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.
The "i don't really care " thing is a tactic people use when they don't want to be pressed or questioned on their position. Hes probably a low information hater in that he read headlines and buys into them without further researching them so when you take the time to dispute it, he can just say "I dont REALLY care" so he doesn't have to acknowledge he's wrong. Its easier than re-evaluating his biases.
Id just point out that if you can find and disprove a few of these things with little effort, imagine how much more hes been lied to about other things.
Couch it by saying you don't pretend the man is a saints, but obviously the media is not truthful and willing to lie to manipulate how people feel about him too. Wonder aloud what else they've lied about.
Once you get him thinking on that, honestly , you've won.
My husband was basically this way up until a few months ago. He wouldn't really say he didn't care, it's more that he would just say politics is so dumb and he was tired of hearing about it. But he would still on occasion say something that was very much like something the MSM would say about Trump or a certain political subject (even though he voted for Trump in 2016!). We would sometimes get into small fights over it, in large part because I would want to talk about what was really going on, and I just couldn't believe he would side with obvious lies even though he acted like he wanted nothing to do with any of it.
I don't know what happened honestly, but he changed his mind quite suddenly (from my perspective). Both of our jobs had us working from home since early spring, and the monotony of it all was starting to get pretty depressing. I wasn't keeping up with the news, would hardly talk about it. Then one day he started showing me red pilled type of things from instagram and talking about Ben Shapiro, the walkaway movement, and suddenly he knows who Candace Owens is. I was amazed. (He is mixed, half Asian half white, so I'm guessing the walkaway thing in particular speaks to him.)
He now says he hates that he felt forced to care and forced to pick a side, but I think all of this has just become too retarded to ignore. Politics have taken over every aspect of all of our lives. Possibly most importantly, once I stopped talking about it, he came to his own conclusions because he wanted to, and people definitely have to want to do something on their own and feel like it was their own decision. It can't be forced. I'm just happy to say he's on our side.