Too bad the only people that will watch this are people who already understand the terror of what is happening. It might have helped a little if it had aired. My MAGA dad still watches 60 Minutes (no idea why, habit?) This might have penetrated his TDS-addled skull if it had aired. But the takeover of CBS by Trump and Ellison (and his 1980's-college-villain son) with Weiss is complete, and vile.
If you want to break this you have to know the person and ask key questions afterwards. Their distortion field is held together by beliefs and principles, not empirical analysis.
For instance, for my father, the question "how is this treating people responsibly? How can we expect the behavior of those guards to be held accountable?" would pierce this ... but really you have to know how the person doing motivated reasoning thinks.
His Dad will be smart enough to know these questions are trying to set him up. Maybe try having a real conversation and not trying to change his mind. After all, there is a good chance you will be that Dad in the future (no matter how hard you tell yourself you won't be). Tell me how I now.
I'm almost 50. I won't be. I have friends who are becoming grandparents now, still no interest.
I have half a century of talking with my father. If you think this is my first strategy as opposed to one that took years of therapy and personal struggle, I dunno what to tell you.
There's a wide body of social and psychological research on this stuff including multiple university departments (communication, psychology, sociology, management, teaching, etc) because "simply talking to people" doesn't actually work.
Thanks kristopolous. We have a very similar story (I'm a few years older). I think I'm at the "I've given up point" because his glee at others' suffering is just too painful to even address. So: he get's hellos at holidays and that's it.
People have discovered being an open sewer spewing hate and prejudice gets likes, views, reposts and advertisers
It's also a very easy job. You don't need to do journalism, be diligent about citations and accuracy, use robust analysis or careful language.
You don't even need a script. Just hop on a hot mic, blame an oppressed scapegoat and see money roll in.
The content is evergreen, trivial to create and performs great!
Just like you don't have to be a doctor to swindle people with phony medicine or a psychology degree to hustle people as a psychic.
The problem is we've taking the smooth talking performative palliatives of these slick mountebanks and christened their confidence games as sacred free speech instead of the hatemonger hustle it is.
And unfortunately, like Albania’s Nationwide Ponzi scam of the 1990s, these crimes have become institutionalized power and their bullshit is bringing the country down with them.
Other than personal gain, what ought be the consequences of arsonists shouting "fire" on the crowded Internet?
It's a very prevalent form of cynicism, which I find ironic because in high school every student learned to write persuasive essays, but "adults" like to tell each other not to change people's minds. It's a subtle meta-rhetorical move used to undermine rationalism and formal education.
I debated asking, but I talk to him only a few times a year and we both work really hard to avoid politics. I realize it is my responsibility if I want to see change, but I just lack the skills.
I’ve read lots of books on psychotherapy, and the verdict is a hard disagree on that. The idea of positive relationships to parents is a toxic one, and leads to more transgenerational suffering. It’s good to process the past sufficiently to hold no grudge, but it’s still necessary for mental hygiene to set and enforce boundaries. The most important element of this is grief. Like other posters replied, it is not necessary nor healthy to suppress and wait with anger and grief processing till after their death, and plenty of opportunity to work through unfinished business with them ever after their passing (eg with representatives in constellations work).
Unless a Parent/Child was physically or mentally abused (by clinical standards) then I confident that stopping interacting with them over politics alone is foolish.
Maybe, but also maybe politics can be a reflection of a person’s actions in a broader sense, for which it is perfectly reasonable to disengage from them when those actions have a negative impact.
Yeah, I don’t see why one should wait until after the abuse occurs (“by clinical standards”, above commenter says) to begin defending oneself. As you say, politics isn’t divorced from the rest of their psyche.
It’s predictable that a person who e.g. yells slurs and threatens violence against (whoever they perceive as) gay people on TV is going to progress to actual violence against the gay people in their life, more often than not.
This parental situation is sadly repeated endlessly in the US. My dad is a wealthy retired tech executive whose mind was seemingly taken over by Fox News. He's kind of now in an anti democratic cult and he gets angry if he is even exposed to other news sources.
I will feel sad when he passes and I already feel the loss of being able to talk to him about anything. My brother says the same thing. He doesn't even talk to his grandkids much. I think this is sadly common.
