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this post was submitted on 18 Mar 2024
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I remember getting into political arguments that went nowhere at the time but resulted in me changing my mind years later. The people I argued with never knew about my change of heart. As far as they knew I was one of those people who get more entrenched in their beliefs.
What I'm getting at is that your arguments can hit home without looking like it. What you're seeing as getting defensive could just be the early stages for them changing their minds.
This can be especially true if someone's political beliefs are part of their identity. You don't make those kind of changes all at once.
So I'd say just argue in good faith, don't try to score points, provide food for thought if you can, and hope for the other person to eventually find their way to the truth.
Has happened to me, and also I’ve had the rare opportunity to hear back from someone later. We had a very heated discussion about a very hot topic. Took about 2 hours lol, seemingly zero progress. Agreed to disagree.
A few years pass, we’re still friendly, and they eventually confess to me that I did change their mind that night. Just took them a long time to process it.
Basically I took the same approach as the person who changed my mind, which you have laid out very succinctly,
I came up with some truly stupid things while trying to justify my ridiculous beliefs. Deserved to be made fun of frankly, but this person instead treated me with respect. People are not perfectly rational truth-seeking robots, often just being a jerk is enough to convince them you’re wrong regardless of any other factors.