I don’t really think in terms of good people and bad people anymore. It’s more useful to say good and bad thinking, good and bad actions. If you just say a person does bad because he’s bad, you can’t work with that.

If they’re genuinely bad people, they can’t be changed. If it’s bad thinking maybe you can, assuming you’re not thinking badly yourself. A certain percentage of us are sociopaths and can’t be fixed, but that’s not most of us. There’s something you can do.

If your model for fixing the world involves getting rid of the bad guys – when every bad guy thinks he’s the good guy… You basically wind up exactly where we are now.

Just had a little social media convo regarding my last post, about how right and left are too far apart anymore and won’t talk to each other, how we’re trying to win without convincing.

The guy I talked to thinks most of the shit talk from liberals is out of frustration at not being able to get through to hard-headed conservatives. Not to mention there’s a deluge of shit talk coming from the right. Of course you want to clap back.

I get it. I’ve had my heart broken by things I’ve seen conservative people in my life say on social media over the years. But looking back, I didn’t help matters. I had too much of that edgy Reddit atheist sense of humor. I was being alienated. I was doing the same.

Liberal and left messaging toward the right has been a disaster since long before MAGA. I have a sense of why, because I was on that side of the fence for many years. I was part of two consecutive tribes: 1. rural evangelical Reagan fanboy and 2. atheist libertarian.

Inability to see things from others’ perspective is a hallmark of the right, but the same is true of the left – as regards the right. The Internet promotes this, feeding us strawman versions of the other side and steelmanning our own. The world becomes good vs. evil. Opponents (neighbors) become enemies.

I agree with the progressives on most issues. Racial and income equality, the environment, respect for intellectualism. But the messaging is terrible.

From liberals there is condescension, which sets country people off like you wouldn’t believe. When I was a teenager in the country, searching for my identity, I wanted out of that little spot on the map.

I wanted to live in the city and hang out with musicians and artists. A liberal to be, you would think. But somehow I had a sense that the liberals were not on my side. (The left wasn’t even on my radar yet. The Cold War was still on.)

As I encountered the left in later life, I encountered elitism and puritanism. I didn’t necessarily think they were wrong, just that they weren’t nice.

When I became an atheist, I began looking for people to talk to. I found a chatroom of mostly progressive atheists and tried to have a conversation. When they learned I was a Republican they called me a fascist and bullied me out of the group.

I couldn’t talk to Republicans about losing my faith, and I couldn’t talk to these people. Far from seeing the error of my ways, I became bitter and dug my heels in. Who would talk to me? Libertarians. So that’s what I was for several more years.

You tend to identify with people who are nice to you.

What had the opposite effect? Making friends with people on a music site where I went on to become an admin. In that space you were respected for your taste in music and if you were nice. I teased the the liberals and lefties I found there (I didn’t understand the difference) and called them hippies, but I liked them.

They didn’t immediately change my politics. But when the time came to reconsider my outlook, I wasn’t afraid of their ideas, because they weren’t the monsters I had been sold by the Republicans.

TDLR, if you want to change somebody’s mind, start by finding some common interests and treat them like people first.