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This isn't just a liberal issue, it's a political climate issue that everyone plays a part in. Liberal 'smugness' is a reaction to conservative anti-intellectualism. When their feelings are as good as your facts, there is nothing left to debate.
No matter how simple liberals try to explain things, it doesnt matter. Conservativism has stopped having substance worth debating over when it is no longer about policy, but all about taking the opposite side of every liberal stance.
Liberals are not at fault for the willful ignorance of rural voters. No one starts off being smug and condescending to people. This happens after they've tried to explain with civility a thousand times and nothing worked. When ego and pride, not empathy and understanding, are the only things of value to conservatives, liberals resort to contempt. There is nothing left but to resent these people for being pigheaded and small minded. Their world views are set in stone by fox news, and any attempt you make at showing them the truth is deemed as a personal attack.
I’ve managed to radicalize multiple of my blue collar, truck loving, baby Jesus spouting, coworkers. It’s a process, but so was my on radicalization, just a different one due to our different material conditions.
Obviously, you can’t change everyone’s minds, but in my experience, there’s not much mind changing that has to be done in a lot of cases, just education on the root causes of the things they already know and notice.
When one party is telling you that this is the best time in our history, while your wages have gone down for 30 years straight, and the other party is the only one addressing their issues, but is doing so through inflammatory rhetoric and outright lies, it’s easy to see why someone would lean towards one over the other, and why they’d come to believe one sides lies over the other side. The trick is that most rural atomized people recognize most of the same problems in our society, the same way the rest of us do, they’ve just had people telling them lies about why those things are happening.
If you want a mass movement, you have to meet the people where they are. If you want to feel superior, then dunking on rednecks is the way to go. That doesn’t mean accepting bigotry, but recognizing that everyone is at a different stage in their political development, and that it takes a custom catered approach towards each individual in order to best effect said development.
A big problem i see liberals having when trying to change the minds of both leftists and conservatives, is an inability to even consider any aspect of another’s perspective, and a belief in one’s own perceptions as objective reality. In doing so, they will argue against their perception of others beliefs, rather than actually discussing and finding what those beliefs are, or where those beliefs come from.
It’s almost like no one remembers that redneck meant socialist union organizer before it was corrupted to truck loving suburban hillbilly wannabe. The working class is ripe for radicalization, but you have to treat them like full people first, not caricatures.
I have talked to my conservative friends on Facebook about their problems and their perspectives and try to understand where we agreed on things; what I found was that we agreed on a ton of things. This is funny because they would often times believe I was conservative simply because I was listening to them.
The biggest hurdle seemed to be some kind of weird mental block whenever it was revealed that they were talking to someone who didn't religiously follow certain political stances or certain politicians. This bothered me because I wanted to discuss certain topics and politicians and the conversation would immediately end whenever doubt was introduced.
Meanwhile, it seems whenever I criticize a liberal ideal with liberal friends I would get a lively conversation and nobody hating anyone at the end. I want to know why it's like this!!
Cognitive dissonance.
“Coping with the nuances of contradictory ideas or experiences is mentally stressful. It requires energy and effort to sit with those seemingly opposite things that all seem true. Festinger argued that some people would inevitably resolve the dissonance by blindly believing whatever they wanted to believe.” Festinger, Leon (1962). "Cognitive Dissonance"
See my other comment. I think that wall of doubt is consciously or subconsciously knowing that if they agree with you, have a realization, and their thinking changes, they will stick out and face getting that same cold shoulder from their friends, family, and community forever. Peer pressure is very real, especially in rural places where there aren’t too many peers to choose from.
I find similar issues when I discuss things with liberals. So many are so religiously committed to their parties ideological stances, that they often don’t even realize they are ideological stances, but insist that they’re just “common sense” that the rest of us are too stupid to recognize. No, I won’t support your reactionary policy that neglects the foundational material conditions that create the very issue that you’re seeking to address. No, I won’t succumb to, “Yes what we did was wrong, but we’re past that now” when there has been no meaningful actions taken to ensure that it wouldn’t happen again, and evidence shows that it is still happening and never stopped. No, I won’t cheer on the alphabet agencies just because they’re attacking “the other team”. I think they should be dismantled, and that position doesn’t change based on who they’re attacking right now.
Most all of my friends are pretty liberal, and I enjoy a rousing conversation about policy with them, but the only ideological stances I've ever heard liberals not move on are human-rights type stuff, everything else is on the table. Without talking in vague overtones about generalities, I don't think it's possible to really dig into the issues you are talking about further.
The problem, as I see it, is that many conservative ideologues back in the 80s discovered that you can't get people out to the polls with boring policy stances, so conservatives started pushing wedge issues and the culture war. Ever since then, it's been impossible to pull some people away from their culture war battles. Now, this culture war has escalated so that legislation is targeting specific groups and having direct harm on people. And conservatives are celebrating this harm because there are so many perceived aggreviences already that who cares about actually governing, it's easier to score points on your opponent.
And rich liberals are just sitting back and banking on the outrage at conservative policies to just fix itself without any work. Making peoples lives better involves directly engaging them not speaking about them and around them. So, we are just in this stuck place where the majority is unhappy with everyone, and everyone sticks in their corner because everyone is outraged all the time. Rich people love this situation where everyone is blaming whoever the media is telling them to blame instead of blaming rich people.
Every conversation about how liberals or conservatives are the problem seems to avoid speaking about rich people and their influence on our entire way of life.
If you figured out how to turn them (bluepill?) why not write down the blueprint somewhere and share it.
Because it’s not a blueprint, it’s a process that is catered to each individual and their circumstances. There’s no shortcuts.
You're probably right. Shame.
A lie Can stand alone, but the truth requires a strong foundation. I Can say, it’s best to wait for people to bring up their issues and questions on their own, and then, without using words that have been demonized, explain things in an easy to comprehend, succinct way, that explains the root of their issue, acknowledges how other people see the root, and then quickly uses analysis to debunk the false narratives surrounding their issue.
It’s hard to explain, but it really just relies on extensive understanding that allows you to explain something simply enough to be understood while still containing the necessary information to be accurate, and really listening to what they’re saying at every step, even when what they say is so counter to your own understanding that their position seems absurd.
You have to understand why they arrived at their conclusions, and that requires individual material analysis and development of rapport strong enough they feel comfortable sharing.
It requires enough knowledge that you can contextualize their experiences within systems of oppression and understand their function both systemically and personally.
I’m slowly getting there, but I’ve also found that saying, you know, I don’t know enough about that to comment confidently, but if you’ll give me some time, I’ll see what I can dig up for you, is often more accepted than trying to explain something I know, but not well enough to explain properly, which can set the whole process back.
Overall, the big thing is do not be condescending, these things aren’t simple, and if you think they are you need to learn more yourself, be empathetic and understanding, and be on their level, while still maintaining your individuality, respectability, and composure. If they’re cussing up a storm, you probably shouldn’t try to talk like an English lit professor dissecting a work, but you also shouldn’t be using slurs, even if they are. I drop F bombs constantly, I use slang, etc.
I can code switch really well, and when you switch out of work code into friend code, it’s usually taken as a sign of respect and equality, and people are more willing to listen to what you say. Like, I’ll be like, “oh yeah man that shit is fucked. So, my understanding is, that xxxxxxxxxxx is xxxxxxxxx, but if we look deeper, there’s some real crazy shit, like this fucking blah blah blah blah and then this bullshit happened, and now we’re here, so yeah…”
It’s almost like no one remembers that redneck meant socialist union organizer before it was corrupted to truck loving suburban hillbilly wannabe. The working class is ripe for radicalization, but you have to treat them like full people first, not caricatures.
That's not what redneck originally meant at all. That usage came later in the 20th century. Have a quick look at the Wikipedia article.
A big problem i see liberals having when trying to change the minds of both leftists and conservatives, is an inability to even consider any aspect of another’s perspective, and a belief in one’s own perceptions as objective reality. In doing so, they will argue against their perception of others beliefs, rather than actually discussing and finding what those beliefs are, or where those beliefs come from.
I've noticed this a lot, but mainly on the internet, especially with people that I have either a more distant social connection with or none whatsoever. It's especially visible when talking about guns, since that's a subject where the average conservative is significantly more well-informed than the average liberal (I say this as a leftist, not a conservative). The liberals that engage in these arguments seem to be fully convinced that they are in fact more informed, even though they tend to have an active aversion to guns, rather than an interest that would motivate them to learn more.
In-person results are better. There's a level of politeness that comes with interacting face to face, plus some level of mutual respect and trust that comes with social connections. I've managed to significantly shift the opinions of a number of my friends on the subject. I could be in a bit of a left libertarian-leaning bubble, though. The current cultural climate is probably also significant. The threat of an active fascist movement in the US is a pretty decent motivator. A very large portion of liberal internet commentators seem to be unmoved, though.
I grew up around and still live with these people. Let me tell ya how they think: They don’t. They don’t even really know what a liberal is.
To them a liberal is something other than them. And the ingroup they’ve spent their whole lives trying to fit into says that’s bad, so they are against liberals and everything they do and say and want. But so is everyone they know, so they’ll oppose liberals even louder and more extreme, in a bid to get noticed by their peers at work, church, family, and party.
And of course they’re right, liberals are shit. But they don’t know why, because again they Do. Not. Know. What. A. Liberal. Is.
And if they ever figure it out and outgrow the childish mentality of opposing without understanding, they will be outcast from their friends, family, and community. And that is the fear that keeps them lockstep in line, voting for the apocalypse.
NOTE: I will be using the word "Liberal" as the US term for "left of center" since you seem to be doing that as well. As such, I'm including people who would not be internationally treated as "liberal". /disclaimer
I will suggest liberal smugness might be exaggerated. Not saying it never happens.
I've spent my entire life in farm towns... deep blue farm towns. I've also worked in Boston for most of my adult life. I have not once seen some so-called "smug liberal" have a problem with my rural roots, nor treat me or farm-town locals like we're idiots. At best, people thought I was crazy to drive 2 hours to work to avoid moving closer to the city.
Even when we talk about deep-red states, we're talking about the membership that empowers and reinforces that deep-red nature... and not every individual. As such, I really think "liberal smugness" is largely a fabrication of conservatives to make them hate and distrust liberals.
There are a few "Liberal" stances that are a bit problematic, you're not wrong. Gun control is substantially different to a person in a city than they are to me, when my hometown outsourced police to the next town over and had no animal control; 20-30 minute response times and police are not equipped to help with pest predators. Nobody looking to ban firearms is looking to create the infrastructure allowing people living in the middle of the woods to live without them. I've never seen a well-focused gun control bill that effectively took the tool-use of firearms in rural America into account. Or the fact that we have population control zones that include our own property, where people with guns need to be here, killing animals (whitetail deer in my area) to prevent a collapse of our local ecosystem.
Liberal smugness is a figment of conservative anti-intellectualism’s imagination. Anyone who speaks above the 3rd grade level is, in their minds, a smug bastard who thinks he’s better than everyone else.