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PaperclipPerfector  3mo ago (text post)   2329 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for August 4, 2024

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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How? They have beliefs slightly to the right of the BBC. At this point, the gap between our worldviews is so large that anything I say comes out as alien and incomprehensible to them; if anything our conversations push them further into their own hermetically sealed worldview. If I attempt to say anything honest about politics, it's drowned out by loud wails that their son has been brainwashed by Russian misinformation and Andrew Tate. I've never even seen Andrew Tate.

@2rafa put it best:

It reminds me of real life conversations I’ve had with white English people, intelligent, center-right conservative types, about groups, identity, mass immigration, genetics, civilization, and they just shut down. I don’t mean that they shut down the debate, they’re usually polite enough and I wouldn’t discuss ‘edgy’ things with people I didn’t trust anyway, but they shut down internally. They display the exact pigheaded stubbornness that the Seattle video interviewees do, the strange combination of [post] Christian guilt complex and superiority complex and absolute, ‘Emperor’s New Clothes’ type emphasis on propriety above policy. [...] Some (politically involved people, one a former MP) will even admit the current levels of immigration are a catastrophe, but then suggest in the same breath that what happens will happen, and that above all the focus should be on preventing the far right from making too much hay of the situation and “destabilizing” things. What can you do with such people?

I come back to that quote often. It's true. And it drives me to absolute despair.

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