politics
Welcome to the discussion of US Politics!
Rules:
- Post only links to articles, Title must fairly describe link contents. If your title differs from the site’s, it should only be to add context or be more descriptive. Do not post entire articles in the body or in the comments.
- Articles must be relevant to politics. Links must be to quality and original content. Articles should be worth reading. Clickbait, stub articles, and rehosted or stolen content are not allowed. Check your source for Reliability and Bias here.
- Be civil, No violations of TOS. It’s OK to say the subject of an article is behaving like a (pejorative, pejorative). It’s NOT OK to say another USER is (pejorative). Strong language is fine, just not directed at other members. Engage in good-faith and with respect! This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban.
- No memes, trolling, or low-effort comments. Reposts, misinformation, off-topic, trolling, or offensive.
- Vote based on comment quality, not agreement. This community aims to foster discussion; please reward people for putting effort into articulating their viewpoint, even if you disagree with it.
- No hate speech, slurs, celebrating death, advocating violence, or abusive language. This will result in a ban. Usernames containing racist, or inappropriate slurs will be banned without warning
We ask that the users report any comment or post that violate the rules, to use critical thinking when reading, posting or commenting. Users that post off-topic spam, advocate violence, have multiple comments or posts removed, weaponize reports or violate the code of conduct will be banned.
All posts and comments will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. This means that some content that violates the rules may be allowed, while other content that does not violate the rules may be removed. The moderators retain the right to remove any content and ban users.
That's all the rules!
Civic Links
• Congressional Awards Program
• Library of Congress Legislative Resources
• U.S. House of Representatives
Partnered Communities:
• News
view the rest of the comments
These people are in their own reality. It's a cognitive dissonance wrapped in layers of shoddy reasoning and tribal beliefs to keep it from unwinding. You can't rationally reason with them and any attempt to do so will be seen as a personal attack. It's the classic "you can't reason somebody out of a position where they didn't reason themselves into."
Best you can do is going along, acknowledge their pain or fear that's somewhere at the basis of this cognitive dissonance and ask some questions that might get them to thing like asking them to explain who taught them this or the "so why would God cause a new pandemic?" type of questions from time to time.
Yeah, I find asking questions often tends to put them into a space they are not used to being in, depending on the question.
For instance, recently, I was visiting another relative during some larger gathering. I was flipping around channels and left it on CNN for a minute. Another relative (known for being a magabrain) drifts over to the TV and says, "CNN, eh?" and expects me to react in some prescribed way. I just shrug and ask "is there something wrong with CNN?" They honestly had no real answer. You could see them kind of thinking it through, esp. given the current content was something very innocuous.
I think I asked that anti-evolution type what they thought the difference between mutation and evolution was when they were objecting to the term "evolution" in regards to new strains of viruses. That was ages ago, it was probably around SARS or avian flu.
More recently, I asked one of those people going on about "gain of function" in relation to Fauci and Wuhan labs, etc., that I knew also to be an anti-evolution. I just asked them what they think gain of function means?
It's not about trying to find trick questions - that tends to just have the blowback question. I find just trying to ask more innocent questions, ask them to define their terms, or what they are parroting means to them seems to have them go quiet for a while. I'm assuming they are mulling it over. It might not change their mind, at least not any time soon. But if I can at least get them thinking about what they are mindlessly repeating, I figure that's a win.