It’s interesting that a lot of liberal discussion of The Bad Politics doesn’t seem to be aware of the fact that a lot of trump supporters (esp ones who have been harmed by his politics) live in a different reality.

Sometimes people bring this up and the response is “I don’t care, they’re bad racists,” which is true, but if you want to push back against the ideologies you have to acknowledge that trump supporters have access to a different reality than leftists and liberals.

Especially if you are arguing with people who’s minds you do want to change.

In my discussions about politics with my dad, he very frequently says things that have no basis in my reality and being unprepared for that makes it very hard to fight with him about it.

If you want to change the mind of trump supporters you have to learn about their reality structure in order to attempt to dismantle it, and that takes a LOT of time and energy.

Part of the reason we keep seeing arguments (in media, online, wherever) that go absolutely nowhere is that liberals assume trump supporters have access to their reality and are just being obstinate.

And that might sometimes be true, but that assumption will not win arguments.

Too be clear, this thread is mostly addresses to people trying to argue with family, or people in their life who have fallen into any of these other realities (qanon is a big one). Trying to argue with people like this who don’t see you as human isn’t safe.

And I don’t want people to read this thread and think “ahhh Jane is saying that BLM is doing a bad job because they’re not doing this.” No no no. BLM is doing a great job, and white people need to argue better.

(You can replace BLM here with antifa, the dems, or whatever other ideologies/organizations are in opposition to trump. My point is that in interpersonal arguments being aware of the separate reality is valuable.)