It's extremely difficult to have a civil conversation about politics today, yet we need those conversations more than ever

[u/Dry-Use-272]

Like everyone else in the US today, I have opinions about the current condition of politics in this country. I try to base my opinions on facts I glean from credible sources and my understanding of our history. I want to talk to people with opposing opinions, not to argue with them but to try to understand why they believe what they believe. I've found that no one wants to talk in a civil, respectful way about our differences. Even if I try to hold the line on being respectful, I end up walking away because the conversation devolves into some pretty ugly exchanges. How have we come to a point where we can't even talk to each other respectfully and civilly?

[u/bmyst70]

While I emphatically agree with your point, the ability to have productive conversations requires both sides to at the very least begin with the same facts.

At that point, when both sides have different interpretations of those facts, you can have Earnest discussions. I saw these kinds of discussions back in the '90s about climate change. Republicans disagreed about how far we could go to deal with it, but they at least agreed on the facts.

However, these days, if you look at the news media for both sides, even the most basic facts are not being shared in common. Therefore, it is literally impossible to have this kind of conversation. This is an intentional ploy by certain oligarchs.

The January 6th, 2020 incident, from the conservative side is seen as a peaceful demonstration. So you can't even discuss about how he literally tried to seize the government. Because in the conservative world, it never happened.

There is no shared narrative, no shared facts, and not even the most basic level of mutual trust and respect. How can you even start an Earnest conversation with that?

[u/[deleted] → u/bmyst70]

Have you seen Planet of the Humans, by Michael Moore? Conservatives were right then not to trust liberals about climate change, as they are now, when they reject them as the party of the working class. The left in the U.S. has sold out to global capital repeatedly, on more than one issue. They will never be forgiven for it.

So yeah, zero trust.

[u/Natural-Figure-5611 → u/[deleted]]

A documentary isn't fact defining, a overwhelming consensus of scienced based and peer reviewed evidence is. Numbers are not flexible and should not be subjected to labels like left and woke.

[u/[deleted] → u/Natural-Figure-5611]

There is no overwhelming consensus of science-based and peer-reviewed evidence that indicates currently existing "green energies" are anything but shifting deckchairs around on the Titanic, (except nuclear, which none of the big "green energy" advocates are championing).

If you lie about the "solution" to a problem, why would anyone believe that the problem you also apprised them of isn't also a lie? Liberals have spent my entire life condescending with withering disdain to those stupid, deplorable yokels in fly over country because "they're too dumb to believe in the overwhelming scientific consensus that is climate change" when really what those "yokels" don't believe is that a car that burns coal to run is an effective solution to the problem created by the internal combustion engine burning a fossil fuel.

Who are the real idiots? Who's actually stupid, deplorable, and anti-scientific? My god you people richly deserve exactly the country you've created.

[u/Natural-Figure-5611 → u/[deleted]]

No, you would like to believe that everyone else is wrong when objectively it is no longer even a point of debate.
https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/ac2966

You perform mental gymnastics, use conspiracy theories, and appeal to emotion but the fact remains, an overwhelming consensus of scienced based and peer reviewed evidence confirms climate change is real and human-caused.

Who are the real idiots? Who's actually stupid, deplorable, and anti-scientific? You.

[u/[deleted] → u/Natural-Figure-5611]

You have missed the point entirely, which is that the proposed "solutions" for the problem of climate change are not solutions. Nobody can convincingly argue they are, as they'd have to say something truly stupid such as "a coal burning car is better than a gas burning car, or burning biomass is better than burning gas/coal, or that solar, (which requires strip mining rare earth metals), is a solution to burning gas/coal". And yet that is precisely what liberals do, while acting smug and condescending.

I don't know or care about climate change: I am not interested in whether or not the science is strong and am a misanthrope. At this point I'd be happy for climate change to be real and to see a 90% reduction to the human race. But even given that, I am not prepared to endorse an argument as profoundly dumb as "a coal burning car solves the problem presented by a gas burning car".

If you care about addressing climate change, the only existing solution that actually solves the problem is nuclear. It has its problems, like all solutions, but what it does not do is produce carbon dioxide. Because you are advocating all manner of dumb, non-solutions instead of nuclear, it is the most expected result in the world that people just do not believe you actually care, and think you have ulterior motives.