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]

I agree with almost everything you've written here enthusiastically, except that I'm confused by some of it because I'm all for calling them out too, so you don't need to be trying to persuade me of that.

Do you think that when I say "understand" I mean "accept" or "forgive"? I don't mean that.

I don't want to platform tea partiers or more specifically their organisers like Fox.

I commented here because I'd like one precise thing to stop: People who want to negotiate trying to negotiate from a position of: "You stupid. How do I teach you?"

I dunno if it's worthwhile anyone trying to negotiate but that precise route is guaranteed to backfire, right?