I was raised with Republican beliefs, but got off that train during the 2nd GWB admin. The times were there were any middle ground to find between mixed political couples is long gone. When the only topics anyone spends time debating are morality, religion, and discrimination, what middle ground can exist? Facts don’t weigh into debates for Republicans anymore. They have chosen feelings in the face of data. They choose to knowingly follow ignorance. It becomes a zero-sum game, where they either wear you down into going along with them, or they get ignored and cut off.
Being open to others’ opinions, experiences, and education helped me to see a different world view, but it didn’t seem so frowned upon back then. But now the desire to get rid of the Board of Education, promote a purposefully biased curriculum, and treated the educated as an enemy, I don’t know how people are supposed to get shown a different truth than what they have been indoctrinated into.
They do have principles, however oddly flexible they may be.
My family and the gf’s are probably 90% conservative. They know I’m not, and to an extent they treat me differently. But I don’t think they’d wish anything bad on me as they might a stranger.
You see this in the face eating leopard articles where they’re always like “I never wanted them deported, they’re one of the good ones.”. Once they get to know someone, they see they’re really not so different at the core and that they’re good honest people like they see themselves.
I really think it’s just some bad wiring in the empathy part of the brain. Most of these people still have a chance to learn better views on the issues. Some may truly be hateful misanthropes, but I feel that is a very small minority.
It’s easy to hate conservatives right now, and I won’t say anyone is wrong to be angry. The only non-violent way we preserve rights though is by getting people to understand strangers and develop that empathy.
Most of us probably know a number of hard to love people right now, but it’s taken time to make them ignorant and hateful, so we can give up on them or we can put time into undoing what has been done to them. I can’t tell anyone what is right for them, but it’s something we all need to bear in mind.
People act like me not getting off the raised republican train until my early 20s is really slow but that’s when as a female child they allowed me to leave the house regularly for things other than school or church.
I had an amazing 2 year relationship with a woman in a very conservative family. We were early 20s back then and we were damn near perfect for each other. I ended up having to break it off for reasons akin to what you mentioned. She was not allowed her own car, couldn’t choose her own job, was not allowed to move out unless it was to someone she married. We couldn’t sit on the same couch in her parents house and she had a 9pm curfew. Again, this is in her 20s.
Although she did not hold those values as rigidly, her family would’ve disowned her for doing anything outside their wants, and family was her everything. Because we couldn’t progress the relationship without jumping straight to marriage it just had to end. Really unfortunate TBH and I hope she’s gotten out of it to some degree. People shouldn’t have to live in such a way, being so controlled like that.
Exactly. I’m from a pretty small-town area, at least back then it was. We hardly had any diversity in school, and how are you supposed to really understand different things with no exposure?
As I started working different jobs, I’ve met people of numerous cultures and races, those who have been homeless, people who have been subject to different kinds of abuses, rich people who are nice, rich people who are jerks, and people that have all sorts of beliefs and justifications for them. I don’t think most of us are born into that type of situation, and it’s possibly not in a young child’s interest to have that kind of understanding thrust on them too early, so we need to have realistic expectations for people to figure things our.
There also shouldn’t be a deadline for it. I was always happy to hear one of my grandparents form a progressive opinions, even after 60-80 years. It’s never too late to make the world better or to be kinder to your fellow people. Some people never get there, so we should always be proud when they do. At some point, they’re more on our side than not, and gatekeeping isn’t going to speed it up.
I was raised with Republican beliefs, but got off that train during the 2nd GWB admin. The times were there were any middle ground to find between mixed political couples is long gone. When the only topics anyone spends time debating are morality, religion, and discrimination, what middle ground can exist? Facts don’t weigh into debates for Republicans anymore. They have chosen feelings in the face of data. They choose to knowingly follow ignorance. It becomes a zero-sum game, where they either wear you down into going along with them, or they get ignored and cut off.
Being open to others’ opinions, experiences, and education helped me to see a different world view, but it didn’t seem so frowned upon back then. But now the desire to get rid of the Board of Education, promote a purposefully biased curriculum, and treated the educated as an enemy, I don’t know how people are supposed to get shown a different truth than what they have been indoctrinated into.
They debate morality? I thought they’d abandoned morals afte integrity stopped being a thing.
They do have principles, however oddly flexible they may be.
My family and the gf’s are probably 90% conservative. They know I’m not, and to an extent they treat me differently. But I don’t think they’d wish anything bad on me as they might a stranger.
You see this in the face eating leopard articles where they’re always like “I never wanted them deported, they’re one of the good ones.”. Once they get to know someone, they see they’re really not so different at the core and that they’re good honest people like they see themselves.
I really think it’s just some bad wiring in the empathy part of the brain. Most of these people still have a chance to learn better views on the issues. Some may truly be hateful misanthropes, but I feel that is a very small minority.
It’s easy to hate conservatives right now, and I won’t say anyone is wrong to be angry. The only non-violent way we preserve rights though is by getting people to understand strangers and develop that empathy.
Most of us probably know a number of hard to love people right now, but it’s taken time to make them ignorant and hateful, so we can give up on them or we can put time into undoing what has been done to them. I can’t tell anyone what is right for them, but it’s something we all need to bear in mind.
People act like me not getting off the raised republican train until my early 20s is really slow but that’s when as a female child they allowed me to leave the house regularly for things other than school or church.
I had an amazing 2 year relationship with a woman in a very conservative family. We were early 20s back then and we were damn near perfect for each other. I ended up having to break it off for reasons akin to what you mentioned. She was not allowed her own car, couldn’t choose her own job, was not allowed to move out unless it was to someone she married. We couldn’t sit on the same couch in her parents house and she had a 9pm curfew. Again, this is in her 20s.
Although she did not hold those values as rigidly, her family would’ve disowned her for doing anything outside their wants, and family was her everything. Because we couldn’t progress the relationship without jumping straight to marriage it just had to end. Really unfortunate TBH and I hope she’s gotten out of it to some degree. People shouldn’t have to live in such a way, being so controlled like that.
Exactly. I’m from a pretty small-town area, at least back then it was. We hardly had any diversity in school, and how are you supposed to really understand different things with no exposure?
As I started working different jobs, I’ve met people of numerous cultures and races, those who have been homeless, people who have been subject to different kinds of abuses, rich people who are nice, rich people who are jerks, and people that have all sorts of beliefs and justifications for them. I don’t think most of us are born into that type of situation, and it’s possibly not in a young child’s interest to have that kind of understanding thrust on them too early, so we need to have realistic expectations for people to figure things our.
There also shouldn’t be a deadline for it. I was always happy to hear one of my grandparents form a progressive opinions, even after 60-80 years. It’s never too late to make the world better or to be kinder to your fellow people. Some people never get there, so we should always be proud when they do. At some point, they’re more on our side than not, and gatekeeping isn’t going to speed it up.