Will you ever be able to trust Republicans again?

[Igel]

21. I've known people who were solidly pro-Soviet.

When I was a kid I thought these folk were evil. Then they saw the conditions there and turned on the Soviet Union. By then I realized that my thinking was really quite simplistic. I mostly grew out of that between 3rd and 4th grades.

Delusion =/= evil. That's a category error.

One act or activity =/= a person's character. That's a fundamental attribution error, at least most of the time. Even if that "act" is something that has more than momentary duration. Just as "Republicans" aren't a monolithic group, so individual humans aren't always consistent in their beliefs and actions.

Logic recognizes that the errors can be there and can mitigate their effects on our attitudes.

Emotion does not, and revels in the logical errors because emotion is not logical.

Emotion can provide the motivation for logic: For science, to build better bridges, find new medicines, uncover the causes of natural phenomena that allow us better living or allow the discoverer better income.

Emotion can also provide the motivation for burying logic--to deny evidence in order to justify a desired course of action or to justify a kinsman who did something wrong, to solidify group boundaries and defend one's team because group support is often, esp. in poor conditions, required for survival and urgently maintained even when "survival" is just perceived and not real. Think of it as vicarious self-protection.

What works for Democrats in this regard works for Republicans just as well. We're all people.

Not sure I'd want to be a in foxhole with Trump supporters. Or Clinton or Sanders supporters. There's the whole "I don't really want to be in a foxhole" thing going on.

I have different views on betrayal. Should they feel betrayed by you? After all, non-agreement on an issue or candidate really is a two-way street. By definition.

If I were in a foxhole with them and had time, instead of arguing with them over whose team is superior, the one you're on with all the good and just people, or the hateful and imbecilic losers that your friends and relatives have obviously sided with (put it that way and you've just said, "I want to feel superior and humiliate you, making sure that you're back's up and you're ready for duke it out, because I'm really interested in showing how good I am and insulting you until you convert, heathen!&quot . If you don't think that works, check out your reaction to my first paragraph above. Experience a put down, and emotions and self-defense win out over the actual propositions. You can't reason with those who feel like you're the foe and they need to defend themselves. So your first task is to de-foe yourself, not bomb Hiroshima.

I'd probably resort to the data elicitation techniques I learned to try to find out what their views and underlying structure of their views are, plus why they hold their views. While eliciting data, you can't cop an attitude or correct the subject. Moreover, it's often a good thing to distract them so they can't sort out what, exactly, you're asking about--otherwise they'll fall back on tried-and-true defensive positions and talking points. I learned this for language-data collection, and, yes, there are talking points (it's called "the grammar you learned in school&quot . Your center has to be on them and the data, not yourself, otherwise not only do you run afoul of the observer's paradox, but your data starts to reflect your views to a much greater extent than required. It means you keep yourself, your facial expression and your tone of voice, even your choice of words, under control to achieve the goal of collecting data.

Moreover, since it makes them aware very explicitly of what their views are, possibly for the first time, and since you're not being combative, sometimes they also learn something about themselves. They may also stop seeing you as somebody they can talk to. Then you wind up with communication instead of two people yelling at the same walls, either in tandem or turn-taking.

The danger with this is that seldom does it lead to conversion. It leads to understanding and empathy, which has the rather pathetic result that group boundaries tend to become a bit less well defined and can even re-form in an inclusive manner.