Friend Infected With Right Wing Brain Worms - What to Do?

(Which is to say the left people, ofc)

great post, as always, kate.

I think a lot about how the information age has transformed the way people argue, even when you're not doing it electronically. I watched a friend and a stranger argue about Palestine/Israel the other day and the stranger accused the friend, who shared an article and referred to another bit of reading, of bad faith arguing since she didn't lead her to exact sentences/paragraphs in the article and couldn't read the book in the middle of a conversation. basically wanting a screen grab of appropriate places in the book.

but like, this is what arguing was pre-internet! you'd have having a conversation in public, and you reference a book you read, or research you read, and the person arguing against you probably hasn't read those books so they just argue what they know, but maybe later on they read those books, and either dismiss them outright, or change their view. weirdly, that's how I wound up a leftist, simply because I started from more right-wing and centrist positions and over time, evolved.

now, arguing is treated as if there are definite, immutable facts for every topic known to man, they are all somehow miraculously stored in bite-sized internet articles that one can read within 5 minutes, and that posting the magic link instantly wins the debate. and if you can't do that, you're 'dodging'. posting a link to an article that editorializes and draws the conclusion for you so that you can instantly acquire the requisite expertise on a topic you knew nothing about five minutes ago...seems to be seen as the superior method. that's why I hate when people say "got a link?" in response to claims made - it presupposes that every topic has a ready made link that can answer every question and you don't have to, y'know, actually spend hours reading up on the topic.

when it comes to 'emotion' vs 'facts', it's of course another way conservatives have perverted the meaning of what an "emotional argument" is. an "emotional argument" is one where you solely rely on your feelings and biases to form a position, and you don't have factual basis for it. like someone saying "zipper merging is bad because you're cutting in front of me, jerk" when it's actually established as the most efficient way to merge.

conservatives, however, mean 'emotional' in the misogynist, patriarchal sense, they use it to mean a form of weakness. they mean "you're too sensitive and that sensitivity is clouding your thinking", just like an asshole husband tells his wife "oh, you're always too emotional" when she gets angry at him for something fucked up that he said or did. or insinuating the 'emotional' person is childlike and naive, that the 'adults' are the ones who have the 'real answers'. it's rubbish, too, of course, because almost all conservative moral panics are rooted in emotional outbursts, i.e. those idiots that believe there are no-go zones in Detroit ruled by Sharia law.

kate, the part of your post that spoke to me is pointing that this is intentional, these bad-faith assholes are trying to force people to debate their own existence because then they get to be hateful on their own terms. a gay comedian that performed a lot on the Fringe Festival cycle did a show back in 2012, around the time SCOTUS was ruling on same-sex marriage, and he said some woman who learned he was gay said she didn't know if she agreed with his 'politics', and he said "what fucking politics? I'm a gay man who's just trying to live. You are the one who made it political".

another friend (pansexual) also tried to start a conversation among peers decrying the inclusion of a known asshole TERF musician at a local music festival, and was told to keep "politics" out of the board, that it was 'out of bounds', and she replied "politics? all of you know someone who is trans. this is personal.", and basically got bullied out of the discussion.

bigots try to commodify those they oppress and force them to defend their own existence because it's how they win.

I watched a friend and a stranger argue about Palestine/Israel the other day and the stranger accused the friend, who shared an article and referred to another bit of reading, of bad faith arguing

arguing is treated as if there are definite, immutable facts for every topic known to man, they are all somehow miraculously stored in bite-sized internet articles that one can read within 5 minutes

I think the problem in these cases is that everything becomes bad faith, a different opinion isn't just a bad opinion (which could potentially be changed), its a bad faith opinion (which cannot be changed because its not even real). It isn't the facts that are considered immutable, its the beliefs (or rather the perception of others beliefs). The facts are flexible and malleable. People are never mistaken, they're flat out wrong - and not just wrong, but bad and wrong, its just the way they are and nothing can be done.

My dad is obsessed with rail strikes. There is always a rail strike, regardless of whether there is one or not. He is genuinely animated about this, even if there is no rail strike on the website its best to leave early because a rail strike could happen at a moments notice

A rail strike is currently happening and a rail strike could happen are the same thing. This means there is a rail strike every day of the year

Oh, to have rail infrastructure worthy of a strike!

really good thoughts as well, neando

honestly, i think for me it's more that the information age _hasn't_ transformed the way we argue, that people still argue the way we always have even though theoretically we can be, like, much better informed than we used to be.

i've been thinking about... well, i was remembering, for instance, the Old Days, that people used to argue endlessly about evolution on usenet. people would go on talk.origins and like... it's this tradition, i think is shitty, this tradition of Debate or Discourse... like, it's all emotional. it's just people throwing excuses at each other, trying to persuade each other emotionally, and coming up with all kinds of lies and excuses to do so. it's why people always used to hate lawyers, because if a good lawyer makes an argument it's not about determining Objective Truth. do people still hate lawyers? i don't know. i'm not sure if i ever hated lawyers. i don't hate lawyers now.

like someone saying "zipper merging is bad because you're cutting in front of me, jerk" when it's actually established as the most efficient way to merge.

zipper merging is fine as long as you _merge when everyone else does_ instead of driving so far ahead that you nearly run into someone just so you can cut in 50 feet later. that's my hot take.

conservatives, however, mean 'emotional' in the misogynist, patriarchal sense, they use it to mean a form of weakness. they mean "you're too sensitive and that sensitivity is clouding your thinking", just like an asshole husband tells his wife "oh, you're always too emotional" when she gets angry at him for something fucked up that he said or did.

and yeah for me this is also... like, you know, i think sometimes people still say "hysterical" as a put-down. i try not to do it but it comes into my head sometimes, when someone (probably me) is being really emotional. there's this whole field of argument in the humanist tradition centered around "the woman question", these very enlightened rational debates about the question of whether women should be _allowed_ to read and write, whether or not women have some _nature_ which precludes, or ought to preclude, our being _educated_. of course, most of the people taking part in these debates were men. that, to me, is emblematic of humanist, enlightenment thought, the way it _works_. i do see in internet arguments more continuity than change. debates over "the woman question" prefigure debates over "the gay question", "the trans question"... many others, no doubt, past and future - woman/gay/trans are just the examples that stand out as being particularly relevant to me.

i find that there's... kind of an upside to my existence being "political". i was going for a walk at a local park yesterday, and the folks i was with made it to a local landmark at the same time as some kids and their parents. i don't know what age. 11? 12? at least one was wearing a boy scout uniform. so i said "i used to be a boy scout", to nobody in particular. it wasn't a _debate_. it wasn't a _discussion_. politics is as simple as continuing to assert my existence. that's what allows people to _question their assumptions_. these parents see a middle-aged lady, older than them, who used to be a boy scout. more importantly, there's this kid who sees this old lady and _she_ used to be a boy scout. and that, i believe, is how people start questioning about what is and isn't true, what is and isn't possible.

the internet, when i was younger, opened my eyes and my mind to a whole new world of experiences and now, idk, i guess my mind ain't so open in that particular way. i'm still open in a lot of other ways. i just... i just am not sure what the internet has to _offer_ me right now... besides convenience, which is no small thing, or rather, many small things that add up to a great deal.

I got an ad for Brilyn Hollyhand, I don’t know if that’s a candidate or just a right-wing grifter but wtf “Brilyn.”

R.F.K. Jr. Says Doctors Found a Dead Worm in His Brain

The presidential candidate has faced previously undisclosed health issues, including a parasite that he said ate part of his brain.

lol came here to say to post that

tfw yr poisonous thoughts are too much for yr brainworm

apparently at the same time RFK Jr was having brainworms he also suffered from mercury poisoning - all of this was presented as evidence that he couldn't afford alimony payments to his ex-wife, who later committed suicide

he looks incredibly unhealthy, like over the last 10 years he's aged about 25 years.

that happens when the spirit of 3+ dead ancestors inhabit your body, telling you to stop being so horrible or change your name

https://i.postimg.cc/FKp6cFCx/271a3521-804f-4b15-bd1c-ff89f66141bc.jpg

I thought about this in relation to football yesterday, and how people have opinions on matches, teams, players, that they haven't even seen - but as though they had seen them.

I caught myself the other day about to say something about a player, when I realized I'd seen them maybe twice. Was I forming my opinion on what I had seen, or what others said about him? The former is likely too small a sample size to outweigh the latter, but subconsciously I'd rolled them in together. Even regular match going fans don't really see other teams players all that much. How many times have I actually seen Brentford on TV? Yet I have an opinion on Ivan Toney

If I see Brentford play and Toney is terrible/fantastic do I change my opinion based on what would be a significant proportion of the sample size, or do I keep my original opinion and say "well it was just one game"

I guess the latter comes down to how invested I am in my original opinion, if not much then it probably changes my viewpoint significantly, but if I'm subconsciously invested in my original opinion, I'm more likely to cast aside what I just saw as statistical noise even though its the actual fact I saw and not the conceptual fact I received

Keep having to remind myself that Cheryl from Curb being married to RFKJ is real life, not a story arc thought up by Larry David