To my own detriment, I have to admit, I'm attempting to have nuanced conversations with friends about our current political situation. Why? Well, for one because I'm worried, and two because I do consider them friends, and I feel obligated to help them break the spell they've fallen under.
However-- I seem to be failing...
Incongruent thinking
I have a good friend, someone who I love dearly and that I've known for a really long time, who's turned into a fully fledged Trump fanatic these days.
He and his wife share all the memes, repeat all the lies, the verifiable lies, and refuse to listen to facts that contradict their convictions. It can only be described as evidential immunity, if such a thing even exists.
Now; this friend of mine has no clue that I know things about him that would make anyone feel more confused than Darth Vader in a Teletubbies feature.
My friend lives a double life as a woman.
Listen, I'm in no way shape or form kink shaming him. I believe he has the right to self expression, and as long as his wife is "in the loop" and she's supportive, well-- So am I. (even if he has no clue I am)
Open relationships are not my thing, but as someone who believes in freedom, I do repeat the mantra, when asked that is-- "You do you".
I doubt my friend would consider himself a member of the LGBTQ+ community, but it's undeniable that he's at least adjacent to them, which allows me to land to my point, or my question that makes the point for me.
Why would he support someone who hates people like him?
Tell me why
Since being a fully fledged member of MAGA requires, at least at this point, loving Elon as well. This friend of mine has began posting Musk memes, and hot takes defending his actions.
That said, there are congruent ways to defend Musk, logical ways to present, if you will, reasons why someone might think Musk is great. But my friend, my good friend, is simply shit posting fallacies.
It was his very last post the one that lured me into "helping" him see the light, and why I'm feeling quite frustrated at this very moment.
Allow me to share his hot take:
The same people who are saying Musk was not elected were completely fine with Kamala being appointed as the Democratic candidate.
Two wrongs != One right
As I said at the very beginning of what seems to be a good rant for a good Sunday, I saw this and decided to insert myself, insert some logic, an olive branch, if you will, to my good friend.
The Dems messed up, that was BS, but also, this point you are attempting to make, can't be the very reason why we are not allowed to discuss Elon's actions. Nobody should be given carte blanch to do as they please, not somebody operating as a public servant. That would be illogical.
I even added a simple example, one that should not require much brain power to understand.
Kid A eats all the chocolate selfishly. His parent tells him that was wrong, and that he should never do that again. Kid A then responds: My brother drank all the juice.
Again the core message being: Two wrongs != one right.
Where is the goal post?
The conversation then devolved, as maybe I should have known it would have.
My friend:
Elon has no power, he's just an advisor to Trump. Trump has not given him the keys to the car, and this was the case from day 1.
Me:
I heard this just yesterday, he was even declared not be the head of DOGE which seems to be in direct contradiction with everything we knew until now.
Friend:
Show me when Trump said he was the Elon was the head of DOGE
Me:
Posts a video of Trump saying precisely this.
Friend:
DOGE existed under Obama under a different name
Me:
I did not know that, but I still should be able to question the actions of any governmental department, this does not negate my initial point.
Friend:
Don't you want Elon to fix the government? What is wrong with him finding Fraud and Abuse?
Me:
....
Self Torture
I remember hearing the expression: "Playing chess with a Pidgeon" and thinking it was creative, but too hyperbolic. But as of yesterday I think I fully grasp the need for said expression.
Yes, I know, I'm on a futile quest, and I need to just click away. But shit.... it's hard.
MenO
Peer reviewed research has shown that cultists, when confronted with proof of lies, corruption, and harms to the cult, are supplied generous doses of dopamine when they deny such facts.
Human beings are wired to belong to powerful gangs, because surviving intraspecific competition - war that resulted in the male losers being put to the sword after being conquered - created overwhelming evolutionary pressure to support the gang to prevent being genocided. Dissent and dissidence was strongly suppressed for millennia by the evolutionary force of war, and democracy is today the result of that evolution.
I do not agree with this reasoning. If I am opposed on a battlefield by a foe that suddenly is killed by plague, I do not have to love the plague to be glad of the demise of my enemy. Corruption and insuperable inflationary spending has been utterly destroying the American dream for a long time, and the Elon is very flagrantly cutting that exorbitant destructive spending. I do not have to love the Elon to be glad he is cutting that waste and corruption, because I know he is feeding at that trough himself, and it simply eradicating competition for a place at that trough. Supporting one billionaire is less expensive than dozens, and that doesn't imply that I love any billionaires when I rejoice that dozens of billionaires have been cut off from that trough.
The ensuing conversation reveals you both are misstating things, and unfortunately has not enabled agreement on the actual situation, which I will stay out of.
Thanks!
I do think I'm just going to stop engaging like this with friends... I don't like it, but it helps nobody
What I have sought to employ, rather than extensive attempts to prove any particular narrative, is to seek to apply one heresy in occasional conversations with cultists. If from time to time, such fanatic zealotry is confronted with a heretical fact, they are generally not immediately outraged and react angrily (such heresies aren't claims like 'The pope is diddling little boys' or smth that Catholics must immediately defend the pope from, but rather smth like '25% of the convictions for child abuse have been of Catholic Priests', which is non-specific enough to not trigger them to defend specific individuals, while also compelling them to themselves seek to disprove the true claim, which will cause them to search up supporting information that they cannot accuse me of lying about or making up).
While this can fail if I am too pointed, if I seek to simply counter a general principle or vaguely defined population of the cult, it can generally avoid being seen as a personal attack on their cult leader, but contrast factual reality with some cult precept essential to faith in the cult.
In this way I have had some success as enabling reason and factual information to penetrate the cults attempt to completely innoculate their fanatic adherence to cult indoctrination and propaganda by gently inserting proof of deception the cult - all cults, from religions to major political parties, essential indoctrination of sheeple, like the AGW climate alarmism corporation seek to impose in order to gain complete control of CO2, which is the basis for all life on Earth, so that they can eventually enslave humanity by controlling their access to air, water, energy, and food, ands similar deceptions for specific purposes, like the war on the Ukraine promulgated by war materiel contractors seeking to benefit from production of weapons by convincing people to support war, or donations of war materiel that can be fraudulently diverted by corrupt politicians or military brass and sold on the black market to cartels for covert cash, for example.
Overall, I just seek to introduce a fact, or even just the edge of a fact, that requires my interlocutor to themselves seek to disprove it, which cannot be done to actual facts.
Trying to convince cultists they're in a cult is not possible in a conversation. They can only gradually and incrementally be convinced to themselves accept facts that over time add up to proofs they have been deceived. Mark Twain has (falsely attributed to him, it turns out) said that 'It is easier to fool a man than to convince him he has been fooled.'
When people that are evolved to join and belong to societies that are essential to their success and felicity have joined some kind of cult that endangers them, they can only be gradually and gently enabled to themselves discover their cult is predatory, and not a beneficial society that they should be a member of for the actual benefits that improve their survival and felicity.
I don't think talking about celebrities and politicians between friends leads to anything fruitful. Everything you think you know about public figures has passed through more than second hand.
My experience is that I can only make a point if I relate the questions to the highly personal. For example, when a friend says that her problems all stem from her childhood and that her parents or bad men are to blame, I can ask her “Is that so? What makes you say that and what would you think if the particular man you might be thinking of now said that he only had a difficult life because of you?”
Or: “What would your parents have had to do to make it worse for you?” The more irritating the question, the better.
But it only works if you have a good level of trust in each other.
I think this is the lesson I fail to learn, but I need to.