How can you communicate with someone that is too close-minded to hear the facts?

[kentuck]

All they are capable of hearing is the Gospel of Saint Ronnie or right-wing talking points.

How is it possible to deny the facts that are in front of you? Who are you gonna believe? The facts or your own lying eyes?

This is the present Republican Party. They do not wish to hear another side. They do not wish to compromise. All the debt and all the problems are because of Barack Obama. Don't show them any evidence to the contrary. They do not want to see it.

I understand that many Democrats are Party loyalists and refuse to look at facts also. However, it is not unanimous, as it seems to be with the Republican Party. Their refusal to accept reality is a form of insanity. Nothing good can come from it.

This insanity has overtaken our politics and frozen it into stalemate and inaction. Something has to give. Somebody has to come to their senses. We cannot continue with a government where both sides refuse to compromise. It is not possible to compromise with the demands of this Republican Party. Because they do not want compromise, they want surrender.

Their ideology works against the people. It uses distortions and deception to make people believe something is what it is not. The Republican Party, in my opinion, has been taken over by an evil force that will destroy our country and our way of life. We cannot surrender our people to such conditions. The political reality must change. We need reinforcements to fight this battle.

.

[unblock]

1. you laugh in their faces.

sorry to sound rude, but if they're not going to respond to facts, they need to be shamed into listening.

[Jackpine Radical]

3. I trust you don't seriously imagine that would happen.

Ridicule has the effect of hardening them in their defensive positions. Failure of predicted events hardens them. Damn near everything hardens them.

[unblock]

15. ridicule is the ONLY thing that has a chance of (eventually) breaking them free

as long as they can find a way to stay comfortable in their delusions, there they will remain.

only by making them UNcomfortable can we hope to shake them from their twisted world-view.


of course, the immediate reaction will indeed be defensiveness, but eventually, they will realize find they don't like being laughed at.

[Jackpine Radical]

22. You just feed into their persecution complexes.

Like all those persecuted Christians under attack every year during the annual War on Christmas.

Sometime read Festinger's classic When Prophecy Fails, the story of a midwestern flying saucer cult in the 60's. Or Eric Hoffer's True Believers.

[Maraya1969]

30. When I showed my mother the results of the study that showed

that Fox viewers were more ignorant that people that don't even watch regular news she stopped watching Fox. Some things work.

[Zalatix]

37. There is no point in trying to convince them of anything.

[marlakay]

2. You can't, people usually need to see it in their own lives

My older daughter and her husband who are very pro life, voted for Bush no matter what I said especially the second time when we knew all kinds of crap about him. Nothing would work.

Then my son n law got union job and the workers started talking to him about how the republicans wanted to ruin and destroy the unions.

Needless to say they both voted for Obama even though pro life, and even switched to being dems.

So I think it has to affect people personally for them to change.

They also used to watch fox, and I tried for years to say they told lies etc, it doesn't work.

They first went to CNN and now watch MSNBC...

[Maraya1969]

32. See my post #30

Well basically it says that when I showed my mother this she stopped watching Fox. It appealed to her ego.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/11/21/fox-news-viewers-less-informed-people-fairleigh-dickinson_n_1106305.html

Fox News Viewers Know Less Than People Who Don't Watch Any News: Study

[marlakay]

39. I'm surprised most people who watch fox

Would just say it's a lie from the liberal media...good for your mom for being open.

She must have been wanting to change and looking for an excuse and you gave her one!

[Maraya1969]

40. She kind of fell into the wrong crowd after my Dad died and was influenced

by them. She is becoming more and more moderate now.

[Jackpine Radical]

43. I would guess then that she was never as far-gone as many on the right,

for whom the whole right-wing/fundamentalist/superpatriot exceptionalism business is an indivisible package to which they've made a total emotional commitment.

[SalviaBlue]

4. Talk about the weather or some TV show,

or what they had for dinner last night.

That's what I do with my republican dad. Mind you, he will always try to work some ridiculous thing he heard on rush limbaugh or fox, but I (usually) don't fall for the bait. It is useless, he is completely and totally propagandized and will never change. But he's still my dad so I try to have some kind of relationship even though I have zero respect for his political beliefs.

[pinto]

6. Yeah, I'm not in that situation, but see the value of agreeing to disagree among family.

[vanlassie]

34. Hey sis!

I was reading and thinking "that sounds like MY dad!!!

[pinto]

5. Use facts that are pertinent to their individual situation. Relate it to *them*, not some vague

talking point, emotionally laden argument they may make. State the facts, verbally, in print and with second sources. Rinse and repeat. Then move on...

[Nuclear Unicorn]

7. They might just be saying the same thing about you

How do you feel about them calling you stupid, insane and unable to see what is plainly before your eyes?

If you're a normal person you probably don't feel like standing around to listen to that.

[kentuck]

9. Nobody wants to be called stupid...

But if you refuse to listen to facts, not political ideology, then you are stupid. Facts are provable.

[Nuclear Unicorn]

11. I dunno.

Find a conservative and lob facts at each other. If a point of evidence can be disproven that's fair game but the first person to run out of facts loses.

[kentuck]

13. I would like to see people change with elections...

But I do not hold out a lot of hope that anything is going to change in the next election. There is a difference between compromise and surrender. When Republicans want Democrats to give up Medicare or Social Security, it is different than asking that tax rates go up 3% or 4 %. One is surrender and one is compromise. It is not like the Democrats are asking for 90% tax rates and refusing to budge on their demands.

[immoderate]

8. It's hard -- we're wired that way...

From wiki:

Cognitive dissonance theory warns that people have a bias to seek consonance among their cognitions. According to Festinger, we engage in a process he termed "dissonance reduction", which he said could be achieved in one of three ways: lowering the importance of one of the discordant factors, adding consonant elements, or changing one of the dissonant factors.

Everyone is subject, somewhat. But for some it allows a rigidity of belief that defies the insanity label.

--imm

[unblock]

17. this is exactly why they need to be laughed at.

the only way to change an established world-view is to throw so much cognitive dissonance at them that they simply can't keep up with the defences needed to cope.

eventually, their world-view breaks down and they become open to a new world-view.

[gulliver]

35. Also...

Confirmation bias (also called confirmatory bias, myside bias or verification bias) is a tendency of people to favor information that confirms their beliefs or hypotheses.[Note 1][1] People display this bias when they gather or remember information selectively, or when they interpret it in a biased way. The effect is stronger for emotionally charged issues and for deeply entrenched beliefs. For example, in reading about gun control, people usually prefer sources that affirm their existing attitudes. They also tend to interpret ambiguous evidence as supporting their existing position. Biased search, interpretation and memory have been invoked to explain attitude polarization (when a disagreement becomes more extreme even though the different parties are exposed to the same evidence), belief perseverance (when beliefs persist after the evidence for them is shown to be false), the irrational primacy effect (a greater reliance on information encountered early in a series) and illusory correlation (when people falsely perceive an association between two events or situations).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confirmation_bias

[immoderate]

44. Excellent! Goes back to the premise, you don't need to be crazy...

...to fixate on crazy shit! It's how our minds work.

--imm

[kentuck]

45. Indeed...

..it seems to be true.

[Tommy_Carcetti]

10. Maybe we can get an extremely literate douchebag to talk to them?

[hifiguy]

12. Ultimately you walk away shaking your head.

In ReichWingWorld, words do not have the same meanings that they have everywhere else. To illustrate an example, if someone insists that the word "dog" represents an animal that looks like this



or this



which is, in essence, the tactic reichwingers use, there is no basis for a comprehensible conversation about the nature and characteristics of dogs.

Facts are funny things; they have a "liberal bias" about 98% of the time.

[kentuck]

20. I guess....

We have to assume that everyone has their own facts and there is no true north on the compass...

[treestar]

26. Yep!

Right wingers define words for themselves.

[coalition_unwilling]

29. Someone on DU recently called Karl Marx a 'reactionary'. I immediately

recommended he read Orwell's "Politics and the English Language" (a propos, b/c the thread ironically concerned Orwell's influence).

So I don't think the linguistic disorder is exclusive to Reichwingworld.

[hifiguy]

33. It is not; the nature of the meaning of words got

quite a workout on this thread: http://www.democraticunderground.com/124094223

My thoughts here: http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1240&pid=94298

[Bandit]

14. Almost impossible to argue with dictators, and make no mistake that is what they want

When you make your mind up not to NEVER compromise on ANY issue and have a "My way or the Highway" attitude, that is not called governing. Governing involves hearing all sides and coming to a consensus through discussion and compromise. What they want is nothing more than to Dictate policy.. They truly believe they are NEVER wrong on any issue and only they know what is best.. Dictators....or as Bush* called himself..the "Decider"

[truebrit71]

16. Answer: You don't, you chalk it up as a loss and move on...

...otherwise you will wind up driving yourself crazy..

[JoePhilly]

18. I think this sequence from Bull Durham fits ....

The team sucks ... and just before this clip ... Kevin Costner says ... "They're kids, scare'em."

The right wing base does not respond to logic ... they respond to fear. So, scare'em.

[librechik]

19. Our Republic was founded and based on the Liberal Enlightenment

They are by definition un-American because they hate liberal and liberality, and they in no way believe in ANY enlightenment principles. They lie when they try to call us the ones who are un- American, that they want to take the country back FROM US.

[ladjf]

21. As far as I know, there is no way to communicate with a person who has a closed mind. nt

[KansDem]

23. I used to listen to them and engage in "friendly debate."

Usually the debate would end with them saying, "Well, we can agree to disagree" and that's that.

Now I just call them "stupid" and walk away.

For example, recently I have "debates" about"
Social Security--the other person said it was "welfare." I said it wasn't and that it is an insurance policy. He said "No, it's welfare." I compared it to his auto, life, home, and health insurance. We all pay premiums and it's there for when we need it. He said, "No, it's welfare." I said, "You're stupid," and walked away.

"Tax cuts create jobs"--I debated this right-wing canard with someone who swore up and down that cutting taxes will create jobs. I said "No, that doesn't work. We tried that with Reagan's "Trickle Down" (30 years) and Bush's tax cuts for the rich (10 years) and we have one of the the highest unemployment rates in recent memory. He said, "No, tax cuts will stimulate the economy." I said, "No, we tried that. It didn't work." Finally I said, "I have facts and experience on the side of my argument. You have nothing. You're stupid," and walked away.

Sorry, but I just don't want to f*ck with them anymore...

[riderinthestorm]

24. You can't, you don't. I have decades of experience with my mom whose the worst sort of Republican

Its maddening since she's always trying to bait me. It makes our time together pretty stressful and I've dialed back on being with her since she's so deliberately provocative (and wrong).

On Mother's Day I drove to my sister's house for our gathering and was about 5 minutes late. I explained that I'd stopped for gas and there was a line since our closest station had dropped the price so much. My mom pipes up with "the only way to solve our problems is to drill baby, drill." yes she really said that.

I responded with "fracking causes earthquakes and is destroying our water." She responds with "that's not true" and then proceeds in a furious rant about how the LIEberal media is trying to misinform the population, and how Obama is really a Kenyan, socialist, secret Muslim blah, blah, blah. Lather, rinse, repeat.

After 2 hours of this nonsense I usually have a real headache and have gotten nowhere. Every time i counter with facts, she tells me that's a lie.

There's no winning with those who have already closed their minds. They're beyond redemption imho.

[slackmaster]

25. Raising your voice and flailing your arms around sometimes helps

OR YOU COULD TYPE IN ALL CAPS.

[TheKentuckian]

27. I went to a party with a girlfriend some years back and she ended up so blitzed (somehow)

that we ended up having a spirited debate about if she had shoes on or not. She did not but believed she did and that was that.

If the concrete under her feet couldn't tell the story and with some gentle direction her eyes couldn't tell the story then no possible argument psychological tactic was going to be better than observation.
This is where it is with the TeaPubliKlans now and sadly it is almost as delusional as they are to sit there and argue with them.

I think we'd do a lot better once we stop pretending to ourselves, them, and everyone that they are rational much less correct in their assessments. Significant numbers and sanity are not the same things at all.

Look, we have to give up on all this almost as mad meeting in the middle nonsense because it isn't applicable to the situation. There is no "middle" to reach when one of the positions is not consistent with observable reality, particularly when the other pole is essentially a calculated "middle ground" of whatever their last sanish sounding position was within their paradigm which is it's self predicated on anti-social and wrongheaded principles.

The only "win" is to stop pretending they have anything sensible to add and cease and desist with coddling their delusional bullshit.

[coalition_unwilling]

28. I find open-ended questions sometimes help. My problem comes when

the responses to said questions expose anti-worker racism, homophobia, sexism, chauvinism and so on. But asking a question like, "What's your opinion about the fact that 1% control 40% of the wealth in the U.S?" will usually gin up the cognitive dissonance mills (unless, of course, you're talking to a 1%er. But usually, the 1% will hire someone to do the talking for them.)

See how asking the question -- presto-chango -- plants a factual seed in their mind?

[lonestarnot]

31. You don't.

[gulliver]

36. You have to go sub-cortical, imo

If the cortex is walled off, you need to go after the deeper parts of the brain.

I think Romney may be just the agent needed. Slimy, phony, clever, cruel, spoiled, apparently lacking any principles... To get the economy going again, what we need is for people to put America and average, everyday jobs first. We don't need some mealy-mouthed Douglas C. Niedermeyer telling us we need to worship him and his friends and beg them for our livelihoods. Romney has the capacity to make a lot of people feel very, very angry and disgusted with Republicanism. Obama comes from a decent place, and it is obvious. You never see him with Romney's "What? Me lie?" half-smile, half-caught look.

People don't trust their thinking any more. That is the Republicans' great gift to the country. Everything has to be real simple now and has to make a direct emotional appeal.

[Rex]

38. Trick question. You cannot.

Show me a GOPer that thinks and I will introduce you to one very confused libertarian.

[kentuck]

41. How very succinct....

...and true.

[daaron]

42. Short answer: you can't. nt