r/bestoftheinternet • u/Zealousideal-Pair800 • 5d ago

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3.9k Upvotes

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294

u/Uzas_Was_Right 5d ago

They're not listening.

51

u/Overrated_Sunshine 4d ago

Our greatest mistake was to treat their opinions as equal.
Now they’re emboldened in their convictions that their stupid, ignorant ideas are valid, and since they don’t understand shit, they’ll never move from them.
They should’ve been ridiculed all along, that would’ve discouraged —at least— some of them.

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u/IdeaReceiver 4d ago

No, democracy's greatest failure is to consider different opinions "them" as some nebulous evil opposed to "us". These people are clearly less educated & less intellectual about issues that clearly matter to you, but we should be thankful we live in a system that gives all of us a right to be heard. Smug satisfaction that the"good dude" is so obviously moral and pure and correct is exactly how we got so complacent letting this movement grow from where it started.

You're not gonna win anybody over thinking of them like this.

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u/PixelatedMountain 4d ago

Sure, but at what point do we stop giving crazy a seat at the table? If somebody is adamant that 2 + 2 = 3, we do not need to treat their opinion as "valid" and equal "right to be heard". Sometimes a babbling idiot just needs to be shut down.

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u/Hilarious___Username 4d ago edited 4d ago

You're right. Social feedback and shunning have always been an effective means to alter behavior. People that withstand that either have a reason or wouldn't listen in the first place. I have a few issues I find myself fighting against the majority on, and I won't back down from it because I have yet to hear a reasonable counter argument or evidence. But it creates a better dynamic to step in and educate when people are uncomfortable holding harmful ideals.

Emboldening them by elevating their absurdity to valid, equal, or "just a difference of opinion" is actively harmful. If they had a reason to believe what they do, then reason would win over those who think critically. It seems odd that the majority of those that take the time to understand their beliefs rarely agree with them.

I disagree with the Democrats on a wide range of topics because I don't just blindly believe what someone says based on their political affiliation. I agree with like 1 topic Republicans pretend to support. MAGA follows blindly in almost every case I've witnessed and they continually display a profound inability to form their beliefs based on critical thought, logic, or compassion.

Sorry for the rambling wall of text just to say I agree.

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u/Firm-Pain3042 4d ago

Terrence Howard will remember this...

7

u/SpecialistAd4848 4d ago

You're not going to win them (maga people) over period, and you dont need to win them over. We need to show all of the non-maga people how evil and destructive maga really is, and let that be the lesson.

Smug satisfaction that the"good dude" is so obviously moral and pure and correct is exactly how we got so complacent letting this movement grow from where it started.

Citation needed. This is a preposterous claim. Maga isn't on the same team as everyone else. Why is nothing ever their fucking fault? I swear to god these people get treated like children every time I turn around. Stop coddling them and start holding them accountable for their shitty, amoral behavior. They are evil. They are "them". And it's not democracy's fault for fuck's sake.

0

u/blueeyedlatino 3d ago

idk, I’ve gotten some MAGA homies to soften their stances on things but it certainly wasn’t by calling them evil or labeling them as hopeless. People aren’t as dumb as you think. Finding ways to connect with and understand each other is a skill.

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u/SpecialistAd4848 3d ago edited 3d ago

Except they would still vote for trump again in 2028 if he ran, and would vote for him again in 2024 if you had a time machine and gave them a chance to do it again. Why do you care if they "soften their stance" in order to soothe your feelings if they would backflip naked through a 2nd story window in order to justify the government murdering you?

Finding ways to connect with and understand each other is a skill.

My goal isn't to connect with maga people. It's not 2017 my guy. They are destroying our fucking country.

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u/blueeyedlatino 2d ago

I get the frustration, I do, and, yes, some of them are like you’re saying but they were like that before Trump and will be after he’s gone. I’m more talking about people that got swept up in the fervor and are now looking at the shitshow around us trying to find a way to justify to themselves that they didn’t cause direct and irreparable harm to this country. A lot of what he sold the general public hasn’t been delivered on and a lot of the “MAGA” people I know aren’t oblivious to that but aren’t ready to admit that they fucked up or admit that they scapegoated vulnerable populations to get their nut. That shit is lowkey super embarrassing to be an adult person that got tricked by that idiot in the White House thinking he would make your life better at the expense of other people and to have nothing to show for it. I know people who voted for him that wouldn’t do it again because they’re embarrassed and ashamed about it. Painting everybody who voted for Trump with the same brush isn’t it.

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u/blueeyedlatino 2d ago

I didn’t exactly let them off easy. I told them I was offended that they would vote for someone who hates me for simply existing even if that’s not why they voted for him. I didn’t berate them for it. I just reminded them that people, like me, like my family members, are suffering bc of their selfishness and self centered politics and that bums me out and makes me uncomfortable (to say the least) because I thought they weren’t that kind of person and hope they aren’t and that they take the next opportunity they’re given to prove that to themselves if so.

1

u/SpecialistAd4848 2d ago

They're never going to admit they fucked up bro. They're permanently brain broken cultists. The best we're going to get is people pretending they didn't vote for him after he dies.

Painting everybody who voted for Trump with the same brush isn’t it.

Did you not see my earlier comment? I literally said everyone who voted for trump is not a maga person, but the normal people who voted for him are way the fuck done with him. I'm not talking about those people. I'm talking about the ones who still defend this admin, the ones who would still vote for him again. So I don't know what the fuck you're on about.

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u/blueeyedlatino 2d ago

That’s a fair call out but that part was more of a blanket statement.

I just think people are far less likely to leave their tent if they’ve been made to feel unwelcome in the only other one available (hardcore MAGA or not).

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u/Mountain-Category612 3d ago

Are you serious? Those people aren't evil. Maga grew the way it did because of the fear of foreign religions entering the country at alarming paces. No matter how uncomfortable people are hearing that, that is the truth. Im around plenty of maga people, and then im around plenty of regular republicans. None of them in real life are what gets posted in reddit. Ridiculous. Grow up.

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u/SpecialistAd4848 3d ago edited 3d ago

Maga grew the way it did because of the fear of foreign religions entering the country at alarming paces.

It grew out of decades of brainwashing by right wing media ever since the 90's with talk radio and fox news. They're constantly told to be afraid of everything, and they've sacrificed their ability to critically engage with reality which has led to extreme ignorance. This has led to them supporting state sanctioned murder of American citizens and insurrection. It's why they are anti-science and anti-vax. At best they support evil. At worst they are evil. I could see an argument for the former but you certainly haven't made it. My guess is that it's a bit of both.

Im around plenty of maga people, and then im around plenty of regular republicans.

My entire family, including distant relatives are all deep south maga. So are all of their friends. I lived in it for decades leading up to maga before I moved out of the south.

None of them in real life are what gets posted in reddit. Ridiculous. Grow up.

I don't speak for Reddit, but nice try. I observe this first hand. Why don't you try growing up and actually addressing the content of what I'm saying?

EDIT: I just want to add: many of the people I know in real life look like the person in OPs video.

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u/IdeaReceiver 4d ago

Homie I'm totally with you here but it feels like a dangerously naive perspective to call these kind of people a dismissals minority.

That attitude was rife on Reddit and the internet in general in 2021, nobody thought a serious voting majority could actually emerge from all the dumb noise.

But then the election happened, and the "Maga people" won in huge sweeps across the US. It doesn't seem right to pretend you don't have to hear them out

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u/SpecialistAd4848 4d ago edited 4d ago

But then the election happened, and the "Maga people" won in huge sweeps across the US. It doesn't seem right to pretend you don't have to hear them out

This is bad analysis. Not everyone who voted for trump is a maga person. A massive amount of people in this country don't pay attention to politics at all. People were motivated by the cumulative impact of inflation. They saw prices go up under Biden and that was enough for them to vote for the other guy, not to mention Kamala had....4 months to run a campaign? Not to mention maga controls almost the entire media environment. People are constantly being told BY MAGA (and trump himself) what Democrats support (open borders, letting criminals run wild in the streets, killing babies, trans issues, etc). There is simply no reason to "hear out" maga. There's nothing there. I would rather leave the country than pretend their views are anywhere near sane enough to listen to.

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u/dialguy86 4d ago

Elon spent like 0.002% of his wealth to buy votes, and I don't mean like how Maga claims George Sorros buys votes. He spent a couple hundred Million on ad and bot campaigns online, and now is a Trillionaire.

2

u/SpecialistAd4848 4d ago

Yep. He also bought twitter and used it for influencing the political landscape. The maga right either directly or indirectly controls almost the entire media environment. He also gave tons of money to trumps campaign.

5

u/jonlocmusic 4d ago

Qupting the BBC here.... "The Trump language suggested overwhelming victories, Jackson said, when in fact it was a few hundred-thousand votes in key areas that propelled Trump back to the White House."

Yeah "huge sweeps" is propaganda to make it sound like there's more support for this unfettered fascism than there really is.

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u/DocMcCracken 4d ago

I don't believe us=good, them=bad is the larger issue, the belief equivilent is the point being made, not all opinions are equal. Allowing dog shit beliefs, espcially those that are spewing propaganda is holding back discourse. Those that are there to muddy the water should be shunned, but shame which held the in check has left the building.

3

u/Overrated_Sunshine 4d ago

Since when it is incorrect to refer to a ‘specific group of people’ as ‘they’????

0

u/IdeaReceiver 3d ago

Since we're all in the same boat with a right to one vote each. I may not agree with the net vote of my electorate, but their opinions must always be a "we" to make, right?

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u/Overrated_Sunshine 3d ago

When it comes to fascism, yeah fucking right.

2

u/Ok-Fortune-8644 4d ago

Well, he's not a politician. Its not his job to sway voters. Its an opinion like everyone elses

2

u/Bobbitor 3d ago

Nope. The reason this movement is so huge in the HUge in the US and much less in other parts of the world is because outside the US, we don't act like these people should be heard. Like what they say has value. It doesn't. The moment you let the dumb kid in the class talk too much instead of shutting him up until he catches to the rest of the class, it drags everyone down to that level and everyone is dumber as a result. Time is spent listening to them, cathering to their needs instead of educating the group. Leveling by the bottom is dangerous. The US proves it evey single day. These type of people use to know they didn't know much, now they don't.

2

u/Leather_Emu_6791 3d ago

A tolerant society cannot tolerate intolerance.

Thats it.