
Why It's Useful to Talk to People You Don't Agree With - mpweiher
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iQ3NQAaOaOo
======
romwell
I disagree with the statement when taken in the context of the political
discourse that he is referring to.

Yes, it is generally useful to _talk_ to people you don't agree with. But
_talking_ means that your exchange follows a certain rules. There are things
you can't do when _talking_ , such as throwing a punch at the person you are
exchanging information with.

I would argue that following certain rules of reason and debate is a
fundamental part of what defines _talking_ , such as: staying on topic, not
using a plethora of unsubstantiated claims and immediately placing the burden
of disproving them on your conversation partner, not screaming and raising
your voice, not conflating completely separate issues, not oversimplifying the
world to be black and white, etc.

I would argue that the right-wing rhetoric has, for years, been undermining
making _talking_ possible by rewriting the social protocols of what is
acceptable in a discourse.

It is absolutely NOT useful to try _talking_ to a person that is not _talking_
to you.

It wouldn't take long (say, 5 minutes on /r/TD) to convince yourself that
there's a wide class of Trump supporters are not _talking_. They say things
that will make you angry and want to argue, and that's the endgame.

I think many of us have had these conversations, where one wants to scream:
"You can't say this! You are basing your opinion on nothing but that's what in
your head, so no, your opinion does not merit being listened to until you at
least try to find out what's actually going on!" How many of us would plead
the other party to put two and two together, and and be baffled why they would
try to simultaneously - and furiously - throw opinions at you that contradict
both logic and the real world? (If you haven't had that experience lately, go
find a religious conservative among your Facebook friends, and try holding a
conversation on the subject of providing contraception and funding Planned
Parenthood).

The way such conversations go is the result of a successful attack on reason
conducted by the right-wing political apparatus.

These attacks on reason made _talking_ impossible.

The worst part is that they are infectious. Once you engage in the reason-less
farce, you will lose reason, too, simply because it becomes useless in the
pseudo-debate you're trying to have. It's hard to resist getting angry and
pulling things out of thing air if your opponent is doing the same. So yes,
you will find some of your liberal friends doing the same. Losing reason is
easy.

And this loss of reason, in effect, is the crown achievement of the political
right.

It's not just my opinion; the attack on reason by the Republicans in the US
(and by Putin in Russia) has been well-documented. Please consider the
following articles:

[http://www.slate.com/blogs/bad_astronomy/2016/06/30/donald_t...](http://www.slate.com/blogs/bad_astronomy/2016/06/30/donald_trump_is_the_inevitable_result_of_decades_of_gop_denial_of_reality.html)

[https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2014/03/the-
war...](https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2014/03/the-war-on-
reason/357561/)

[https://thinkprogress.org/when-everything-is-a-lie-power-
is-...](https://thinkprogress.org/when-everything-is-a-lie-power-is-the-only-
truth-1e641751d150/)

Going back to the premise, my conclusion, based on too many hours of personal
experience:

For one's sanity's sake, it's often worth to avoid trying to talk to people
you don't agree with.

This will change once we can _talk_ again. Here's to hoping that this moment
will come.

~~~
basurihn
Good old-fashioned demagoguery is alive and well in both major American
parties, and many small ones.

The present system depends on outrage. So much money is spent to cause it. I
don't see this changing without major calamity.

The Democrats own this as well. When the rank-and-file realize that, there
will be talk. Slate, ThinkProgress, and other rags hardly comprise a barometer
for impartial documentation. They're just as guilty as Sean Hannity.

~~~
romwell
>The Democrats own this as well. When the rank-and-file realize that, there
will be talk.

No, I cannot accept "both sides are bad" as an argument. There certainly is a
degree to which the parties are complicit. I simply didn't observe the
Democratic party leading a very deliberate and effective war on the very
notion of truth. I have witnessed the Republican party in the US (and Vladimir
Putin in Russia) do that successfully.

Not that I'm a fan of the Democratic party either - its establishment is its
own undoing, and if they don't change fast, we'll have eight years of Trump.
But I don't see any evidence for your claim "when the rank-and-file realize
that, there will be talk". Many of the rank-and-file who supported Sanders
know full well just how bad the party is. It didn't make it any easier to talk
to "the other side", when a conversation focused on the issues and solutions
is easily derailed.

Finally, I can't accept an ad-hominem argument against the article I linked
to. Please argue against the content of the articles, if you may.

You are right about the outrage, but I think there's more to it. Even when
people are not angry, their way of thinking has changed fundamentally.

The remedy will take a while, and it will have to start in the public
education system, which doesn't do a good job at teaching critical thinking at
the moment. It doesn't surprise me which party seems to be hell bent on
cutting funds to education - and has been, for decades - aiming to turn
education into nothing more than trade schools. So, alas, even a major
calamity will not change the outrage-as-political-currency state of affairs.

