Long story. So bear with me but I think it's interesting.
I'm from Australia. So who the fuck cares about US politics right?
Well back in 2016 the media had me. I was a headline reader and would commonly say to people the likes of "Imagine if Trump wins! How fucked would the world be".
One day a guy from work sort of red pilled me in a weird way... He was a Pakistani and he told me "Who cares... We're not from the US. And they deserve it". It made me laugh (sorry pedes).
Now obviously he had an axe to grind from a Pakistani point of view but he sort of burst my bubble. Why the fuck would I care or stress being from Australia about Trump being president. I never cared before. That's when I realised the media had fucked me.
Anyway a couple of months later some barrister friend (had been having dinner once a week every week for several years) started ranting to me at dinner about Trump being president ending the world. I thought I could maybe help him and calm him down. Try and make him see that it doesn't matter that much. Long story short... We have never caught up socially since then. I've got lots of friends. And he was sort of a "single" friend and I'd just met my wife so while I was disappointed... It didn't stress me too much but it was an eye opener.
Anyway started becoming a Trump fan. Bet on him winning. He won but I learned for years to just shut up about it because people still really hate him here. And basically buy into the fact that anyone who likes him (or even doesn't hate him) is a racist degenerate.
Earlier this year lost another friend. Called her up during Covid to make sure she was alright because she is at high risk (cancer survivor). She started ranting about how fucking stupid Trump was. I backed off and was like "yeah he's got a hard job and who knows what the right decision is" and tried to be non chalant. She basically pushed me until she called me a "fucking idiot" and I told her that I'm not here to listen to her bullshit and to fuck off. She was a little bit of a "pity" friend of mine so was happy to fuck her off at this point.
Anyway feel I almost lost another friend lately. He's a good one who I don't want to lose.
Hes a smart guy. Professional, very educated and wealthy. He HATES Trump. But basically acts like he doesn't care.
So he'll send me "Trump is shit" articles or videos and then when I argue back he's like... "Ah I don't really care". But you know he does. At one point I basically confronted him about his attitude and said that his attitude was confrontational but it's not worth ruining our friendship. He backed down and apologised but I can tell he still HATES Trump and a part of that hates projects onto me.
It's crazy that the media machine is so powerful. That people in Australia lose friends over it.
Imagine being in the US and losing a friend over who the Prime Minister of Germany is.
My blood boiled slightly when you said your friend hits you with the "ah I don't really care".
THEY ALL DO THIS.
It's insufferable, they bring up trump or any of his views and then when you provide a coherent, sane response and try to bring them down to earth a bit, they act like YOU are the one bringing up politics for no reason and instead of just being a reasonable person and admitting they were wrong they say they don't really care.
I'd love more insight into this, it comes across as some brainwashed scripted response but surely it can't be.
It definitely is. One of the coping mechanisms for cognitive dissonance.
It's more than cognitive dissonance. It's a mental disorder to straight up disagree with reality.
People in my family not 24 hours ago were repeating the Charlottesville narrative... after watching the town halls...
There are some people that are totally fucking lost, and to admit they've been wrong in every capacity for the last 4 years would make their head explode.
This is the ‘double down’ phenomenon, right? Total denial. I was telling mates in the pub in 2016, ‘Weeeell, you guys are writing Trump off like he’s nothing...’
None of them thought, ‘hang on, why did Trump really win?’
Instead they all gave each other Covid-TDS. Sad.
Exactly - it still amazes me that not one person has asked me that. People who saw me predict Trump’s win when literally every “expert” was telling them he’d lose and not one of them has EVER come to me and said “how come you knew he would win? How did you get it right and we all got it wrong?”
Your first two sentences say the same thing. ;)
This is exactly what I think! People are walking around trying soooo hard to line it all up every day that it’s driving them bonkers. It’s impossible, surely? It’s why I think the more, shall we say, Lefty suburbs are full of people who are actually deeply unhappy. Spend a day in Newtown. The fake smiles are painful.
YES!! I worked with someone who used to do this all the time - she’d just do like a drive-by, making some BS anti-Trump comment but never giving me an opportunity to rebut. Eventually I cracked it and said look, if you want to discuss Trump I’d fucking LOVE TO, there is literally nothing I’d rather do than talk about Donald Trump. But if you won’t finish it don’t start it - either we have an actual discussion or you stop bringing it up. Since then we’ve discussed politics more (because of Covid) and she has admitted that she really didn’t know anything about Trump. I wouldn’t say she’s a supporter but at least she’s no longer a hater.
It's mental exhaustion. The average person has a "headline-depth" attention span and tolerance for information, so by the time you've argued their point, they've reached the bottom of both their knowledge and attention span. They are ready to be entertained or distracted by something else. "Ugh I don't really care." means that you've exceeded the window of their information tolerance.
That's why things like humor and memes are so effective. Trying to logically deconstruct and examine their ideas in real time to show the average person their logical fallacies is going far beyond their trained capacity for information. They have been conditioned to respond to and digest very short bursts of information, thus memetic warfare is the key for normies. If you have more scholarly friends, they will be more worthwhile going deep on. They can actually last long enough to endure the argument in good faith, and they care more for the truth than partisanship. We'll continue scalping real scholars from the Left until they are naught but a concentration of extreme, low information zealots - and this is already occurring. High information is punished on the Left. The only thing rewarded is emotional solidarity.
Emotional solidarity - I like that
Trump loves peace and order, he has been better than any other president in recent history. He struck a number of peace deals between historically conflicting countries, he defended cities against Antifa terrorism by sending in national guard and federal agents. Just these accomplishments alone make him stand above any democrat.
It doesn't matter to leftists though, orange man is bad in their tiny minds for any reason. They still subscribe to the "Drumpf refuses to denounce white supremacist" hoax.