I have a close friend that I’ve known 20 years who became obsessed with right-wing politics. even though I’m liberal, I don’t make it my entire personality and life. But anyway… I was talking to him this morning casually like friends do.
Me: “Hey man. Do you have off today for MLK day?” Friend: “No, I have to work today.” Me: “Damn, sorry to hear. I have off today since it’s a company holiday.” Friend: “Yeah, I work for a living. Guess that’s the difference me and people who live in an ivory tower.” Me: “Uhh I work for a living too. Idk why you’re acting like I don’t?” Friend: “I didn’t mean you specifically. But you’re off and I’m not so it shows that you get to relax at least. You should be able to handle the truth lol. There’s no shame in admitting that I’m a harder worker than everyone else. you shouldn’t be so sensitive”
Honestly, he’s not unique, either. I’ve met so many people who are conservative, obsessed with right-wing stuff, and they’re all like this. They act like they’re special and the whole world is lazy, “no one wants to work anymore” attitude.
If you’ve known him for 20 years he should respect you enough that you can tell him he’s being a cunt. Coming from you it should mean something, and maybe he’ll take a look at himself. I’m friends with some right wingers who are decent people but folks like that need to be called out.
I’m friends with some right wingers who are decent people.
?
“right wingers” or “decent people”
Choose one, because they are mutually exclusive.
You can still be charismatic, a good neighbor, someone who stands up for friends when things start getting rough, a caring person that worries about those around them, and still hold the most batshit insane political ideas. I happen to know multiple people like this.
People are complex, and plenty are good people who have been led to believe the most outlandish shit. They are gullible and don’t put enough thought into what they accept as truth. It is just as attractive to people on our side of the fence to paint everyone else with broad assumptions. It is the nature of Evil, because evil is ultimately a boring thing that we all do every day without thinking about it.
I think the difference is between our definitions of “decent people”, because I don’t think a person gets to be called “decent” simply because they can be nice, pleasant, thoughtful, or helpful to only the people who abide by your personal world views while actively trying to make life worse for people who don’t meet their bigoted qualifications.
Yeah, they can sure seem like “decent people” if you’re not on the receiving end of their bigoted ire.
It’s not even that they only accept people that abide by their views - it’s just that they are oblivious to those outside the scope of their lives. They are not people who hate immigrants or other minorities, they’re people who never interact with minorities at all and so get no pushback when they just passively accept the idea that they are stealing all the jobs in the US. They don’t know any trans people and so when they hear that trans people are groomers, they just go “that’s horrible! Someone should do something about that”.
We need to remember that these people are a large portion of half the US we constantly have to fight against. They’re not all just a hateful swarm, there’s variety within that mass. They’re our relatives and our neighbors. A large amount of these people are really just insanely gullible and don’t see past their own noses. That gullibility is a mark on their quality, yes. They can still be decent human beings, despite that. They can also be corrected if you get them to understand, which I’ve done before. Many others have done the same.
It must be exhausting and lonely seeing the world in black and white.
Those mental gymnastics you perform daily to justify being friends with hateful morons must be twice as exhausting.
Must be nice to be able to not be a subject of people’s bigotry and think that people who are actively trying to remove other people’s rights and even have a hand in causing people’s deaths could be considered “decent people”.
Considering you immediately turned on me for having a different opinion on who could be considered “decent people”, you are likely to be similar to them in their lack of empathy towards people who are different. Maybe you’re not exactly the most qualified person to determine who is “decent people”.
But please, prove me wrong and show me that empathy you seem to have for your so-called “decent people”. I’d suggest starting with treating me like a person and asking “why do you feel that way?” instead of spewing negative comments towards me.
Apparently you project your toxicity onto the decent (eventhough you’re a leftist) Nuance is clearly, not your forte
I can’t think of a single Conservative social talking point that would make them good people. You have to remember these are the same people who want to ban abortion, gay marriage, remove rights from minorities, and have ‘in’ and ‘out’ crowds. There’s no ‘good people’ there. They may perform good actions, sure, but their belief system is entirely about stagnation and dogma.
Left aren’t any better, they have stallin apologists for one, in your quest to “give rights to minorities” you end up marginalizing the majority for two & three your open border policy causes massive economic damage
Plus I am talking about those said good actions, also there’s a world outside of politics
You’re a naive fool if you think democrats have an “open border policy”. Go talk to your right wing business owners and suggest that if we really wanted to stop illegal immigration, we would jail business owners who hire them. Surprise surprise, those right wing owners exploit these people but don’t really want to stop any illegal immigration.
Funny because, those right wing business owners never said that They would rather employ their own people, rather than those immigrants
You’re talking about corporations, who don’t really have any political affiliation & try to suck up to anyone who is currently in charge
Again you assume all right-winger are the same, People are very nuanced & it’s naive to go “Leftists = bad & Rightists = scumbags”
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Those are called tankies and nobody likes them. Especially those of us on the left.
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“Marginalizing the majority”. Yeah, because white Americans are so marginalized with their hegemonic control over the state and capital.
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Oh, no! The economy is tanking because Juan from Chiapas got a job picking oranges for a Dole contractor in California for less than federal minimum wage because his shitbird boss pays him under the table. Do you know how fucking stupid that sounds?
No, there is no world outside of politics. The personal is political. Choosing to associate with ignorant bigots says more about your values than any half-cocked appeal to moderation.
What hedgemonic control ? People have been losing jobs left & right
The right knows how to mask their hatred when it counts, while the left is busy virtue-signaling, Anyone half-intelligent will use whatever tools effective & honestly so will
Rightist policy of exclusion is pretty good you know, I want to exclude capitalists from society for e.g
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You went pretty quickly into insulting me simply because I don’t agree that hateful bigots should be considered “decent people”.
You’ve shown plenty of evidence that you are not qualified to determine who are “decent people” and who is “toxic”. Seems I was able to determine the toxic nuance embedded in your comment just fine.
Yeah when you go Leftist good, Rightist bad, well let’s say that, that kind of dumb thinking is what makes you lose strength in the eyes of apolitical people & invites trouble , the world of politics is too murky for you behave like that
Oh & as for rudeness, you’re the very definition of hateful since you cannot compartmentalize, You have made your politics into your entire identity & as for rooting out things; Leftists have been losing a lot of potential recruits lately haven’t they (you couldn’t root out your own toxicity)
Where I’m from calling someone a cunt is term of endearment.
In North America it’s like domestic violence in a word. Cunt doesn’t really have a positive connotation here.
The funniest thing about conservatives is how they’ll complain the left are a bunch of snowflakes, but you say a single word like trans and they’ll probably explode into a million pieces because you said a bad word that scares them.
I was reading a standard celebrity obituary article the other day. It was an actor nobody really remembers and it mentioned his family and the shows he was on.
In the comments someone said something like:
I don’t know why you had to mention his husband!!! Why does everything have to be so woke?
Sure, pal, if he had married a woman, everything would be ok, but since he had a husband, we need to pretend that he doesn’t exist around you so you don’t feel icky?
Earl Holliman?
Doesn’t sound familiar, but maybe.
I just googled “news dead gay actor” and he did episode 1 of The Twilight Zone, which is a pretty notable resume item. He died a month back unfortunately.
Mentioned COVID tests around my dad cause my brother was going to see my Aunt sick with an aggressive cancer. He exploded about how COVID is fake and the Flu will kill her too… Shes sick with cancer, dude… Shut the fuck up…
If I’m honest, I think your dad’s logic is sound:
Whether or not your brother has COVID is immaterial to the fact that he has an illness that is likely contagious and is still planning to visit your compromised aunt.
If she’s ill enough that any illness could tip the scales for her, then it doesn’t matter which illness. The real question is why the hell is your brother considering visiting at all.Not that you’re wrong for asking that, it’s just that your question is superseded by a question that it seems your dad forgot to think about while contradicting you.
Edit: Scratch that. I can’t do words good sometimes.
I re-read your comment. I misunderstood part of your comment. I thought you were saying your brother is visiting your aunt sick, who has cancer. But your aunt is sick with cancer. My whole comment is predicated on a scenario that isn’t happening.Except they were possibly exposed to it. So you know.
Ooh. Yeah. Possible exposure. Definitely grounds for testing.
Lol this same person once told me that he doesn’t support LGBT or Black lives matter or any of that because he doesn’t agree with those communities and thinks that they are hateful
They are hateful of him. And should be.
Have you ever considered that your buddy just might be a fucking idiot?
It’s cause they never know what trans people are packing, and a penis scares them more than a gun.
I love telling transphobes that they’re only mad because the ladies’ dick’s are bigger than theirs.
its the propaganda they ingest. they are constantly told that everyone brown or poor does nothing but live off the government teat. constantly . despite this being demonstrably not true.
This one sounds more like the “real man” propaganda.
A real man behaves a certain way and can only wear certain clothes and do certain jobs and is respected by women.
They refer to themselves as “Real America” so it’s pretty much right there in the open.
you shouldn’t be so sensitive
Imagine being so sensitive that someone else having a day off sends you into a insecure tirade about how hard you work. Ditch that loser. Life is too short.
Company holidays mean you’re lazy? Bro needs to get a grip.
Sounds like he’s jealous that you are getting a day off and is trying to spin it as you being lazy
Yeah OP, it just sounds like an unhealthy coping mechanism. He might just need some empathy
The conservative people that run my job think they’re funny or something. We get a the standard holidays off but if the 4th of July or whatever falls near a weekend they’ll swap another holiday to make it a 4 day weekend.
The only holidays they “trade away” are MLK day and Juneteenth… Funny that.
Ray Cesum
Ray sees 'em.
Same, though I’ve never had Juneteenth off (AT best there’s a Juneteenth BBQ that… no one but management gets to attend because we don’t have to day off to do so) and we traded MLK Day away for… I think Black Friday? I don’t remember… I just know that I work on it.
My brother, a right winger, brought his kids up to visit me last summer.
It was at the end of the week that he told me that I hardly work at all. I’m like: Yeah, I have fucking guests in my house. I was still at my desk when I wasn’t trying to keep 2 teenaged girls entertained.
He moved his family 1000 miles away and 20 years later is lamenting that they have no relationship with the people he moved away from. (I’m sure it’s just a coincidence that this lines up with the rise of “Family” talk from right wingers.) This same guy calls other people “Sheeple”.
Sounds like him living 1,000 miles away is a good outcome.
Why is an adutl man concerned about how much another person works…
Also working hard is not a virtue, it is an indicator of poor management
working hard is not a virtue
I have to disagree here. Well, probably. I figure, if you’re not lazy/half-assing your job, you’re pretty much working hard, right? I see it as being diligent about your job, and yes, I do see some virtue in that.
But you also wrote “indicator of poor management” which makes me think you’re using “working hard” as a label for something like “unpaid overtime”. That would be a whole different ballgame.
I think we are align.
I practice my trade. I do everything to standard, I solve my customer’s problem and I own my mistakes. That’s professionalism imho
When people use “work hard” language, all I hear are grifters who in fact don’t work hard or otherwise. They are seeking attention and or trying to out capitalist PR a person who is doing fine work.
I think I see where you’re coming from. I don’t hear grifters in that phrase, personally. I’d almost say the opposite; workaholics are more likely to invoke the phrase. Or, to put it another way, victims of upper management gaslighting.
Typical conservative reply: it’s your fault you’re offended that I was an asshole.
Hate, insecurity, intolerance, and ignorance are the foundation of their ideology. I’m not proud of myself at all for this, but I got sucked into the pipeline when I was a young teen. However I am proud to say that I did fortunately manage to pull myself out of it and I’m now a socialist.
While I hate that I got sucked in, it does give me a lot of insight into why they are the way they are. They start by targeting common insecurities which they use to lure people in, and then they feed them lies while appealing to those insecurities. For example, I remember being a lonely teen and watching mgtow 🤮 videos and the gist of the videos was that if you joined their “movement” that you would get laid all the time, and of course that video was ridden with a shitload of misogyny and lies. Then from there it snowballs into more and more hatred and lies.
Conservatives are just sad, narcissistic losers who are incapable of understanding that people need to lift each other up rather than putting each other down. That’s why conservatives like to brag, because they think putting others down is how they get lifted up.
Being knowledgeable is a good defence against their tactics since their lies become obvious and it quickly becomes evident that they are fools.
The secret sauce at fox news is flattering dumb people, telling them they are smart. Smarter than those woke professors, doctors, scientists. “Youre a free thinker, you see right through the deep state lies, you know the real deal and dont fall for their propaganda…etc.” If you can flatter a moron into thinking they are smart, you can literally program them like a manchurian candidate or robot.
Yall are in the best position to deradicalize them. And while it wasn’t good you got sulked in, they were actively targeting people like you to suck you in
What a loser. I hate people like this. We are all working hard you fucking dunce. Get your head out of your ass.
People like this are just primed to make up their own reality. Rather than face the truth that he has a (probably) shitty job, his mind instead translates it to: “those people are lazy, I’m a hard worker. I’m working a holiday because I’m a tough man and can handle it”
Yeah, conservatives like to randomly plug phrases of propaganda like unfunny inside jokes. Depending on my relationship with them I do one of the following.
- Ignore if I’m not that close. Maybe roll my eyes a bit.
- Push back on it if we’re in the context of world events/news/politics.
- If we’re close enough, re-direct the culture war bullshit interjections with interjections of class war. If your friend sees it fit to just randomly call society lazy, you can also randomly call the upper capitalist class lazy government-teat sucking hoarders.
You’ve got it backwards. Toxic and aggressive people become conservatives (in Anglo countries) because it serves them emotionally.
Occasionally one is too queer to successfully do that, and have to find an alternate outlet, like stanning for North Korea or something.
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Being a harder worker isn’t something to be proud of, friend.
That depends on context but if you don’t own your company ypu shouldn’t be giving your job your all.
