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.
Yeah, yeah it is.
But what do you do when someone in a position of power over you has a tantrum and refuses to use common sense…?
Oh lord. This is not how you approach thinking about anything remotely like this if you actually want to change someone’s beliefs.
Belittling them and their beliefs, no matter how deserving, is nearly guaranteed to just piss them off and not do much more. It doesn’t read as an attack on misguided beliefs, it will read to them as an attack on them and their own decision making/reasoning skills. Because you probably are internally thinking “what the fuck is wrong with you” and it probably come through to them loud and clear.
If it’s your boss, stop fucking talking politics at work. Not tomorrow, not now, yesterday. No, you don’t get a pass for correcting the abysmally wrong. Just shut the fuck up about politics and keep your head down. Work is for making a paycheck so you can survive, not for making an idealogical stand. If they keep trying to talk politics to you and won’t allow you to disengage, start looking for a new job. HR is not your friend and are most likely going to side with the more senior position, or at least will let it slip that you complained to them, making your job even more hell. Just cut your losses. Either get your shit together to be able to work around it, get a number of people together to all lodge the same complaint so it’s more costly for HR to ignore you than it is for them to, or find someplace else asap.
If it’s your parents or family, just avoid the fucking subject for as long as you are reliant on them for anything. If they won’t shut up about it, learn to “grey rock” or just smile and nod. Redirect. Change the subject. Do anything except try to meet them head on and “win” the argument. That’s not how conversations work in regards to convincing people of things, especially when there are strong feelings attached.
It is not your job to correct people’s misguided beliefs. The people who argue that it’s your duty to speak up whenever and wherever you can… they live a life that is either significantly divorced from reality, insulated by living surrounded entirely with like minded individuals, they are slowly alienating those around them, or they are only so outspoken online. Your first priority is to just get by, hopefully avoiding unneeded conflict in your daily life.
And before all the people come out of the fucking woodwork with extreme hypotheticals… Yes, if your boss or parent is literally using racial slurs, that changes things. If things are more extreme than some asshole just blabbing out their dumbass beliefs, re-evaluate. All I’ve said is under the assumption that the shit you’re complaining about is mainly just people talking stupid shit.
People don’t work like some sort of fucking debate club where you can beat them over the head with facts, logic, and gotchas until they submit and see things your way. It’s a very addictive thing to convince yourself that they do, but they overwhelmingly don’t
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?
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/
That’s a lot of words to ignore critical pieces of what I said.
Awesome! Given this was a post about MAGA, I assumed you were from the US, dealing with people also in the US.
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?
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.
Absolutely.
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.
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.
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?
That’s a bit ironic, innit?
Oh as if you even browsed it, let alone read it.
Not what the point of the article, which again, you’d have known had you read it.
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.)
“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.