What do you do when people don't care?

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You are entirely missing the point.

Being surprised the average American is fully on board with concentration camps and genocide should not come as a surprise anymore.

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If the concentration camps were started during the Obama administration and (nobody cared), then were operated during the first Trump admin and (the only caring-concern was performative) then they continued to operate under the Biden admin (while still nobody cared) then why would people suddenly start caring now?

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Yeah okay, I get that.

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exclusively cishet white population who are financially well off.

...there's your problem.

Why would they care? At worst they're unaffected. At best they're benefitting. What is their impetus for change?

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You’d like to think some sort of empathy, compassion and solidarity at the very least.

But I guess those are traits the US has very effectively diminished from generation to generation.

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call them american

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The moderate right provide a platform for the far right but I don't think that makes them default Nazi's.

Honestly, your point of view is no better than the "all Muslims are terrorists" mantra and people like you will sleep walk in to another four years of Republican rule.

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Where's the profit in empathy?

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I dont want to be another i-dont-care-ican
What are we gonna do Franco, Franco Un-American

^(franco ^unamerican ^- ^NOFX)

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I don't live in the us so I can't comment on any change that has been or not been.

I do know that privilege itself obscures experience. Compassion and empathy are built on experience. Therefore expecting someone who is privileged to have compassion or empathy is unrealistic. They have to be shown, or brought to a point where they can align their experience with others.

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I remember watching a congress inquiry or something into something like student debt or subsidies (iirc) where comedian/tv personality Hasan Minaj was included in the panel. He was a bit out of place next to the usual gov office types cracking jokes half the time (although never inappropriate) and serious the other half and i think someone even noted his presence there being strange. I forget if it was someone in the video or just a comment below the video but they pointed out that they wouldn't have even been watching this legislation discussion if it wasnt for him and his occasional humorous answers or comments and i realised i wouldnt be watching either. Im not even american.

If comedy is the gravy you need to put on some veggies to make them more palatable for people to consume them then by all means, pour that shit on and get people interested and engaged with the issues at hand.

The every day person doesnt have to agree or change their mind, they just need to be aware and informed so when it comes the time to vote or support a choice they are given then they at least have some further knowledge beyond 'my political team is going this way so i suppose ill do that'.

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The US was doomed from the start, it might have been better to let every state be it’s own country. We would probably see some wars with the more extreme places/states of the country.

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Yeah and especially when they created a system that doesn’t even allow you to really vote for somebody who you believe in.

The US is a timebomb which is going to explode.

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Yeah you are right, but US politics doesn’t allow for nuances. People aren’t left or right or conservative or progressive. They will have bieves that suit a certain direction on the politic spectrum, but people can have opinions regarding different topics all across the eniter spectrum.

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Sorry, but fuck you being cishet isn’t the problem and it has nothing do with the believes of a person.
In countries like The Netherlands we have percentages wise more white people than in the US and the rest is mostly Muslim or from one of the used to be colonies. But we legalised gay marriage as one of the first, trans have rights here etc.

Keep alianating people by using terms for them that aren’t relevant. Lgbtq+ people often choose a term for themselves. That’s their choice and it generally suits their beliefs. Putting others in boxes is just wrong period. Stop being part of the problem

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I had some very similar feelings after the 2020 election cycle and COVID stuff. This VSauce video came out around the same time and, unironically I guess, helped convince me of some stuff I'd started to realize with regards to changing people's minds. https://youtu.be/_ArVh3Cj9rw

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Me neither, just commenting on the general disparity between other western countries and the US in most of issues that concern some sort of a moral choice. I have to assume at some point they were equally leaning towards (at least a decoy of a semblance of) common good, as it (as fragile and grayscale as it is) has generally been in the developed west outside of US. Not saying it’s perfect anywhere, but I think we do have to concede that things are, and have been, way more weird and concerning in the US in the past 30 years. Maybe more, but that’s what I have experience with and insight into.

But I believe people can have empathy outside of own experiences. All it takes is some tendency towards curiosity and enough imagination to actually be able to make sense of something as abstract as assuming someone else’s point of view. And empathy besides, which is a little bit of a harder concept and probably requires some inherent traits acquired at birth(?), compassion certainly should be possible for anyone. You can rationally realize others’ troubles without understanding it completely. That just requires caring past one’s own self.

It would of course benefit them if they had the experience. I’ve often, when speaking of such hard and heavy topics, gone on a similar tangent. Perspective, at the end of the day, is the thing everyone ought to have. Experiencing the things yourself is one way, but I think just reading about others struggles and thoughts is a great way to gain that as well. If someone lacks any and all traits required to care about others, then I suppose the perspective evades them until they experience it themselves (this is so common in right-wing politics (doesn’t even have to be far right, even very liberal right falls for this constantly!) even in extremely progressive countries such as mine), but I have to believe there are other ways.

This often comes up with depression and anxiety and outside of the more serious things, just general bad mindsets. A lot of people are having a hard time adjusting to the world as it is today, and that’s so understandable. But when people wonder why Im seemingly able to find light, joy and happiness, hope even, while being generally aware of all this, I don’t really know what else to say, other than tell them I spent several years on the edge of suicide, fighting against these things that were driving me down the ledge. Without going to the specifics, I just always try to give them the understanding that the perspective gained from that, surviving it, finding the way forward, it just helps navigating the struggles to find a little bit of light in everything. But was I somehow less empathetic to the people going through clinical depression before I did myself? No. I was fully aware how horrifying and desperate it can get, I just didn’t really know how it felt, but I was able to imagine a lot of it. And a lot of people, I’ve found, are the same. Most of them, even, though that’s just anecdotal. Maybe people like that tend to herd towards others like that, dunno.

But as sad as it is, it’s so common to see the less empathetic or compassionate people drive hard for certain policies, until the policy kicks them in their own knees via their family or friends or whatever, and suddenly they drive against it. It didn’t matter that someone was suffering from it. It had to be someone they knew, before that suffering mattered. As with e.g the depression, a public figure can be a strong opponent of mental health and just promoting the most awkward stuff like not being stressed by eating an apple and going for a jog or whatever. While those too have merits in general, thats just not even close to answering a lot of the cases where that simply isn’t enough, or even possible, or even good at all. Calling everyone soft and losers with no spine. Then when their own child gets diagnosed after a long while of publicly calling even them, their own blood, losers in need of strong leaders and happy thoughts, suddenly it’s a real thing and mental health is an actual concept that isn’t just hippies feeling down or whatever.

Anyway, don’t know where I’m going with this. I agree with you, but I guess I had some words wanting to get out of my head along similar lines.

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It's also worth noting that at the time, Samaritans were seen as an enemy. "To the Jews, a Samaritan was more revolting than a Gentile (pagan); Samaritans were half-breeds who defiled the true religion."

So when it was written that a good Samaritan was an example of a neighbor, it was impactful. Part of the point was to say that even those perceived as "enemies" are ordinary people that should be treated with the same dignity and care given to one's own tribe.

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Not impossible, look into cult deprogramming. My mother a few years back had a media diet of Steven Crowder and talking heads alike. She has very different views now. Her social life has improved, she dissects political news and generally became more stable person.

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I don't begrudge you for not knowing this, it certainly wasn't something that I was taught in school... But LGBTQ people, and trans people specifically, were among the first groups targeted by the Nazis in Weimar Germany.

I am well aware that communists were pretty high up on that list as well, but maybe there's a reason why the LGBTQ stuff wasn't taught to us in school...

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What do you do when people don't care?