• dactylotheca@suppo.fi
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    5 months ago

    Conservatives are only capable of empathy if their ideology directly affects someone they care about. Good on them for finally getting there, but they’re a day late and a dollar short

    • Melatonin@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      5 months ago

      Listen, I get your point but…

      They’re not some different animal that has foreign feelings to you. They are humans and they are as you are. They are deceived, they are mistaken, they are perhaps brainwashed. But they’re people.

      When we start using the word “conservatives” the way you just did, to identify the “other”, it permits all kinds of inhumane behavior because “they’re not like us.” Even when they do something objectively good, they’re only doing it out of selfish interests, and not because of enlightenment. It’s an ugly perspective.

      Try substituting the word blacks, or Jews, or transgenders when you say conservatives next time and see if it sounds as good as you think it does. And if it doesn’t, maybe back off the rhetoric a little.

      • kboy101222@sh.itjust.works
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        5 months ago

        The difference between black people, Jewish people, or transgender people and conservatives is that you choose to be an asshole conservative. You don’t choose to be black, (ethnically) Jewish, or transgender.

        And comparing the systematic abuse those groups have suffered under to the complete lack of abuse conservatives haven’t suffered is honestly disgusting. The conservatives helped cause that abuse. Don’t compared the abused to their abusers.

        • Melatonin@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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          5 months ago

          If you think that I am here defending conservative point of view, you have entirely missed the point.

          I am arguing against a point of view that judges individuals by the groups they belong to rather than their personal actions, to the point where EVEN IF THEY REPENT AND CHANGE THEIR POSITION, they are still subhuman and are only doing it for some selfish motive and cannot ever gain humanity again.

          I think many Democrats would rather that conservatives would DIE than that individuals would change their heart. And I think that’s really sad.

          • kboy101222@sh.itjust.works
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            5 months ago

            If they want to change their positions, great! Fantastic! Love it!

            Just don’t expect me to immediately believe you. Or to immediately embrace you because you suddenly care now that it affects you and your family.

            And that still doesn’t make comparing people with a chosen political position with groups that have experienced actual physical harm and systemic abuse not absolutely disgusting amounts of BS.

      • VARXBLE@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        5 months ago

        This is a bad argument, and you know it was. Referring to a group who identify with political beliefs, at their own discretion, as that group, is not the same as “othering” based on ethnic or sexual traits that are predetermined. No where close.

        • Melatonin@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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          5 months ago

          I do not agree. I feel like it’s plain and simple. Thinking can be changed, but ethnicity can’t. Yet even though the possibility exists to reform them, we blame them for being “different” somehow rather than trying to understand and change their position.

          I have defended my statement enough. If some of you want to argue that hating conservatives is justified, and even if they try to reform they’re still doing it for selfish reasons, then I have nothing to say to you.

          • acosmichippo@lemmy.world
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            5 months ago

            I do not agree. I feel like it’s plain and simple. Thinking can be changed, but ethnicity can’t. Yet even though the possibility exists to reform them, we blame them for being “different” somehow rather than trying to understand and change their position.

            you can’t reason someone out of a position they didn’t reason themselves into. they are getting their beliefs from their religious authority; how are any of us supposed to compete with that?

            I have defended my statement enough. If some of you want to argue that hating conservatives is justified, and even if they try to reform they’re still doing it for selfish reasons, then I have nothing to say to you.

            what else do you call it when your mind only changes on a topic when it directly involves people close to you?