lady I know who doesn't have cable, but listens to a lot of folks talking about what they have heard "as true" (ala on fox news.) I am generally polite, and only partially engage in the conversation when politics comes up.
But this afternoon - she was drawing comparisons between Lincoln (all that is good) and Obama (all that is bad). She said that Obama wants to make us unsafe. I asked "How?" She said that he wants to get rid of the Marines. I said: "That's not true." She paused. I said that I read broadly and had never read such a thing. Then I added that I thought he was politically savvy (she agreed - but for her this wasn't a good thing). I said that it appeared that military votes had increased for Obama in the recent elections (not sure about this), and that while he may be fine with cutting some weapons systems - and HLS military industrial complex spending (which I looped back to), I affirmed that he has never proposed cutting support to the military or to the VA.
This opened up a whole different conversation about military contractors, fraud, and her saying "we never learn" - ala this was a lesser, but already huge problem in the 80s. I cite Ike, and move towards the problem with "money = speech" by the Supreme Court - such that someone with millions to spend has an outsized impact compared to someone's whose speech includes just their vocal chords or writing to the paper.
The whole conversation changed. Her anti-Obama rant dissipated. She even acknowledged that it was hard to know what was true anymore (and this is indeed true.)
Why did I make headway? I weeded through many conversations over the past couple of years. Was polite and disengaged when the political conversation got crazy - or tried to redirect the conversation out of the crazy area. I had established respect in the conversation. Today was the first time I said: That's not true. She couldn't back it up. I saw an opening. I took it. I kept the conversation respectful to her.
She ended the conversation with reiterating how hard it was to tell what information one heard was true or not. She had long dropped her strident contention that Obama was going to end/gut the Marine Corps.
Sometimes one can make a small chink in the armor of crazy conservatism.
= new reply since forum marked as read
