this post was submitted on 24 Oct 2024
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If I understand you correctly, then I very much agree, but I don't see this happening very much. On one side I see people saying "vote for the lesser of two evils, and then we can focus on changing the system/changing the democrat policies" without actually any clear idea how to do that. On the other side I see "don't vote for either party, neither major party deserves to win" without any clear idea of how to give any realistic chance for a third party to win.
Here again you are using bad faith tactics to dismiss the idea that people in favour of voting might have valid reasons to, instead presenting it as if these people think normalising genocide is a good thing. This is divisive and not constructive at all.
Yes I know how quickly controversial discourse can go downhill, but to be that seems all the more reason to not allow our arguments to disintegrate, even if the other sides are.
I definitely agree, I think all widespread "truths" should stand up to scrutiny, but my point is about the way this is done. Challenging a truth/point of view should mean approaching the logical base of that view, and presenting an alternative with reasons why the alternative is better. But so often I see people ignoring the logical base of the other side's viewpoint, and instead creating straw-men to attack instead, or simply just dismissing the other side entirely through one tactic or another. To be clear, this is done by all sides, I see many people dismissing the argument to vote as simply being "supportive of genocide" (which is obviously ridiculous), while people dismissing the argument to vote third party as being "stupid/ignorant" or other things to that effect, which is also obviously false.
Like you say, we are all products of our societies with different values, but the vast majority of people are reasonably smart and have good intentions. And dismissing people is not a good way of "calling them out", it only causes further division and makes them even less likely to be receptive to your ideas. If you cannot see the reasons for someone's beliefs (even if you strongly disagree with those reasons) then you stand very little chance of changing their mind.