This being my first diary, I hope the readers of DailyKos will forgive any literary faux pas(is that plural?) on my part. I thought I would share some events from the past few days, and perhaps see if others are experiencing similar things.
I live in NC(Asheville), but work in Greenville, South Carolina. I'm often surprised at how different the two places can be, what with only one hour of drive time separating them.
A couple of days ago I elected to wear some of my Obama gear to work, just to see what kind of reaction I might get. Being self-employed, I'm not beholden to any restrictions on what I wear. Even though Greenville calls Bob Jones "University" home, I was still somewhat surprised by not only the negative reaction, but by the complete ignorance I encountered. At least five people whom I consider at least acquaintances, if not friends expressed shock that I was voting for Obama(I'm not one to often wear legible clothing or cover my car in stickers), and a couple seemed to view me with outright suspicion, as though I were suddenly the enemy!
The interesting thing though, is that when I asked them why they felt as they did, I couldn't get one solid answer: "He's bad for the country", "He hangs out with terrorists", etc. When I refuted their claims and offered facts, I was brushed off.Though one person even admitted, "I really don't know that much about it". The thing that I find fascinating here is that so many people don't do any research of their own. They watch Fox and believe that they are getting all of the information they need. I even had one guy tell me that Palin was just as qualified as Obama.
The real point of this post however, is to detail a conversation that occurred on my blog that has left me somewhat puzzled as to how to deal with people that remain willfully ignorant.
I posted a link to the article addressing Arnold Conrad's words at a McCain rally:
"There are millions of people around this world praying to their god — whether it’s Hindu, Buddha, Allah — that [Obama] wins, for a variety of reasons. And Lord, I pray that you will guard your own reputation, because they’re going to think that their God is bigger than you, if that happens. So I pray that you will step forward and honor your own name with all that happens between now and election day."
I received the following comment from one of my regular readers. Any names used have been changed.
"Past few days here I’ve been seeing lot of links to and videos of stupid people. These are people whose opinions simply do not matter to me. People who will never have a pube of influence over my opinion as far as this election goes. If you guys just continue to post videos of idiots in bubblurbarrrr America, you’re just spinning your wheels and giving us non socialists no reason whatsoever to jump onboard your train. I’m not swayed or impressed."
And this was my reply:
"I can list all of the reasons in the world to "jump on the socialist train", but nothing I could say would be convincing. One has to arrive at that conclusion oneself, and the only way to do so is through research. You admit on your website(myspace) that you don’t even like books, and that mentality tends to make it difficult to change one’s opinion about something.
I read everything I can, whenever I can. My house is nearly a library unto itself. Does that mean that I’m smarter? Absolutely not. More informed? Certainly. I like to think I have a good understanding of why conservatives are conservatives, and I agree with some of their principals.
I would point out, however, the the free market system(capitalism) simply does not work, as power inevitably ends up in the hands of corporations. War, poverty, exploitation and oppression are products of the capitalist system, a system in which a minority ruling class profits from the labor of the majority. Theoretically socialism, a society based on workers collectively owning and controlling the wealth their labor creates, is a far better system of government.
True socialists(and I’m not saying that I am a socialist, I am just spelling out what it actually means. Odds are that you actually don’t know, and again I base that on your own claim that you don’t read)oppose imperialism–the division of the globe based on the subjugation of weaker nations by stronger ones–and support the self-determination of oppressed nations. Socialists oppose discrimination of any form, be it via race, gender, or sexual orientation.
And contrary to popular misconceptions, China and Cuba, like the former Soviet Union and Eastern Bloc, have nothing to do with socialism. They are state capitalist regimes.
This is not to suggest that socialism is a perfect form of government, not by any means. It too, suffers from the weakness of relying on humans not to be consumed with greed. Native Americans(especially those in the Pacific Northwest) in fact practiced an early form of socialism, and were quite successful until the arrival of Europeans."
So to reiterate my question, how do you educate those who resist being educated, and approach any new information with disdain unless it reinforces what they already believe?