No. Read again. He quoted me saying "you might simply value other things more", and responded with "Correct. My priorities are: 1, 2, 3. If a policy helps that cause, I’m in favor of it. If it doesn’t, I’m probably opposed to it."
He values his personal wealth and comfort over the struggles of minorities. At best, he does not care about the plight of minoritised people. If a politician or policy offers him a benefit, but will increase the suffering of people who are not in his in-group, he still supports that policy. If a policy or politician focuses on alleviating suffering, but may come at some perceived expense to him, he opposes it.
Police violence, particularly against people of colour. Protests? Too disruptive! Literally just kneeling? Too disrespectful!
Even MLK Jr. mentioned this in his letter from a Birmingham jail:
First, I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen's Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to "order" than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: "I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action"; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man's freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a "more convenient season." Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.
Yeah honestly living there for a while, I came around a bit on doing things by paper.
It's slower, certainly. But the Japanese are scary efficient at it, and there is a lot of infrastructure to support it.
And in the case where things go wrong or are confusing, at least you can take the forms and actually go and talk to someone, rather than staring at a computer screen that offers nothing.
It's not really a cognitive disconnect. Most of us know that some members of a minority group will vote against the interests of their own identity. Perhaps because they have some other trait such as wealth that insulates them from the consequences of their politics, or perhaps because they are ignorant. But Quislings have always existed, we know, it's not a shock.
Yes, they have two date systems in common use. It's only the year that changes though. And there's no way to confuse the two, usually. If you write "2023" instead of "令5" it's pretty obvious. I suppose there is a potential for confusion if one just writes a two-digit year though.
Every political opinion has a reasoning and differences in political opinions are usually based on differences in the morals or ideals of people.
That is very vague. Because sometimes those "differences in the morals or ideals of people" are that certain demographics of people are inferior, dangerous, or otherwise shouldn't exist in society. That isn't something we should pretend is reasonable.
It's also not true that every political opinion has strong reasoning behind it. Some people just do not live in the same reality that we do.
Refusing to debate a topic (aka refusing to hear the other side’s arguments) just leads no narrower-minded people. You cant have a reasonable opinion if you have only heard one side’s (your own) arguments.
But we HAVE heard them. We have heard them for decades. We have heard them over and over and over again until our ancestors had to fight multiple wars against them.
We have heard the racism and the sexism and the homophobia and the transphobia and every other little bigotry. Stop pretending we haven't heard them out. We have.
And after decades of listening and trying to have these conversations people eventually say "enough". That's not being narrow-minded. It's the opposite.
The more room you make for bigotry, the less room you make for people affected by that bigotry. And if one wants to hear diverse views, then one should listen to diverse people. Bigotry leads to echo chambers.
This is a bit of an unrealistic position, especially if trying to generalise past the boundaries of your friend group. Your friends trust you, so by all means, talk to them and try to educate them. But trying to change a complete stranger's mind is almost impossible.
And many of the positions the left refuses to "debate" are that certain groups of people should not be able to exist within society. Like, the left isn't refusing to debate tax policy, it's always about bigotry.
And let's just be perfectly blunt. The vast majority of conservatives screaming "groomer" at visibly LGBT+ people aren't going to have their minds changed. You can't educate someone who does not want to be educated. And demanding minorities stand in the firing-line and fruitlessly try to educate the people who hate them, sometimes to the point of hate-crimes, forever... You have to question the priorities of such a demand.
Sometimes caring for minorities means giving up on convincing hateful people.