Yesterday's troll has not been the only person to
challenge my sisters politically, though she was certainly becoming the most
prominent.
One thing we have discussed periodically is whether
there is even a point in having these conversations, because no one is
listening. Remember the coworker who is Christian but does not believe you have
to love others? He loves discussing politics with her, except
"discuss" might be an overstatement because it implies that some
listening goes along with the talking.
My response would often revert to having seen two
people change their minds. It's rare, and it's hard to say what makes it
happen, but it is at least a possibility. I want to go over those, and then
something else that recently happened.
For the first one, I don't know what happened. He
had been a Sanders supporter and virulently anti-Clinton. One day he posted
that he had been wrong; Clinton has been serving people all her life. He seems to be back to supporting
third-party candidates now, but for a while it was really encouraging.
I know the turning point for the other, and it was
something that freaked me out. It was the video contrasting two men of
different races demonstrating their right to open carry an AR-15.
I was shaking mad when I saw it. It seemed like a
great way to get the Black man killed, and I was so angry with whoever had
decided to risk his life to prove a point. That is discounting his willing
participation, and they probably thought the cameras provided a measure of security,
but I felt sick. I felt sick not from what I was seeing there, but from fear
because of what I already knew.
It was different for her. She had blamed many
incidents before on non-compliance and attitude and reverse racism, but with
that video she saw it. Not everyone did; there are people who argue about it
being a holstering issue and having nothing to do with racism. For at least one
person it made a difference, so you never know.
The day after the previously discussed Facebook
scuffle, a mutual on Twitter posted that he didn't understand why a certain
phrasing that Donald Trump had used was perceived as anti-Semitic. I knew that
one, so I responded. Soon it felt like I was down the rabbit hole, because he
just didn't see any evidence that Trump was racist. After all, he had an
Orthodox Jewish son-in-law and had dated Black women.
Relationships don't automatically heal racism, and
there is a lot of evidence for that, but I focused on some of the more obvious
signs of racism, and concerns about Trump setting the stage for violence in the
wake of his defeat. He knew that wouldn't be a problem, because while he had
seen people against both Trump and Clinton in his Twitter feed,
there were lots of pro-Trump tweets and none in favor of Clinton.
That can be an interesting commentary on how it is
easy to insulate yourself from differing viewpoints, but at the same time, he
follows me. I have tweeted things in favor of Clinton, and he's not seeing
it. There are a lot of people with her.
That didn't feel like it was going anywhere. He did
delete some of his tweets praising Trump during the conversation, so maybe
there was some impact, but it was hard to tell. The next day I found an article
that was really pertinent, and passed it on to him:
He promised to check it out, and that was the end of
our interaction. However, the next day he tweeted that only one person had been
against globalism and why did it have to be Trump? Maybe he did see something.
Maybe he at least has a better understanding of why some people have concerns.
What may not be obvious from that story is that I
found that interaction exhausting. Between him then and Rachel the day before,
I wanted to give up all political discourse because it is not worth it. But then
sometimes it might be, so I stay in there.
I do have some ideas on why the anti-globalism
candidate might necessarily be the groping racist misogynist that is Trump.
More on that tomorrow.
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