I understand the situation at hand. I don’t understand what you’re suggesting I do though. There are Republicans everywhere in America. There is no place to move to get away from them. I don’t really want to either. I’ll tell them their ideas are ridiculous until they lock me up or kill me. I’m not running away from the fascists. That’s how they win.

You joke, but wouldn’t you prefer a less aggressive snake if you had no choice but to live with a snake?

Yes that’s correct. It’s also the place where Republicans recently rejected some anti-trans laws, which they could have easily passed, after an impassioned speech from a trans representative that we also recently elected. Things aren’t always black and white.

I’m good. There may be Trumpers around but there’s more space between me and them than just about anywhere else. Republicans are saner here than most other places as well. Not sane, but less insane.

I’ve been trying to think of a phrase to use on a sign for the 50501 protest on 4/19 and I think this might be the one

You said what I said using more words. Call it different if you must be contrarian but the conclusion is the same so why bother.

You’re far from the only kid to learn that lesson the hard way. Not that that makes it better but at least you have company

Don’t try and rationalize what Trump’s plan is. Whatever you think he’s doing, it’s not that. Your brain and his operate in fundamentally different ways. Logic can’t help you understand the intrinsically illogical.

The person you’re taking to online has a vested interest in defending the position they put forth. Someone reading your response who initially agrees with the person you’re talking to does not have a defensive attitude to the same degree. Your arguments will be much more successful with the observer than with the other participant. You will probably never know if you had an impact on the observer. That’s what you should be aiming for though.

If it’s Putin’s fault then no one in the US can solve the problem. If that isn’t the case then there’s no plausible way to avoid accepting that this is our problem to solve internally. Some people aren’t ready to face that reality so they choose the comfortable oversimplification instead.

It must be nice to have the capacity to care about everything, everywhere, all the time. That sounds like the height of privilege.

Yeah well, that’s pretty much where the whole world is at right now. It’s easier to lie than explain the truth

That’s fair. I suppose a better wording would have been “let people articulate their weird positions in their own words”. I think that’s a good thing in conceptual form. However, as you noted, it doesn’t really work if you aren’t equipped to push back and make them address the counter arguments. That’s where Joe is lacking. He’s good at getting people talking and asking layman’s questions but that’s as deep as he can go. He needs to book the guys who can give the rebuttals either on the same show or immediately after.

I’m conflicted about Joe Rogan, or at least the concept he had at the start. Clearly he’s fallen down the right-wing rabbit hole but the original intent he had of letting people defend their weird positions is a good one imo. One could argue that the reason the right-wing funnel exists is because there isn’t really space to talk about some of those things on the left.

For example, it’s not crazy to ask questions about vaccines and how they work. However, when people do that those who are educated on the topic will largely assume ill intent by default and treat the people asking questions as if they’re stupid or malicious. There’s some good reasons for that but such an approach is pretty alienating for those who are genuinely seeking information. That leads at least a portion of those people to listen to more right leaning information because they feel like that is the only group taking them seriously.

We need to do better at meeting people where they are instead of assuming they are trying to spread misinformation. Yes it’s true that all the information you need to develop an informed opinion about the vast majority of topics is available on the internet, but finding and understanding that information does take skills and time that not everyone has. In order to understand why a statement or belief is incorrect or misinformed you have to create a space in which it can be discussed without fear and shame driving people away.

Based on the limited amount of his older podcasts that I’ve been exposed to, I do think that Joe genuinely tried to do that, he’s just not particularly well equipped to handle that kind of environment. Over time he fell victim to the same kind of radicalization that he was intending to subvert by letting people share their actual thoughts instead of assuming he already knew what they were going to say.

I don’t know that I would say “as intended” but it is better than live TV, especially in the educational department. Neil Degrasse Tyson’s yt channel is better than anything on the discovery channel these days. Countless podcasts are better than anything on the history channel. I don’t think they even try to do history anymore. They just air pawn stars reruns 24/7.

Which I’m not so yeah, it was pretty easy.

Yeah I heard some stuff about it at the time but not much. About 5 years later I started reading an article about it but only got like 2 paragraphs in before I remembered why I never paid attention to it the first time around and quit reading.

Where can I buy this?

Gamergate was at least easy to ignore. I still don’t really know what it was about. Always seemed like pointless internet drama to me. That may or may not be true but it hasn’t been a problem to stay ignorant about the topic. You can’t ignore what’s happening now unless you don’t use the internet at all and even that isn’t going to be completely effective.

I don’t have time to read this currently but I will try to later. In the meantime, does anyone know how they are coercing access to these devices? I’ve done a fair amount of international travel and no one has ever asked about any of my devices, much less attempted to gain access to them. It’s my understanding that if you refuse them there’s no legal reason they could refuse you entry.

Obviously, legality is of less concern to this administration but these people should have legal recourse, at least until the facade of civility is completely cast aside.