No. of Recommendations: 6
Ah, well, there's the flaw in your reasoning with regard to the posters here.
As I've said many times, I'm not trying to push Dope1 (or others) off of their beliefs. You almost never can change people's beliefs on the internet, and you certainly can't change people's beliefs about very strongly held ideas on "should" questions.
I'm trying to understand where they're coming from. What is it that they believe, and why they believe that. The same exercise that Jones did in preparing that very cogent summary of what he thinks conservatives believe is happening when they look at Minnesota.
Not because I think that will be useful in convincing posters here of anything, but because it helps me have conversations with other people - IRL, in my community. People who aren't rabid MAGA, but who are generally very sympathetic to many of the points that Jones articulates. Those folks aren't going to be persuaded just by calling the MAGA people FASCIST, because they generally agree with some of the things that those MAGA folks believe and won't just dismiss those points as "fascist" just because people label them as such. Positions like "ICE is law enforcement, and disobeying law enforcement is a serious social violation" and "the protests aren’t an act of conscience, they’re an act of obstruction" and "Democratic leaders are politicizing public safety" absolutely are contestable claims, but they're not necessarily (or self-evidently) "fascist."
So if you just walk in and say, "I'm not going to engage with fascists" when talking about ICE in Minnesota with these folks, you're not going to persuade anyone. If you have a discussion about the pros and cons of ICE enforcement with anyone who isn't on your side already and is persuadable without knowing what conservatives think on these things, you're going to be ineffective.
