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"Talk to Your Conservative Family" Doesn't Work Because They Dismiss Pathos as Identity Politics, A Thread
If, like me, you have the pleasure of one or more family members being the kind of conservative who thinks they're smarter than everyone else (read: libertarians) you probably learned early that arguing with them is pointless. They always have more facts than you ...
and now that we live in the Fake News Era, literally every fact can be refuted with another "fact," enabling both sides to call "fake news" on anything they want. So logos is off the table.
If you've tried talking to them recently about BLM or the CDC recommendations, you probably got frustrated at their ability to write off experts or organizations with claims of fraud or conspiracy. Clever, because it's what we do to them, too ...
making our arguments to trust this or that authority cyclical and utterly unproductive. So it's a no for ethos.
Which leaves us pathos, which is I think where the "talk to your family / reach across the aisle" comes from. It would be so lovely if the one thing that cracked their cold little capitalist hearts was an anecdote detailing your personal suffering and oppression.
However, conservatives have decided that all arguments that mention an identity are now "identity politics" which means that you're using your disadvantage to gain an unfair advantage in an argument. They also love to make fun of anyone who has "multiple identities" ...
because obviously that's an *extra* unfair advantage in an argument, and the only reason you would identify that way is for debating purposes! /s
I should also add that rhetoric is a universal and accepted mechanism in conversations. It's not like liberals invented rhetoric, and it's not manipulative to rely on facts, experts, and emotional appeals to persuade your opponent.
Now, I am very privileged, but I am queer. But my conservative family will only ever see this as me playing a card to further my argument. And that shit gets internalized.
"Talk to your family members" hinges on the assumption that the bonds of familial empathy run deeper than arguments. But IMO this is flawed because conservatives have been indoctrinated to see identities as invalid.
Of course that's ridiculous; they all have identities too but since they're so normie, they never have to think or talk about it. Cis, het, allo, abled, neurotypical, are so default and the education about identities is so lacking...
so it feels unfair to them when someone can "pull an identity card" to try and make pathos work, the final frontier of argumentation, because they know they will never be able to pull this card too.
Or rather, they might have been able to if not for their beliefs, which now tell them that anyone who isn't a normie is a snowflake. So it feels like inequality that we get to use an argument that they cannot. Ironic, right.
So because they can't have it, they invalidate it. And they invalidate us. Pathos is gone and all you're left with is a person who helped create you who doesn't believe that you are real, and thinks you're inventing your struggles to manipulate them.
I mentioned it gets internalized. It feels pointless to mention how their actions hurt me and people like me because I know the outcome. For me lately this is also "it is pointless to mention how I feel" and leads to all sorts of self-confidence and passivism problems.
Either I stay silent for peace, or I say something, and neither will change their views or my views or their feelings about me or my feelings about them. The damage is done and I haven't even had The Final Conversation yet. When I do, it'll be the end of the relationship.
"Reaching across the aisle" is hollow--you think we haven't tried? I need to have these Final Conversations as part of my personal growth, to get rid of unhealthy relationships. But it won't do anything for the world or my family's votes/beliefs.
If anything, being ostracized could push them further into their beliefs, because they see me as a bright young mind who's been corrupted by the evil libs, and now I'm so corrupt that I removed myself from their lives, so they think the libs have harmed them.
And like I said, I am very privileged and I pass easily and can choose to not have these conversations. I imagine BIPOC and people with intersecting identities, and people who don't pass as well as I do, have felt this for much longer. It fucking sucks
