Nothing in this binary national stalemate of ours can possibly benefit from blunt oppositional shoves. A firehose of antithetical talking points is no antidote. The way out of this is human connection and re-framing.
My impulse is to lead with humility. The person I'm talking to is not a muddied waif requiring a cleansing spray from me as the high minister of idealogical cleanliness. If I ever feel myself positioned to scrub others into idealogical cleanliness, that sentiment is the red flag of all red flags that I need to reconsider and reframe, myself.
We are a nation of deluded neurotic maniacs, but everyone sincerely wants to get things right. I think the best way is to acknowledge that desire - in your interlocutor but first in yourself (everything I learn or figure out takes me another notch out of the mud pit of ignorance, but I'm still thoroughly muddy!)
Anyhoo, let's see if my reply helps. If she just scorns and screams at me less stridently, I'll consider that deceleration a happy result.
Re-reading, this is a bit too long and wordy. I should have gone right to the I-hate-to-be-spun part and the stimulating-my-brain-stem part. But, hey, I'm trying....
"it really angers me when people refuse to learn the truth"I understand that you sincerely feel that you have it right and I have it wrong and I've been indoctrinated while you see clearly. I get that this is good faith.
But if I can ask you a question aside from world events and social media dialog, just a higher level check-in: Do you ever question whether maybe you're wrong, and your'e indoctrinated? Because I actually question myself constantly.
Do you have moments of doubt? Because if you don't, I'd suggest (and, again, this is just human to human, no politics, no Ukraine, no Biden) that this might be a condition worth questioning. Question the unquestioning confidence.
Again, I'm not insulting you with this because it's something I do constantly myself! I do it because I'd be horrified if I wound up hyper-confidently spouting sprays of falsehoods. I did this a few times when I was younger, and the memory makes me squirm with embarrassment.
In order to keep questioning myself, I seek out a diversity of news sources, avoiding any with an overriding point of view to sell, or tons of emotion, and anyone who tries to make me angry or fearful to addict me to their stimulation of my brain stem's fear/loathing centers just so they can make a buck. I ignore anyone super left or right. And, having, stripped those layers away, I try to hear from moderates on both sides, preferably non-partisan experts who don't have a idealogy to sell, and, most especially, from non-partisan or moderate experts who *disagree* with each other, so I can hear alternative viewpoints and weigh them.
I do this because I hate to be spun. Seriously hate it, especially because, as a centrist, to me everyone in America looks severely spun one way or the other. Ugh!
FWIW, I posed this whole thing to Facebook, where (non-MAGA) people responded in a way I found maddening, finally making me sputter forth my exasperation—something I've been trying to constrain since childhood.
If you'd like to see me discombobulate—to balance the unnaturally composed version of myself you read here—have a look here (it's my posting starting "I've called for an escape from binary thinking") once you've read some of the replies).
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