The RRR is NOT the Tea Party.
Submitted by Aegis on Wed, 02/22/2012 - 08:45How do we convince the media, the facebook trolls, internet trolls, and brainwashed liberals, that the Radical Religious Right and the Tea Party are GROSSLY different.
That everything that the Establishment Republicans are asking for are not what we stand for...
That any message other than ...
Limited Government, Personal Liberty, Personal Responsibility, Lower Taxes, Fiscal Responsibility.
is not OUR message.
We are not the RRR. We are the Revolution FROM them.
It can be difficult
to get someone to see things from another POV, especially when combined with a poor public education system and a corrupted MSM. More than that though, many people just LOVE creating false dilemmas when their worldview is questioned, or they keep "moving the goalpost" as they say.
I think the key is to get people to stop basing their worldview on assumptions. During debate, call them on it whenever possible. Let them know you're not going to give their poor arguments a pass for ANY reason.
If your opponent refuses to listen to reason and gets rude/irrational, onlookers will take note of not only their behavior, but yours as well. Sometimes, it's not just about convincing the people you're directly talking to, you know?
A signature used to be here!
It's not "our" Tea Party either.
If you are using a label you are asking to be hijacked.
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"Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make
violent revolution inevitable."
John F. Kennedy
Attempting to convince
Attempting to convince anyone, who is brainwashed about anything, is an uphill battle. I used to spend time debating with people like that, but when people have strong emotional attachments to their worldview...and when they have closed their minds and are not interested in questioning or discussing, there's only so much you can do, but put the information out there in the hopes that someone else who is more open minded and interested will benefit from it.
The first step in engaging someone in productive and thoughtful discourse, is for that person to be curious-- curious about you and your perspective enough to listen openly to what you have to say (even if it turns out they don't agree in the end). This is why race-baiting and demagoguery is so effective in shutting down discourse and dissent. It's a thought-stopping mechanism. It forces an emotional wedge between people, to block them from engaging others who have opposing views. To unravel this.... you have to unravel the identity attachment and emotional response that triggers the knee jerk reaction, and the thought-stopping that follows. How? I'm still working on that one... I don't have the answer. :p
But I do know that under no circumstances does it help to feed the trolls, or to feed into their hate or demagoguery. Don't respond with anger or intense emotion. Instead, seek out others who might disagree with you, but who are calm and principled in their reasoning-- those are the sort of people who are more likely to have a productive discussion. Having a public debate with other calm and reasonable individuals who hold opposing views, without fear and prejudice, sets a good example for others to open up and do the same.