So you still have friends that have different beliefs than you?
Maybe a different religion, or especially political beliefs seems to be a big deal-breaker. Do you still find it worthwhile to keep them in your life?
I do. I have e.g. Christian Conservative friends, and Atheist Liberal ones, etc. I enjoy each one for what they are. I mean, nobody is perfect! (like me 😁)
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Yes, I'm a pretty right leaning guy. I have a long time friend who is a socialist, another friend who is apolitical, another who's a gay liberal, and a wife who's pretty centrist. Politics don't stop people from having other interests in common.
If you're right leaning, I don't see how you can say you're friends with a gay liberal that the right doesn't think deserves to be able to marry who they love. I don't see how you could say you love your wife when the right thinks she shouldn't be able to divorce you or be able to get an abortion even if it results from sexual assault like in Idaho, Kentucky, or Louisiana.
I wouldn't consider anybody a friend that "leaned" towards making my life materially worse. Just because you cheer for the side that hates them just a little is no excuse. I think the people in your life deserve better friends.
First, I'm not religious. So I don't have some sort of "moral" opposition to homosexuality. Follow laws, pay your taxes and have at the "Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of happiness".
I'm sorry that a bunch of Christian radicals have soured your idea of a political thought process that valued personal freedoms and lowered governmental interference in its citizens lives. Marriage isn't something the government should be involved in the first place. The government shouldn't have a voice in whether or not people get divorced.
Fiscal responsibility, lowered government involvement with citizens day-to-day lives, and a focus on supporting your own citizenry in your own infrastructure are not things that care about who you love, what gender you identify as, or what sort of religion or not you want to practice. These things were added after the fact.
If you think your friends give a shit about when things were added or whose fault it is compared to you voting for the party that wants to strip them of their rights, I dare you to ask them if they think you made the right choice to put fiscal responsibility ahead of their rights, if they think putting Nazis in power is the right move to get smaller government, if there should be more or less rapists on the supreme court or in the white house. Let us know how those conversations go. I, for one, think blaming others is a cop out to make you feel better about being shitty to the people in your life and being ok with others being shitty to them as well. Don't care what else you have to say, I think how you voted makes you a bad friend to them and a bad person generally.
And who said I voted for Trump? I wouldn't vote for someone who wants to dismantle the country and and destroy the democracy that it's built on. You are making a fuck ton of assumptions that you have no real link for based on someone else you don't like. Pocket your biases and try to actually listen to people before you start pounding the table.
Just FYI, most of us left wingers are not like that. It does help listening to people.
The important thing imo is finding common ground. Keeping an open mind, but with firm boundaries: as long as both sides can agree on being civil to each other, and protecting human rights and liberty. Do not ever yield from those, however the other might try.
As long as that applies, I don't see why one couldn't be friends, or at least acquaintances.
But that said, this has become increasingly more difficult. It feels odd to ask this, but I figure it'd be best to ask from your side - you might know more. Maybe you have experience, maybe not.
When talking to far right wing people, what would you say helps best in deradicalising them? And when talking to right wing people, what would help them in seeing my point? The great rift of polarisation due to the growth of the far right I see currently in the world, is a danger to democracy. So I would like to do my best to reduce that.
I wouldn't consider myself far right. But the few family members that I still attempt to talk to its help to realize that in their eyes(even if it isn't the truth) their overall quality of life has decreased while people they disagree with have seen an increase in overall QoL. Now, a non-emotional look at that situation doesn't suggest that one causes the other, but they perceive it that way. I believe that one of the first things that need to be done is showing/convincing them that just because those they don't like are enjoying some time in the sun, it isn't the cause of their current bad time.
Another, perhaps harder to accomplish, things that needs to happen for the mid to far right to come back to the table is realizing that holding on to traditions does not mean reverting to the past. As an example, I believe family units are the backbone of our society and are important to the development of the next generation. I do not care if the parents are heterosexual or homosexual or something else as long as they love their children, raise them to be cognisant of the laws and social contracts we have, and treat them well.
At the end of the day, right or left, as long as we are all trying to get to a place where our fellow countrymen are safe, happy, and able to provide for themselves I don't mind if we bicker about which road to take to get there. And I'll always back good faith compromise over either side getting its way unopposed.
Who did you vote for then? Pretty right leaning generally means you voted for the Republican Candidate.
This time around I voted Harris. Didn't actually think she'd win but at least she wasn't going to take a shit all over the things my Grandfather fought his way out of Poland for.
OK then fair play. Seems everyone jumped to assumptions to quick.
Not sure if I said it here(I'm a few days removed from my original comment) but political beliefs NEED nuance. If you're entire political identity can be summed up by pulling one of two levers.....then you're dumb.
Lemmy ranges from EXTREME leftists to bleeding heart (neo-)liberals to centrists, who mostly avoid discussions involving politics. You'll never see the Alt-Right here, but you'll definitely see the Alt-Left (in e.g. Hexbear or whatever they call themselves after they forgot to renew their domain name and had to change it).
(Perhaps sadly?) the internet seems to mostly consist of just different forms of echo chambers.