno what the solution is. I read an interesting Twitter thread by someone who said, to some extent, white bigots assume every white person agrees with them, even if the other person won’t admit it. The Twitter person said she dealt with her extremely bigoted next-door neighbor by, any time he offered up the latest right-wing conservative nonsense, by saying, “I know you don’t really believe that.” It would puncture his balloon and he’d shut down the conversation. Her point was that a lot of these people absolutely do know what they’re saying isn’t true and a problem is that we try to engage as though it’s an argument presented in good faith.
I remember asking my right-wing uncle directly if he thought Obama was born in the US and he hemmed and hawed before saying, “I don’t know!” I realize now, he knew. He knew full well the Kenya this was a lie. And he couldn’t bring himself to flat-out join the lie (he is a very honest person, to a fault sometimes), but boy, he really wanted to.
Chief Oshkosh
Ann Applebaum needs to write on something she knows, because based on your synopsis and highlights, she sure as fuck doesn’t know how The Troubles were semi-resolved in Ireland.
Felanius Kootea
I think outright lies should be confronted and condemned because we can see where ignoring them leads. I do think that focusing on projects and policies that lift everyone up can help ease some tensions, as Biden is trying to do.
People have been fed disinformation and fallen for that disinformation. It is clearly going to be necessary to target those disinformation networks and penalize them (I don’t know the best way to do this).
On a completely different topic, this story about a dog running away from home to wait at the hospital for her dad for six days made me smile this morning.
Kent
You do realize that those were lefty protestors who did that? A menagerie of ANTIFA-adjacent types?
West of the Rockies
I have pointed out several times that AM rage radio and Fox are big engines in this rightwing insanity. Publishers of Coulter (et al) books are to blame as well. I have no idea how we address those ruptured spigots of misinformation and resentment.
Matt McIrvin
To my mind, the amount of slack you get should scale inversely with how much power you have and how much violence you exert.
We can’t visit revenge upon 70 million people. We can prosecute insurrectionists, terrorists and elected criminals to the fullest extent of the law.
And people don’t get to lie without being called on it.
Kelly
Yep, and it isn’t new. The same people that went in for Trump were mad about the spotted owls back in the 1980’s. Mad about land use and streamside logging regulations back in the 1970’s. They have a nice even disposition, a little bit angry all the time.
Nicole
The other thing that tough is that FOX News traffics in anger as a drug- it offers up a product that keeps its viewers in a state of rage, and anger is a high. During the Iraq War, I very quickly got addicted to Keith Olbermann’s show because he was offering the left-wing version of FOX News. And I reached a point where I would spend the entire day stewing about what the GOP was doing, waiting for 8PM and my next hit of Olbermann. Once I realized it, I stopped watching, but addiction is tough to beat.
Miss Bianca
@sab: How about pushing the neighbor’s car *into* the snow?
RepubAnon
@Sebastian: I’d suggest a multi-pronged approach:
Until we establish trust again, the conspiracies will continue their march.
Chris Johnson
@Major Major Major Major: I agree. You cannot starve people into being less desperate. There’s fuel for these fires that can be undermined by acting Dem-like.
I would also suggest to all that this is not happening in a vacuum, or by natural political pressures: this is a WAR fought by unorthodox means and every bit of it was driven by Russia, at a safe distance.
They ran Trump, except he was and is a narcissist wrecking ball and could not follow orders, so they placed him and then manipulated him through directing right-wing media and through other more trustworthy agents. Find and punish the agents.
They ran QAnon and are STILL running it, through extensive manipulation of things like 4chan and Facebook and Twitter. Find and punish the agents. Force the willing tools like Twitter and Facebook to continue to backpedal frantically. Control ’em because somebody is going to, and if it ain’t us it will continue to be Russia.
This didn’t just happen. This is war. If these crazy right-wingers aren’t so deftly controlled and goaded on, they’ll fizzle and they can be taken care of and tamed. This was DONE to them because they were vulnerable: either (sometimes) economically, or (obviously) because they were resentful racist white nationalists. Those were the ones who could fly on private jets to the Capitol to storm it. Those are the super-entitled ones. Poor ones can’t do such things, but are also out there in great numbers, and voted.
This was DONE to those people, and it’s ongoing. And that is the real deplorable thing. It’s not a crime to be stupid: half of us are stupider than the median. What you do when you’re recruited, that can be a crime.
KayInMD (formerly Kay (not the front-pager))
This. The insurrectionists, the liars – those in government, those in media, the social media apps that funneled folks to more and more radical “information” – need to be identified, called out, and punished. There can be no healing without removing this infection.
But many of the 74 million Trump voters are just kneejerk Repub voters. So fine, with them, we can use the policy-forward methods of unification. There is room to forgive, to allow that they were led astray (granted, this is much easier for me, as a well-off white woman, to say). But there must be the clear example that there will be no tolerance for white supremacy, for the assumption that only white votes count, that if Repubs don’t get their way in the voting booth they can simply take it by force. That must be made crystal clear to all. Only then can we move on.
Ruckus
@Paul T:
They are one issue people. They let it fester because they aren’t getting what they think is right and proper and at some point it becomes their defining issue.
They see their issue as the one thing that is holding back a massive improvement in human existence, their human existence. It never is a massive improvement, it always comes with worse issues down the road and they do what humans always do, they double down, because they can’t be wrong, it’s everyone outside their group. And the cycle goes on.
MisterForkbeard
I think Unity is fully compatible with combatting lies. In fact, they’re necessary partners. You can’t achieve unity if half your populace believes fervently that your president is part of a huge shadowy pedophilic cabal, for example. You can’t have unity if the losers are constantly pushing a lie about how Democrats are going to come and put them in camps, or how they’re the most censored people in history, etc. It can’t work if they’re in a constant state of outrage and high dudgeon based on lies.
This is a different conversation than whether or not Unity requires consequences, which I also believe. The consequences don’t have to be severe – it’s not like we’re going to put Republicans in camps or anything. But kicking the Cruz/Gosar/McCawley’s out of government and into cushy private jobs would be great, and a significant consequence is if these people just had to admit they messed up. That’s it. A “We went too far and we were wrong” would still be consequential for them, helpful for the nation, and it’s not even hard to do it. But we haven’t gotten that.
Tenar Arha
@Adam L Silverman: I couldn’t read it. She is one of those Jewish people who always seems to have forgotten how recent our acceptance in the US is, & are sooo surprised in our present. People like this tend to make me angry.
Also, too wasn’t all the “community building” accompanied by a mandatory communal remembrance of all the atrocities committed during the Troubles & after? Did she even mention that? Bc if she didn’t discuss how these communities did go thru a process of naming the truth, her examples of how communities were then healed is tainted by ignoring the history of what actually happened.
Punchy
IMO, they spew it because it sells. It sells because it’s popular. It’s popular because it reinforces the bullshit they see on social media. Capitalism works in all directions.
When everyone got their news from the same source (5/6PM local news), I have to believe these conspiracy theories were much, much more rare, and only traveled via the speed of mouth-to-mouth. Social media changes everything.
UncleEbeneezer
The SwingLeft How We Win podcast had a great interview with the author of “Homegrown Violent Extremism”, Dr. Erroll Southers. He said similar things about approaching these people like cult members you want to try to extricate and deprogram. It’s really hard work, takes a lot of empathy/patience and obviously not everyone is a viable candidate for extraction. Anyways it’s a good listen.
WhatsMyNym
@Kent:
We have some pretty tiny counties (by population) in WA. The lowest vote for Pres. Biden I could find was Lincoln county at 24.36%, with only 6,863 total voters. And we have smaller counties than that.
sanjeevs
I think Cambridge Analytica type techniques can work with many fractures to split a society. In America it’s race, in Poland religion because those existed already so were easiest to work with.
But in the U.K. they were able to do it with EU membership where only a single digit percentage of the population even considered it a major issue in 2014. In the Philippines it was drugs/crime even though a similar percentage would have considered these a major issue in 2014.
I doubt the Northern Ireland ‘bridge the divide’ stuff is relevant
Middlelee
I haven’t had time to read the comments so probably 30 of the more articulate commenters have already written this better than I but here goes.
When we look at the 70 whatever million people who voted for Trump in the last election and consider whether we need to stop trying to persuade them and just skip to dropping the current story and changing the subject, we need to figure out who we are trying to talk to.
The clowns we’ve seen following Trump mindlessly and stupidly are not the only people voting Republican. These clowns can afford $3,000 to $5,000 worth of clothing and equipment to attend a rally. They are not following Trump because they lack food, schools, medical care, decent places to live.
There are other Republicans out there who are truly downtrodden and left behind. They cannot find work and it would be pointless to retrain them because there are damn few jobs. How many fast food jobs are there in poor white neighborhoods? How many decent schools are in rural communities in the south where so many poor white people live?
How many lost jobs can be reclaimed? How many hospitals or clinics will let you through the door without insurance? How many doctors and nurses travel around these neighborhoods and dirt-poor communities offering free preventive care in this grand country?
Many millions of these people vote Republican when the Republicans clearly despise them and have been steadily ripping away any help for them. I suspect they vote Republican for the same reason I vote Democrat.
I was born a Democrat. Every person in my family was a Democrat. I learned Democrat with my mother’s milk. When I was about to turn 21 I did not sit down and have a reasoned conversation with myself about which party most reflected my values. And I stayed a Democrat because of people I respected and whose values were so worth learning and following. There were many of those people but Dorothy Day is the only one I can think of just now.
I get very tired of so many people writing about how to reach Republicans. These sages are so fucking privileged they have no idea just how bad life really is for millions of Americans. You know, the ones the NYT reporters and David Brooks never see or talk to. They should read Barbara Ehrenreich before they write about how to talk to fucking Republicans.
Stuart Frasier
@schrodingers_cat: My current green card says “permanent resident”. The previous one said “resident alien”.
geg6
@burnspbesq:
I totally agree. The main job right now is to make the insurrectionists pay a price. And let them rage for a while. Eventually, once the punishments have been meted out, we can talk about how to re-integrate the rest of them into society. Until then, I have no patience for anyone who wants to protect these people from the consequences of their actions.
Ruckus
@Kent:
The problem isn’t rural and urban. It’s far more basic than that. What makes it look like rural-urban is that people separate themselves into groups of like minded. The reasons are not rural-urban but alike-not alike. Racism.
Racism is the core of human interaction issues. And racism is really about differences, the color of skin, the religion, etc. And they are all actually petty differences that do not usually make any damn difference, unless they are made into important differences. And we humans have a massive tendency to make them into important differences, to have someone/something to blame for the crap in our lives. But it’s those things that we turn into differences, that we make matter, when they don’t, that cause what we are seeing now.
We look for reasons for these, to place blame, because blame is easier than fixing what we have turned into problems. And the problems become that because we always look outward for the reasons that life can suck, and someone or someones to blame for that. Never look inside, that would mean we have to find actual answers to questions we refuse to ask, that we might have to look for our own faults and learn to get rid of them for the actual benefit of us all. And that isn’t usually a benefit that pays off nearly as fast, it can take centuries, and none of us have centuries.
citizen dave
Mixing and doing stuff together is always a good idea. Haven’t heard anything about it lately (and have seen jackals post about it), but we should probably have a year or two of National Service in something for ALL 18-19 year olds–no exceptions.
My more extreme idea is that we should assign all the RWNJs new immigrants (illegal or otherwise), and let them teach the newcomers how to be ‘mericans. What could go wrong? It’s similar to my idea that all the unwanted babies should be assigned to and adopted by the pro-life republicans.
chrome agnomen
fuck their fucking feelings until the end of time.
Cacti
Giving these people the soft touch after the Civil War got us where we are today.
There needs to be a reckoning.
Chief Oshkosh
@Tenar Arha: Exactly. The truth and reconciliation approach sort of works, and works better than other approaches. TRUTH, then maybe reconciliation.
Applebaum is full is shit. I didn’t know why until Adam’s post on her background, which just makes her more pathetic.
DropDminus
This is an interesting approach. In some ways it’s a potential answer to a question I’ve been wrestling with for the last few months. How do we separate the ones who can be rescued from the maga horde? Late stage republicanism is likely to spin faster and faster into a self destructive cyclone as the imposition of consequences for their actions moves forward. At the center it is held together by a shared sense of grievance and persecution that has its own gravitational pull. That pull is only sustainable if there are enough people to “buy in”. The hardcore believers are going to do what they do and those people are beyond redemption (though not prosecution). The practical and politically pragmatic question is really how to give those life long republican voters in the outer bands of the storm who aren’t invested in the crazy a reason to either jump ship or more likely a reason to disengage from the grievance cycle. Every person who steps back from that brink is a potential vote for a democrat or at least a potential non-voter. Regardless, that’s one less person feeding into the grievance cycle. Maybe changing the subject is a pathway to doing just that. Arrange for a graceful exit from grievance by offering something that allows for a shared purpose and appeals to basic decency. It’s a permission structure to allow for the return of some people to civil society and helps erode the support for those whom power and profit flow from division and grievance.
Matt McIrvin
@citizen dave:
That’s actually the plan, for a lot of them. They’re very much into adopting these kids and raising them as religious-right types; it used to be they leaned heavily toward preferring healthy white babies, but that’s changed to some degree. The non-white ones particularly can have a rude awakening later on.
The Moar You Know
Recognize we’re in a “warm” civil war. Best case scenario: Northern Ireland. Worst case: Sri Lanka.
Not quite at the point where I’m going to change “worst case” to Rwanda, but we may get there very quickly. Depends if any of the insurrectionists try to walk it back or not.
That being said, Applebaum is not wrong. We can do it her way, or we might as well do it right and just plow every Republican in the United States, alive, into a trench and build housing for the poor on top. Which is not something I have the stomach for, TBH.
Feathers
@schrodingers_cat: Calling extraterrestrial beings “aliens” actually came from the word “aliens” which has been used to mean foreigners in English since the 1300s. It was borrowed from French, the Latin was aliēnus, which had the same meaning. So nobody decided to use it to refer to non-citizens. It was the term that was in use at the time. It’s a case of the original meaning of the word being taken over by a new one. But yes, time to retire alien as an official way to describe people.
Interesting side note, at one point psychologists were called “alienists” because they treated the insane, people who had become foreign to themselves.
Anonymous At Work
Two points:
It’s harsh but you can’t forgive until the sin is confessed and the penance is made.
sab
@Miss Bianca: She is pretty good at doing that herself. She has a very sloping driveway that she doesn’t bother to shovel or plow.
Major Major Major Major
@Chris Johnson: I think it’s a big mistake to view this as some foreign provocateur thing. A lot of these people were radicalized, but it was mostly by other Republicans. Even Q is just, like, those Watkins dipshits. Russia’s main contribution to the 2016 election was via WikiLeaks and Roger Stone, not Facebook groups or whatever. If we pretend this is exogenous we will not effectively fight it off.
Patricia Kayden
Just Some Fuckhead
Did we unity yet?
Kent
@WhatsMyNym: Well, OK, I was spitballing it. But you know what I mean. Eastern OR and eastern WA are as red as any red state. Just looking at the NYT election maps for OR. Lake County went 80% Trump, 18.5% Biden and there were several other counties in the high 70s. In WA, the reddest county was Lincoln at 73% Trump, 24% Biden.
Eastern WA has a lot more urban space than eastern OR so that might account for why eastern OR is even more red. The cities and suburbs are MUCH MUCH further away.
Patricia Kayden
@Major Major Major Major: It’s also about holding people accountable for their behavior. If we don’t, they’ll simply recoup and try again. January 6th was just a dry run for some of those terrorists.
Subsole
@Doug R:
Ehhh…it seems every time we get these folks back on their feet they turn around and try to kill us again.
Obama saved their asses, and they. Hated. Him. for it.
Clinton bailed this country out from the flaming wreckage of 12 years of Reaganism. How did the poor downtrodden conservatives reward us? 8 years of presnit towel-snapping frat boy and his merry band of pirates.
Democrats from FDR to Johnson dragged – yes, DRAGGED – the denizens of conservatopia into the twentieth century, and what did they do? Abandoned us the instant we let blacks have actual rights.
We gave heartlanders strong unions and job rights that many southerners cannot imagine, and what did they do? Elect Reagan.
And that’s just how we do our fellow whites.
Honestly. We may just want to keep them sick, starving, jobless and watching their kids get shot over lies in a foreign country while their towns get wracked by flood fire and drought. It’s the only time the fuckers actually try to be decent…hell, Trump did all of that to them, and they LOVE his ass.
So yeah, do the right thing. Obviously. But don’t expect any thanks or appreciation or even acknowledgement.
Remember KKK recruitment seems to go UP when America is doing well. All the way back to the Roaring 20s.
Subsole
@Major Major Major Major:
Deprogram the programmers?
laura
Othering. The us v them tribalism will never go away because it been a thing since forever. So how does a society lessen the dangers of othering when it’s profitable, or advances a cause? I simply do not know, but here’s what I’d like to see- compulsory public education. No religious schooling or home schooling. Compulsory civics along with the full range of home economics – financial, food and nutrition and maintenance and repair. Eliminate all or most standardized testing. All the arts in school. Bring back band and expand physical education to dance and movement. Vocational classes – which lead directly to jobs which may or may not require additional classroom learning. That’s just the start for what we owe our youth.
I’m worried about all the gun owners who thought they’d get the chance to shoot and kill all the people they believe warrant shooting and killing. That urge. What to do about that urge?
CaseyL
Many years ago, as I was thinking about how nations go about reconciling former enemies, I came to the conclusion that any such project would take at least two, and more likely three, generations.
Because you cannot budge the adults. You just can’t. And the resources you would spend doing trying to do so represent wasted opportunities to spend those resources more effectively elsewhere.
So screw the grownups. Let them stew in their RW media bubble of lies.
Go for the youngsters. The ones who aren’t as absolutely brainwashed yet, the ones who might be reachable. Do as the Catholic Church says, “Give me your children until they are 9, and they’re mine forever.”
Spend the community outreach money on activities, clubs, education and outreach, all geared to kids. Go to areas where there is nothing, where life is shitty because there is nothing, and have community meal programs for kids.
Combine it with curriculum that is kid-appropriate: maybe bring back some of the stories and tall tales we grew up with, Daniel Boone, Johnny Appleseed, Lewis & Clark, Sacajawea, Molly Pitcher. Also talk about things like the Horse Culture of the plains tribes, the Iroquois Five Nations that the US government structure is based on.
Positive, fun stories, about America. Avoid, at first, the downside that our history. You don’t want to get too complicated right off the bat, you don’t want kids grappling with even more anger than they’re already exposed to, and you don’t want to bring up anything that will trip their parents’ alarm systems that their precious offspring are being fed Enemy Lies.
Use the stories to ask and answer questions – not about big issues, but just about what it’s like to be a pioneer, to be hopeful, to be on the frontier where there aren’t any of the things we take for granted. Guide them to thinking about community: how it is built, what it’s for.
Start there. Keep the ball rolling, with more advanced curriculum as the kids get older (with, of course, new ones coming in all the time.)
Focus on the youngsters. They can be salvaged. The parents can’t.
And, yes, it will take at least 40 years.
It took us 40 years to get where we are, from when Reagan began the great dismantling of the Great Society to now. 40 years of starving communities, the education system, and infrastructure to get us where we are now.
40 years to dig in. 40 years to dig out.
Jinchi
We can’t “change the subject” while Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity, Limbaugh, Fox, OAN, Newsmax and the rest are still inciting the mob. Republican Congresspeople are shoving Capitol police aside because they don’t want to leave their guns at home. Republican legislators in Georgia are working to ensure that Democratic voters can never turn out in numbers they did last November. Proud Boys are still planning their race war.
South Africa had it’s “Truth and Reconciliation” commission. Truth was an essential part of that. Reconciliation doesn’t succeed when only one party accepts the facts.
Kent
But of course.
You prosecute all those who invaded the Capitol. You crack down mercilessly on violent extremist groups. But there is a difference between right wing militias who show up armed to threaten state capitols, and my 80 year old aunt in rural MI who wrings her hands about ANTIFA burning down cities.
Feathers
@citizen dave: This is completely horrible. If you are serious, it is an evil thought. If you are joking, stop now. It’s not funny. There is a whole movement within Evangelicalism to do just this. With the advent of homeschooling it means new unpaid workers for the farm, unpaid servants to care for your white children (and often the parents as well), with little to no government supervision. In much of rural American nationalist Christians have taken over the child welfare agencies and support the rights of parents to raise good Christians, rather than the rights of children to be educated and not abused. Other countries are wising up to this as children escape back to their home country, either as children or when they are old enough to leave. Many countries are shutting off adoptions to Americans and this is why.
One thing to realize about America, is that other countries do not have the adoption culture that we do. Rich countries offer family support to allow children to be raised by their parents. Poor countries have orphanages where parents can leave their children and reclaim them when they are again able to support them. Adoption is seen as a last resort. When children become a commodity, there is invariably corruption and inevitably stealing of babies from their parents. With US laws protecting adoptive parents, even those who have broken the law in obtaining those children, there is little reason not to steal a child if you really want one. This needs to end.
Anybody who doesn’t think that the family separation program at the border wasn’t intended to steal these Catholic children and get them adopted into good Christian families hasn’t been paying attention. This is why the right wing turned a blind eye and so many supported it. They saw it as a good thing.
leeleeFL
@Sebastian: This appeals to me as a method of re-training. If someone lied and got others to follow, punish the leader. Thus endeth the lesson for all of them. Make the Liars in Chief confess publicly and denounce their duplicity. Then, take their platform, then fine or imprison.
Their followers might just get the message to be cautious about who the believe and follow.
Kent
Yes, the Orcs are ALWAYS at the door and the battle is never won. It has always been like that and always will be. But there is also progress.
sdhays
It seems to me that a glaring hole in the suggestion to “take lessons” from places like Northern Ireland is that by the time the peace process started there, there had genuinely been atrocities on both sides. Both sides had blood on their hands. At that point, it doesn’t even matter that much which side is more to blame – both hold too much blame, and that creates the possibility of stepping away from that.
That’s manifestly not the situation in the United States of America in 2021. The violence the Republican Party has been fomenting and protecting for the past decade, at least, which culminated in the January 6th insurrection attempt has absolutely no analogue on the Democratic side.
And goddamn it, I’m a goddamn bleeding heart liberal and I don’t want to let rural America rot, no matter what my feelings are for a majority of the people who live there. I actually “want to pay for a bunch of happy-clappy vaccine volunteers, or new roads in rural America, or mental-health services and life counseling for the MAGA-infected” – especially that last one. I just want them to stop lying about everything and treating any admonishment to not be an asshole as if they’re being raped and murdered. It’s really not that much to ask.
LongHairedWeirdo
The point may be, if you find yourself in this sort of discussion, it’s better to say “let’s talk about something else; I’m not into conspiracy theories” than to try to show that they are, in fact, conspiracy theories. That way isn’t showing approval, it’s just saying “nope, not going to go there.”
Frank Wilhoit
“…so that the will of the actual majority is more frequently carried out….”
You seem to think that carrying out the will of a majority automatically leads to good outcomes. History is not with you on that point.
Example: 1980. Did Reagan carry out the will of a majority? If so, then the notion of majority rule is perfectly discredited. If not, then what kind of pretzelled sophistry will you apply to the voting statistics from that election?
There is no substitute for institutions whose definitions decouple them from the majority of the moment.
Louise B.
My current tactic with my conservative relations (who are all elderly and not disengaged from reality) is to disengage, and make THEM change the subject. When they spout a right-wing talking point, I say “mom, I have nothing to say to you about that” or “mom, that’s not something I’m willing to talk with you about.” Then I shut up. They will sometimes ramble on a bit, but then the conversation wanes, and there is silence. This disconcerts them, and it has changed the dynamics of our conversations. As Josh Marshall says, they are not people with whom we can deal in good faith.
Brachiator
A recent BBC News Article
How Should You Talk to Friends Who Believe Conspiracy Theories
Interesting stuff.
Jinchi
CNN’s headline writers seem to agree:
“Why the GOP still controls the Senate” is currently the headline for the top article.
Ksmiami
@WaterGirl: Crush their media universe, tax their political churches, enact penalties against the worst offenders and then extend a hand
Another Scott
We all know that it’s going to be a long-term process to get our civil discourse (and more) back on track. The approach we take is probably going to have to depend on the circumstances and the audience.
National leadership probably has to approach things the way Biden seems to be going about it at the moment. Play up the unifying themes, the idealism, the importance of norms and respect and truth and the rule of law, that we’re all in this together, that we will have disagreements and that’s ok and doesn’t make the others evil, while also stressing that things have been broken and must be rebuilt better than they way they were in the past.
I’m reminded a little by the revolutionary times in the 1770s. There was a substantial minority that wanted to stay with England. How did the new national government handle that? By having lots of discussion and arguments about the new government, and by playing up the rectitude of the new national leaders. And by having national leaders that weren’t afraid of confronting rebellion in a sensible way.
Whether it makes sense to argue with someone, I dunno. The old maxim – “You can’t argue/reason someone out of a belief that they didn’t argue/reason themselves into” – probably holds more often than we’d like. People have to change their own minds, and in order to do that they have to be willing to do so. Helping to get them into that frame of mind is a long, slow, painful process. But it’s probably the best way we have (until we figure out how the brain works better).
OTOH, I do think that we have to go after the people with the megaphones and the power to guide opinion. Popehat has been beating the drum that trying to correct speech and so forth with laws is a very bad idea and he’s probably right. But we can boycott anyone and any company that supports this monstrous stuff and tell them why. Democratic leadership must go after the insurrectionists and their enablers.
I mentioned hearing an NPR piece with Dannagal G. Young a week or so ago. She seems very thoughtful about how people think about politics, the cult-like behavior of QAnon, and so forth. Her earlier book Irony and Outrage is near the top of my to-read stack.
tl;dr – If it were easy, it would have been done already.
Thanks.
Cheers,
Scott.
Martin
Well, there’s two things here. The screamers on Parlor aren’t the problem. The leaders are the problem. There needs to be serious accountability for the leaders. Go easy on the followers.
Consider if after Trump said he’d march on the Capitol with the crowd, he actually did that. They’d have breezed past Capitol police with Trumps SS detail in tow. They’d have owned the building without a punch being thrown. They’d have been able to execute Pence and democrats without much resistance if Trump said to do it. By the time Pence and Harris’ details worked out with the Capitol Police how to engage against Trumps detail, it would have been too late to stop it.
None of this would have happened without Trump and members of congress and important voices in the media providing the justification for it. Hold them accountable. You have to. Now that they realize what they did wrong, they won’t make the same mistake in 2024.
It’s going to happen again because the GOP isn’t making any effort to address their demographic problem. They’ll be even more in the minority in 2024 unless they purge their white supremacist leaders, and they need help doing that. Biden, Schumer, and Pelosi need to have a come to Jesus talk with Cheney and McConnell and maybe Romney and tell them if they want to retake control of their party Dems can help but it’s going to require them to throw their weight behind censure or expulsion of those members who lied about the election being stolen so Congress can make a referral to the DOJ for criminal charges, and they need to back that for Trump and other members of the administration.
Let them know that will happen with or without them. Censure is a simple majority. And while the DOJ doesn’t require they be censured to indict, it basically signals that Congress will not fight it under the separation of powers. Alternatively, they could expel the members (⅔ vote) along with a declaration they couldn’t hold public office (14th amendment) and Congress would ask the DOJ not to indict. Odds are, the GOP will get all of those seats back.
If I were Schumer, that’d be my demand for preserving the filibuster. Democrats don’t need to give 10 seditionists a veto on legislation, nor should they. That’s a hill that we should die on. Those 10 need to be dealt with – if they want to publicly apologize for lying and accept some punishment that can be considered, but if not, then Schumer has a way to neutralize their votes by nuking the filibuster.
Bex
@Nicole: I hate watched Fox the other night for a while. D’nesh D’plorable was whining about “the huge military presence at the inauguration” and saying there was nothing like that at the last one. I could feel my mind being poisoned. Ingraham never even blinked. I could see Fox addicts I know lapping up the misinformation.
Subsole
@Windpond: This. I spent a decade arguing with people until I finally realized one day I wasn’t arguing with them, I was arguing with Rush and Glenn and Ann and Sean and Tucker and Laura and their pastor and apparently also half the effing GRU.
CaseyL
Following up on my earlier comment: The Boomers get a lot of hate. But the Boomers are the ones who ignited the uprisings in the 1960s for civil rights and against war. White teenagers from comfortable middle class families took to the streets. Why?
This is also something I’ve argued before: We were taught an idealized version of America. We were taught that America was a beacon to the world, that America set the example for the world to follow. We grew up believing it… and then we learned how far from that idealized standard we actually were.
The point wasn’t merely that America hadn’t lived up to its ideal. The main point was that America can live up to the ideal. “Look at everything we’ve accomplished! The only reason injustice still exists is that we let it. We can change our trajectory.”
So, two important factors: The idealized America we were taught existed, and the capacity to achieve that ideal by our own actions.
We who are veterans of the past half decade of social action are jaded by it all, and mostly immune to calls for solidarity with one another to make America more like its idealized self.
But youngsters aren’t. They may never have heard of such a thing. They have adults in their communities yelling about how Liberals stole everything, and gave it all to “Those People,” and how great it would be to kill them all and take their stuff. What they don’t have is anyone telling, and selling, a positive story about people working together to achieve a greater common good. They’ve probably never even heard the concept of a “common good.”
Give them a better dream than “killing everyone and taking their stuff.”
Major Major Major Major
@Patricia Kayden:
Sure, I doubt anybody here is suggesting letting actual violent offenders off the hook.
Ksmiami
@Major Major Major Major: deport Murdoch and family, seize their assets and shut fox down
Johnny's mom
Have watched various cousins online (insert scream emojis here). One, 27 years my senior, who drank the kook-aid hook, line and sinker. One, who is another cousin’s husband who can’t even see straight or hear logic because of his constant rage at liberals. Personally, I think we have to strike at the heart of news. Maybe outlets like fox can only be classified as entertainment. Maybe they need to drop news from their name. Maybe there need to be standards to qualify as news. And, it needs to be regulated. It’s damaging our democracy to let it continue as is.
piratedan
well, I have to admit, that there’s a glimmer of a notion to be as bad as they accuse us of being…
Wanna call us Godless Commies who are out to take their jobs and subvert their way of life?
Fine, we dissolve the Supreme Court… boom
Nationalize Fox News, OANN and Newsmax, arrest their owners and toss them in jail. no more RW media spigot by which to feed the masses.
Your semi-automatic rifles, tanks, bazookas, mines.. confiscated.
If you belong to The Oathkeepers, III%, Proud Boys or the Klan.. fine, you’re in jail… in Gitmo, and you get treated just like those asylum seekers, you get to represent yourself. If we don’t like you, enjoy Honduras. Plus, we’ll confiscate your lands and your cash.
you want aggrieved, by the FSM, we’ll show you FUCKING AGGREIVED.
All those folks that stood on those firm principals of questioning the legal results. Expelled, here’s your sedition charge. Go find your ass a lawyer. Everyone Trump Pardoned, here are your new lawsuits, hope you washed your jumpsuit.
Churches fronting as political movements, guess what you’re reclassified, here’s your tax bill.
you make over 500K a year, welcome to the 45% tax rate folks. I’m sure you’ll get by.
Corporations, watch your loopholes get closed and watch the labor laws get strengthened.
Is this going to happen… pretty unbleeping likely, but guess what, they’ll behave exactly as if all of this is actively taking place. I don’t mind people talking about unity, am all in favor of it, but one side has to admit, begrudgingly or not, that they’ve been lying, operating in bad faith before we can mend fences. If they can’t do that, then fuck them. I’ll wait for an apology and until I hear that, I care not a tinkers damn for what they have to say.
Martin
@Major Major Major Major: The thing with coups is that the pawns are replaceable, but the leaders aren’t. Holding the violent offenders is necessary, but not sufficient. There are millions more pawns to take their place. You have to take out the leaders.
Hitler attempted a coup, was imprisoned, was pardoned, and then succeeded the next time. Hugo Chavez the same thing – tried, failed, pardoned, then succeeded.
You have to remove the leaders. Without the leaders, it won’t happen.
Subsole
@Kent: What is it about Portland that attracts those guys???
lowtechcyclist
@WaterGirl:
This. Once the rest of the loonies see that the people who invaded the Capitol two weeks ago had the book thrown at them and had to do hard time, we can talk with them.
The underlying problem is the combination of lies and demonization that the loonies are brainwashed with, when they watch Fox or Newsmax, when they listen to right-wing talk radio, and (for a lot of them) even when they go to church.
A new Fairness Doctrine that covers cable TV as well as broadcast won’t solve everything in our digital age, but it would at least be a start.
ETA: And why does anyone read Anne Applebaum anyway? My last straw with her was right before the 2004 election, when she said that a repeat of Florida 2000, if that should happen, would be worse than either outcome of the election. (Tell that to the relatives of those who died in Katrina the next year.)
Ksmiami
@Cacti: they nearly stole an election and almost killed our representatives. I want punishment and re-education not unity.
Steve in the ATL
@WaterGirl: La plus ça Baud…
TEL
@Windpond: Same for me and my brother. When I explained to him the history behind social security and how important it is to keep it – especially for someone like my brother who doesn’t have any other retirement saved up, he agreed. And you’re right, it’s because he respects my opinion that he listens to me. One of the most toxics effects of the Foxification of discourse is so many people are being taught to believe that Democrats are the real enemy and not worthy of respects. They literally believe that Putin is less of an enemy to them than Democrats.
One thing I do when I talk to acquaintances who are Republican if they get political, is I remind them that they have far more in common with other Americans who may be more liberal than differences, that black and white us vs them thinking isn’t correct, most of us exist on a spectrum of policy beliefs. I usually get them to agree about that such that conversation moves into a healthier direction.
Zelma
It’s conservative talk radio and Fox News et. al. I’ve probably told this story before, but I watched what it did to my husband. It started out so innocently. He had always listened to talk radio when it was sports and local stuff. And then Rush appeared. Suddenly, he was listening to that for three hours a day. Then Fox News showed up. It was colorful and lively and extremely good at appealing to our most basic emotion: fear. My already anxiety prone husband became a different person. Granted he had other issues, but he changed politically as well. I won’t go into the whole story, but I was in a position to tell him you can live with me but only if you never watch Fox News again. And within six months, he changed. It was amazing to see the difference. Within a year, he was supporting Obama.
Having watched this happen in my own family, I am convinced that Fox News is the single most destructive force in American politics.
KenK
I have no problems with “reaching out” to Republicans. As for Trump supporters, especially after Insurrection Day, fuck ’em. I have one BIL who is the former, I enjoy being in his company. I have two BILs who are the latter, I’m fine if our paths never cross again.
Feathers
One of the things that no one is talking about is the outside funding issue. In every one of these messy conflicts that we are talking about, ending the external funding which was pushing it was key to ending the conflict. In the US, Ted Kennedy and other Irish American politicians had secret meetings with Irish American organizations where they were read the riot act and told that if they didn’t stop funding the IRA and supporting them with money and guns (hello NYPD!), they would be prosecuted for illegal funding of overseas conflicts. The spigot of US money into the IRA was shut off and that was a big part of getting them to the bargaining table. Irish American politicians promising big funding once there was a peace accord in place also helped.
Cutting off the money funding all this right wing garbage will be a big step. The new law forcing corporations to reveal who run them will be an important first step. Right now, wing nuts can set up a charity, plug it full of money and hire Andrew Brietbart and James O’Keefe to create outrage and scandal. Knowing who and what these organizations are is important. On the left, we need to be able to take advantage of this info when it becomes available.
Another thing to realize is that these are all grifters. If Trump and his spawn had actually been arrested for any of their many illegal schemes, he never would have become President. Yes, they may bounce back, but prosecuting white collar crimes will be an important tool in trimming back the influence of the conmen currently running the Republican Party. It may even remind the media that some of this shit actually is illegal.
A professor I know, who is placed to know these things, has frequently told me that the savings & loans bailouts of the 1980s is what financed the Clinton hating right wing machine of the 1990s. Look at all the PPP loan funded folks going to the 1/6 insurrection. I wouldn’t be surprised if the money from helicopters became anti-Obama dark money. One of the reasons to reign in the excesses of Wall Street, Silicon Valley and the hedge funds, is to not have these crises where one of the inevitable results is money flowing to the dark grifters of American capitalism. They need to be seen as not only the enemies of the poor, but the funders of our political enemies. The Mercers owe how many billions in taxes?
topclimber
@Cameron: This thread is expiring but I wish Kay would chime in with whatever success or not she has had working with GOPers in Ohio. (Haven’t seen her much lately). I recall she worked with them on local projects.
No name
@Bex: the hideous Ben Domenech was on Fox yesterday spewing the same vile line of crap. I felt reality bending! This must be their new talking point.
Miss Bianca
@Zelma: Yow.
This story reminds me of Betty C’s story about what Fox did to her once-and-futurely sweet grandma – who reverted to her old sweet self once the Fox spigot got shut off.
It’s amazing what right-wing normalization of outrage will do. I remember once reading a book that completely demonized and fear-mongered immigrants, Hispanic immigrants particularly, but did it in such a seemingly “reasonable” way that I found myself actually nodding along in semi-agreement until I put the book down and went “WTF?!” to myself. It was scary. And that’s the kind of shit that people get exposed to all the damn time on FOX News. It’s why I can’t even look at it if it’s on somewhere – I have to leave the room or try to shut it off. I have a visceral reaction to getting any of that poison dripping in my ears.
Gin & Tonic
@Ksmiami: Under what legal authority?
Calouste
@Subsole: Not much else to do there?
Geminid
I want to see tough prosecutions and sentences for the Jan. 6 mob, with special attention to organizers and financiers. More generally, good U.S. Attorneys and grand juries to go after criminal activities of trump’s administration. And most of all, I want a successful Biden administration and Congress that deliver for Americans.
As for malign republicans and conservative independents, the only solution I can see is to beat them at the polls. Flip some of the 22 republican Senate seats up in 2022 and expand the Democratic House majority, then do it again in 2024, plus hold the White House. Same for state races. The last few cycles have shown that at least when it comes to elections, “conversion strategies” are relatively ineffective. I don’t see how that could be different in terms of broader society. And in the short term, it’s establishment republicans who will absorb a lot of the ire of the crazies. They have an intraparty civil war on their hands, and from what I’ve seen in my state, they will come out of it weaker, not stronger.
Bill Arnold
@Cacti:
A Reckoning (clip from “Wyatt Earp”)
It’s a long-game project.
Feathers
@Brachiator: When somebody talks about kicking out the illegal immigrants, point out that every other fucking country does this by seriously penalizing the employers who hire them. Here we make it a viable strategy for companies who want an workforce they don’t want to pay and who can’t complain when they do illegal shit.
That’s the real reason why companies hire people who can’t work here legally, they are breaking other laws and don’t want to be held accountable. If you were serious about ending this, you would take any complicit company and do an immediate wage and labor audit going back five years. Triple money to any employees who have been victims of wage theft. Do an OSHA inspection. Do an EPA inspection. Create consequences.
Kent
This was in today’s local paper
Spanish Moss
@TEL: This is the approach I take with my sister. She and her husband are the only Republicans I know and unfortunately get their news from Fox, so she is woefully ill-informed. Fortunately she is not a white supremacist or an evangelical, just brainwashed. We mostly avoid politics but occasionally I tiptoe around the edges where there can be common ground, and she often seems surprised that we agree. Fox convinces their viewers that all liberals are nuts, and I think there is value in showing that we are in fact pretty normal. If I tried arguing I wouldn’t change her mind and she would just avoid me. As I understand it this kind of exposure to the “other” as normal was helpful for the gay rights movement.
Feathers
@Kent: One of the reasons these folks need to give it a break is that they don’t know what Biden’s policies will be, so they can’t know what will be the best way to influence his administration. One thing I know for sure about 1/6 is that one of the reasons the Democrats are able to take the high road is that there was no violence from the left. The Republicans started it, finished it, and own it.
There is so much non-violent work that can be done right now, no need to start shit.
Another Scott
(via Popehat)
Cheers,
Scott.
ballerat
Dropping the argument and changing the subject only works when the other side agrees to do that.
The one of the things that defines a fanatic is they never change the subject and they never shut up.
Subsole
@Kent: Wow.
Just wow.
Bill Arnold
@DropDminus:
A key long-game project, and it probably should be explicitly non-partisan, is training a high percentage of the populace to be aware that they are being emotionally manipulated.
If they’re feeling rage, they should be identifying the immediate exogenous (outside themselves, that is) sources of rage-induction, and pondering the motives and true identities and backers of those manipulating them.
Done right, this breaks all manipulative marketing, and breaks consumer capitalism, but hey, gotta break some (rotten) eggs. It will always be an arms race between manipulators and their victims, but a move towards unskewed truth as an optimal influence method would be good.
Another key element would be proper funding, both public and private sector, for non-partisan-as-possible real-time identification and disruption of malignant influence operations. There are commercial entities that do a lot of this already (though most are dark-siders). If the appropriate talent was funded, a few hundred million per year would have a large effect. I don’t know what is being done defensively by governments already, but clearly whatever they are doing is entirely insufficient.
Bill Arnold
[temp comment to get edit window]
citizen dave
@Feathers: Really sorry, it was along the lines of A Modest Proposal. But someone else upthread said this is basically happening in the adoption area.
MisterForkbeard
@Anonymous At Work: Regarding #2, my own analogy is the 12-step program for addicts.
Several of the steps demand acknowledging you screwed up and trying to make amends. Even acknowledging that they screwed up would be a huge step towards unity and keeping America on track, but getting it is really hard due to the fact that the right-wing sphere in this country is operating like a cult: Insular, with self-reinforcing propaganda and media and ritual shunning and casting out of anyone who strays from orthodoxy.
Imagine Ted Cruz saying “I was wrong to push lies about election fraud” and you’ll see what I mean.
geg6
@Anonymous At Work:
Yes, if there is one useful thing I learned growing up Catholic is the benefit to confessing your sins, completing a penance and being forgiven afterward. It has nothing to do with religion. It has to do with having a functional, civilized society. That’s what the truth and reconciliation commissions have been about and those are the models I’ve seen that work best.
marklar
@Kent: This reminds me of the BernieBroSis’ protest chant:
“What do we want?”
“We don’t know!”
“When do we want it?”
“NOW!!!!!”
MisterForkbeard
@Kent: The Portland Antifa groups are an interesting bunch. Somewhat out of necessity they’re started what might be considered secret societies – events are organized on Telegram secretly, there are ‘cells’ that coordinate, etc. They put this in place because the police were violently ending ‘normal’ attempts to protest.
But it also makes them vulnerable to weird shit like this. Is some leader (or an infiltrator) makes a bad decision it’s really hard to fight it.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Feathers:
That might be a bit difficult since Brietbart is still dead.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
This thing isn’t the same as Northern Ireland. This is basically a bunch of really dumb people tried to do an on line role playing game and lost it. Both sides in the Irish Troubles had concerns that could be addressed so people could move on. You can’t do that with people who live in a fantasy world.
ballerat
@Feathers: We do the same with our bullshit war on drugs. They go after the supply side not the demand side. Unless it’s the poor and minorities, of course.
MisterForkbeard
@Another Scott: This has been making the rounds between my Devs and my QAs. It is spot fucking on.
Gravenstone
@Kent: But they are watching Sinclair owned local news stations, and listening to Cumulus owned right-wing AM radio channels. There are entirely too many paths for right-wing lies to saturate the daily consciousness of the lumpenproletariat.
Barbara
Lots of interesting comments. I think we have to accept that U.S. is way more complex than Northern Ireland, where there is basically one sectarian divide, of long duration, in a densely populated setting where nearly everyone knows at least one or more representatives of the other side. We aren’t like that, not at all. So while Applebaum’s suggestion might work in some places, it seems excessively simplistic for us.
I did know of her husband’s story and her sudden introduction in what it’s like to be the target of hate stoked by a conservative nationalist movement. She has written some interesting articles about how conservatives in the U.S. changed. E.g., Laura Ingraham. But I never find her theses to be all that satisfying.
The reality for me is that conservatism basically means (and has probably always meant) conserving what a specific layer of society and above have been able to amass in the way of means and privilege. They have to be exceptionally dishonest and try to find some kind of “principled” basis for their views because, hey, democracy was supposed to supersede the divine right of kings and other notions of inborn privilege and birthright, but whichever way you look at it, their theory of government or social policy is sculpted around any outcome that privileges and protects their continuing pride of place at the top of the pyramid. They are assisted in pushing this approach downward through conservative organized religion (Mormons, Catholics, etc.) and perhaps other institutions.
So I think Doug way back in comment 15 has it right. Making life easier for everyone is still the best choice. It’s certainly best for those who are already on the side of inclusiveness and diversity, and making life easier for those who are living in other parts of America, but outside the privilege belt, makes them less beholden to the mercy and money of those living within it.
And yes, I do think that lies need to be confronted.
Geminid
@Feathers: I’m serious about ending the problem of illegal workers, by passing comprehensive immigration reform that gives them legal status and a path to citizenship. Aside from reasons of equity and justice for these folks, this will have a substantial positive effect on Social Security funding. And immigration reform is a strong wedge issue for Republicans, probably the most divisive of all.
waratah
@schrodingers_cat: Me too. I did not realize they were talking about me at first. I am not an alien.Lol
PJ
@Sloane Ranger: I think that lies have to be called out, too, otherwise they proliferate. I’m not going to change someone’s bigoted opinion about minority groups, so I don’t bother, but if I’m talking to someone, we have to be talking on the basis of reality. If they can’t accept the evidence (or lack thereof) after it’s been pointed out, there’s no point in continuing.
Ksmiami
@Gin & Tonic: reckless endangerment, criminal conspiracy, illegal use of public airwaves to incite
Pennsylvanian
Screw that BS unity/distraction/let’s talk.
Accountability and justice.
“Where you go one you go all”, right you traitorous fucks? Well, turns out, it may be federal prison!!
Still SO angry…
PJ
@Stuart Frasier: “Alien” has long been the legal term for foreign non-citizens in the US. There has been a move away from that term under the belief that it is disparaging; I’m guessing this is the result of the popularity of science fiction, particularly over the last 50 years or so (before that it was pretty niche), and identifying “alien” with a creature from another planet.
ballerat
@Amir Khalid: Indeed. Let’s not bicker and argue about who killed who…
Nettoyeur
I have been working on a very large physics project in the former East Germany, close to the Polish border, for some years. This involves lots of personal contact and months spent onsite. There is family history—my wife is the daughter of a Holocaust survivor—and was hesitant about spending time in Germany for many years, until she spent time with a new generation of Germans, who have went through more than 50 years of “truth and reconciliation” for what the Nazis and then the Communist dictatorship did to Germany.
Germans are horrified at what Trump and Trumpism have done in the US. They have seen it all before, and German film and TV like Babylon Berlin, Generation War, and the Lives of Others have shown vividly how an advanced country can descend rapidly into barbarism in the hands of narcissistic, self serving demagogues, both Nazis and Communists. Germany under Angela Merkel (a physicist, like me!), in contrast, is a prosperous, compassionate democracy, a dramatic role reversal compared to 1945.
How did this happen? Well, after WWII the Allies forced Germany through de-Nazification, which tried and punished Nazis and their enablers in proportion to their offenses. And after reunification, there was yet another additional reckoning, with a complex procedure for restoring property expropriated by the Communists. And this process continues: recently, Germany broadened the criteria for the descendants of German Holocaust survivors to acquire German nationality. And so my wife can now apply for the German citizenship taken from her mother by the Nazis.
There is a lesson in this for the US. It is now abundantly clear that Trump, his enablers, and their brain washed mob of terrorists came with a few metres and a few minutes of ending American democracy. So much for American exceptionalism. A country can forgive, but it must never forget. And so there has to be a thorough reckoning, and just punishment, before we can talk of unity and moving on.
Barbara
@Nettoyeur: And yet, the re-emergence of Nazi sympathies is an escalating problem in Germany itself, especially in the ranks of law enforcement. I won’t link because so many object to links beyond a paywall, but there was an incredible profile in the NYT of a rising star in German security forces who is now facing charges arising out of terrorist actions. There were a lot of signs of his dangerous views, and to put it politely, those signs were ignored.
Gravenstone
@Kent: Still didn’t stop them from being destructive fuckwits, did it?
Feathers
@Geminid: Yes, that is needed, but the employer side needs to be dealt with as well. Sarah Taber is good at talking about this. Rural America has no good jobs because the folks at the top of the heap want it that way. They like ruling the roost and don’t want to see anyone else gathering enough wealth to be able to challenge them. Part of how they achieve this is by employing undocumented workers who are unable to hold them accountable in any way. We won’t be able to save rural America until the jobs there are $15 an hour, paid by companies who are required to follow state and federal laws on safety and the environment.
And farm subsidies are a huge scam. This is land which could be supporting a well paid workforce, but the farmers are lazy and just want the handouts. We need to separate farm owners and farm workers into two separate categories.
Nora Lenderbee
@laura: Plus equitable funding for public school systems. Poor kids need arts and civics just as much as rich kids, not to mention roofs that don’t leak and enough supplies to go around.
I cannot agree more with abolishing religious education as a substitute for public ed. Kids can do their Sunday School or Hebrew school after regular school.
WayneL140
@Amir Khalid:Debating who’s right and who’s wrong, what so-and-so’s just deserts should be, is still continuing a conflict.
That’s a conservative line, and it pisses me off. We forgave you conservatives over WMDs. We even tried to reason with the Tea Party and Freedom Caucus when they were wrong. Now, they will not admit that Trump was treasonous and they were right there along with him.
I’m a liberal, so I don’t like punishing people. I hated dishing out to my children, but I did it. If I didn’t, they would have grown up to look a lot like those people who stormed the Capitol, and Ted Cruz. Stomp them. Stomp them hard. Hit them hard enough to knock some sense into them.
ballerat
@Kent: There is a deep insecurity in modern rural americans. I don’t mean economic insecurity, we’ve debunked that one plenty. It’s not even the white privilege thing, although that’s a huge factor. It’s not just about gender and sexuality, nor lack of education, though those are in there too. The thing I’m talking about is even deeper than that, something more fundamental. And I don’t know what to call it but I am convinced it’s there.
It’s like there’s this sense of foreboding, deep down inside that somewhere, they missed something, as if sensing a half-formed hunch that many many miles and many years back at a Frostian fork in the road in a yellow wood, they took the road more traveled and it too made all the difference but not in the way they thought it would.
That insecurity is exploitable and as we have seen the right has relentlessly and cynically exacerbated this sense of inferiority so as to better exploit it.
Geminid
@Spanish Moss: My few friends and family are all Democrats, but I have a landscape customer that I have gotten to know over some years, and she and I have friendly but careful political conversations like you describe. Jane was a moderate Democrat and did volunteer work for the Paul Tsongas campaign as well as Planned Parenthood when she and her family was in Atlanta. I believe her when she says that she and her husband voted for Obama in 2008. But in the last 10 years she has gotten caught up in this intense rightward polarization, like it was a whirlpool. This last year especially, because she discovered Epoch Times while sheltering from the pandemic. But we’ve had decent conversations. I mainly point out examples of how Democratic politicians are not as horrible as she fears. She has a very distorted view of the current Democratic Party, and voted for trump as the lesser of two evils. I’ll be interested in hearing what she thought about the 1/6 insurrection.
A woman from anywhere (formerly Mohagan)
@Immanentize: How can people vote for another 4 years of Trump and not believe he should be President?? I can’t understand your reasoning.
StringOnAStick
@Chris Johnson: Excellent summary. I am amazed at the number of people who don’t know about the Q idiots and who is running it to exploit divisions in the west.
A woman from anywhere (formerly Mohagan)
@JCJ: I remember when the TV show “Third Rock From The Sun” was on and the main characters WERE aliens (from off the Earth). They got freaked out too when they first heard about “illegal aliens”. They thought it meant them.
Nettoyeur
@Barbara: Yeah, there antuvimmigrant neo Nazis, mostly in places like Dresden where immigrants are few. They do not control major parties.
Ruckus
@Barbara:
Been away, taking care of a defunct car battery so I’m late to the post. Anyway…..
What you wrote is great. I do think that humanity is actually simpler than we try to make it. I think you are right that it’s haves and have nots but there is a portion that is interested in how you get a select group moved from have nots to haves, and it’s mostly to serve their own selves. Personally I think that religion does that, and mostly does it pretty well, mainly by shear momentum. But it is loosing steam as education gains and people start to ask questions, although it is still a large force, as it has that what if you are wrong thing/cover all your bases, going for it.
Feathers
@citizen dave: No problem. Adoption is always seen as this good and wonderful thing. But it has real downsides. I think finding out where those children in cages ended up will open a lot of eyes.
Solving the housing crisis and having the minimum wage be a livable wage will go a long way towards solving the foster care problem. There shouldn’t be so many children in need of new homes.
No name
@Doug R: right on all points but add a better education system so people are less susceptible to falling for the lies and bullshit.
Amir Khalid
@WayneL140:
I am not conservative (or American, for that matter) so kindly don’t address me as “you conservatives”.
The Republicans arguing against Trump’s impeachment trial are transparently trying to evade accountability for him — and for their party collectively, both in the recent insurrection and in the decades of polarisation that have led up to it.
I wasn’t advocating the evasion of accountability for harm done in any political conflict. I was agreeing with the idea that constructive mutual engagement between parties in a long-running conflict (e.g. that between Catholics and Protestants in Ireland) helps to humanise each side in the other’s eyes, and to mitigate tensions.
ballerat
@A woman from anywhere (formerly Mohagan): Neither can I.
Voting for a candidate in a presidential election is indeed a defining moment.
Which might explain why so many people, especially young people, balk out of it.
ballerat
@Chris Johnson: I am pretty much there too, sans the bolding and capitalization.