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

There is often a lot of projection going on and ppl can't see how they are bringing with them their own privilege or financial/ familial/ logistical circumstances and background of how previous decisions worked out for them.

so "in that situation I would do X; I can't understand why/it's illogical that someone else would do Y"
when you are only able to do X/ benefit from X because of your personal circumstances.

then you also get arguments like
why don't poor people buy lentils instead of high-calorie food; I would
why don't abused women just leave; I would

I'm not quite caught up on the conversation but in reference to the obsession with "logical arguments"... I think a lot of these guys also get fixated on memorizing those lists of fallacies that are all over the internet (usually with stupid little icons for each, if you search by images). Then anytime there's a debate at all, they're waiting for an opportunity to yell the name of the first fallacy they think they hear. It plays into them keeping everything at arms length and looking at issues as coldly and robotically as possible.

https://static.existentialcomics.com/comics/fallacyMan1.jpg

The rest here:

https://existentialcomics.com/comic/9

existential comics is good

And lest we forget – his video was mercifully taken off YT, but this archetypal screenshot remains:

https://i.redd.it/j1zbow89212z.png

i was definitely once seduced by a list of fallacies. probably by an atheism FAQ i found on usenet in 6th grade or something. took me a while to completely shake that, it's very appealing to imagine yourself in possession of a sort of book of spells that reveal everyone else to be wrong and you to be smart. it's also genuinely important and useful to not be seduced by logical fallacies!

The amount of sheer deductive logic contained in that frame is simply too much to bear for a female child.

xp

That might be the finest photograph produced by Western civilization.

A lot of energy, albeit mostly in the soda.

The watermark in the bottom right corner is kvlt af.

it's also genuinely important and useful to not be seduced by logical fallacies!

― Good morning, how are you, I'm (Doctor Casino), Thursday, June 27, 2019 11:44 AM (four minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Yes! Don't get me wrong. It's really good to understand them. I agree.

I'm going to paraphrase a friend's recent facebook post here since we're not 77, but he related an anecdote about his own family:

"Similarly, I was raised by people that insisted that their way was the only way to do anything, and if anyone did it differently, they were wrong and were to be shunned. This belief extended to everything from how housework to holidays should be done."

it was juxtaposed with a quote from a Joseph Campbell book he's reading:
https://scontent-ort2-2.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t1.0-9/65195991_10218585290678639_6120980664893308928_o.jpg?_nc_cat=109&_nc_oc=AQmw9kI6lOwMzqCqvgP1-_ZTNS2GQ8qncHV3qCPeVdeC-qFotQOuN8Z5xCSJgna4vog&_nc_ht=scontent-ort2-2.xx&oh=0e5abebb593d00765d9f62438622c989&oe=5DB6E1AC

hmm that probably failed to embed, but this was the quote:

On the other hand, like most of the rest of us, one may invent a false finally unjustified image of oneself as an exceptional phenomenon in the world--not guilty as others are, but justified in one's inevitable sinning, because one represents the good. Such self-righteousness leads to a misunderstanding, not only of oneself, but of the nature of both Man and the Cosmos.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attribution_bias

This is great on bogus appeals to logic and reason:

https://www.currentaffairs.org/2019/05/the-worlds-most-annoying-man

The great benefit of understanding logical fallacies for me is that it gives me the opportunity to see when people are, consciously or no, arguing in bad faith and _disengage_. Look, there's plenty of research to show that proving to people that they're wrong isn't effective, so why would I do it?

The thing that frustrates me is identity issues. As much shit as the "cling to guns and religion" comment got, it was mostly clumsily phrased rather than actually untrue. Personally I do see it as sort of pseudo-identity politics. I don't think that being a gun owner is an identity issue the way that, say, being queer or a person of color is, but a lot of gun owners do see it that way. At that point things are irreconcilable and, you know, something has to give.

Relevant to this thread:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aDMjgOYOcDw

That dude is annoying and that video is 70 minutes long. I lasted three.

i don't even know who the target audience is for these types of videos

extremely earnest young men i suppose

This is great on bogus appeals to logic and reason:

https://www.currentaffairs.org/2019/05/the-worlds-most-annoying-man🕸

I don't think that being a gun owner is an identity issue the way that, say, being queer or a person of color is...

By the time you've twisted your worldview to the point where gun ownership is a right given by God, not courts, yet "science has not proven that people are born gay" so it's okay to deny gay people human rights, it's 100% an identity issue.

i think we should stop giving gun enthusiasts "special rights."

As nuts as it may seem, I can definitely understand gun ownership as an aspect of identity on par with, say, sexual identity. Components of self-identity are as often a fairly rote component of a shared cultural identity (particularly when that cultural identity is perpetuated in a cloistered echo chamber) as they are the product of genuine self-knowledge. I think it's insane to blow one's life savings on the collected writings of L. Ron Hubbard, but anyone who's hanging out at the Celebrity Center every day is gonna get the stinkeye for failing to do so.

I read a couple of Pinker's books about 20 years ago and remember thinking they were ok(?); I don't know how anyone can read those excerpts listed in that article without saying out loud variations of 'no they don't', 'no it isn't', 'no we don't', 'no it doesn't'

pinker's one of those cases where he's reached the point that the right ideas are made in a completely wrong way

some inherent passive-aggressive tendency

that is, the ideas that are on the right track

not all of them are

i mean look i'm talking about a friend of mine, not a strawman, it's frustrating mostly, i wish it was something where the preconditions for rational discussion were met but it's just not

i feel like people will be more willing to listen to each other and find common ground when the long-term consequences of not doing that become sufficiently manifest

otm but when it gets to the point where we are living in separate realities, and one of the main realities is based on the notion that there can be no compromise, then what.

I'm thinking of an acquaintance of mine, Australian who lived in London and Ireland for quite a while. I don't think he's fully infected but around the Brexit election he would spit up tropes like the false factoid about how much money the NHS is losing to the EU. When we did spend time together (we don't anymore) I would generally avoid politics except to try to find common ground over issues like climate change.

In his case I do think a lot of his views were molded by being raised in an isolated environment with a succession of abusive father figures. It gets back to the mention of empathy above, and also what some pundits have noted about the conservative fixation with the "strong father". Personally I don't think my acquaintance fully lacks empathy, he's just a person who had much of his empathy beat out of him at a young age. Much like my father in fact but at least he was a leftist.

Regarding gun nuts and identity politics, I figure that like much apparent right wing irrationality, it's closely linked to the backlash against desegregation.

The federal government enforced desegregation, so in their minds they can't trust the federal gov't, therefore need guns to protect against "tyranny".

Closely tied to the exploitation of crime as a bogeyman by politicians and media throughout the worst decades of the Southern strategy, and which clearly continues today.

https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-features/suicide-rate-america-white-men-841576/

Like this article, the dudes in Wyoming thinking they need this stockpile of military-grade armament to protect themselves from some imagined home invasion. In Wyoming. And not to come off as classist but I'd guess some of their homes they imagine being invaded are trailers.

that, and a crisis in masculinity following the women's movement/2nd wave feminism. loss of (sole) "provider" role, feeling of insignificance, retreat into "protector" role

like its no coincidence that the NRA went from a shooting club to gun's rights activist lobbying group start in the late 1970's.

https://www.currentaffairs.org/2019/05/the-worlds-most-annoying-man

This was highly satisfying.

otm but when it gets to the point where we are living in separate realities, and one of the main realities is based on the notion that there can be no compromise, then what.

― viborg

Right, that's the really frustrating thing about it. When dealing with a rigid and uncompromising opposition, compromise is not a viable option, only appeasement. The left has no real agency in this situation; we can only wait for the inevitable denouement of the right's ideology and rebuild what we can from whatever's left.

It ain’t over til brunnhilde burns

An exchange yesterday that was so abstract I'm finding it difficult to recreate here, but the gist is something like: "If we do the things that some people are suggesting then we will be like some countries where it has been tried before", one that is fairly familiar

With some work, I kind of got this as far as "If Rebecca Long Bailey becomes Prime Minister, and more money is invested in education or health, it will set off a chain of events and the country will become like North Korea"

I was unable to get a timeframe or any details on the chain of events between "Enters 10 Downing Street", "Marginally increased support for public services", and "Installation of dictatorship". This stalled somewhere around "its been tried before".

It is now too dangerous to consider even a marginal move to the left as the ensuing snowball effect will ultimately lead to the violent death of millions of people

I had a brief convo with an ex-army type who seems to think the UK has to be subservient to the US and commit troops to wherever they go to war next, otherwise the UK will become a rump state of the Russian Federation. Fuck knows his working out but he's a bit mad. But I did point out to him that Wilson did a very canny job of keeping the UK out of Vietnam and the UK didn't turn into a Soviet satellite - but he was only transmitting and not receiving at this point.

I know it makes me an Ugly American but I pay essentially no attention to English politics, this is the first I've heard of Rebecca Long Bailey but I'm heartened to see that perhaps there's someone over there worth rallying around. my almost entirely uninformed sense is that Corbyn seems to have worn out his welcome.

it was never there in the first place to wear out!

It was a push to get any name at all, usually its "some people". A mysterious group of people that are rarely defined or named but are stopping us from misgendering people. I have yet to find out who it is thats going to stop me, where I need to go to meet them, or what will happen to me after I have done it.

it's amusing bc i think liberals are right to be suspicious of nonsensical slippery slope arguments from the right of the kind you're mentioning, but otoh of all places to complain about it, ilx, where many commenters want developments that are in fact the end of the slope the right is concerned about is a funny place to do it. like yes no mainstream ppl in the DNC (or I assume Labour but I'm not as sure) want to demolish capitalism or disband states or form a one world government or abolish gender or have open borders or whatever radical proposal you can imagine, but plenty of ppl here do lol.

these ppl, such lunatics for thinking we want the things we purport to want

can't recall a lot of support for North Korea on here. i may have missed a banaka post or two.

in this country centre left policies that are hardly controversial throughout Europe and Scandinavia are termed "populism" or "marxism" and not just in the right wing press, this stuff is often parroted on the supposed impartial bbc. Sorry probably repetitively repeating myself here, but it feeds into all socialism/national socialism/communism - millions died! memes that people who don't really know much about 20th c history seem to get excited about and share.

I don't actually have a problem with a slippery slope argument! And I also don't think this type of thinking is necessarily right wing! and I don't have a problem if anyone has radical or ridiculous ideas!

but for me where the brainworm stuff kicks in is the inability or unwillingness to explain the middle steps, in any kind of thinking. I understand step 1, and step 2, but suddenly we are at step 50. I want to know what steps 3-49 are! I may disagree with them but uncovering what they are is really difficult, as getting from the abstract to the tangible is tough going. Getting my cousin to commit to anything beyond "some people" is almost impossible!

tbc the left does the same thing to the right where they extrapolate from their first principles and their seeming commitments to all kinds of horrors that the right-wingers themselves would blanch at and of course then the left finds some right-wingers who do want the US to be an ethnostate or liquidate all minorities or whatever horrors so it's easy to see how this thing works. you believe X. i think X would lead to Y. some ppl who vote similarly to you explicitly want Y. consequently you want Y too. maybe the process is more obscure with your friend but i don't think anyone is totally immune to this particular ideology game.

some right-wingers who do want the US to be an ethnostate

these people are in charge

Of course, I don't think its inherently a right wing thing (in fact my cousin exhibited this long before becoming political), but in general "the left" do this, "the right" do that is hard work, because unless we're naming names, we may not even be talking about the same people! Do left wing people do these things? Yes! but are we better off naming them? If they have the cloak of anonymity, they could be anyone!

I struggle with abstraction in general so with my cousin its an obvious mismatch. An example would be something like

Cousin: "some people are committing crimes, and they are committing more of them"
Me: 'Where? which people? what type of crimes? Do you have a link to the stats?"

Cousin: "Why does it matter, even if you found out that person committing a crime in fact didn't after all, so what? we both know some other people are committing that crime, and also that it is increasing"

I couldn't imagine my cousin saying "why do you need to know the circumference of each raindrop before you will admit it is raining?", but perhaps they should

the left does the same thing to the right where they extrapolate from their first principles and their seeming commitments to all kinds of horrors that the right-wingers themselves would blanch at

2016: "Calm down snowflake its not like Trump is gonna start putting people into concentration camps."

2019: "Actually they're necessary."

— Dan Arrows (@_DanArrows) July 14, 2019

The thread could absolutely do with some examples of Left Wing Brain Worms too, and Non-Political Brain Worms!