I fucking hate living here. The culture is poison. The economy is a fucking disaster. The education is designed to leave a huge portion of the country illiterate. Every single atom of it is white supremacist. The land is all stolen. The capitalists are completely above the law. Fuck cars. Fuck America,

  • chiefecula [none/use name]
    ·
    edit-2
    3 years ago

    That's the only move you have if you want any chance to actually get to people.

    If your goal is to make people agree with you, then step one is finding common ground and agreeing with them on something. You can't start with confrontation and debate people into doing something they don't want to do, that's not how real world works.

    Obviously some of their opinions are shit, I'm not telling you to agree on everything. I'm just saying focus on the things you already agree on. I'm sure you can find plenty of things to disagree about even between the left, name more iconic duo than leftism and infighting. That's why it's important to talk about the things you agree on.

    • SolidaritySplodarity [they/them]
      ·
      3 years ago

      That can only work for a long-term engagement, though. Confirming a budding fascist's biases and then not seeing them again is only a 100% bad thing. It would be infinitely better to state a socialist position clearly and plainly, though that doesn't mean announcing death to America lol. Can just talk about how bosses don't actually work 10X harder than workers and workers should have more say over how the business runs, for example.

      If it's a co-worker you're going to talk to for months, maybe you could lead with talking about "the swamp", but you're gonna have to find a way to turn the corner from Trump to socialism.

      • chiefecula [none/use name]
        ·
        3 years ago

        the swamp was just an example to use instead of usa, I didn't mean to always open with specifically the swamp

    • wantonviolins [they/them]
      ·
      3 years ago

      “Oh, I don’t know about that” is a far more productive disagreement than actually confronting whatever horseshit they’re saying, it lets you segue into more nuanced discussion of issues where you cloak explicitly left politics in a veneer of “common sense” rhetoric.

      If you can cite the saints and canon of US civil religion (founding fathers, originating documents like the constitution, Jesus, that sort of thing) as justification for your position it’s like arguing on easy mode and they’ll agree with almost anything you say.