I'm in one of those "hard purple" areas, wherein the next town over is rural farmers and in town itself is full of the type of jobs that are basically pure Red voters, but its also full of Mexicans and the giant university folks (and those that they bring).
So I get the full gamut. Even my own two neighbors are a "OFFENDED LIBERAL?!?!" Trump guy and someone who has in the past year flown Ukraine, Gay, and now Palestine's flag.
Its actually quite amusing to see shifts in public conscienceness happen in real time from it. Like seeing the TDS guy at work go from bullying other people into agreeing with him, to watching his every Media Fed Line get laughed off by complete normies.
Have you also noticed a shift of people being more openly supportive of Trump?
It's taken years, but I think the old "secretly a Trump voter thing because they are intimidated by Leftists" may be actually wayning. There's certainly less generalized political violence against Trump supporters now than there was in 2016 and 2020.
Absolutely. Me and a bunch of guys at work today were literally openly talking about being Conservative and voting for him, despite having never talked politics before to know it was "safe" to do so.
I think there has been a very powerful shift in the Leftist tactic of making Righties feel isolated and odd man out, and thereby never feeling like they could even speak up. Now it seems people know that they aren't outnumbered and can't be shouted down with -ist labels so easily.
And in my personal experience, a lot of these conversations are literally opening on mockery of Kamala. Like she is so bad that people feel compelled to point it out and laugh at her, which then leads to that realization that we were all Trump voting anyway.
Interesting. Around me, it's still mostly "keep politics out of it" just because it can be such a toxic environment. The polarization is just serious enough that we can't even agree on the same shit. I think I mentioned before that I still have friends that think Trump explicitly staged his assassination.
Having normal conversations with people that captured is genuinely difficult, because you quickly see that they are fully comfortable with joking about their own narrative, and just assumed that you (like everyone they see on television) hold the same opinion.
IIRC I just had one recently where I was talking about the way that the Assyrian Empire basically eviscerated their enemies (mass killings, full scale city razing, complete ethnic cleansing, possibly a genocide, and at one point they literally imprisoned a god), and they were like: "sounds what the Americans did to black people." ... I was just so taken aback by the level of insane hyperbole on that comment, even as a joke, that I just tried to change the subject to something more personal. If we can't agree that blacks were not systematically genocided in a fire-bombing campaign in the US, then we really don't have anything we can agree upon.
BUT, at least we're having fewer instances of interpersonal political violence.
Around me, it's still mostly "keep politics out of it" just because it can be such a toxic environment
I think the only reason we felt comfortable about it was, as you said, the knowledge that we all kinda agreed and it was more an opinion discussion instead of Judgemental Moralization like most Left/Right politics talks get.
Which is something we couldn't have done in years prior because we'd be too scared to admit to being Conservative or doing so in public with others around.
Having normal conversations with people that captured is genuinely difficult
It can be. I've got friends who we just straight agreed to never discuss politics around each other and maintain enough respect for each other as a person to not break that. We both agree that the other will never sway to our side, so we instead just be friends.
But I maintain that a lot people are far less captured than they seem. I've pulled feminists from the brink with continuous wearing down of their ideology through examples and in their face actions, same with many minorities about their own race or immigrants in general. Its a very delicate push and pull act, and not always successful, but I think most people are so obsessed with getting their "CHECKMATE LIBERAL" virtue signal and jerking themselves off about how they are The Most Anti-Woke that they burn that bridge before it can even be conceptualized.
To keep with my work example. While the TDS guy isn't likely to budge, constantly prodding him jovially and watching him sperg out has done wonders in shaking up people who agree with him on pure optics alone. Especially when you point out regularly how you "can't discuss this normally because he is around" to really drive the point home about how damaging that type of rhetoric is and how you are a "safe" person to discuss with.
What's even funnier about that is that he is in essence my direct supervisor and someone I have a strong working relationship with that is almost mentor level. Yet by maintaining a non-confrontational attitude every time he goes on his rant about felons and racism, its turned the back and forth into more of a bit (he calls me racist daily because I hate Mexican food) instead of an actual battle.
If we can't agree that blacks were not systematically genocided in a fire-bombing campaign in the US, then we really don't have anything we can agree upon.
There is a huge issue of people turning "the really bad" events of history into this basic catchall where literally every evil thing imaginable is either included or seems plausible that it happened. Where the evil of "the bad guys" was so cartoonish that they truly believe in hilariously contradictory or maddening things.
Its particular bad (at least in America) with black history, Indian history, and Nazis/Holocaust stuff. Wherein people will claim fucking anything happened and then treat it as actual history just because "well people were evil, so they'd do literally anything evil."
I'm in one of those "hard purple" areas, wherein the next town over is rural farmers and in town itself is full of the type of jobs that are basically pure Red voters, but its also full of Mexicans and the giant university folks (and those that they bring).
So I get the full gamut. Even my own two neighbors are a "OFFENDED LIBERAL?!?!" Trump guy and someone who has in the past year flown Ukraine, Gay, and now Palestine's flag.
Its actually quite amusing to see shifts in public conscienceness happen in real time from it. Like seeing the TDS guy at work go from bullying other people into agreeing with him, to watching his every Media Fed Line get laughed off by complete normies.
Have you also noticed a shift of people being more openly supportive of Trump?
It's taken years, but I think the old "secretly a Trump voter thing because they are intimidated by Leftists" may be actually wayning. There's certainly less generalized political violence against Trump supporters now than there was in 2016 and 2020.
Absolutely. Me and a bunch of guys at work today were literally openly talking about being Conservative and voting for him, despite having never talked politics before to know it was "safe" to do so.
I think there has been a very powerful shift in the Leftist tactic of making Righties feel isolated and odd man out, and thereby never feeling like they could even speak up. Now it seems people know that they aren't outnumbered and can't be shouted down with -ist labels so easily.
And in my personal experience, a lot of these conversations are literally opening on mockery of Kamala. Like she is so bad that people feel compelled to point it out and laugh at her, which then leads to that realization that we were all Trump voting anyway.
Interesting. Around me, it's still mostly "keep politics out of it" just because it can be such a toxic environment. The polarization is just serious enough that we can't even agree on the same shit. I think I mentioned before that I still have friends that think Trump explicitly staged his assassination.
Having normal conversations with people that captured is genuinely difficult, because you quickly see that they are fully comfortable with joking about their own narrative, and just assumed that you (like everyone they see on television) hold the same opinion.
IIRC I just had one recently where I was talking about the way that the Assyrian Empire basically eviscerated their enemies (mass killings, full scale city razing, complete ethnic cleansing, possibly a genocide, and at one point they literally imprisoned a god), and they were like: "sounds what the Americans did to black people." ... I was just so taken aback by the level of insane hyperbole on that comment, even as a joke, that I just tried to change the subject to something more personal. If we can't agree that blacks were not systematically genocided in a fire-bombing campaign in the US, then we really don't have anything we can agree upon.
BUT, at least we're having fewer instances of interpersonal political violence.
I think the only reason we felt comfortable about it was, as you said, the knowledge that we all kinda agreed and it was more an opinion discussion instead of Judgemental Moralization like most Left/Right politics talks get.
Which is something we couldn't have done in years prior because we'd be too scared to admit to being Conservative or doing so in public with others around.
It can be. I've got friends who we just straight agreed to never discuss politics around each other and maintain enough respect for each other as a person to not break that. We both agree that the other will never sway to our side, so we instead just be friends.
But I maintain that a lot people are far less captured than they seem. I've pulled feminists from the brink with continuous wearing down of their ideology through examples and in their face actions, same with many minorities about their own race or immigrants in general. Its a very delicate push and pull act, and not always successful, but I think most people are so obsessed with getting their "CHECKMATE LIBERAL" virtue signal and jerking themselves off about how they are The Most Anti-Woke that they burn that bridge before it can even be conceptualized.
To keep with my work example. While the TDS guy isn't likely to budge, constantly prodding him jovially and watching him sperg out has done wonders in shaking up people who agree with him on pure optics alone. Especially when you point out regularly how you "can't discuss this normally because he is around" to really drive the point home about how damaging that type of rhetoric is and how you are a "safe" person to discuss with.
What's even funnier about that is that he is in essence my direct supervisor and someone I have a strong working relationship with that is almost mentor level. Yet by maintaining a non-confrontational attitude every time he goes on his rant about felons and racism, its turned the back and forth into more of a bit (he calls me racist daily because I hate Mexican food) instead of an actual battle.
There is a huge issue of people turning "the really bad" events of history into this basic catchall where literally every evil thing imaginable is either included or seems plausible that it happened. Where the evil of "the bad guys" was so cartoonish that they truly believe in hilariously contradictory or maddening things.
Its particular bad (at least in America) with black history, Indian history, and Nazis/Holocaust stuff. Wherein people will claim fucking anything happened and then treat it as actual history just because "well people were evil, so they'd do literally anything evil."