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

just had a call from a friend called Dave having a racist rant about his namesake at The Brits. When I kept dismissively shutting him down, because he was droning on with lots of bingo card qualifiers that make him avowedly non-racist, he said we are having two separate conversations here. So I said but mine is the good one and yours is the bad one and he put the phone down after calling me an arrogant cunt. I probably did that wrong!

I need to do that, but with my mum.

No, you were right.

xp

There is probably a more subtle way you can handle a conversation like that, but I've heard it so many times now it's a struggle to not let my internal voice out or I feel like I'm cracking up, no matter how rude and counterproductive the results of doing so are.

Can't believe how lucky I am to have none of these people in my life, worst I get is a colleague occasionally whinging about cyclists and extinction rebellion.

I get the extinction rebellion one occasionally. I just say I've never heard of them, who are they? If you're going to go down this path with me you best put the hard yards in and explain it to me because I've never heard of it

he was droning on with lots of bingo card qualifiers that make him avowedly non-racist

Ask him whats so wrong with being racist is it really that bad?

one of his examples was what a happy multicultural place the Asda he works at is and how his workplace acts as a sort of verifying microcosm of his theory that 90% of the UK population aren't racist at all and it is amplified too much by a few moaners amongst the minorities. And he doesn't want his teenage kids to come under the influence of this "criminal" rapper called Dave, even though he is called Dave and used to listen to Tupac and Biggie himself!

a choice quote I've remembered from him was "this isn't about politics ..it's about people" still trying to work out what that means!

he also does this "I work 45 hours a week" thing where I think the subtext is that a f/t carer/benefits bludging scumbag like me is getting way above my station by having an opinion!

45 hours? shiftless part-timer imo

Ask him whats so wrong with being racist is it really that bad?

― anvil

don't do that, then he'll come out to you as racist

calzino there's no right way to handle those kinds of conversations unfortunately. when people start talking stuff like that to me i give it a shot to see if they're really serious about that crap and if they are i immediately start disengagement procedures. some people might say i give up too easily, but ahh, everybody deals with racists assholes in their own way.

it's quite awkward because even though he's a terrible bigot, and very boring and hasn't really got many positives tbh. I've known him 41 years + there is some bond of friendship there and I feel like sometimes I could get better results by being a bit superficial and change the subject or something rather than maybe make him angry and possibly keener to dig in even more where he is at. On the other hand fuck him tbh!

i have a friend like this. we usually start talking about '80s/'90s wrestling to get away from sensitive topics

even though he's a terrible bigot, and very boring and hasn't really got many positives

These people are best eased gently out of your life.

Loyalty's a helluva drug. Sometimes you just want to give people a chance till the bitter end.

If you have a boring friend
Now is the time now is the time etc

If you have to work 45 hours a week you're doing work wrong. Tell him that.

i'm sorry – what is "extinction rebellion"?!

respect existence or expect resistance

Right now as far as office chat goes, Extinction Rebellion are this - https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-cambridgeshire-51534446

"Why can't they respect the law?"
*fossil fuel companies strip-mine the Arctic*

"I agree with them, but they really aren't going to win anyone over by inconveniencing working people"

Friend update! He has considerably cooled down on the stuff that was worrying me.

I finally revealed to him that I am trans, and although I could tell it was awkward for him, he handled it well. There’s always going to be stuff we don’t see eye-to-eye on but he has proven to be a good and loyal friend where it counts.

Contrast that with the two other supposed friends (both cis women who don’t know each other) who completely cut me off after I came out to them last year. One even told me that she felt my revelation ”invalidated“ her womanhood, which of course really, really fucking hurt to hear. This was in the context of a very long email where my friend regurgitated a bunch of TERF/“gender critical” talking points that she had apparently been absorbing online. Talk about brain worms!

She then stated she was cutting off contact and threatened legal action if I responded. What the fuck?

The other friend was initially polite when I told her, but indicated that she had “reservations” about trans issues and that if I wanted to hear them I should let her know.

Ok, but...how is one supposed to respond to that? I was already in a very vulnerable place after coming out to my family. I was not going to entertain objections to my life choices or identity. But even so, I wasn’t ready to lose a friend just yet. I tried to respond in a diplomatic way but it came out sounding rather rambly and meandering, which she took as me “talking down” to her.

Eventually she revealed that her ex (who was abusive to her) had turned out to be trans after their breakup.
Which...ok, but what was she saying? How does her ex being a piece of shit have any bearing on their or my trans-ness? I’m not them! Of course, it transpired that like my other friend, she had also been absorbing “gender critical”/TERF propaganda from reddit and other places online. In so many words she said that my being trans was an insult to her womanhood and the suffering she had gone through as a woman. From this point on things deteriorated rapidly. She wrote an email indicating that she was cutting off contact to “protect herself” and wished me the best (gee, thanks).

Both of these friend breakups happened within the space of a week. The same week, in fact. It was very strange and upsetting and it kinda ruined me for a while. I think about what happened almost every day and it still stings.

I’m really sorry to hear that lb, you know you will be better off without them in the long run but it still fucking hurts. It’s really fucking out of hand and melting brains everywhere. I’m glad your other friend has accepted you though.

stay strong latebloomer!

My old boss was a super right wing guy (in the abstract) but something never sat right. He was never like that in his actions. It was jarring to me to hear the same old same old dogma (from someone that was clearly bright) and then to see him act in completely the opposite way in the way he stood up for people. I wouldn't say he was brainwormed exactly...it was more like his abstract understanding of the world and his empathic understanding of the world were polar opposites (unlike my RW cousin who doesn't possess empathy at all in an imaginative sense, which I think is one of the preconditions for brainwormery)

Just because someone is wrong in the abstract, doesn't mean the same will be true in reality, just as someone who's right in the abstract can turn out to be made out of paper when it actually matters.

much love to you latebloomer

that's one of the things about coming out as trans that's so hard to explain to people who haven't had that experience, having to be willing to lose basically anything and anyone in your life, at random, for no reason at all. people whose love you have never doubted for a second in your life suddenly reject you, even though acceptance costs them nothing and we risk fucking everything just to be who we are.

i legit just don't fucking get that

They will come up with an interim solution, a kind of halfway house to a vaccine. This will keep the economy functioning until a useable vaccine is ready.

A vaccine for the brain worms, now?

what if the brain worms are the only thing that's protecting them from the corona

I was talking to my friend last night and she said that her two year old son has not had any vaccinations and she's concerned that if a Covid-19 vaccine is produced then the government will force people to take it. She said that she's not an anti-vaxxer but she just didn't want her son to be vaccinated (she was a bit vague on her reasons for this).

I didn't challenge her on this (maybe I should have) because I'm not a parent and I'd imagine that having people who aren't parents telling you how to raise your child must be annoying, and I was worried that being too confrontational could be counter-productive. However I definitely think she should get her son vaccinated for obvious reasons. Should I raise this with her, and if so what's the best way to go about it?

She said that she's not an anti-vaxxer but she just didn't want her son to be vaccinated 

i believe there's almost no chance of trying to argue somebody out of an idiotic belief but depending on the person i guess you could try a "social responsibility" tack.

Especially if the idiotic belief concerns their children.

Is she concerned that about a covid-19 vaccination itself, or that people will be forced to take it?

Should I raise this with her, and if so what's the best way to go about it?

Being confrontational is obviously unlikely to work. In my view its best to work with what you share and build on that, because taking an oppositional stance starts with what you don't share.

So what do you currently share? Some kind of unknowability about everything to do with covid-19 presumably, because no one really knows the lay of the land yet. So your both in the same boat. Involve her in the process of making the decision about whether to take the vaccine when it arrives. Ie don't tell her what to do about covid-19. Ask her what to do about covid-19

(involve her in you own decision about whether to take it, I mean)

That would probably be for the best. We've got a lot in common politically in that we're both lefty liberal types, so I was surprised when she came out with this. And I think she's more concerned about being forced to take the vaccine than the vaccine itself.

I ran into someone like that in a friend’s facebook comments. She said she’s staying home, wearing a mask, etc. but if people wanted to go to events or hold a farmers market, it’s not the government’s place to say no.

The entire “people should be free to do or not do things if they want” mentality is basically the soft marketing version of the individualist society we pretend to have. Is there nothing that’s a societal responsibility?

tbh I’ve thought about just dumping my raw sewage in the gutter in front of some homes. I’m doing what I like over here in a public space!

She said she’s staying home, wearing a mask, etc. but if people wanted to go to events or hold a farmers market, it’s not the government’s place to say no.

The entire “people should be free to do or not do things if they want” mentality is basically the soft marketing version of the individualist society we pretend to have. Is there nothing that’s a societal responsibility?

I'm not taking a particular tack here and it depends what lens you look at this through, but societal responsibility and government enforcement aren't the same thing? Or are they?

In both these cases I can see someone saying "Wait a minute, we trust Boris and Trump now all of a sudden?" and we end up with police inspecting shopping bags and saying we can't do push ups in the park.

Deeper issue here about trust in governments, which is complicated at the best of times

if a vaccine is rushed (i.e. not put through the usual rigor of testing) then i could see myself being hesitant to get it

As far as immunizing your children is concerned my line is that the state should do more to protect the child's individual rights and freedoms. Giving the decision to parents isn't extending freedom of choice, it's treating minors as property.

if a vaccine is rushed (i.e. not put through the usual rigor of testing) then i could see myself being hesitant to get it

I think vaccines are amazing things but this is my starting point too.
I thought she was saying that re her child not having previous vacs either.

As far as immunizing your children is concerned my line is that the state should do more to protect the child's individual rights and freedoms. Giving the decision to parents isn't extending freedom of choice, it's treating minors as property.

― clap for content-providers (Noodle Vague), Sunday, April 26, 2020 9:58 AM bookmarkflaglink

otm

if it makes everyone feel better, it's not even a given there will be a vaccine, since it's a coronavirus

that doesn't make me feel better at all!

sorry, I was being unhelpfully facetious

(waits for this to hit "pvmic")

ive seen a few articles repeating a who announcement that previous infection and recovery from covid 19 does not result in immunity, but none contained commentary on implications for the possibility for vaccines, and i keep thinking, well doesn’t this make a meaningful vaccine impossible? Or are only some people, but not all, immune to it following recovery? In that case, you’d need about 70% of total population vaxed and responsive for some herd effect?