If you're deep enough in, it can be difficult to extract. When observing people with very strong ideological identification in general, I always come back to two true things:
1) You cannot reason people out of what they were never reasoned into.
2) "It's better to have ideas than beliefs. You can change an idea. Beliefs are trickier." - A paraphrase of Rufus from Dogma.
People go all in when their ideologies and tribal contexts become core parts of their identities. So when you're attacking their ideas, they perceive it as attack on themselves. And when it comes to our identities, most of us are very, very reticent to concede that there is any kind of flaw in how we're perceiving ourselves.
And it's not just conservatives. It's all over the place, and I perceive it getting worse with increased partisanship. I could point out a dozen things on our side where I find myself thinking, "Oh, this is just religion dressed up as something else. This is just belief in objectively untrue things and self-identity at work in order to self-soothe self-perception." There are some topics floating around I won't even discuss. There is no point. It's like when people try to get into arguments with fundamentalists using Bible quotes. "I shall destroy them with my logic!" Yeah, no, that's not how people work. No one's going, "Oh, you're right! I never thought about that! Thank you, Smarty McSmartperson!" They've thought about it for about ten seconds and then dismissed it because it doesn't fit how they want things to work.
Free expression is the simplest area to see the dynamics at work. Ask two questions. "Should schools and libraries bar certain materials?" Wait a second. Then follow up, "Should social media companies ban certain forms of speech?"
If you're very quiet, you can hear a faint whooshing sound when the logic and reason portions of the brain start disintegrating in favor of the tribal and the ideological.
= new reply since forum marked as read
