General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: Regarding things from the south. [View all]rrneck
(17,671 posts)Got dunked and everything. Nowadays friends and relatives in the south figure me for some sort of bound for hell commie. But in spite of all that, the christian message of "turn the other cheek" still holds true. And it ain't easy. If (generic) you hurt somebody, they will hate what you do. If you hurt them again they will hate you for what you do. If you hurt them enough they will hate you for who you are. Keep hurting them and they will hate everybody like you.
It's a funny thing about forcing people to admit something. Trying to force them to admit it usually makes them dig in their heels more. You can watch it happen right here all the time. Facts and figures are to no avail. Logic is useless. That's because people believe in something, and since politics is just another religion fundamentalism is going to happen. One can be a fundamentalist liberal just as much as a fundamentalist christian. And the results are about the same.
For all the high falutin' thinking that goes on here and everywhere else, I've found the best way to change people's minds is to work with them personally on a shared objective. And I don't mean discussing it over a distance of a thousand miles. I mean actually working shoulder to shoulder. There is still plenty of racism in the south just like everywhere else. But people of different races do actually work together, and they they do so happily if not joyfully. They are able to do so because the activity is not defined by ideology. They may believe any number of things, but they bring those beliefs to the task at hand and profit from it. And they profit in more ways than one.
There is a weird and ugly thing that happens when we begin to expect people to work for an ideology instead of expecting an ideology to work for people. Buying something means someone has invested in it and they will have a tendency to protect that investment. It seems we have become ideological consumers buying personalized ideologies from industries controlled by the 1%. I sometimes wonder if a "personal relationship with God" is really any different from personalized identity politics. How often are left leaning talking heads referred to by their first names and lionized as political celebrities for telling people what they want to hear?
I can appreciate your skepticism regarding a "federal solution". The actual work of helping people and getting along with them is best the closer to home it is. I think maybe that the money to do all those good things should run through Washington because it unites us as Americans and, in the words of Willie Sutton, "That's where the money is."