I started a job at a sawmill and at first things were good, it seemed liek the group I was working with was a good bunch of folks but a couple of things have stood out to me.
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This sweet older lady that I was shadowing for the first day, we were joking and talking the whole day and i thought she was just a really nice person. And then one day I overhear her in the lunch room saying “they just don’t deserve to live honestly” when referring to addicts, like wtf? how can someone be so pleasant and then turn around and say something so barbaric.
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I was shadowing another guy who seemed friendly and we were getting along well, and then one time while a group of us were standing around just talking, he was complaining lightheartedly about his wife when he starts dropping bombs like: “Best place for a woman is in the kitchen” and “A woman looks best behind a vacuum” there were more but I don`t remember cause I was honestly shocked.
I was looking forward to getting to know the people here and getting in on the group dynamic but now im not sure if im gonna be able to stand anyone here lol, so far it was only these two but going forward I want to be able to counter reactionary bullshit like this when I hear it. Chapos how do you counter this shit when you come across it without pissing off your coworkers?
how can someone be so pleasant but turn out to actually be bad? because awful people mostly do awful shit and think awful things because they want simple warm fuzzy nice, and the world is a big difficult complicated mostly fucked up place. easier to just call someone bad than have to recognize their pain and the injustices done to them, including your culpability in those injustices.
have you ever been to the south? or met anyone from there?
appropriate counters vary depending on your audience. for the tear stained, I like to go with “yeah, who the fuck do they think we are? jesus? snortlaugh” as kind of an all around reminder that they’re shitty people who believe in nothing and just use their magic woowoo bullshit to feel good about cruelty to the weak that lets them feel the false sense that they’re strong and capable and not the throwaway scum of the earth disposable tools of the billionaire class.
Only start challenging them when you’ve become part of the work culture imo. Once you have respect they’ll respect what you’ll say, but if they don’t then you might just make them think you’re annoying. But once you’re in a position where you can push back,
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Don’t get emotional. Even if someone’s saying something abhorrent, just casually ask questions socraticly, or maybe laugh a little if they say something particularly stupid, but never go beyond that.
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If you don’t know something say “I don’t know” or “Hmm, good point, I’ll have to look into that” instead of floundering, trying to own them. If they make a good point acknowledge it, find common ground where you can, and try to make the agreed upon aspect line up with your political vision.
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A good concept for Americans is the concept of positive liberty vs negative liberty. More effective as a starting point than any European or socialist sounding words. Also, in general try to formulate things in your own words instead of using slogans and words that people recognize and have built up readymade responses to.
Lots of good suggestions here. If I’m not feeling up for a long session of asking questions and digging deeper, I’ll sometimes try to put a twist on the topic that brings out another side to the issue. I had a coworker say some bad shit about addicts too, for example, so I took us off on a tangent about how pharmaceutical companies knew that people were getting addicted to opioids and deliberately pushed the drugs to make a profit, etc. If you really feeling like going for it, you can get into the CIA and drugs. Or for your other example, you can go off on a tangent about how being able to feed yourself and maintain your home is a basic life skill and you’ve never really understood how some men seem proud of being helpless. Well, that last bit might be coming on too strong–but you get the idea.
“One of my best friends used to be a drug addict. It was a really hard time in his/her life, but he fought through it and now he has a stable job and contributes to society. Do you think they shouldn’t be able to live?”
Hey sounds like my workplace. The working class, especially the white working class, has been incredibly propagandized when it comes to damn near any cultural or economic issue. Most of these people have trauma that they’ve never really confronted and it’s excused via propaganda. I know a guy who does my job but wishes he was an engineer, who hates engineers, but falls back on, “well, I was a shitty student who didn’t put the effort in so I deserve this.” No motherfucker! If you want to be an engineer you should be able to go to school and try at least, but he’s so cowed and submissive to the system that he literally thinks he’s deserves to break his back because of grades in high school. So many people bitch about welfare recipients or welfare scammers and it’s like they don’t even know that the biggest frauds in the country are the assholes getting billions in tax breaks. I want to challenge them but I get so tongue tied, but maybe I need to speak up a bit more and direct their attention elsewhere. It’s like they have the anger and energy and it’s all pointed in the wrong direction. Same reason I can’t fault trump people who aren’t nazis: the system has failed, but they diagnosed it the wrong way.
The more you push yourself outside of your comfort zone, the easier it gets. Keep it up, and it grows till you’re comfortable again.
Try it out comrade. Keep in mind, these are people processing trauma that they don’t have the tools to properly handle. Why would you ever want to avoid sharing if it could help them?
And, in fact, Lenin and Sankara have popular quotes compelling us to share. It is truly our duty to reach out and bring our fellow humans to understanding, to try to resolve their suffering, to fight for their liberation.
