For what it’s worth, a non zero amount of republicans and conservatives didn’t vote for Trump, probably in no small part due to the people in their life who remind them of their humanity. You might not be surprised to hear of estranged family becoming more radicalized by the right once they’ve been cut off. I have people in my life who are conservative and will never believe that abortion is acceptable, but I have been able to share stories of where it was medically necessary and they have changed their mind on supporting a total ban. Is that great? No, not really, but it’s certainly something. I don’t know that I’d call these people “friends” because I don’t really like them or share with them in the way I would my actual friends, but I have had them in my home. Unfortunately, changing hearts and minds requires a little buy in. It’s not always safe for everyone to do, and I get that, but people love to show stories of people becoming deradicalized while hating on people engaging in deradicalization. There are people out there who say “conservatives are good people they’re just misguided”, and I don’t really believe that, but I do believe they can BECOME good people. Obviously, some are a lost cause, but some can be pulled back to reality. I had a Hollywood is all trans/they’re hiding the true science (not a flat earther, just not a believer in the globe??) coworker I eventually turned into a socialist. That doesn’t happen overnight, and if they don’t at least consider you friendly, you’re not gonna see any movement.

You can disengage from political debate and only engage in infighting with your own party or what not, good for you.

Considering most peoples get their politics from their parents and it’s more a football team mentality, I think you’re a little off.

Yes. Outreach is an important part of helping people change their minds.

It’s the same reason you shouldn’t fuck with Jehovah’s Witnesses. By treating them badly, you increase the feeling of isolation they have towards broader society and shove them further into the clutches of the cult.

That’s pretty reductionist and also untrue.

It’s hard to reconcile, but here are actually Republicans and conservatives that aren’t bigots.

They’re a minority, and a quickly fading one, but that doesn’t mean they don’t exist.

Remember, the Republican party of today was formed post civil rights. People cling to their identity and ideas long after reality has left them behind.

Does that make them stupid? No more or less than anyone that clings to any party affiliation past when the party changes.

But there is movement away from the Republican party by those that weren’t bigots that bought into the whole idea (falsely claimed) of reduced government control and free market ideals.

While I tend to think those stances are pretty fucking dumb to begin with, it isn’t bigotry.

The other problem is that as those leave, even more bigots pull off their masks and some of the extremist bigots that weren’t previously engaged in the political structure jump on board.

People are very stupid. We all are in some way or another, usually multiple some ways. One of those forms of stupidity is thinking that change from the inside is the only choice. Another is that you have to pick someone to vote for. Another is that you can resist bigots by engaging with them. And all of those are common among the non bigot Republicans.

I keep running into Republicans and ex Republicans and having to remind them that the party as it exists is not the party they thought it was, that it has used dog whistling and other tools of the so called southern strategy so long and so well that it has transformed into something even worse than the left thought possible.

But they are not all bigots.

That being said, there’s also a good bit of ACAB present too. Those non bigots are still part of the problem, they’re just as responsible for it happening. I would call it ARAB, but that’s a pretty horrible initialism lol. But that’s why identity politics is a horrible thing.

You don’t get it. They are just voting for fascism, but they are not fascists themselves. It’s totally cool. Nothing to worry about.

If one tolerates all actions other than those causing harm to non-consenting others (basically “adults can do whatever they want with themselves and with other consenting adults”) which is sort of the traditional maximum tolerance boundary, one will tolerate many practices which, whilst not amounting to causing harm to non-consenting others, do spread intolerance.

From where rises the Paradox that such choice of putting one’s boundary of Tolerance at the maximum level possible actually ends up in aggregate reducing Tolerance.

Making it a social contract reduces the boundaries of tolerance by the minimum amount possible that’s needed to just stop Tolerance from allowing the very tools of its destruction to work.

Under “social contract rules”, at a personal level those who are NOT tolerant of intolerance are, very strictly speaking, being less tolerant, but at a Systemic Level they are actually making there be more Tolerance in aggregate than if they had tolerated the intolerant.

PS: I actually work in Systems Design (amongst other things) and it’s actually quite common for certain ways of doing things which are perfect at the individual level will in aggregate cause systemic problems making the whole function worse, so the optimal choice for the whole is actually to use a less optimal individual choice. Thinking about it, I would say that pretty much all Tragedy Of The Commons situations are good examples of that kind of thing.

I think there’s a subvariety of “paradox” which aren’t actually paradoxes, but we call them that because at some point, the name stuck

It’s not a paradox because nobody says that absolutely anything anyone does is fine. There are always rules to acceptable behavior in society. The “paradox of tolerance” is a strawman.

There’s no paradox. Although, Karl Popper’s words are as good as any.

My point is, no one said “the left have to tolerate everything.” In fact, not tolerating capitalism is the defining feature of all left leaning ideologies. More so, where you are on the scale of leftism is based almost entirely on the extent to which you won’t tolerate capitalism. Rhetorically, for what possible reason would the left ever have to tolerate nazis, in the first place? Who said they did? Where are they? Of course, no one said they did.

I found it’s best to, rightly, just reject the false premise of it being a paradox out of hand. The type who use it know its BS too.

You just need to tolerate their life and continued living, don’t need to give them anything more.

Basically, I want my various types of weirdness tolerated by others. Others want their weirdness tolerated. We mutually agree that it’s beneficial to each of us to tolerate each other. This gets expanded to other forms of weirdness. So long as it doesn’t significantly impinge on others who dont want it, we have no reason not to be tolerant of others. This is the social contract.

Intolerance inherently impinges on others. While it might not impinge on my personal weirdness, I will still fight against it. I know it could be me next, and I would hope others would stand with me then. In turn, I will do that for others, both because it is right (in my mind) and because I don’t want to be targeted next.

I will default to assuming people are happy with the contract. If they demonstrate disagreement, or contempt for the contract, then I withdraw its protections.

Is Legally Blonde not left enough for you?

Yeah, exactly like that! ^

What does tolerance mean?

Yeah, I’ve started watching some YouTube lately for the first time ever, and it certainly seems to want me to be conservative incel.

Previously I never watched YouTube because the ads were so intrusive and annoying, now I’m about ready to give up because most of what the algorithm shows me is offensive. Whether it truly thinks I’m conservative, such as based on demographics it shouldn’t have, or knows I’m not but thinks stirring up outrage will keep me coming back, they might be wrong

You can hate the Biden/Harris stance on Gaza as much as you like (and there’s good reason to). But if you failed to vote for the obviously less bad option, you are partially responsible for the actions of the obviously even worse option.

You could go into all manner of discussions about how being all but forced to vote for the lesser evil because of a broken and corrupt electoral system is terrible and a major systematic issue. And there’s a lot of merit there as well. But at the end of the day, those systems were not on the ballot.

You actively failed to do the bare minimum for the people of Gaza, along with many other groups of people inside and outside the US just so you could watch the suffering from a slightly higher horse.

Grew up in a conservative religious household, ended up a lefty because people who understood how to talk to outsiders without being fucking assholes about it made me question my beliefs.

I see the same problem as you with many lefties today: they have no ability to understand conservatives, and seemingly no desire either. They will choose the dumbest fucking hills to die on (drag queen story hour for example) instead of attempting an ounce of empathy.

You could talk to conservatives about corporate welfare or how inequality causes the economy to slow down rather than grow, leading to discussions about taxation, unionization, maybe even shorter workweeks! Nope gotta focus on some obscure identity shit: putting gender neutral bathrooms in city hall while your city’s homelessness doubles is a sign your priorities are stupid. Focus on material, actionable things and actually talk to people: conservatives will respond to that.

I thought that was millennials. What’s the latest thing MSM claims they’ve ruined now?

The argument isn’t rational to begin with, rationality cannot disprove it in the minds of those who believe it.

So, people are just powerless to do anything but follow at the call of bigotry & disinformation, and they’re witless masses totally unamenable to reason? Got it.

The KKK has largely been expelled from society for the past century (not entirely).

That’s a weird example: white supremacists & KKK spoke openly and terrorized with complicit support of local & state authorities during the civil rights movement. Despite that, the civil rights movement prevailed. Without understating the difficulties, challenging reprehensible ideas is evidently possible.

Speaking with a Nazi posits that their ideology has the same value as yours.

No: association fallacy. Now you’re being irrational. You were before, but are now, too. It merely means we disagree, same as rebutting someone who is wrong.

Nazis should be expelled from society in their entirety.

Unless we exterminate them or deport them (where?), I don’t see how we do that. Maybe you mean suppress them from freely expressing themselves? Sacrificing any civil rights to achieve any of that is almost certainly an unjust threat to civil rights. Maybe you prioritize civil rights, too, but think sacrificing them is necessary to defend them?

Neoliberal propaganda has convinced you that all ideas have value.

No. We’re merely convinced bad causes can be defeated justly, because it’s been done before.

Sometimes I wonder if these types of claims discouraging the healthy, open discourse we had decades ago are disinformation designed (1) to make people think the effort is futile and (2) to inflame & harden polarization. Same with comics like this.

The problem with current society is that many of those places are closed

Social media can filter out being called out (look at what elon did with twitter) or qanon

Fox News doesn’t have labels calling their propaganda false

People who hold those views aren’t interested in debating the issue

It’s not for them, it’s for other people that they would otherwise convince

No, that’s an incorrect summation of one part of my argument.

The response to your comment is in my second sentence.

That would be no tolerance. The absence of tolerance. Intolerant.