(based on a true story)
No. I want it to be shitty for everyone because it was shitty for me.
“The shittier it feels the more real it is.”
The above quote is from a secret book called “Reality testing heuristics for ardent masochists.”
When I have actual conversations with conservatives, I’ve learned how you can prevent it from becoming an argument and actually get them to change tune and try to start pleasing you. It’s shockingly easy in many cases, the conservative mind isn’t very “long term” and they are literally just reactionaries who can only deal with whatever they’re feeling right now.
They key here is to almost strictly ask questions, questions that lead towards them and their lives and what their problems are.
When they complain about economic bullshit they’re obviously parroting from FOX news, you do NOT attack their figures and statistics and facts. They don’t care. Same with immigration, sex education, race issues and anything else. Remember that they’re not making arguments based on facts and logic, they are repeating mental validations they’ve heard to justify how bad they feel.
When you keep this in mind, you will realize that calling out hypocrisy or false facts is going to have zero effect at best, and make them combative at worst because you are just dismissing their feelings.
When you ask a lot of questions about how these issues are affecting them, and be genuine about it, have curiosity about what their struggles are, you will cut right through ALL the programming and get to the heart of their problems and why they’re clinging to FOX and Trump.
Then you’re set up to start actually challenging their flimsy ideology, but you also have to be crafty, because again you’re trying to get them to lower defences and practice cognition for a moment:
“Has any politician helped you directly?”
“What policy measure in our state right now would help you this week with this week’s bills?”
“What are you most worried about happening in the next couple years?”
These are some powerful questions that should be focused on - and they’re so powerful that they make people squirm and change the topic, so stay on it. Don’t get distracted by weaves into social issues, come back around and ask again - “Okay, sure, but what happens to you? What happens to your family in the meantime?” or “Okay, but what have they DONE for you, like how has your life improved with these politicians representing you?”
You don’t have to try to win this argument, you are just planting questions that they’re not normally allowed to ask. This is a time-bomb. Check in again later (assuming it’s someone you know.) Ask the same questions again. Ask them what their grocery bills are like. Ask them what happens if something happens to the family breadwinner(s), ask what happens if they have a medical bill. Ask how the system is taking care of them and what they’re getting for their tax dollars.
A lot of the time, you will get concessions well before the next conversation. Often you will see them break immediately when they think about their spouse or their kids or parents. They are reactive, emotion-driven creatures who can be led to the places you want with those feelings, and then new ideas introduced. (“Sure would be nice if that huge chunk they take out of your paycheck for taxes actually went to healthcare, huh?” or “Sure would be nice if you were allowed to negotiate with your coworkers for better pay, huh?”)
This tactic is very effective but you’re not going to get satisfaction from it. You’re not going to make anyone feel regret or pain. You have to drop those incentives for “winning” and learn to just be a good listener and communicator.
Thank you. It’s always unfortunate when people try to logic people out of positions that didn’t logic themselves into. I used to do things like that, but it’d probably be riskier to try now with my current outward identity. Even if I get them to listen to a brown woman, I’m also trans and bi which could easily shut them out if I conceal it, and would make me even harder to approach if I don’t. I hope others can do it for me.
It might vary wildly depending on who it is, but you might be surprised. See, you’re already thinking it’s going to be “an approach with an intention to being accepted” and that’s a mistake.
I grew up conservative in a deeply conservative part of the land, surrounded by all types of the breed, and I taught self-defense for about 17 years to families, so I would love to pass on some of my own perspectives that may help you or someone you care about at some point.
I would never push someone to confront a stranger even though I often advocate for a much stronger hand against fascism and racism, especially if you’re already part of a targeted group for hate, but if you ever do find yourself in a situation where you’re sharing a bus or a jury box with someone with a red hat and a punisher tattoo, the KEY thing you can do is make them let down their guard. Be funny, friendly, break the tension with something self-referential. See, a lot of people don’t get just extremely simple and stupid the motivations are of the average right-wing transphobe/racist. I don’t mean the smaller set of ideological monsters who have nazi compounds, but maybe the average Joe who works construction and lives in the city and has kids and all the same basic axioms as any of us but a deeply narrow worldview.
For a lot of the people like them, their introduction to bigotry almost invariably starts with jokes and making fun of something they “don’t understand” and this joking is performative to signal to their friends that they’re not connected to that strange, weird, outsider THING. They then grow up with this deep hangup about “THING” because they had to hold frame, and are also now afraid that they might say the wrong thing about “THING” in front of their peers, or someone might mistake them for being friendly to “THING” themselves, it’s a stew of feelings.
All of this is to say, in a one-on-one situation, they are very likely more scared of you than you are of them. You are THING. And if you’ve ever had a dog, you know that fear often expresses itself as barking and yapping. And just like with a dog, it’s more productive to calm them down than yell back.
Make very friendly small talk, if you express yourself with unique clothing or are wearing something untraditional, make a joke about it, “Don’t worry, it won’t bite” kind of thing, or just say hi if they’re staring at you. Don’t say anything that could be interpreted as assuming they’re racist or bigoted at all, unless you can feel right away there’s a discomfort you can identify. Being friendly and even parental in tone and asking friendly questions, showing curiosity and warmth even if they’re cold or bitter. Don’t be persistent, don’t give their fear anything to latch onto.
And more often than not, something magic happens and you change their entire world, either right then and there they might try asking you sarcastic-sounding questions or talking about their own life so you understand them. You might be the first time they’ve ever met a black, trans person. Think about how formative that experience will be in their mind well after you meet.
I don’t know if there’s a name for it, but I’ve seen it, and I’m not the only one to learn how effective this can be. Just don’t get discouraged if it doesn’t always work. Just know that the internet and social media and television has radically skewed just how scared of each other we should be. And never shows us how to actually make it better.
This is all in very stark contrast to when you meet them in groups while facing counter-protestors in the street or something. Learn some martial arts and get some mean fucking boots so you can kick their goddamn teeth in.
You’re entirely right about the importance of context. I grew up the opposite of conservative, yet I’ve learned very similar lessons. When you’re on relatively equal footing with shared goals, most can become your friend. When there are power dynamics and the perception of a zero sum game, most can become your enemy. I’ve long been a person who seeks out those who are most opposed to my way of thinking, and I’ve never regretted being friendly with and understanding those people.
At the same time, getting into such neutral conditions is harder than ever for me, as the barriers get put up long before I show up. It’s not actual conversations that hold me back, but getting there in the first place. Whenever I come across a conservative I can approach, I always make sure to talk with them.
I like to call this the “professional” tone, because it’s exactly what those in professions like lawyers, accountants, doctors, etc do, especially if they have problematic clients.
Your job is to advise, not to actually change people. You really need to repeatedly ask them guiding questions. If they are unreceptive of authority, then you need to make them feel as if they arrived at the conclusion themselves (management consults are experts at this).
This does not mean you need to be a pushover; in fact you need to remain calm, and firm.
This is the approach that has been scientifically proven to work, most recently in convincing anti vaxxers.
How to speak to a vaccine sceptic: research reveals what works - https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-025-01771-z
Someone in a profession with difficult clients described their job to me as basically being a babysitter for overgrown children, which I think is a very healthy way to mentally cope, process, and approach such situations.
Wasn’t that what that black guy who befriended several members of the KKK and got them to quit did? I seem to remember in a documentary about him that he pretty much just talked to and listened to them. That never made much sense to me as a kid but it makes a lot of sense now.
Daryl Davis, yes his story was a big one, they slightly exaggerated just how effective he was but that’s okay. (Not everyone he befriended actually changed, humans have this weird world we can live in where we can hold contradictory ideas like, being a KKK member while having a black friend, that takes extra levels of involvement to try to change.)
For me, I mostly have flipped incels and their ilk, which come in many colors and backgrounds but the left has largely written off young men and boys in this situation because part of their schtick is to be as toxic and repulsive as possible as a way to validate and “prove” they don’t deserve love or good things in their life. They’re probably easier to flip than older, set in klansmen who have lived entire lives under one narrative, but the point remains - changing people is not some jedi skill that only “powerful, trained minds” can do, anyone can do it.
This is the sort of thing that needs copy-pasta’d!
I would fully expect to get a lot of “I ain’t reading all that” replies. As is normal nowadays.
THANK YOU for making this the first logical comment I’ve seen on Lemmy for a while. THIS IS THE WAY!
“If we did that, then I’d need to come up with another excuse for being a sack of shit!”
“But life being unfair is how I can justify hurting people who are at a disadvantage relative to me!”
Alternatively, “making life more fair would be unfair to those who don’t benefit from more fairness.”
I really feel bad for all of you who have conservatives in your lives, it feels bad enough to just hear about it all online as someone who never had any conservative family or friend(s) and very, very rarely interact with any IRL.
So simple and correct.
I used to think a bit more along those kind of nihilistic lines of “there’s no justice in the universe”. But that means that any justice that does exist, is the justice that we have imposed on it. And that’s pretty powerful.
Terry Pratchett captured it well in death’s speech.
YES. AS PRACTICE. YOU HAVE TO START OUT LEARNING TO BELIEVE THE LITTLE LIES.
“So we can believe the big ones?”
YES. JUSTICE. MERCY. DUTY. THAT SORT OF THING.
“They’re not the same at all!”
YOU THINK SO? THEN TAKE THE UNIVERSE AND GRIND IT DOWN TO THE FINEST POWDER AND SIEVE IT THROUGH THE FINEST SIEVE AND THEN SHOW ME ONE ATOM OF JUSTICE, ONE MOLECULE OF MERCY. AND YET—Death waved a hand. AND YET YOU ACT AS IF THERE IS SOME IDEAL ORDER IN THE WORLD, AS IF THERE IS SOME…SOME RIGHTNESS IN THE UNIVERSE BY WHICH IT MAY BE JUDGED.
“Yes, but people have got to believe that, or what’s the point—”
MY POINT EXACTLY.
Justice is a communal lie. It doesn’t exist. Yet, but believing it it, we can make it real.
No they prefer the violence. The just don’t like when it happens to them
A short video essay on this:
Exact conversation with my dad for the past 20 fucking years
My dad used life is not fair as a means to justify how he wasn’t fair to me.
Society – the mechanism by which we human beings organize as a force multiplier against the elements – is fair, or works towards fairness in order to encourage mutual cooperation.
And when we stop being fair, when we exploit or subvert society to serve the few, those elements, from heat or cold to famine to plague to predation, will be right there to divide us and wipe us out one by one.
