Just something MAGA-people seem to have a hard time with sometimes. Probably not as much when Americans are speaking to themselves, but as a non-American, sometimes it’s challenging to get “those people” to admit that there is indeed anything wrong with the US. As in they won’t accept a single criticism, and will loudly proclaim “America is the greatest country in the world”, while wearing a “Make America Great Again” hat, which for me pretty explicitly means America isn’t great, if it has to be made to be such again.

  • @[email protected]OP
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    4 months ago

    If it’s your boss, stop fucking talking politics at work.

    I live in a country where I people can’t be fired over “talking politics” at work. A boss isn’t too much in a position of power, depending on the job. This is because here in Finland, we have regulation.

    I’m an adult. Why would my family be in a “position of power” over me?

    “It is not your job to correct people’s misguided beliefs”

    So if a cop broke your rights because they got mad at you for making them have a tantrum and use an excuse to arrest you, you’d allow them and apologize and not do anything about it, since “it’s not your job” to correct the cops misguided belief that they were in the right to arrest you over simply having offended them?

    If you’re in politics, and you’re in a session and the speaker has a tantrum, what do you do?

    If you’re an American a few years ago, your president was Donald Trump, a drooling, diaper-wearing senior who can’t parse sentences together and refuses to believe in well established facts. That’s a deluded, misguided, and willfully ignorant man as the president, which I would consider a position of power (over the people in his nation, not me, as again, not American.)

    You wouldn’t think it’s perhaps in the interest of greater society to not have people like that in positions of power?

    People don’t work like some sort of fucking debate club

    Oh gee whiz, kind internet-stranger, thanks for the words of wisdom, I never would’ve thought that otherwise.

    Or perhaps I’m making conversation here about this subject you think you know so well.

    Have a gander: https://howtobeastoic.wordpress.com/2016/01/19/one-crucial-word/

    “The higher, pretentious form of stupidity stands only too often in crass opposition to [its] honorable form. It is not so much lack of intelligence as failure of intelligence, for the reason that it presumes to accomplishments to which it has no right … The stupidity this addresses is no mental illness, yet it is most lethal; a dangerous disease of the mind that endangers life itself. … [S]ince the ‘higher stupidity’ consists not in an inability to understand but in a refusal to understand, any healing or reversal of it will not occur through rational argumentation, through a greater accumulation of data and knowledge, or through experiencing new and different feelings … We may say that the reversal of a spiritual sickness must entail a spiritual cure.”

    • @[email protected]
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      04 months ago

      That’s a lot of words to ignore critical pieces of what I said.

      I live in a country where I people can’t be fired over “talking politics” at work.

      Awesome! Given this was a post about MAGA, I assumed you were from the US, dealing with people also in the US.

      I’m an adult. Why would my family be in a “position of power” over me?

      I don’t know you, and there’s more and more posts on lemmy each day from high schoolers and young adults still living with their folks. I very clearly said that was advice for if you were still reliant on them, so… just ignore that section I guess?

      So if a cop broke…

      If you’re in politics…

      Read on to the end please, I tried to be clear that I was giving advice for a situation where someone is just dealing with annoying talk and poor political beliefs from a boss or a family member they may be dependent on. I’m seeing more and more of those posts lately.

      I’m not interested in discussing extreme hypotheticals, as I hoped that it might not need to be made explicit that advice meant for one context does not apply outside of it.

      If you’re an American… [orange man bad]… You wouldn’t think it’s perhaps in the interest of greater society to not have people like that in positions of power?

      Absolutely.

      Oh gee whiz, kind internet-stranger, thanks for the words of wisdom, I never would’ve thought that otherwise.

      Oh, I’m very sorry that I mistook your comment worded as though it was looking for advice as though you might be looking for advice. Again, I don’t know you, who you are, or what you do and don’t know.

      Have a gander… [stoicism stuff]

      That’s a nice piece there, and effectively what I was trying to get at in a far less pretentious manner than that text. Can’t logic people out of beliefs that have a significant emotional component.

      And because of that, I feel it’s best to not waste effort if there isn’t a pressing need. No single person is going to argue down enough Trump voters to impact US election results, so that effort is likely best applied elsewhere, rather than introducing unproductive conflict into your life.

      • @[email protected]OP
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        4 months ago

        Awesome! Given this was a post about MAGA, I assumed you were from the US

        That’s understandable. Personally, I don’t comment on posts without reading them, but I understand the attitudes towards literacy are a bit different in the States. If you had, you’d have probably noticed the “as a non-American”, bit, wouldn’t you?

        Read on to the end please

        That’s a bit ironic, innit?

        That’s a nice piece there

        Oh as if you even browsed it, let alone read it.

        Can’t logic people out of beliefs that have a significant emotional component.

        Not what the point of the article, which again, you’d have known had you read it.

        No single person is going to argue down enough Trump voters to impact US election results

        Well, we’ll ignore the fact that the US doesn’t have direct presidential elections and pretend as if the popular vote was a de-facto direct vote. If it was, then even by affecting one voter, you could be affecting the outcome of the election. To say there’s literally no impact is disingenuous, because politics is all about, well, politics. To say that “what are you gonna achieve by talking about it”, in the context of politicians, is… rather silly.

        Apathy is the greatest tool of the oppressor, and they’ve certainly gotten you. You should definitely have a look at this. https://medium.com/@annalloydc/how-fascism-and-apathy-are-linked-017c8a7b1e3d (And I use have “a look”/“gander at”, because I knew you wouldn’t be bothered to spend a few minutes reading them, but hoped I’d be wrong.)

        Apathy can result in a lack of political engagement and interest, creating fertile ground for the rise of fascism. Corrupt people in political office love it when young people don’t vote, and become apathetic, because it increases their chances of winning.

        “You can’t argue the opposition anyway since they’re idiots, so why bother”

        Well, because while most idiots will stay idiots, not all do. Yes it’s a vanishingly small percentage you’ll experience doing it mid-debate, but to think that having discourse has no effect even if some MAGAts stayed magats despite the discourse, then you’re being apathetic, which is putting the US (and the world) at more risk of fascism. So… please stop.

        It is from small streams that big rivers rise.