OccamsRazer

Wages don't go down though, or at least I've never seen it. And rarely have I seen wages sit at minimum, indicating that the market wage isn't linked to the federal minimum wage. I understand that this may be different in other parts of the country. This is just my experience.

Lemmy and reddit are closets in one room of one floor of one building, where they kick out anyone who won't scream "Fire!" along with them. Those are echo chambers. Anyone telling you that half of the country is fascist, is pushing an agenda and using fear to influence you. Or they have been influenced and are simply propagating the propaganda.

Lol are you serious? You gotta step outside the echo chamber every now and then.

Uhh... Terrorism where innocent citizens are targeted is worse than specific targeting of terrorists themselves.

I suppose the third type of person is a revolutionary, who wants to throw it away and start over. But then what, continue the cycle of revolution once the next generation arrives? Or is there an end point? Do you think it can actually be achieved? From a practical perspective, does human nature allow that?

I mostly agree with you about the bubbles. Getting outside your bubble is extremely important. It's important that they get outside, but additionally it's important for each of us to step outside our own bubble to make sure it isn't happening to us. None of us is above that affect, and it's instinctive to seek validation of our own preconceived notions. Trump has a propaganda machine working for him, but his opposition has an equally powerful machine working as well. Would you recognize it? Can you tell when it's the machine and when it's the truth? It's pretty tough to separate out the noise, especially in a place like this that has an overwhelming sameness of opinion.

That's just demagoguery. There's a guy I know who thinks progressives hate America and everything they do is for the sole purpose of destroying it. It's like that. I get that it's far simpler to reduce your (political) enemies that way, but it's lazy and uninteresting to me.

Not even to try to understand them so that you can address the root cause of why they like him? Or is the fact that they like him evidence of them being irredeemable and flawed humans? In that case, how should they be dealt with?

Thanks for actually answering the question! I would distill it down a little further though, and say that the difference between conservative and progressive is that progressives believe that human nature is malleable and that the system can be used to drive humanity in a positive direction. On the other hand, conservatives believe that human nature cannot be fundamentally changed and that attempts to do so will result in dystopia of some kind, or an overall decrease in happiness as humankind strays further from it's nature. Obviously there are people within either of these camps who take things way too far. I don't remember where I read this theory, but it's the only one that has held up over the years and in various contexts.