Comment by dangjc
7 days ago
We often reach for black and white thinking which makes political discussions difficult. Both sides do it, and it stunts our empathy for why people vote the way they do.
7 days ago
We often reach for black and white thinking which makes political discussions difficult. Both sides do it, and it stunts our empathy for why people vote the way they do.
Empathy for why people vote the way they do has to be balanced with empathy for those harmed by horrible voting decisions.
There are horrible consequences and people are suffering, totally. So then what? How do we get others to understand the impacts and start to change their mind?
Honestly, I'm increasingly cynical that it's even possible. From what I've seen, it seems like people mostly crystalize their beliefs by 30 and then don't change their beliefs without some sort of immense personal suffering. And few who aren't affected by bigotry are going to go through that to change their mind. There are exceptions, but nowhere near enough to swing political trends.
I think Trump's idiotic economic policies will probably result in losing voters as they're harmed directly, but that's just more of people caring about themselves. It's not a fundamental change in people's beliefs about the homeless, lgbt people, racial minorities, etc.--if people aren't affected by how Trump harms those people, they aren't going to change how they feel about those people. And even a swing against Trump due to his economics harming voters won't matter if we don't even get to vote in 2028.
The only way I see anything changing is that the boomers die of old age. My own generation (millenials) are more compassionate, but have basically been hamstrung by an older generation that has kept all the money and power. And honestly, I'm not sure we'll do much better when the boomers die--we're cynical, and tired from living our entire adult lives in this bullshit, and on average just content if we can survive. Gen Z seems on average to have even more compassion than millenials, and some more nuanced understandings of how to treat our fellow humans well, and seem to still want something better for themselves, so my hope is on them.