I’m surrounded by people who care more about Charlie Kirk than about Gaza, sometimes it’s hard not to believe that most people are drones or just horrendous people. I can’t even watch a video my colleague sent me on AI because it’s so western centric and anti-China and I can’t get past that to have a conversation about the other stuff. It’s so isolating and disconnecting.
I was talking to a family member recently and they were shocked, or, apalled that I even suggested that all billionaires are right wingers. In fact they were offended at the thought that even the Clintons are anything but communists.
It’s surreal, but a reminder that I once also believed in the status quo, and that anyone on the actual left was a crazy and insane brainwashed privileged person (hence their leftist beliefs).
To be honest, this part makes me upset that we’re so niche that people could even believe that. When people criticize wrestlers they don’t say they have weak punch combinations. When people criticize teachers they don’t say they waste too much time in the gym. When people criticize football players, they don’t call them unathletic (usually). But somehow when it comes to communists, we get flak for the Clintons?! The CEOs?! Chuck Schumer?!?! Russia?!?!?!?!
I hear this shit and I can’t even have a conversation about it. It’s so doomed to fail because you’re not defending the thing itself. You’re not even defending a straw man. You’re defending a wheat field. It’s so far removed from even beginning a conversation about it.
musings about strategy
You can short circuit the conversation “what do you think about market socialism? No, not really like China, I was thinking of Vietnam” and then they don’t know Vietnam so it clarifies there’s no real headway to be made so you can change subject/tune out their rant.
The alternative would be to dig into how they’ve been personally victimized by the system. You’ll never change someone’s mind. So you’d, at best, open their eyes to the suffering they’ve endured and tell them that someone cares about it (it’s not a capitalist). Alienated at work? The meeting Luigi’s CEO was going to started on time. Health insurance? Rent? Mental health? Raising kids? Buying a house? No community? You as an evangelist, I believe, are capable of 1) sympathizing and 2) explaining how capitalism caused it. Even if they’re grotesque, being grotesque doesn’t stop them from suffering or open them to change upon being called grotesque. So if your goal is any kind of rehabilitation, a win, no matter how unlikely, starts with seeing their point of view and recognizing why it would suck.