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You might find Mick West's book, <em>Escaping the Rabbit Hole,</em> to be helpful. It's all about how and why otherwise smart and reasonable people can fall into conspiracist beliefs, and how to approach the topic with them. It also goes into some of the details of the arguments behind specific conspiracy theories like the 9/11 ones. And it's a surprisingly good read, IMO.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01N39W2DI/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1
there you go, this is their bible.
one of the top comments:
> One of my political science professors pointed out that the Nazi party was a right wing creation. I raised my hand and asked how this could be the case if they identified themselves as socialists. My professor shut down the conversation by telling me I hadn't paid close enough attention to the reading and refused to discuss it further. Now, thirty years later, that conversation finally makes sense.
Another fantastic book in the same vein is What's The Matter With Kansas? by Thomas Frank. Really does a great job explaining how conservatives have gotten people in the south and midwest to vote for them based on an ever changing idea of "conservative values" despite Republican economic policy being the opposite of what they should be voting for. Highly recommended.
Someone has apparently never heard of the Streisand Effect. I was on the fence about getting this book, but seeing a few new articles about it this morning pushed me over the edge. Amazon link for those interested.
I've suggested this book a bunch, but America's Bitter Pill. It's a great look into this sort of price inflation on chargemasters in hospitals, the legislative process of Obamacare (and how it was watered down by lobbying, politics and Ted Kennedy's death) and our health care industry at large.
If you really want to read it today you can grab the kindle version from Amazon
A Generation of Sociopaths: How the Baby Boomers Betrayed America (yes I know the title is a bit cringy) actually works through this in rather solid, data-backed detail.
Of course any individual has the possibility of being convinced or shifted from their position, but on a large-scale the boomer generation has caused, and are still causing, a LOT of damage due to actions of mass-sociopathy.
From the Amazon product page:
> This item will be released on January 5th at 9:00 A.M. Eastern
That is fucking brilliant. "You don't want us to publish it? Ok, we'll publish it sooner!"
I've for quite some time thought that the "ego" or "esoteric knowledge" thing was part of it and it may be but I'm reading Escaping the Rabbit Hole: How to Debunk Conspiracy Theories Using Facts, Logic, and Respect and the author points out that although there has been a study done on having special knowledge that the relationship between the need for this knowedge and conspiracy belief is very weak. I'm paraphrasing a bit but I was surprised to see that. This is one of those cases where the media promoted this with a sensational headline when the evidence wasn't very strong. I can't find the specific article but I think it was from Psypost.com
I read this book a few months ago.
The Sociopathic Generation.
His points about how it came about applies to every generation that primarily had a top down one way communication system including mine Gen-X.
Maybe especially mine, as our original name was "the latch key kids"... but then the Boomers were known as "the Me Generation"...
Feel free to get from local store as I did..
Bruce Cannon Gibney talks about that in "A generation of Sociopaths - how the baby boomers betrayed America", basically the pension funds will run out of money sometime in the mid-2030's.
So that is another problem to consider.
It sure can seem that way when you only consume media that is pro-Israel, as almost all mainstream western media is. Bear in mind that Israel is a hegemonic underling of much importance to the US and the west, and our media essentially functions as state propaganda. Hence, there is a vested interest in making sure that you, as a voter and citizen, are Pro-Israel and Anti-Palestinian.
The simple fact is that Palestinians are kept in an open-air prison and are second-class citizens - people who are denied a nation. Israel is a settler-colonial state who used the vast power of the failing British Empire to create a country for themselves while pushing the actual natives out. That's right - Israel is yet another example of Europeans pushing natives out of their land for their own use. Yes, the Holocaust is a big reason for that and is of course horrifying, but try telling that to a Palestinian mother whose children got incinerated by an Israeli missile, or who just lost her family home to settlers.
The real answer to your question is that Palestinians are a diverse group of people with a lot of opinions. Of course, replacing Zionism is Arab nationalism isn't the right call - you'd just be flipping the roles and that isn't justice at all. What is justice is true equality, and that's what we should aim for. Those who want nationalism of any kind there should be dismissed out of hand as the psychotic lunatics they are.
White's only deeds used to be common. The effects are still in force in Philadelphia, even if the deeds are not.
The Color of Law by Richard Rothstein is an excellent intro to the topic. It is a very engaging book, meaty not dry, utterly fascinating and depressing.
>I said nothing about race. Your comment is nothing but racial. There are industrious individuals that are black, white, and brown profiting from revitalizing neglected areas. I love it. Success knows no color, but green.
There are certainly people of all backgrounds doing their best to make it in this world.
At least in an American context, it ABSOLUTELY makes sense to bring up race, as the tools that made the Black Community overwhelming poor and overwhelmingly shut-out of home ownership were based on racial public and private policy.
If you're up for a read or list, The Color of Law goes into great detail as to how this came to be the case.
No problem man! I just realized I got the author's name wrong, it's actually Mick West. Here's an amazon link if you're curious:
https://www.amazon.com/Escaping-Rabbit-Hole-Conspiracy-Theories-ebook/dp/B077YS5G2N#ace-g7448806443
This obviously may not be the time to take this on, but here’a a great book about how to help people see that their conspiracy theories are baseless without making them feel threatened. In the meantime, I’d recommend individual therapy for him and couple’s therapy for you both.
> Part of the strategy of authoritarians is to make your political opponents seem like they're some unified and shadowy organization
Republicans that aren't even MAGA did this themselves. There are several books about unified, shadowy organizations fund Republican candidates and illiberal policies.. A perfect example is Dark Money.
> Second, once you make them a threat it gives you carte Blanche to tie said opponents to those you refer to, in this case especially, as traitors, extremists, and terrorists
Only MAGA Republicans are terrorizing the FBI just for doing their jobs; harassing poll workers for doing their jobs; harassing teachers for doing their jobs; harassing regular, working class people for trying to support their families with an honest day's labor.
Traitors that may not be (that word has a specific definition), they are extremists and borderline domestic terrorists. And they've only themselves to blame for that characterization.
when liberal will only support good policies when dragged kicking and screaming by the more leftist members of the party, and then when left to their own devices go ahead and construct massive state-led segregation and poverty-increasing policies... well maybe the frustration becomes more clear
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01M8IWJT2/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?\_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1
IMO idpol is not bad on its own. I think what happens is that (especially on the big crappy anonymous internet), people who are open-minded and want to learn about other peoples' experiences and find common ground are often indescernable from bigoted bad actors who pretend to be "just asking questions" in bad faith. This is by design on the part of the latter.
The end result is that the marginalized people see both good-faith and bad-faith outsiders as the same (as a defense mechanism), which can turn off potential allies with dismissiveness and even aggressiveness.
Better education about concrete history and statistics and studies can help the non-marginalized allies be meat shields to help soak up fire from the bad actors. We can't relay lived personal experience, but we can understand history and sociological data.
c.f. books like this (an extremely great historical breakdown of the USA's systematic policy-level racism and segregation against black people, written by a jewish dude)
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01M8IWJT2/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?\_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1
I think you're missing some of the issues in your conversation on this.
The US spends considerably more on healthcare per person for worse outcomes. In large part because the way we spend money on healthcare is super inefficient, and isn't really a free market. It's a "system" in the sense that healthcare is only affordable to people who have employer provided health insurance provided as a benefit of full-time employment. The wide scale popularity of employer provided health insurance is an artifact of wage caps during WWII (a much more blatant government intervention than government healthcare), which required employers to compete for talented workers by offering benefits.
Our government does spend a lot of money on healthcare in the form of Medicare, Medicaid, Tricare, and frequently, where government is the purchaser, chargemaster prices tend to be lower than they are for private group or individual insurance providers. Tri-care is mostly at cost, while Medicare has more bargaining leverage better prices because they represent a large part of a healthcare provider's business.
If you want to look at authors who actually know what they're talking about, you should start with Steven Brill. https://www.amazon.com/Americas-Bitter-Pill-Politics-Healthcare-ebook/dp/B00LYXY05S
> The insider trading
Have not heard of this. Can you explain?
> The tax laws that benefit the rich
I can assure you that the left has known & actively worked against tax laws benefitting the rich. (Note that 'the left' is distinct from 'the Democrat party'.)
> the reason why border security was ignored
Which was?
> the women who were raped by Bill Clinton and threatened by Hillary
> the fake dossier paid for by the DNC and Hillary campaign
Yeah, that dossier was a massive joke. In total agreement there. Hillary being ruthlessly self-serving and corrupt is not news to me.
> the voter fraud
L-O-fuckin-L. Sorry but... yikes.
> the gain of function research created in the Wuhan lab that gave us COVID-19
Trump didn't expose this at all.
> the Hunter Biden laptop
Trump didn't expose this at all.
> and Biden's illegal dealings with China, Russia, and the Ukraine
Not familiar with those. Please let me know.
IMO, Ohio is the book What's the Matter with Kansas in action. Bluntly, "conservative" social/economic elites claiming to support and advance the "values" of "regular folks" while screwing those "regular folks" over. The "culture war" issues, while they may be sincerely felt, are more distraction than substance.
https://www.amazon.com/Americas-Bitter-Pill-Politics-Healthcare-ebook/dp/B00LYXY05S
One of the best books I've read on the status of the American medical industry. Atul Gawande's stuff is really good, too. And of course, the 2007 study on bankruptcies due to medical debt, coauthored by Elizabeth Warren.
If anyone wants to go down the rabbit hole of funding flowing into extremism and cultural division in the US, I recommend Dark Money by Jane Mayer. Depressing but insightful read.
​
https://smile.amazon.com/Dark-Money-History-Billionaires-Radical-ebook/dp/B0180SU4OA
I would suggest not trying to win an argument using rationality. You'll just get frustrated. I think the approach outlined in Mick West's book is the best you can do. What I got out of it (and I'm sure this is a pretty pale summary) is the following, and it might be mixed with other suggestions I've heard:
​
- Have respect for your friend and a genuine desire to help them.
- Listen to them to find the specifics of their beliefs and where they draw the line. For instance, they may not believe that JFK Jr is going to be Trump's vice president.
- Introduce them to new information. For instance, point out that you believe that QAnon has hindered the fight against human traficking, and why you believe it.
- Walk away without any agreement and let them digest. You can only make slow progress if you make any at all.
- Ask "what would convince you that XYZ is incorrect." Then work with that.
Best of luck!
A Union is a private entity, they have two main ways of attracting you to their Union.
1. Better Pay
2. Heath Insurance.
Take either away and they become useless. They used to be able to push the "Safety" part too except Osha came in on that end, along with other state and federal regulations.
Goddamn son, maybe go to a Library someday?
Here a book for you to sound out when you get a chance.
It's a big one, you will have to focus to make it through, but with dedication you can do so just like when you walked to the grocery store by yourself.
Wait, that probably never happened, but could.
https://www.amazon.com/Americas-Bitter-Pill-Politics-Healthcare-ebook/dp/B00LYXY05S
For the love of god, please take a basic urban history class. Highways, as opposed to most rivers, are entirely man made and are thus influenced by human decision making and policies. One of those policies, you ask? Route them through lower-income neighborhoods (most often minority), further declining property values, making it easier to acquire additional right-of-way for expansion. Rinse...repeat.
Ever heard of exclusionary zoning? Zoning polices that LITERALLY divided neighborhoods on racial lines. So yes, race and income absolutely drove, and continued to drive, urban development policies.
I recommend reading The Color of Law by Richard Rothstein.
Here's an excellent collection of hard policy data: https://www.amazon.com/Color-Law-Forgotten-Government-Segregated-ebook/dp/B01M8IWJT2
You agreeing with the above poster seems like it contradicts your earlier point though -- I'm betting that evidence of systemic policy-based segregation (such as redlining, excluding black people from the GI bill, excluding black people from New Deal jobs, excluding black people from FHA-backed mortgages in neighborhoods close to jobs, etc) might not be enough for you, because some individuals were able to overcome that. But then "lived experience" also isn't enough for you because that's anecdotal? What else is there?