How do you negotiate with crazy people?

[andrewducker]

• 67 percent of Republicans (and 40 percent of Americans overall) believe that Obama is a socialist.
• 57 percent of Republicans (32 percent overall) believe that Obama is a Muslim
• 45 percent of Republicans (25 percent overall) agree with the Birthers in their belief that Obama was "not born in the United States and so is not eligible to be president"
• 38 percent of Republicans (20 percent overall) say that Obama is "doing many of the things that Hitler did"
• Scariest of all, 24 percent of Republicans (14 percent overall) say that Obama "may be the Antichrist."

From

I mean, I know a lot of, say, Conservatives in the UK have beliefs I don't agree with.  But the vast majority of them, so far as I can tell, just have different experiences to me, and different opinions about how things should be organised.  They don't believe that the leader of the oppositon is the fucking antichrist, or other things that can be disproved by 30 seconds with Google.

Comments

[meihua.livejournal.com]

Oh, sure. I just wanted to be clear what you were asking. If you'd like your LJ to be a place where that doesn't happen, then that's cool, as I suggested a while back by PM, I don't wanna engage if all that does is be draining and unhelpful.

I think that the split you're making between "aggressive" and "assertive" is a split which makes more sense in your head than in mine. I do see a kind of "assertive" based on calm logical strong arguing that you and lots of other people do, but if I do that it comes out as sarcastic and cold, so perhaps what you're asking for would be best satisfied if I didn't engage here.

Are your Interesting LJ Links available via RSS? I enjoy reading them. :)

[andrewducker]

The assertive/aggressive thing is something I got from an assertiveness training course, and from the counselling I did. It's not something that works for everyone, I'm sure.

Links are available at:
http://syndicated.livejournal.com/andyduckerlinks/
and also at:
http://feeds.delicious.com/v2/rss/AndrewDucker
(which is where they come from - http://delicious.com/AndrewDucker is where I tag them to in the first place)

[andrewducker]

I have to say that, say, at the moment, you're not coming across as sarcastic and cold at all. You're coming across as, well, human :->

Same, say, here:
http://andrewducker.livejournal.com/1998022.html?thread=13456838#t13456838

[meihua.livejournal.com]

Well, no, because I'm not expressing my opinions about things I dislike. When I express my opinions about things I'm angry and upset about, I'm angry and upset. When I don't, I'm not. I'm not some hysterical character that can't stop expressing emotions, but I also won't suppress them to be calm and logical if I don't feel it. I'll communicate directly, which is what I'm doing. If I ever come across as "not human", for heaven's sake, CAPTCHA me.

[wildeabandon.livejournal.com]

I think there are a couple of things that you do when you're angry which aren't expressions of anger per se, and tend to be what makes it hard to engage with you. One is that you stop responding to what someone actually said, and start responding to what you assume they meant based on the least charitable assumption of what they said. The other is that you insult the person you're arguing with (or a generalised group of people that you assume they belong to), rather than talking about what's actually being discussed.

There are plenty of ways of expressing anger without doing these things.