In Democracy the people get the government they deserve. Guess we really don't deserve human rights and habeus corpus.
It’s no surprise to me that the pols I respect, R. Pauls, R. Wyden, and the like come from more rural states (Texas, Kentucky, Oregon) .
The cities are the problem, I fear
So speak up. Educate your fellow citizens as to why these issues are important. Break through their media bubble/snowglobe and have multiple meaningful conversations that go deeper than the talking points spewed out by media personalities. Much of the country is purple not red and blue - if you can have a respectful conversation with someone you can find common ground on these issues.
And show up on election day.
The First Amendment exists for a reason - "we get the government we deserve" applies to those of us who chose to stay informed as well if we don't respond to the challenges of the day.
Have you ever actually gotten that to work? Have you personally ever changed a single persons mind? Not trying to be facetious, but I'm incredulous.
I've also talked people out of supporting outrageous statements or made them question their own beliefs (rural relatives in South Dakota who loved talking about their lack of income tax now openly question why SD gets so much more government tax money than neighbouring MN etc).
That said, the point isn't to be "win", it's to have a dialogue, share ideas, and break out of the "us vs them" mentality.
It is extremely hard and works only with people not entirely webbed into "alternative media". I managed to get only one attendant of a Nazi march to rethink his views. In three years. Conspiracy theories are hard to break out of, especially for those without a job and doing nothing but watch "freemen of the land", "europe will be islamized" or "the hooton plan is real" (hooton plan = nazi nutjob theory that "the elite" wants to extinguish the Germans by having them breed with "weaker races") videos all day.
The rest, well... beating them like Spencer isn't exactly the most moral way either, but forcing them back into their caves at least keeps them off the streets. I don't want Nazis openly marching with torches on the streets.
Today it is possible for someone to hear, watch and read only fake news all day without having any kind of dissenting viewpoint, compared to prior times where the only exposure was the weekly KKK gathering and maybe some letters. It is way harder (or impossible!) to break through the psychological walls the exposure to this shit creates.
In addition, today's fake news and right wing propaganda is specifically engineered to appeal to the lowest prime instincts only, and Facebook's algorithms only intensify the problem as they keep feeding you more and more poison.
I’ve found the most movement comes with frank and respectful exchange of ideas. I’ve moved a little as a result, and I’ve seen others move a bit too. Sometimes that movement has come simply from recognizing the other party isn’t as insane as common rhetoric would paint them.
I frequently change my mind, which is proof that one or more people out there are changing at least one person's mind. And here's the thing: in nearly all cases, the person or, more often, the people who change my mind never know it. I am often stubborn in the moment and unwilling to admit I've been swayed. More often, I don't realize that I have been swayed until I revisit the conversation over the next months, while adding in new information from other conversations or things I'm reading with a developing perspective. Sometimes my mind changes so slowly that I don't even notice it did until someone quotes back to me the now (obviously! objectively!) wrong thing I used to think.
My point is this: you may be changing minds without knowing it. And another point: even if you aren't, you are likely benefitting personally from having meaningful conversations with people.
To effect change, people must be open and willing to change themselves. And I don't think most people are, especially the older we get.
If you want to change people's minds on a big scale, it's by educating the young, and creating incentives towards your way of thinking. It requires institutional power, and it takes generations.
As a direct counter-example: I think a lot of older people have given up their previous views on privacy in exchange for using Facebook and doing other commonly-intrusive internet activities.
I think I'd replace the paragraph with "If you want to change someone's mind, try demonstrating an alternative with better trade-offs".
I'm hoping the GDPR will be a demonstration to Canadians & Americans that demanding a right to privacy is a viable alternative to the status quo.
Social networks, advertising, and privacy are able co-exist, just perhaps not with the existing trade-offs allowing free-as-in-beer and know-me-better-than-myself-"features".
edit: reordering paragraphs edit2: reorganization
Don't take this as a personal comment, but the ability to change ones mind based on changing facts is one of the characteristics of liberals. Conservatives, on the other hand, by definition are known for not changing their minds.
disposed to preserve existing conditions, institutions, etc., or to restore traditional ones, and to limit change.
The definition you posted above cover's the characteristics of a person's actions, strategies, etc.
In contrast, I understood your earlier post to be about conservative's epistemic habits.
Those two things are certainly connected, but aren't identical.
Proof: me.
I've changed my mind on certain topics - esp drugs and to a certain degree AGW based on discussions.
Protip: calling me a troll, paid shill, downvoting honest questions doesn't work on people like me.
I do however listen to reasonable arguments and take pride in being able to change my mind.
It doesn't work on anybody.
I had a relative who was extremely intelligent, his career being aurospace engineer who didn't believe in cimate change and another a computer programmer who didn't believe in evolution.
I don't think I understand how people can believe nonsense and yet obviously be capable of learning complex and difficult topics.
>"I don't think I understand how people can believe nonsense [...]" //
Are these supposed to be related. Not believing in evolution doesn't mean you do believe in nonsense, for example.
Once you've been around the block a few times it's easy to get cynical about scientific claims. Too much scientism.
Ok, let me give it a try. A few years ago I knew nothing about climate science.
My scepticism (not denying) was grounded in the overwhelming focus on feelings, not numbers.
When someone started answer my questions with measurable numbers my scepticism waned.
So I might have been wrong about this but I think it is often a nice heuristic: when people refuse to give you data and insist on either playing your feelings (with pictures of sad animals), appeal to authority (2500 scientists...) or outright calling you a troll then it could be because there was no hard data.
I know the question wasn't directed at me, and it's not with respect to the proposed Muslim ban, but I have changed the mind of some of the voters from this general background: specifically, would-be Roy Moore voters. I convinced a good handful of them not to vote for him[1]. And as far as I know, they stayed home.
The key is to be extremely patient, honest, and respectful. You can't use the typical Twitter technique of beating them over the head with opinions, or even the blunt HN technique of overwhelming them with facts. You have to first try to understand their viewpoint, and where they are coming from. Doesn't mean you have to agree with it, just understand it. And the best way to do that is to start asking lots of respectful questions, and depending on the person, sharing your own background. Then, start interspersing harder questions about the subject in question, like Roy Moore in this case. Don't push too hard, but ask hard questions in a respectful way.
Of course, in these situations, you have to be open to having your opinion changed, as well.
It's not a very eloquent summary of what I've done in this situations, but it's the best I've got tonight.
1. Perhaps the hardest part about this is differentiating between propaganda sock puppet accounts, whom you will likely never convince, and actual people who happen to believe some pretty crazy things. Once you've identified real, genuine fellow citizens behind whatever pseudonymous social media account, you're half-way there.
Most of the pro-gun liberals I know said they didn't have a strong opinion on the subject and they found the pro-gun numbers and stats less filled with dishonest trickery than the anti-gun numbers and stats.
With most issues most people don't care much. These are the people who you can convince to have a baseline opinion that is (for example) against the CIA shipping people off to be tortured with carefully reasoned argument. It's like how most people believe man-made climate change is a thing to some extent. They don't care strongly but a couple decades of numbers and facts have influenced the baseline opinion of those people.
Unfortunately, that study turned out to be completely falsified.
But, in anotothef twist, the underlying hypothesis may indeed appear to have some merit—there are a few studies now underway.
(Sorry for not including links—on mobile right nowk
There is also a transcript available, too: https://www.thisamericanlife.org/584/transcript
And it kind of just slots so many pieces of wrong conclusions and xenophobia and dehumanization of the "other" together in one, painfully clear image...
I'm not sure of that moves the needle on being able to convince anyone.. But if not we might as well all build gas chambers and furnaces and burn vagrants as a source of electricity. Because if we give up fighting for the right for all of being viewed as human - what's left?
[ed: to more directly answer the question - I know I've made people pause - but most recently - a friend really made someone reconsider/reframe their idea of feminism/equality due to an hour or two of discussion and and real-world examples. So it is possible, but it takes patience, emphaty and knowledge.]
"Donald J. Trump is calling for a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until our country's representatives can figure out what the hell is going on."
>We live in an age where "Muslim ban" sounds like appropriate policy to about half the population.
The OP is saying that close to half the voters voted for Trump, so it's likely they agree that a Muslim ban is appropriate.
It's also hard to go against this, as we've been at war with the Middle East since Desert Storm - only a ceasefire was called. And then later add on extremist moslems during September 11 attacks, and yeah.. It's a perfect firestorm of justifiable hatred of a religion by a great many people.
The people in the middle east worship a "psychotic man with a hairy mole" (aka: Mohamed). I learned that on WIBC, 1070KHz after a multitude of interviews that Mike Pence hosted back in the mid 90's with "religion intellectuals". I was in my mid teens during that.. should have recorded him talking about all this, but I'm sure the radio studio has recordings as well.
And back to the main issue, "Otherization" allows targeting anyone they don't want. And this seems to be drifting hard to neo-nazism. I know the people on Daily Stormer and similar groups are rather happy.
I'm a better and more mature person at 40 than I was at 20 because people have taken the time to patiently point out flaws in my own thinking. Not every conversation moves the direction of your life, but they do collectively nudge you in the right direction.
1 - https://www.npr.org/2017/08/20/544861933/how-one-man-convinc...
Engage them directly, wait until the next conversation on the topic in a group, and hang back. Sometimes you'll be surprised. People don't always change their minds immediately, but this is to be expected -- it is a means to protect the ego.
One thing to note is that the beliefs you’re convincing people of don’t have to be top-level shifts like ‘be a communist instead of a libertarian ‘... one can help others see individual issues or political figures in a new light.
With one caveat, though. If you approach it with the mindset that you're out to educate other voters, you're not going to succeed. What you can do is have actual conversations with them. Sometimes those have results.
When one person sets out to educate another, there's a presumption of power, position, and knowledge. Unless the person to be educated has set out specifically to be educated, this is almost certainly going to rub them the wrong way. Instead of being educated on the subject you'd like, you'll educate them that advocates on a given subject are arrogant lecturing asses.
Small but important nuance: the majority vote gets the government they "deserve" ("voted for"). The rest has to go along with the majority vote. The rest are people as well, but they're marginalised by both your quote as well as by reality. The difference can be small. Case in point: the last US presidential election.
Not all of us out here are hicks, especially when you get to the big cities. Look at the voting trends by county and you'll see that Wake goes blue every year.
Trump advocated targeting civilians in a war zone as a campaign promise. It was met with thunderous applause. https://www.christianpost.com/news/trump-kill-innocent-famil...
How do you like your second amendment? How do you like due process of law? How about fuck both those things cause we're going to put people on Kafkaesque lists without any day in court and bar them from gun ownership without explanation. Surely such a measure would be massively unpopular with Republicans... http://time.com/4370009/donald-trump-gun-control-watch-list-...
In fairness on that last one it didn't matter who you voted for. Hillary literally said the same thing. https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/elections/2016/...
Its not like the US would actively hack US citizens on US soil in order to suppress a peaceful protest. Oh shit. https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/07/26/standing_rock_prote... But you know, fuck them hippie protestors and occupy types. Whole lot should go get jobs amirite?
Do I need to continue? Because I can. I've barely even touched upon the Obama era. And obviously the Patriot act and Guantanamo before that.
Let me be clear here. I don't hate America. But when transgressions like this are applauded it becomes clear that a huge fraction of our populace just doesn't stand for our values. Our country is only as good as the people in it.
It's cheap of you to throw a muslim ban into the immigration bucket and not into the religious freedom bucket.
"Verily, God does not change the state/condition of a People until they change themselves." (Quran 13:11)
When has someone pushed for a "Muslim ban" in the United States?
"I'll tell you the whole history of it," Giuliani said, as transcribed by The Washington Post. "So when (Trump) first announced it, he said, 'Muslim ban.' He called me up. He said, 'Put a commission together. Show me the right way to do it legally.'"
[1]http://www.cnn.com/2017/02/06/politics/trump-muslim-ban-trav...
Right here:
“Donald J. Trump is calling for a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until our country's representatives can figure out what is going on.”
Source: https://web.archive.org/web/20161207195544/https://www.donal...