What should we do about "them"?

[Angrboda]

Those of us on the left are waking up to the fact that the crazy isn't going to just go away now that Trump is out of the White House. Qanon is still here, and as strong as ever. White Supremacists are basking in the warmth of a new sun, even in the absence of Trump. And those on the right have similar revulsion about those of us on the left. The radical left is still trying to push its odious ideas on "us ordinary Americans." Hunter Biden is not in jail, and Joe has yet to face impeachment. Neither side can talk to each other anymore. There is no longer a shared reality created by the big three commercial TV networks, as there was before the rise of the internet. We not only have the tools to create our own personalized ideological silos, each and every one of us, there is a lot of money to be had in selling those silos to eager consumers. And with the rise of foreign subversion on social media and elsewhere, nobody has any idea whether the person telling them some critical tidbit is even who they say they are.

The default reaction is just not to talk to "them." To shut them out of our lives and pretend they don't exist and hope they just stop being themselves.

But that's not going to happen. Neither the left nor the right is going away. And governing and functioning and business depends upon us all having a role in things.

So, what should we do about "them?"

[ignoramus]

Fix the economy and we'll find the extremes of the bell curve will trend to fall inwards as people become less shitty with their world view.
My fear is that this drug fuelled false economy will need to implode first to remove all the bubbles (the everything bubble). It's happening anytime between now and the end of March.

[The Grand Nudger]

I don't think that governing and functioning and business does depend on us all having a role in things.

A governing party whose governing principle is that there should be no government, for example - no role in governing things. If we really did depend on them we'd be well and truly fucked, because the only thing we can depend on them to do is exactly what they say they will. Same goes with the white supremacists. If those nutballs wont self quarantine and keep the hoods in the closet at the very east, it really will get to the point that they have to be loaded into rockets and fired at the moon for safety of everyone else.

We're coddling them both, and I propose that this is the bigotry of low expectations - victimized everywhere they go.

[Angrboda]

Fix the economy and we'll find the extremes of the bell curve will trend to fall inwards as people become less shitty with their world view.
My fear is that this drug fuelled false economy will need to implode first to remove all the bubbles (the everything bubble). It's happening anytime between now and the end of March.

With all due respect, Trump inherited a growing economy, and the economy prospered for several years under him. If anything, that accelerated trends towards polarization and extremism. Those on the right rejected those on the left for not accepting conservative successes. And those on the left rejected the right for what they saw as undeserved laurels. And these problems aren't isolated in time or place. Populism and left/right extremism has affected countries like Turkey, Poland, Hungary, Brazil, Peru, and Venezuela. "The economy" can't explain what seems to be a worldwide trend.

[The Grand Nudger]

Economic anxiety was a cop out, and the notion that fixing the economy would make them less anxious is naive and, even more insidiously, an artifact of their euphemizing propaganda that's been widely internalized by the left. Economy was going fine for them, and they did this. Billionaires funded it, while we're on the subject - so even if the economy isn't doing great, so long as there are confederate billionaires.....

How far down the rabbit hole of what our home growns believe and how it maps to something true that we might be able to change are you willing to go, Boda? Nativist laws absolutely would help to calm their fears and bring them back into some kind of useful collaboration. They're screaming out that fact in their pursuit of them. We should believe them. Not just here, everywhere.

-or load them into rockets, as before.

[ignoramus]

I obviously am commenting from afar, and I do tend to see thing from an economic lens, and yes, there are many overlays here, many not connected.
I will trace (our beginning of the end) to the global refugee crisis, the yellow jackets, etc. This seems to be about where nationalism started sprouting the rednecks worldwide.
(Including our very own psycho who killed 50 in NZ). Its seems like a perfect storm is brewing atm for the soon to be ultimate crescendo. whatever that means.

Actually, I was watching many vids on the collapse of the American middle class long before Covid ... (where 40% don't have $400 for an amergency).
If that's not an economic crysis fore the richest country in the world, what is?

[The Grand Nudger]

That 40% is mostly non trumpit minorities, on the bottom of our socioeconomic totem pole. It may be a crisis for the country, but it's not a crisis for them.

They do have 400 bucks...maybe not much more, but that's a big difference. It's not the money.

They believe that they are being discriminated against.
They believe that they are suffering rights abrogation.
They believe that they are being stigmatized and denied pride.
They believe that they have suffered a loss of self esteem.
They believe that they are witnessing genocide.

We either service these beliefs....or load them...into...rockets. I'm not even remotely joking. It's not something that any hippy leftist is driving - it's the situation they will force and that they are loudly claiming they will force and that they are diligently working to force.

[Belacqua]

So, what should we do about "them?"

We can't change other people.

We can only work on ourselves.

[The Grand Nudger]

Some Asshole™ says he really is going to fuck some little girl.

Can't change him, pointless to try? Even if so..what do we do about the little girl? Can we really say that because we cant change some asshole who's determined to fuck a little girl we can and should only work on ourselves?

Who does that benefit?

[no one]

Send them to camp, get them reprogrammed. It's worked so well for the LBGTers, surely it will help these misguided souls to find the path of righteous again.

If not, science needs some pandemic lab rats.