[raxxorrax]

Sure, they pray on the emotional need of their audience to "own the libs". Little use to deny that. But it is not a position you can engage with and win anything.

> Again the first sentence is false. And more importantly, the beliefs like "flat-earther", "NASA is a hoax", "chemtrails", "antivaxxer", etc. are anything but irrelevant.

They are irrelevant aside from being a boogeyman. Even combined you are probably talking about a very small group, although I would explicitly exclude antivaxxer here because it is another quality. I am vaccinated but against mandates and have been called antivaxxer, so you have only grown opposition. I see the opposition not holding people to account because their eyes are focused on a group that does not have the tiniest inch of political influence and therefore cannot be responsible for much in society anyway. Antivaxxer are also no authoritarians, they argue for the opposite.

I don't think they cause the distrust, the distrust is caused in how you engage with them. While the play of politics usually suggest that you should not engage with unhappy people (inhuman, I know), you conduct with them is relevant. I don't believe people blaming anitvaxxers are capable of holding leadership to account because they waste their energy in criticising people that don't have influence on policy. It would be foolish to align myself here, I don't need and image of an enemy.

I am not from the US and mostly align with the democrat party, which is still very conservative from my point of view. But a few years ago I understood the objection many US conservatives harbor. And they are just as guilty of the same thing. In the Obama years many of his initiatives were blocked out of pure spite, no factual discussion could have changed that. I disliked them doing that only to learn that this is the usual conduct between political camps. But you are just making yourself a tool of the other political side. Perhaps better than other blind followers they have, but not by much for constructive dialogue.

[toss1]

Also,just a historical note, if you look into WWII, you'll find similar riling up of anti-intellectual sentiments, exploitation of bigotry, and conspiracy theories in the Axis powers.

Neville Chamberlain attempted the kind of constructive dialog with the leaders,and came back proclaiming "Peace for our time!". It was September 1938.

The Axis' people's and leaders' distrust was not caused by the failure of any non-Axis person to engage on friendly terms. It was caused by their leaders.

It took a war of scale and scope unprecedented in history, and death by the millions, to convince them that they were wrong. And their heirs are now on the march again.

I hope it does not take that much again, but understanding that the facts are not as pretty or amenable to friendly means as we hoped is no help.

[toss1]

I love your faith in constructive dialog — I wish it were all we needed. In more ordinary situations, it can be very effective. But it is an effect that works mainly on the margins.

We are in the situation where major global forces are actively working to destroy even the ability to communicate, literally attacking the idea that truth is knowable. The conspiracy theories don't come from nowhere to become widespread, they are specifically and relentlessly pushed - the specific goal isn't so much to gain adherents as to push so much noise that people abandon the concept that they can find any truth, and also to promote the concept that everything happens not because of knowable forces in the universe but because of a secret evil cabal, whose members can be identified by the conspiracy pushers (handy to leverage bigotry and claim the other party is the ultimate enemy).

This literally destroys the opportunity for factual discussion.

The result is to open the doors for authoritarians like Putin, Xi, Orban, and wannabes like Trump (who are all agents promoting this).

The problem is these specific efforts to promote distrust in humans, leadership (other than the chosen "strongmen"), and truth.

The fact that I have come, through direct experience and attempts starting with trust, to no longer trust them is now irrelevant. I neither caused nor amplify the distrust. Whether I (or you) trust them or not is irrelevant. They will continue to distrust unless I actively join their cult lunacy.

Can you provide a single example where your trust and conversation actually changed the mind of one of them? If so, how did that work? Did it "stick"?