It was a confluence of things.

And to set the stage, political leanings are complex. There is a tendency (insistence, I’d even say now) to collapse a 10 dimensional notion to 1D. At the time (myself, and what conservative parties were offering) aligned on a retrospectively narrow majority of dimensions.

I’d really drank the capitalism kool aid. You work hard, you get rewarded. The role of the government is to facilitate the opportunities by putting business is a favourable position to incentivize the creation of opportunities to create jobs. Poor people don’t want to work; if the jobs are readily available it’s on them for not participating.

I’d also really drank the baseless vibe Kool aid. “Conservatives are good at economy” “Conservatives are for personal freedom”. These associations were unchallenged through my youth. You spend 20 years internalizing those “truths”, it’s nonsensical to expect to convince someone otherwise in minutes.

I grew up in a rural area. It was just accepted as truth. There were no homeless people in my sightlines. I understood their experience as much as I understood the experience of a kangaroo.

I moved to the city, and my friend group was a mixed bag politically. Nobody too far in any direction, and politics wasn’t a major topic of conversation.

I did have a gaming buddy, though, full on communist. Super smart dude. Loves Talking about politics. Usually voice chat. A few times a year he’d be in town and we could meet for lunch or something.

I think eventually I would have shifted my perspective organically as a function of just having a broadened perspective, but he was certainly the catalyst.

Things I took as true, he’d say “no” and have data to show it. We’re men of an era, so I wouldn’t say he was “nice” about it, but it was never personal attacks.

We would (and still do) argue. At length. It wasn’t an overnight thing. It was a years thing.

When I mentioned earlier about the many constituent pieces of a political leaning, those really just got dismantled one by one. Or, shifted. I still think personal freedom is important. I just now reject the idea that conservatives offer policy to support that value.

Nobody has asked, but I think the key for me was to not make it about identity. Show how your values don’t map to the political party you think you support. When I’d challenge, he would respond directly. If we were talking about… I dunno… Taxes, and he felt like I was making points that he didn’t have the greatest answers for, he wouldn’t just change the subject (but her emails!) kinda thing. He loves being right but he had the integrity to not switch gears just to “win”. That built a lot of trust.

It was probably a few years before I actually ever read any backing sources he ever provided. But eventually, I was just too curious. If he hadn’t built that trust I don’t think I ever would have.

I don’t think anyone can flip someone with an identity-based political association in a single conversation online. If the relationship is transient, there is no trust.

You gotta charge up the person’s curiosity level. I think many people can contribute to that, though.

People who trip over themselves to make broad statements about how stupid and terrible you are for how you voted reduce the curiosity. People who respectfully engage with curiosity, avoiding identity attacks raise it.

And, it’s not just me who believes this. Putin does, as well: it’s the playbook for destabilizing western democracy. His troll farms are designed to get people to just snap at eachother and write eachother off as terrible people and lost causes.

Imagine having someone tell you that despite a right leaning tendency, they still vote for Democrats.

And then you swoop in and tell them they’re a giant piece of shit.

You know that your behavior is literally what Russian troll farms are intended to cultivate as per the Muler report, right?

Don’t know if I’ve ever done it, but it was done to me.

So, it’s obviously possible.

I’m pretty amused by the mix of comments where people are offering up themselves as irrefutable evidence, while others proclaim with certainty it can’t be done. Actually a humbling perspective see people who’ve convinced themselves trying to convince others I don’t exist.

Tell me you didn’t finish reading even one complete sentence before responding, without telling me you didn’t even read one complete sentence before responding.

I’d go even one step further, which is to say he’s even dumber and more petty than you’re even giving him credit for.

He thinks expanding the physical size of a nation is a metric for success. Greenland is relatively large, (and he thinks it’s larger than it really is because he can not comprehend the reality of a Mercator projection). He knows there’s only a few tens of thousands of people there. Seems like an easy grab for a big plot of land.

He wants golden statues of himself in Gaza. He thinks the 49th parallel is an arbitrary line. The Panama canal is one of 4 presitegeous global pieces of infrastructure that his dementia addled brain can even recall.

He want big. He want thing people know. He want golden statue. He like 4 year old. He mad.

Trying to ascribe any meaning beyond that to his actions is like when people anthrpomorphise an insect as being embarrassed. We’re projecting meaning for which there just isn’t evidence to support, where there are simpler explanations to be had.

He is profoundly insecure, profoundly stupid, and profoundly petty. This provides sufficient explanation for everything he’s ever done.

Yes. It’s just regurgitating whatever was in the training set.

Skibidi alert

Not recommend but all of mine are named after Mesopotamian archeological sites.

I can imagine the typical household plumbis will vex future archaeologists

It’s always projection.

He’s not going to go

Accurately count the occurrence of the letters in a word of their choosing

No. It was a long winded way of saying “it’s not strictly necessary from a purely functional standpoint, but it is in reality because humans are mushy and irrational especially in groups”

No. But yes.

Like pretty much every social construct, it only really exists as far as people have faith in it. Money only has value because we blindly assume that the grocery store will accept them. Any agreement only has the value of the belief it will be honoured. Law only has meaning if we believe they’ll be applied.

In any coalition there will be participant members with disparate interests. Someone needs to speak for the whole to generate the faith that the collation really does have alignment (that the coalition truely exists). In turn there must be faith that constituent members really do support the direction-setter, at least in so far that they won’t leave the coalition given internal disagreement.

It’s the “U” in USA. Without a federal government, without a leader, it’s just the SA.

The USA was the de-facto leader of the Western world since about May 8, 1945. I think history will recall that reign ended Feb 28 2025. I’m not sure if it’ll be the EU body directly from here on out, or if it’ll directly be France or Germany who acts in the function of the leader of the free world.

Ok, so that’s the crux of it that I think was unclear in your original post.

Your initial post was read by me (and presumably others) as “NATO without the backing of the USA isn’t a meaningful defense group”

But I think what you’re saying is “ENTRY to NATO with the USA pulling the strings is an unrealistic goal”

Even if the USA were to leave NATO or refuse to participate, there still isn’t a better security guarantee than the remaining block being obligated to engage militarily in your defense, and the block still contains nuclear powers.

I don’t think it’s as benign as just trying to get a rise out of people.

It’s called “reconnaissance-in-force”. Basically you scout by starting a low-cost battle.

Him and Elon do it all the time, but in the political space. They say things as a “joke”, and then gauge the blowback. Then they decide if it’s a joke or not post hoc.

It’s always “a joke to own the libs” until it isn’t. You know those “jokes” about how if he gets elected, you’ll never have to vote again?

Some redneck spray painted shit like “go home” on a Mosque in my rural hometown. Like, literally illiterate levels of redneck. I think they literally spelled “Canada” wrong in one of the messages.

When people saw it in the morning, the community SWARMED the mosque with cleaning supplies to scrub it off. All the school kids made posters saying stuff like “You ARE home”. By noon, the mosque was cleaned and windows plastered with the posters the kids made.

Kinda pissed me off that the national headlines neglected to mention the community response.

Made me realize pretty early on that ragebait sells and the media knows it.

There are probably countless instances of communities banding together that you’ll never hear about. Doesn’t mean they don’t happen.

When you’re 18 you have a nearly fully developed brain but almost zero experience of the adult world (which was graciously shielded from them by adults who deep down know the adult world fucking sucks).

I love them. I envy them. They absolutely should have the vote. Their perspective is invaluable. They have to be in the conversation and at the table.

But like… They’re still incredibly naive, generally speaking.

JD is drawing false equivalence, to lead to the conclusion that law doesn’t matter.

Does a judge plan a military operation? No. But they can establish if it is legal.

That’s their whole job, to establish if actions violate the law. If they violate the law, they can order them to stop.

Judges don’t write the law. You don’t like the judge’s ruling? Change the law. Judges don’t write the laws, they just interpret the ones that exist.

JD is arguing that judges (and by extension, the law, and by extension the fundamental concept of the rule of law) don’t apply to him and Trump. It’s literally an argument for monarchy.