Posted on 01/27/2018 10:37:14 AM PST by Krosan
My cousin is an anesthesiologist. I think she is really smart, but she works 13 hours every day and perhaps doesn't have time to think. She is saying the dumbest leftist things, but I know she is not a bad person.
Perhaps you guys have some pieces of advice on how to talk with your family when they've been fooled like that.
Wow. It took to post 26 to find a tolerant person. I always enjoy that conservatives are actually tolerant, not like lefties. But FReepers on this thread sound like they have zero tolerance for other views or even for people who are busy but not politically aware.
I find that sad.
The reason I love America and its Constitution is because I love freedom. And I fully acknowledge that freedom means living how YOU want. It doesn’t mean you have to live how I Want. How is that so hard to understand?
Will my son with special needs even be safe around most FReepers in this thread? It doesn’t sound like people with less intelligence than others will get any respect from people like the commenters here, who don’t handle differences very well at all. No contact with relatives who are different from yourself? Really?
Thanks for being the voice of common sense.
I have but one leftist family member like you (a cousin) so you have my sympathy. For this leftist family member, I simply ignore and have nothing to do with him other than seeing him when another family member dies. Pretty simple.
A few years back I had to eat lunch in a hospital dining room with four TVs blaring an Obama speech.
Worst 1/2 hour of my life.
I’m comfortable with letting people be themselves. It took me a long time to realize that it wasn’t my job to control people. Politics are important to me, but they are not my god.
My liberal relatives know where I stand, and they also know that I won’t be getting into any intense debates with them. I focus on what we can converse about respectfully: their children’s strengths, their house decor, the last good novel we’ve read, their arthritis, their workout routine, or what good movie they’ve seen. In other words, I do what I can to build and maintain a relationship without focusing on our differences.
There have been times that they’ve begun to question their own beliefs, and when they do they tend to come to me, rather than to a more quarrelsome family member.
Either way, I love them. They may be odd, but they’re family.
Your sis is immersed in a eurotrash culture? Good luck.
She lives in Leipzig, Germany anyway.
***********
Are you in the USA? Is she a citizen of Germany
or over there for some other reason, job, military
etc?
“I had to endure eight years of Obama now it’s your turn.”
Meant to include that sometimes it is best to
find common ground and leave politics out of
the discussions.
It "aint" easy. As a pharmacist I work with highly educated people of high IQ, education and high IQ does not equate to logical thinking. Many of these individuals have actually been indoctrinated in university and do not even realize it. Oddly they are good people but are devoid of rational thought. Even more oddly they are of high IQ.
I was educated in the oilfield as a roughneck on the drilling rigs. This paid for my education as a geologist, pilot and pharmacist. I became educated but retained the logic learned in the oilfield. I was a lucky man to be a roughneck first! There is much wisdom to be learned on a drilling rig.
I don’t discuss it with them. They can’t convince me and I can’t convince them so it is a big waste of time and energy.
I don’t. I dissolved my relationships with them. Permanently.
That is the only tactic that results in a good night’s rest for me.
That is sad, but I blame the Left. It is they who politicize EVERYTHING and call for the elimination of conservatives. To them, we are not opponents. We are enemies. It is their loss, not yours.
“She lives in Leipzig, Germany anyway.”
IOW, she lives in formerly Commie Central in the former DDR. Now it’s not hard to understand the root of her POV. Is she old enough to have traveled to East Berlin before it got spiffed up after the Wall came down so she could compare and contrast it with West Berlin?
As to how or whether to attempt to have a persuasive conversation, I’d say she’s already been deep-dipped in the statist sludge. No recovery is expected...
You cant talk to people who virtue signal, period. What they “believe” is the only proof they have that they are good. If your correspondent is simply naive but generally thoughtful you may be able to reason with her if you present facts unemotionally. Maybe. I’ve seen it happen but I wouldn’t expect it.
If you’re talking about politics you’ve missed other more interesting topics. Once upon a time, when we had a polite society, politics was off the polite discussion list. Still a good rule.
You can’t fix stupid. Avoid them.
My husband was a democrat for the first 11 years of our marriage. We just agreed to not talk politics, because if we did, we both got mad. Now he’s a big Trump supporter, and he’s appalled that he didn’t realize what Obama and Hillary did, because the news sources he listened to were all leftist. What caused him to turn, was that he got upset with NPR, his go to radio station, about an unrelated matter, and tuned in a local talk radio station instead. Herman Cain was on first thing in the morning, and what he said made sense. Well, Rush was on right after that, then Hannity. Pretty soon, he became educated about what liberals REALLY are, and wants nothing to do with their politics. God moves in mysterious ways, his wonders to perform.
Start by acknowledging them. You know this person and know she has a good heart. Acknowledge that some of these ideas sound good when you first hear them. Then point out why they don’t work, and why they are simply undermining the very things they’re supposed to achieve. And finally, point out how conservative policies better achieve those objectives.
The tax cut, for example, is accomplishing many progressive goals. They want to increase wages, or so they tell us. Well, Trump’s tax cut is doing it. They want to put more money in the pockets of working people? Trump’s tax cut is doing it. Even the liberal Brookings Institution says that the bill cut taxes for 80 percent of Americans. And the share of income taxes paid by the upper quintile is actually increasing slightly (partly due to the doubling of the personal exemption.)
Education is another area. Keeping poor, disadvantaged kids in underperforming schools only keeps them poor and undereducated. That keeps them dependent on welfare. We want to get them out of poverty. As the late Jack Kemp once said, “Liberals measure their compassion by how many people they’re helping. We measure compassion by how many people no longer need our help.” Charter schools, private schools, religious schools, and home schooling produce better results, on the whole, than inner city public schools. And it’s not a funding issue — some of the districts with the highest per-pupil expenditures have some of the worst performance, and vice versa.
And you can make similar cases on pretty much every issue, that our policies better achieve the things they say they want to achieve.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.