MagicShel

These days nothing is illegal and nothing is a fact until that specific case has been adjudicated in a court of law.

Even lawmakers and judges are loathe to call anything illegal. They apparently don't fucking know until a jury tells them. Unless you don't have money and they know you'll be railroaded by the system. Then that shit is illegal.

To be fair, that would make them a big waste of money, indeed.

I don't remember the specifics because it was damn near 40 years ago, but I had a teacher tell the class that everyone has a sort of 6th-sense sight through an invisible 3rd eye in the middle of your forehead. And her example was that blind people will pick out clothes by colors or tell someone they were wearing an ugly tie. Which I've never seen, at least not outside of some sort of Hallmark Romance Drama quality religious schlock.

I never had any problem correcting a teacher if they made some calculation error or misquoted something out of the book (I wasn't an asshole who corrected every single thing, just the ones that might be material to everyone else's understanding of the lesson).

But when confronted with a teacher spewing utter bullshit, I was at a total loss for a response. I can't imagine anyone else believed it, either, but what a fucking loon. My sister was/is blind and the only superhuman power she had was being fucking annoying.

I don't even know if that was the worst/only one, but that's the one that has always stood out for me.

I guess you could add that American Exceptionalism was taught as a legitimate point of view rather than nationalist bullshit.

It's rough, man. I've got family I don't really talk to over this stuff. Just because I have an answer, doesn't mean I have the answer, you know?

Best of luck.

Eh... what I really wanted to know was when they are going to clear the wreck and whether that stupid mother fucker died so I shouldn't flip them off as I drive by. Can Google Maps tell me that?

I didn't really want to out myself as the asshole wishing for someone's death. But here we are.

~~Are they accepting refugees? Or did we wipe them out?~~

This was supposed to be funny, but tbh I'm too ignorant to made a decent joke about it. Obviously they would just be under US jurisdiction if they still exist, and probably don't have that kind of power, but fuck maybe it's time for native Americans to kick the rest of us back to the sea because we obviously don't deserve their land.

I didn't like Twitter as a social platform, but I did use it a lot for news on current events, such as how is the traffic on my route home, and why am I stuck in traffic, and how many miles ahead of me is the fucking accident?

Handy for communication during some kind of emergency that floods the phone network, but that's pretty niche. Anyway, I interact a little on Bluesky but mostly it's just a time killer like TikTok or whatever. Twitter was super easy to quit between the Musk take over and moving away from DC.

No one is supposed to follow illegal orders. But, who is to say what's illegal and isn't? And who are you going to call when they force you? The people executing Trumps orders? Is it worth not going home to your family over, or should you just let the courts decide? And who is to adjudicate your guilt? And can you even afford to fight it? Not if you're a non-corrupt civil servant.

No, there is no plan for the country choosing evil.

Please do.... that's super sexy.

I get it. 100%. But are these folks you want to reach, or folks you want to argue with? Because telling them is going to make them defensive. Listen to them. And then ask questions that get at contradictions. Don't point out the contradictions other than to imply they seem not to make sense to you, so you need them explained. Don't bring in outside sources, or even your own knowledge or opinion. Ask like you don't have a strong opinion of your own and you are curious, but see a couple of things that don't make sense.

And, no you won't reach all of them. Probably not most of them. And none of them are going to suddenly change their opinions because of it. Because that stuff all takes time. And they have to come to their own conclusions. And you might not like them. Maybe the answer is, as long as taxes go down, or abortions stop, or no one comes for their guns, they will happily support Trump burning the world to ash.

But hopefully, that's not everyone.

Boy, Putin really knows how to play Trump. It's kinda gross.

I think mainly identity politics. When their team does or claims something that conflicts with their core values, they just dismiss it or rationalize it and don't think about it. My FiL said Trump will never roll back RvW but here we are. To his credit, he hasn't voted since. He'd never vote Dem, but he won't vote for Trump either. Maybe rolling back vaccines will be a watershed moment for your friends, if it isn't too late. Maybe not.

When you're talking to them, it might be helpful to ask open ended questions instead of directly challenging them.

• "I know you've always cared about conservation. How do you square that with Trump's environmental rollbacks?"

• "What makes you confident RFK Jr. won't follow through on his anti-vax stance?"

• "How do you feel about legal refugees being turned away? Do you think there's a better way to handle it?"

And then just listen and ask for clarification when they vaguely hand wave things. This approach keeps the conversation open-ended and forces them to engage with their own reasoning rather than shutting down in defensiveness. There's no guarantee of reaching them. They might get irritated when confronted with these contradictions. They might just shut down and dismiss the question but maybe it'll start a process of introspection.

There's probably going to be a lot of "I told you so" fuel coming soon. Try to avoid that among friends. Save that for cathartic Lemmy posts. Good luck.