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Not gonna lie, I was happy to see that your story was one of sympathy and compassion. From the tone around here lately, I was half-expecting it to end with "I decided 'Fuck this guy, one less illegal is a good thing.'"
I think the right and the left are increasingly unable to model one another's thinking. I come here and see people who are celebrating violence and clearly want more of it. I get disgusted, go to other places, and see people... celebrating violence and clearly want more of it. Just directed at different people. I think about a reddit (yeah yeah, I know) post I read the other day, where some woman out of the blue texts her brother basically demanding to know "where he stands" on Trump and ICE. No indication that this had been a previous topic of discussion or that he was MAGA, just suddenly she needs to know if he's aligned with her. When he replies with a sort of mealy-mouthed "It's not a black and white issue, but I love you and family over politics," etc. etc., she informs him that she's going no contact with him and his family forever, and immediately tells their mother that he's cut out of his life. He didn't even say he's a Trump supporter (though I guess one could infer it), just that he's not completely on-board with her TDS.
I recently got into an argument here where I said I know very leftist "woke" people, and they are not evil. I was piled on by Motters saying of course they are, they just haven't turned on me yet. Unsurprisingly, I have had similar arguments in left spaces. "I know conservatives/MAGAs, they aren't Nazis, they aren't evil." "Well, you can say that because they don't want to kill you." (I mean, some of y'all do, but...)
It's just... very sad. And tiresome. Thank you for still having a heart.
And they say being the resident mod bad cop brainbroke Hlynka.
The mod log looks absurd. Amadan is doing too much of the work.
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Most people aren't good at modeling their own thinking, thus are very bad at communicating it, and the outsider map is more accurate in some ways, less so than others.
I've come around to a sort of cold comfort in that what the sides mostly see as "evil" in the other is what the allowable failure modes are, and the selectivity of attention (whiteness studies professors and actual no-joke neonazis aside, those two groups are evil in the regular sense). Maybe this is just warmed-over Arendt, I haven't taken the time to read her in full. A person can't legitimately care about everything, and where one chooses not to care- to draw their blinders close- has outsize effect on how they're seen by people that make the opposite choice.
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