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Dealing with Abusive Trumpy Friends [1]
['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']
Date: 2023-06-11
A month or two ago I wrote a piece for the Daily Kos on dealing with friends who go down the right-wing rabbit hole. Well, it just happened again; another one went down the tubes.
A couple of days ago I was supposed to go to breakfast with a guy who’s apparently now an ex-friend. I invited him to an indictment party this coming weekend, and he blew up at me, insisting loudly that the Biden and Trump classified documents were “exactly the same.” I smiled and said “No they’re not,” and then he really went off, claiming by smiling, yes smiling, I was putting him down. I didn’t say anything beyond “no they’re not” before he started yelling. (I’d thought he was an intelligent guy and not a member of the Trump cult, and hearing him vehemently insist on something incredibly wrong did raise a smile.)
He proceeded to attack me via the tried and true straw man method, accusing me of things which were blatantly untrue, mocking me repeatedly, and repeatedly interrupting me when I tried to explain why he was wrong. I never did get in a word of explanation. But I managed to keep my cool and later sent him the following e-mail:
__________
Hi,
You were too busy yelling at me and mocking me ("orange man bad") to listen to a word I said, so I'll just ask where you get your news. My guess is social media, or just possibly Fox, Breitbart, or OAN.
If you want to know what's actually going on, you might try reading a variety of independent sources. As for the indictment of the sexual predator, traitor, and criminal in question, here are a bunch of well established independent (from each other) sources, ranging from moderate left to moderate right, that will give you the facts:
The Guardian < www.guardian.com >
Associated Press < apnews.com >
Reuters < www.reuters.com >
ABC News < abcnews.go.com >
CBS News < www.cbsnews.com >
NBC News < www.nbcnews.com >
CNN < edition.cnn.com >
Al Jazeera < www.aljazeera.com >
Best regards,
Chaz
P.S. It's impolite to yell at and mock a friend who simply says you're wrong about a matter of fact. It's doubly impolite to set up a straw man and attack your friend for the crap you're projecting onto him without evidence. And it's even more impolite to interrupt him nonstop so that he doesn't even have a chance to explain what he means. Please think about it.
_________
My hope is that he’ll read my e-mail and learn something, but I doubt that he will. Even if he doesn’t, I still think that a moderately worded response is the best approach, even to abusive, grossly ill informed friends on the off chance that they’ll listen. Why? Because there is that chance, and if you tell them to go fuck themselves there’s no chance whatsoever that they’ll listen to you—and they’ll almost certainly dive even further down the rabbit hole.
[END]
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https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/6/11/2174721/-Dealing-with-Abusive-Trumpy-Friends
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