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SomeMichGuy I don’t think any one group, idea or person will have all the answers. I don’t think any one group, idea or person is completely good or evil, either. I just like to learn of new ways to look at things. As such, I often question people from the left and the right, or make harmless jokes about people, or things, or happenings associated with either side of the political spectrum.
I see the good arguments of socialism and have benefited economically having lived in a socialist economy most of my life. I also see the good arguments made by people who don’t agree with, at least, socialism of the vast majority of services. (I think everyone agrees with at least a very tiny level of socialism in order for a society to exist). I had a friend who was outspokenly far leftist and another who was outspokenly libertarian right (he was a local libertarian politician). I could question the latter’s position all day and he’d more than happily calmly explain his thoughts. With the leftist, I ask one question about socialism and it was ‘you want to kill all disabled people! You want to destroy the NHS!’ And his fiends joined in throwing a list of buzzword accusations at me that had nothing to do with what I said. I’m also disabled and was treated by the same NHS as him, for the record.
In another instance I brought up Jordan Peterson to a left leaning friend. Immediately he goes ‘he’s an alt right pseudo intellectual!’ I explained that actually he had two degrees and a PhD and he backtracked a little but wouldn’t explain how he came to such a counter reality claim. I then brought up another figure he may have been lied to about, and he acts as if the world was ending and blocked me.
There was another lady I knew that grew up in the same church as me. She went full on with the BLM stuff to the point that she was flat out making things up so she could get likes on Facebook. She one time made this ridiculous claim that the church she grew up in was super oppressive as a few of her friends were getting into the whole Christianity is pure evil thing. So I politely comment telling her that I went to the same church as her and that they were absolutely lovely to everyone. She just responds by mocking me and naturally insinuating that I’m some sort of unrelated ism and phobe. I had some other leftist go absolutely insane and block me because I suggested that someone shouldn’t be banned from all social media because he personally happens to disagree with her. I don’t particularly agree with everything she said either, but that doesn’t give me or anyone else the right to ban them from social media.
However at the same time, when I ask my socially right leaning christian dad what he thinks of, say, Richard Dawkins, who spent years attacking his faith, his response is ‘he’s a great man, much more intelligent than I am’ and if he were to disagree with Dawkins, he’d simply tell me why based on the merit of his argument , as opposed to calling him names. As seemed to be the attitude of everyone at the church. I was given polite arguments and recommended books if I ever brought up atheism. Attacking me as a person was unthinkable. Yet let’s take that Dawkins example, ive seen people on the left refer to Dawkins as ‘islamophobic’ and ‘racist’ for applying a bit of the criticism he has for Christianity, to Islam aswell.
I could go on, but there is a word limit.
