@desbearado @GaryWgll

I agree with you. There isn't enough time, it's a long process that can take years.

People are dying out of other people's willful ignorance.

Yet there's also no other quick solution to the hatred either.

There isn't an easy answer.

@jcalexandre_writes I am a gun lover, but I am also very "respect the gun".

There's too many people who don't respect what guns are, or what they can do.

My Dad (and other family), who taught me to respect guns, went from a responsible owner where I barely ever saw them in the house, to carrying them like toys. It is scary.

2nd Amendment is the right to bear arms to keep a free state. Not to cause tyranny, and not to shoot your neighbor's kids.

The problem: Guns do make violence easy.

@desbearado I don't think it will work on all of them. Many are too deep, they will never come out.

There is no all-round way to get them all to listen. Every single one of them has an individual path of redemption.

But, what I do know, debating them or arguing with them or trying to reason with them will not work. It's wasted breath.

I wish I had better answers, but I know what it was like for me. I know what it is like for my family and their neighbors and friends. 😞

@dauphin87 It's not about what they say on those shows.

It's about the emotions they evoke in the people listening.

I try to explain to people it's not a reasonable debate you're fighting, but an emotional one.

Anger is addicting. The words mean far less than the emotional strings they pull. As long as some of the words can justify the belief, it doesn't matter how unreasonable it seems, because reason has nothing to do with it.

@desbearado It was my friends telling me stories about their gay friends; without focusing on anything about the gay part.

They knew they couldn't win me in an argument of the mind, so they won me by going after my heart... and that's how I started my road to changing my outlook and beliefs.

Once my heart was no longer in the hate machine, neither was my brain.

That's how you win.

@desbearado @GaryWgll For instance, and you might hate me for this: I was really anti-gay a few years ago, and I mean very anti-gay. If a friend or family member had told me they were gay, I would have disavowed them.

But, do you know what turned me around? It wasn't anyone arguing gay rights with me.

It was random conversations I had about travel and cats, with people who happened to be gay. I related, then I humanized. It took awhile and eventually I realized how horrible I had been.

@desbearado @GaryWgll I don't think there is a one size fits all solution. The deluge of rightwing media is deeper than you ever see from outside of the bubble.

The only thing I have found that works with my family, that worked with me, is to begin humanizing people we hated or blamed.

Slip in mundane stories they can relate to, without any political slant, about people from different walks of life. Show them the personal struggles.

It's so difficult to be that, but it works. Even if slowly.

@GaryWgll Nope, but they believe they do.

And that's why arguing and debating never works with Republicans.

You're up against a very strong, religiously backed, belief system, not an actual argument.

A debate of any kind, reasonable or otherwise, will never make a dent in that wall.

@VirginMaryCandle @cosoconfessions Still tempted. 😜

@GaryWgll They would just say "the Liberals are censoring TV now".

The justification goes deep, everything gets blamed on the left. If the right does something bad, to them, "the left are doing worse things, so it's okay."

I still struggle with being confronted by things I believed or said, and it's almost an instinctual response to "blame the left".

It's much more of an emotional hold than it is anything to do with logic or reason.

We need to interrupt that emotional hold.

@Juhstin 😂

@GaryWgll If you read back to my posts from earlier today in my post, I explained how I came out of the Republican dream.

And I have been doing that with my sister, brother, and cousins. But, not my parents. I believe they are in too deep.

@GaryWgll You can't.

My family are hard Republican. I was too, until not too long ago.

There's no bursting that bubble, it's a bubble within a bubble within a bubble.

We have to choose to come out of it ourselves.

I wish there was an easy burst the bubble moment, because I'm trying so hard to pull my Republican siblings and cousins out with me.

@GaryWgll I can promise you, they won't. Even if you meant it sincerely, they will see it as you making fun of or attacking their faith.

Everything is highly personalized in that bubble.

@opie I love that saying about the sandbox and sand castles, that is profound.

Freedom is great, when it's not built on hating other people for it.

@Daren @MindfulWilliam Madness! 😂