Common Ground

I mean, maybe it would look like your middle or high school. My middle and high schools taught me that the civil war wasn’t about slavery. Like if you circled “slavery” on the multiple choice “what was the civil war about” test question, it would be marked wrong. This was in state-funded public school too, not some ultra-conservative private school or homeschooling. And that’s only one example of the conservative propaganda that was fed to us in school. Some of the most conservative people I know were straight-A students. For people who live in liberal areas, it can be difficult to even comprehend how deep the conservative lies go, and how soon they start.

Saying “just send them back to school” is reductionist, because they did pay attention in school. They simply never questioned what the school had taught them, and took the info at face value. And that is honestly a large part of conservative conditioning; Don’t question the authorities. Don’t question the church. Don’t question the leaders. Don’t question your teachers. If someone is a higher authority or social status than you, you take them at their word. A child’s place is to be seen, not heard. If someone has been raised to never question authority, can they really be blamed for failing to do so when in school? Conservative ideology is rooted in conformity. The nail that sticks out gets hammered down. And questioning conservative authority is historically rewarded with a big fucking hammer.

Let me give you an example and maybe that will be easier to understand. If you let a person stay at your house because they have no where to live and then steal stuff, that's not ok. Now you bring them to therapy and explain why it was wrong and they promise to stop. Then you let them stay at your house and they still again. So you talk to them again and tell them they need to stop. They continue to steal. Now, at some point, you trying to reform this person is just an invitation to having your stuff stolen because it's not getting through.

This is not analogous to this situation at all. They will keep doing what they're doing. They aren't invited to do it by us. The only way to make them stop is to get them to join us. You can't just kick them out like you could someone staying at your house.

The equivalent situation would be something like being locked in a house with someone. Your best bet is to convince them to be better. It isn't to turn them into an enemy because you're stuck with them.

How am I not showing empathy?

Because you aren't trying to understand how they can come to their position empethetically. They have empathy. It's just being abused. You're trying to turn them into some monstrous "other" that you don't have to consider where they came from.

Or do you think deporting people, banning books, telling people they aren't the gender they claim to be, limiting health care, passing voter suppression, taxing the lower and middle class to fund tax breaks for the rich, you think all that shows empathy?

These are actions, not reasons. Murder is generally bad, right? However, if I murder someone to save hundreds of other people, maybe not anymore, right? They're told, for example, that immigrants are killing, raping, or doing whatever to Americans. They're told this is a rampant massive issue. They want to protect the innocent who are being harmed. They come to a bad action through an empathetic thought process. You not seeing how that can be done is you not having empathy for them.

One side was literally making up insulting nick names for people, banning the press from even covering them, people running as dems them voting republican.

I'm not discussing republican elected officials. They're the ones misleading republican voters to do evil. They are almost universally bad. The average republican is not. They're mostly misguided.

You're the group in WW2 that thought Hitler could be reasoned with and kept trying to appease him.

Again, I'm not talking about the leaders. I'm the person who would fight against Hitler, but wouldn't turn down the help of someone else who wanted to fight against him but voted for him in the past.

Out of touch doesn't even begin to come close to addressing this.... Holy crap man. Do you follow politics at all?

Most people want what's best for them and their family. They're told socialism or whatever is evil, and they believe it. When the policies are polled without telling them what it is, people agree with them. Most Republicans want to legalize Marijuana, for example. The elected officials don't. Don't think what republican officials say or do represents their voters, because it often doesn't when polled. They support workers. They generally support people being allowed to do what they want freely. However, they're told there's a great evil they need to defend against, and that they're doing the right thing by fighting against the left.

There's a reason why people call themselves "Forever Trumpers", they will follow him to the end.

These are not most republican voters.

Look at some of the street interviews of these people, they don't care about policy, they care about their side winning, fully stop.

Again, these aren't most republican voters. Most republican voters are sitting at home and trying to survive, like everyone else.

They're told they're fighting the good fight. They're told there's evil that's trying to harm innocent people. All of this is done so the elites can keep fucking them and us. Telling them they have to continue to be our enemy because they once we're is stupid. It's a waste of everyone's time.

Making enemies has never helped anyone. If you don't want to ask them to join, fine. Just don't say anything. No one needs you to pop in and tell them their pieces of shit when they're thinking about voting against Republicans.