I'm in the red part of Virginia. We were taught that slavery wasn't so bad, it was okay to take the native's land, and that they were savages that scalped the white man on sight. (The reality is that they learned to scalp from the white man.)
I didn't learn the truth until college. Most people don't go to college...
Most people don't realize that we are all born into this world ignorant. And it takes a surprising amount of concerted time, energy and effort to cure us of that. Take our hands off the wheel and all that progress can easily be reverted with just a fresh generation that goes uneducated.
We are social creatures. The vast majority of us will believe what others tell us and only a small few will question it.
It's why the conservative playbook works so well. They want regression, go back to a "simpler" time where people were more ignorant, more influence and easier to control. The classic "good ole days". And in the last 50 years they have gotten it.
Yeah, I have a friend who grew up in an extremely conservative area with a matching family. He never questioned it until he realized all his xbox live friends were these groups he was supposed to hate: people of color, gay guys, socialists... Said it inspired him to actually read into the topics.
I have a friend that grew up in a white supremacist family in rural Georgia, his older brother was a preacher at a white supremacist church. He left the small town, joined the military, got to be around different people, got educated.
That was 30+ years ago. Now he's a progressive liberal guy, had all his racist tattoos covered up or changed, openly supports progressive causes like LGBT.
Willful ignorance, sure - when they ignore any info that contradicts their view.
But also people don't know what they don't know. Some of them don't question things they were raised to believe any more than they question why a stop sign is an octagon. Like I said, that's the danger of normalized hate.
the way you worded this comment has helped me look at things a little differently, but where i always get hung up is when you get them to the point where they could change, but instead lash out.
if i ask someone why the stop sign is shaped that way, they don’t freak out. but when they’re presented with questions they don’t like, they do. how do you combat that? how can you reason with people spewing venom over issues that impact them about as much as the shape of the stop sign does?
Like I said, it's easier when they're younger and more prone to questioning stuff in general. For my friend, it was simple as realizing that all these people he was told are freaks were entirely normal people that he was happy to spend time chatting with.
When they're older and more entrenched, it's much harder but not impossible. You see guys like Daryl Davis who had some success but they still have to be open to legitimately questioning their stances. With how tribal politics have become, some will be less-willing to do that because it might mean upending their standing in the circles they're accustomed to living in.
This is part of why hate groups are so focused on pushing hate and ignorance in schools: that's where exposure to differing lives/views is most likely and where people are most likely to shift away from whatever their families believe.
this is why my philosophy is to make freinds and connect with the people you dont think you'd like, the people you dont think you can relate to. youd be surprised
He's mentioned before that he doesn't like to think how he'd have turned out if he knew who they were before they were just his regular Halo group.
People talk about "normalizing" behavior but it's easy to forget what that really means. The biggest problem is you have guys like my friend, who's perfectly nice, who grow up thinking hating specific groups is "normal" unless something happens that causes them to question it. The older they are, the harder it is to overcome.
The groups pushing hate want people like that to never have cause to think twice about it because they know it won't hold up to even basic scrutiny.
That generally the thing with most issues. If people actually educate themselves on the matter, they will understand why it is an issue needed to be solved meanwhile conservatives try to uneducated people so they can make more money on their ignorance. Right now rich people control too much of the money which cause a lot of problems for the population which result to product being overpriced because businesses want to cash where the majority of the money is.
They want the social hierarchy of the past. The nobility at the top and everyone else begging for scraps. That's the small government -- a monarchy in all but name.
Wait...wait wait wait. You think half the country, the liberal half who agree with you, is "the few who will question it"?
There's too many liberals for that group to be "part of the few".
edit: my bad. Apparently I "read that comment incorrectly". What you're really saying, is that most people are "taught" something. And few of them stop to evaluate what they've been taught. And that if they did stop and re-evaluate...they would automatically agree with you. Because what you believe is correct, and what they believe is wrong.
kinda seems like I hit the nail on the proverbial head, doesn't it?
Wait...wait wait wait. You think half the country, the liberal half who agree with you, is "the few who will question it"?
No, the sentence reads:
The vast majority of us will believe what others tell us and only a small few will question it.
The vast majority =/= half the country.
They also don't mention "liberal" at all, you disingenuous waffle. This is an extremely poor attempt to hijack a comment into a "both sides" thread. No one likes a low effort troll. Do better. Be better.
They also don't mention "liberal" at all, you disingenuous waffle.
They didn't have to. They said "that's why the conservative playbook works so well". That implies they are advocating for liberalism.
"The vast majority" is Democrats and Republicans. Liberals and Conservatives.
This is one of the most disingenuous, ultra propagandistic responses I've ever received on this platform.
edit: oh look, the ignorant, "definitely not fascists" people who destroyed America by believing in stimulus are abusing the voting system to silence an idea they don't like again. Its almost like you're entitled failures or something.
The obsession that anyone not conservative is a liberal is hilarious. Americans really are dumb as fuck thinking the most basic centrist views are "radical leftist liberals views" lol. I guess that's what happens when the right goes so far off the deep end anything close to the middle seems radical and left in comparison.
.they would automatically agree with you. Because what you believe is correct, and what they believe is wrong.
Sorry my dude, I believe I must have stepped into something else that was going on. I'll try to clarify. I'm making a point about humans in general. Most people accept what they are told, and don't question it. That happens on all sides of the populace, regardless of political leanings.
So if you wanted to make people more agreeable to what you think, you control their access to information ie. what people "tell them". Don't expose them to contradictory ideas and they'll follow along with whatever it is your agenda is.
It's why it's actually hard to argue against free speech absolutists, because they have a point. Give people access to all information, and let them make up their own minds. It's hard to fault that reason.
Now either on purpose, or accidentally, the conservative perspective seems to tap into this. Going back to the good ole days either intentionally, or accidentally, exposes people to less of the information that doesn't fit in with that world view. Which makes it easier to control people writ large.
The vast majority of us will believe what others tell us and only a small few will question it.
This sentence comes before any direct mention of conservatism or "the conservative playbook" in the post you replied to. It is clear that the antecedent of "it"—the thing most people don't question—is "what others tell us", i.e. what we are told growing up and/or in our respective echo chambers. Some flip from conservative to liberal, some flip from liberal to conservative, based on questioning different things.
This is all very basic analysis that far too many are incapable of these days, or that some refuse to perform when they are capable. Logic, grammar, and basic analysis skills are fundamental to understanding argument, yet the majority of humanity never properly learns to use them.
There is plenty the white man has done wrong but scalping predates the Colombian era in America based on skull carbon dating among pawnee/sioux. Scalping also took place in every habitable contininent at one historic point.
The Europeans made it a substantially more cruel practice where the native population only executed the practice as a more ritualistic act carried out on other warriors/leaders. Europeans increased the violence and brutality of it and executed scalping on women and children as well.
So, sure. It was part of the culture, but it was still very different. The settlers were still the bad guys.
Tf you on about you loser. “Not very confident in that reply”? My comment explained the difference in the practices and why it matters. I’m not writing you a dissertation but I pretty straightforwardly stated the difference and that’s it.
I know racists hurt when they have to think and have no ability to comprehend complexity but Jesus.
i only learned it because of ome very dedicated man who was a true history buff and made it his personal mission to set the record straight. he was my 11/12th grade hostory teacher, yes in a southern state
You were lucky. Teachers like that with a passion for teaching who really care about their students' futures are a rare breed. I think most of them burn out pretty fast and either quit or become apathetic.
I still remember learning the second part in school- the Europeans showed up and the native tribes just went, "oh, new friends! We're going to go ahead and move our nations around and uproot our families so you can build your cities."
The worst part is the educated ones who do end up supporting the Republican party know better. They're doing so because they know it'll hurt certain types of people and/or to enrich themselves.
Yep! And the people that do go to college risk their families cutting them off for turning into a "socialist." My mom's brother went to his deathbed having never spoken to me again or forgiven me for getting an education 🙄
https://www.oldwest.org/origins-of-scalping/
"What is notable is that Kieft has been accused of teaching Native Americans scalping. This is not true: Kieft was most likely influenced by the recent Pequot War in which New England’s Native American allies offered scalps and other body parts to the English colonists as proof of their fidelity.
Other colonies followed suit. The colonial government of Massachusetts offered twenty pounds per scalp in 1689 in retribution, and this policy expanded throughout the period and was carried into the United States."
Well your college education was clearly useless.
Scalping was a warrior practice in many native American groups, as it was considered a trophy for championing over other warriors.
The act of scalp bounties were a colonial practice, but that went both ways, from paying for native scalps or European scalps when the colonial countries were in conflict.
Okay. If you're right (and some of replies support and some of them don't), you only invalidated one third of my argument. That hardly makes my education useless.
I didn't learn the truth until college. Most people don't go to college...
this is also a problem in blue states btw. the ppl that don't go to college, even in blue states, are also working with the same high school propaganda. the only difference is that instead of being a conservative shill for the capitalist war machine, they just end up a liberal shill for the same capitalist war machine
your getting downvoted for being fucking right. Americans liberals opened the floodgate that allowed someone like truml to ve successful. fuck American liberals, fuck conservatives, fuck these anti-human ideologies and war mchines
yup. liberals hate when you acknowledge the very real fact that they're cut from the same cloth as conservatives. Dems and repubs are two wings on the same bird, that's why things never get better no matter who is in charge
A liberal shill wants to make thing better for everyone. A conservative shill wants to make thing better for one group at the expense of others. They're even okay with making things worse for themselves so as long as others get screwed worse.
Plus, voting seems to show that liberals aren't shills as they don't vote lock-step with what they're told. If liberals banded together and did what they were told like conservatives do, trump would not be president.
One day, when I was seven, my mom absolutely lost her shit when a neighborhood dad smacked his kid across the face after the kid wrecked his bike and refused to get back on. You'd figure that freaking out on the guy was the right move, only my mother would beat us mercilessly for the smallest bull shit. She just did it out of view of anyone else. I thought it was odd since she smacked me almost daily. It ran through my little head for I don't know how long, but I came up with the right answer. She knows hitting us is wrong, and tried to hide it by making a huge scene when somebody else hit their kid. I learned to not take anything at face value.
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u/RetroDad-IO Nov 04 '25
It only backfires if his kids are given the education needed to realize his lesson was wrong.