this post was submitted on 19 Sep 2024
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The problem with that is that, being on the reasonable side, if we just assume the obvious and then are somehow 'proven' wrong on a specific topic (there are thousands of them, so it's bound to happen sometime) we legitimately lose actual credibility in the eyes of people who matter.
Like the 'they're eating the dogs!' things. It's perfectly reasonable to mock him for it being an issue, but insisting it has never happened and that even the idea is ridiculous, opens the entire side to being wrong if even one crazy or oblivious person of color has ever done it, which it almost certainly has. I mean if you look hard enough, you could probably find a crazy example of that from any cultural group. One example and pretty much all the mocking gets flipped around in the minds of anyone only half paying attention, and certainly from the other side next time we insist something doesn't happen.
People so stupid as to believe this crap are on average too stupid to change their mind by communicating with them. You don't win them over any more than you convince creationists or flat earthers. Picture a series of concentric circles. In the center is 20% of the US pop true MAGA believers. They are unconvincable and vocal. Neither they nor their audience reacts to reasoned careful discussion. You humiliate them and make them look like the evil garbage they are. The next 15% or so is watching the humiliation and getting quieter. The next 10% at the fringes you pick away as the bottom 20% get less and less cool.
By the time the entire group has shrunk from 45 to 35 rendering it perceptibly impotent to get anything done and making its proponents look like losers. The 15% publicly claims not to have been that into you and even the true believers get quieter.
People rely on social proof of truth more than logic or reason.
In the US white supremacist ideals are held by 1 in 10 but publicly these are humiliating ideas to hold and defend and as long as this is so they wont be making a come back