I'm in a big American city, and I remember that until the online kids and snarky liberals started moralizing about mask protocol, there wasn't as much resistance to wearing masks among right-wing crazies.
I remember when there was that controversy about 5G networks interfering with bird migration patterns and meteorology, but as the fringe conspiracy crowd started spinning up crazy theories about how 5G was going to brainwash or sterilize or force-feminize people over the airwaves or whatever it was, most people I knew stopped talking about it, seemed to forget that they had ever thought it concerning. It reminded me of the time people were worried about pollutants causing hormonal changes in indicator species, and then Alex Jones started talking about how "they're turning the frogs gay" and the meaningful version of that discourse vanished too.
I view the same kind of thing as happening here, as well as a lot of other places. It's made me wary of the sport of finding what crazy things my political enemies believe to make fun of them, because it seems like the net effect of this is creating "opposite" erroneous beliefs with no evidence
We're living in very different worlds I guess.
Until Donald Trump decided to say covid-19 is a hoax and preventative measures are unnecessary. Presumably because he‘s so contrarian that anything the Democrats supported he opposed and vice versa. It was a dumb move and many (including me) believe it cost him the election, if he decided to support lockdowns I really think he would’ve won by a long shot.
And now it’s too late, since many conservatives got so invested in the fact that covid-19 is fake, and people can’t admit when they’re wrong. I wish liberals were more sympathetic and tried to make it easier for conservatives to accept the vaccine instead of mocking and shaming. But it’s so hard to get people to admit when they’re wrong.
It's interesting that you didn't say "I wish more conservatives would admit they were wrong", but instead put the onus of action on liberals.
It just doesn't excuse some liberals from encouraging this left/right divide and just being nasty. Things like r/HermanCainAward, being proud when vaccine deniers get sick. At least understand that when someone is literally putting themselves in danger, they're not evil or selfish, they're delusional and misinformed.
To be even more clear however, the kinds of people pushing these viewpoints within their community are actually evil and doing it in bad faith for their own self gain. Even the mainstream conservative voices like Tucker Carlson, who is vaccinated and works at an institution with a vaccine requirement, is using his platform to deliberately cast doubt on its efficacy and safety. He knows better, but he is sending the message his supports want to hear. This is evil. Senators who are going out of their way to make sure nobody can be made to wear a mask in certain settings are doing it deliberately for political points and are objectively evil for this.
I don’t fully spite the average person who is listening to and hearing all these voices that align with the rest of their politics and choosing to take the position for no other reason than it’s being fed to them, but there is a limit. And maybe I’m just not aware enough but there is a ton of intentional gritting in the conservative/right-wing space now intentionally pulling on the talking points for a profit motive that I don’t see in left-wing spaces. And that might be okay even, except their also a total scam and bullshit. Selling people a “freedom phone” which is just a rebadge of a cheap Chinese phone (the irony) for a huge markup because it won’t let you be censored. This kind of behavior. Preying on their own audience that they’ve cultivated to specifically exploit them.
There is a lot of evil there.
I don’t think it’s appropriate to dunk on people dying. But it isn’t really surprising that there is that level of response among some people on the left-leaning space. It’s equivalent to the “owning the libs” on the other side. I’m not in for it personally, but I don’t think it’s any more or less popular on either side. Just the general shape of overall disgusting polarization we’re at now.
If people want to live in their own version of reality I don’t care. But when their version of reality is ruining it for the rest of us, it is a problem and there isn’t a lot of room for discussion with someone who isn’t willing to engage with reality.
Are you sure that is a true statement? What exact ruination are you referring to? Are you saying that we would not have had a delta wave in the U.S. if more people had vaccinated? Or that lockdowns would have gone differently? Or schools?
Australia still has a covid problem, despite their lockdowns. Israel is still having covid breakouts, despite their high vaccination rates. It's putting a strain on many health care systems.
What do you think will change if we had closer to 100% vaccine compliance?
> and there isn’t a lot of room for discussion with someone who isn’t willing to engage with reality.
Quite the contrary, there's plenty of room for discussion. You obviously don't understand their point of view. Not everyone thinks the way you do. This ending to your comment struck me as quite dismissive. That's a lot of people you just wrote off.
Where does it leave us if we can't talk about these things, and respect our different values?
As far as people not living in reality, this isn’t even primarily about COVID. It also isn’t a refusal to try and have a discussion on my part. It is what happens when people reject information that doesn’t reflect what they believe. They have written themselves off. You’re right. I don’t understand the point of view of someone who thinks there is a satanic cabal of liberals who prey on children. I don’t understand the point of view of someone who thinks 5G is going to read their minds. I don’t understand the point of view of someone who thinks the vaccine is the mark of the beast. I don’t understand the point of view of, based on various polling, 70-80% of republicans who don’t believe Biden won the election legitimately.
Or rather, I do. Or at least I can see how they got there. But what I can’t do is convince them that these things aren’t true. I can’t convince them that someone on the internet who claimed to be an insider and now hasn’t posted anything in like over a year wasn’t actually able to predict all the future events leading up to Donald Trump being reinstated as president and rounding up all the Democrats and liberals and child abusers. These people have already bought into something that is so far out that there is no reaching them. It isn’t for lack of trying. They aren’t willing or ready to accept anything else.
Eventually some of them will find their way out of it, but that is a place they have to get to on their own before anyone can help them out of it.
To answer your final question, it leaves us in a terrible place and exactly where we are. I don’t enjoy this. I’m not reveling in it. It’s fucking depressing. It’s sad. It’s an actual tragedy. We’re in a bad place and I don’t see that changing or getting better any time soon.
I’ll happily discuss things of this nature with people who don’t agree with my general beliefs but I don’t have a lot of patience for someone, and I’ve interacted with more than a few, who flat out deny things that are objectively recordable, let alone anything subject to interpretation. They closed the door, they shut down the conversation.