ZK, question for you. Why is that friend still your golf buddy?
[/quote]
Question for you, Brian. Are you religious? If so, your beliefs are as ridiculous and ungrounded in reality as any fox viewer’s beliefs. If you’re not religious, do you eliminate all religious people as possible friends? If not, why not? Virtually all religions contain beliefs at least as horrible as anything trump and fox are pushing. And to believe what those religions are teaching requires just as much ignorance of reality and susceptibility to brainwashing as believing what fox and trump say. So what’s the difference?
To answer your question, he’s still my friend because he’s a good person and I like him. He has fallen hard for fox propaganda. That doesn’t make him a bad person deep inside. It makes him a human being who is susceptible, like almost all human beings, to emotional manipulation. Susceptible to believing what he wants to believe instead of what the evidence shows.
[quote=FlyerInHi]
What do you think would happen if, in conversations with your friend, you dished out the same shit about the right wing? Actually, you don’t need to go that far — just based on facts, show him what morons his kinds are.
I think liberals are part of the problem because we are too tolerant of the ranting from the right. We enable them. Throw the shit back and they will see quickly how it feels.
[/quote]
What makes you think I didn’t throw any shit back? I did. And hard. I pointed out a couple of his hypocrisies, told him that I didn’t think and feel how fox told him I feel, told him that fox was lying to him, told him he should open his mind to the possibility that fox is nothing but propaganda, told him that the only reason he thinks NYT and WaPo are fake news is that fox told him to think that. Etcetera.
And this isn’t the first time we’ve had this conversation, so to answer your question about what would happen if I threw back, well, we’d still be friends and we’d be out there playing golf again.
What I should have done, and probably would have if I hadn’t had a couple beers, is told him that we both want the same things. That we’re friends and countrymen and fellow human beings, and that we really do want the same things. And then gone on to ask him some questions. Which, done skillfully enough, can occasionally get someone to maybe start pondering whether they’ve made some bad assumptions (not that I’m skillful at it, but it would’ve been better than just telling him that he’s brainwashed, which is basically what I did).
[quote=FlyerInHi]
I used to be nice, but I now have no hesitation in writing off “friends” since Trump’s election. The deplorables have revealed themselves for who they really are. Let’s not pass it off as the fault of the right wing media.
[/quote]
I don’t think you can lump all of them together like that. Some of them have bad hearts and some of them are just brainwashed. Just like religious people. Some christians take leviticus and turn it into their own personal crusade, and others take the teachings of Christ and actually live by them. And most (but not all) christians, just like most (but not all) of those conned by right-wing media, are no better nor worse of human beings than they would be if they weren’t brainwashed. Their ignorance and whatever malice that they might have are just more visible. That said, there are a few from both of those groups who get wound up and do bad things they otherwise wouldn’t do. And those people (and those whose malice is otherwise revealed) deserve to be “unfriended.” But I think maybe you’re throwing the baby out with the bathwater here. I know I would be if I didn’t hang around this guy any more.
And I do blame the right-wing media. As I’ve said over and over, humans are susceptible to emotional manipulation and brainwashing. Con men throughout human existence have taken advantage of that susceptibility. Right-wing media are nothing but con men, taking advantage of the particular fears, angers, and desires that exist in a large segment of America’s population right now.
Con men and rubes. That’s where the right is at right now. It’s where a lot of humanity is and always has been. You can place all the blame on the rubes if you want. But you seem to be ignoring human nature and ignoring the ice-cold and immensely selfish con men who are fleecing your fellow humans.
[quote=FlyerInHi]
If you friend were as intelligent as you say, he wouldn’t fall for the Fox propaganda.
[/quote]
You couldn’t be more wrong about that. Intelligence (of the standard variety) has very little to do with susceptibility to a con. Take Ben Stein, for example. Here’s a man who was valedictorian of his class at Yale Law School. That doesn’t happen without a very powerful intellect. Yet he seems to believe in young-earth creationism. People believe what they want to believe. And con men are great at getting people to want to believe what they (the con men) want them to believe.
[quote=FlyerInHi]
Zk, by allowing the assymetrical relationship, you are enabling the behavior.
[/quote]
The friendship would only be asymmetrical if your assumptions about it were true (which, as you can see, they’re not). As I said, I did tell him that I thought he’d been manipulated, that fox was propaganda, that if he wanted the truth, he needed to read some reliable reporting. As I said before, what I should’ve done was find some common ground and led him through the process that got him to his current thinking with his own words (via questions). Maybe next time.
[quote=FlyerInHi]
I have written off several “friends” because they could not handle the pushback. Not my fault.
[/quote]
If those friends have malice in their hearts, then good for you. If not, I think you made a mistake.
