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).
I’ve found this to be contextual as well. Like with good friends asking how you’ve been, they actually want to know. There’s a line where if all they ever hear out of your mouth is doom and gloom, it gets to be overbearing, and it can definitely be rude to trauma dump unprompted. But generally speaking, friends want a genuine answer. Random coworkers you don’t know do not. And then everyone in between is on a sliding scale where they’re feeling you out, getting to know you and expecting more and more candid answers as that progresses.
And then of course once you get to know someone well enough you just know where their limits are because you’ve seen them approach those limits and get slightly uncomfortable before. Like I just learned my coworker doesn’t like to talk politics because I brought up some very mild school politics around charter schools and it stopped a perfectly good conversation in its tracks.
I feel very behind for having just figured this out in the past couple years, but it makes interacting with people a lot easier. Like I finally have basic script for small talk.