TLDR: How do you treat 'pleasant' reactionaries?
Long story short my cousin was visiting, but couldn't make it. My family asked if I could show his friends around regardless, and of course I was happy to oblige.
I knew they were going to be sort of rich frat-bro poli-sci stereotypes from the outset, maybe a little bit ghoulish, but nevertheless I find Americans very entertaining in their ways and I'm a nice fella so I took them to some bars and some comedy.
Conversation didn't exactly flooowwwww, but what can you expect meeting someone for the first time? I can't tell if they had no opinions about anything or were embarrassed about the opinions they did have. And then I found out that they were descendants of CIA/NYPD.
I'm now going to be a joyless communist:
I just knew they were bubbling with totally oblivious reactionary ideology, but outwardly they were very pleasant and enthusiastic. We never did broach a topic that was too controversial. About the election, all they had to say was a quick sentence of 'well, most people think both sides are bad... It's a controversial topic because we're unfortunately so divided...' - just absolute platitude spoken very very seriously.
We also talked about the concussion crisis in contact sport, and again, they were just like 'yeaahhh, seems inevitable really, not a lot you can do... anyway...'
Never have I met people so un-opinionated.
When the comedy acts came on, they had a wail of a time. One comedian was a stereotypically attractive woman, and as she came on stage, while everyone applauded her onto stage, these two 25 year olds were giggling like schoolboys, prodding each other, and shouting "lets fucking go!! Lets go bro!!!". At other points in the set one of them especially would give a 'lets gooooo' to a punchline.
Very funny to watch. Americans are such a different breed. Still, they were just having a good time on holiday, and 2 of the sets were very gay and autistic, and they liked those too. And they bought me a couple of drinks as thanks for taking them. I would be lying if I said they weren't nice and friendly guys. I would place them as Democrats or perhaps libertarian.
Anyway, what do you tend to do in scenarios where you know someone would find you a disgusting godless communist if they had any idea?
What I did was just to be normal, and genial. But it is an odd position to be in. Can someone truly be considered 'nice' and 'pleasant' when they harbour staunch ideology that is inherently racist and so on? How do you reconcile that? Aren't like 90% of people like that (though some to more of an extent than others).
Sounds like you've built up straw men in your mind to be mad at tbh. The only way to have a real idea of how they'd react to your opinions is to voice them. They probably wouldn't have cared much. But I get it, not everyone wants to debate all the time. It's tiresome.
Might be a cultural thing to be honest. Them giving you non committal responses to your questions was their polite way of saying I don't want to talk about that. For reference Americans do not talk about politics with people we don't know extremely and I mean extremely well. Maybe we should. Probably have a lot less psychos that way. But it is what it is.
Anyway unless you feel like arguing and willing to blow up the evening the way you deal with these situations is to talk about literally anything else. Especially if it's people you don't know and won't see again. It's okay to drink beer and have fun. The ghost of Mao won't come back and claim your soul I promise.
Yeah, I felt that could be the case while writing it, although, I do happen to know that one is joining The Navy, and the other was on the military pathway before he got into big tech.
True, I'm sure they wouldn't have minded so much, but I think they would've been a bit uncomfortable. And word would've got back to my family that I was a communist weirdo, lol.
That's very interesting that you don't talk politics. Unprompted, people bring it up over here. I can start the conversation about soccer and by the end someone is talking about how big money has ruined sports, or whatever. Film, people will talk about representation, and such. Everyone and their nan has something to say about Kier Starmer, once you go past 'hows the weather'. It feels so inevitable because the political climate is so fucked.
What do Americans tend to talk about, then?
Sports, movies and TV are pretty safe topics of conversation. With other parents about kids.
But those are such political topics! Haha, oh well, it's good to know for next time that I shouldn't dive right in.
Americans also have no media literacy, so the discussions of sports, movies, and TV are extremely surface level and "did you watch the thing?"
It took them three years to realize homelander was a spoof of reactionary chauvinism
"There was a spectacle of gore, SV, and smirking. If you don't enjoy that, you're not really an adult."
I think it’s our intense division. I live in the Midwest, and you never know which way the person in the grocery store leans, and we’re too much of cowards to actually ask or get into a conversation. Probably because we believe, if we have opposing viewpoints, a discussion won’t change anything. And also, we want to have friendly relations with the people around us, and politics turns people unfriendly.