The amount of times I've been talking to some friends and I'll make a prediction or make an observation on what's going to happen in a political situation (or what to focus on), get disagreed with and called a tankie or pessimist or whatever, and then I'm correct 3 months later is driving me mad. Of course, they then start saying they need to protest against that or whatever. You would think at some point if someone is consistantly correct about stuff (that isn't hard to be correct on, I'm just like, the only theory reader and person who knows any real history in a group of americans) that you'd start to give them a little credit and maybe value their opinion a little higher, maybe even try to understand what's different between you and them????
Example: telling them ukraine has a nazi problem???? Why was this difficult.
It might just be me or something (likely) but it seems like it's a trend across the states.
Bigotry sits in a separate category I think.
The issue however is americans will do this over geopolitics. If you don't get in-line behind their imperialism and their view of who the enemies of the world are then you are a bad 'un and you get de-friended.
Europeans don't do this in my experience. Take for example the Nordstream shit, I had multiple americans throw shitfits at me for suggesting it was america and not russia that did it. I've had disagreements with europeans however and they're fine with disagreement over it, no worries. Our opinions have literally no impact on geopolitics and everyone in Europe seems to intuitively understand this and that there's zero point in hating one another for geopolitical disagreement, but Americans seem to think all opinions matter including geopolitical ones.
This behaviour might have started with the Iraq war come to think of it.
That’s a fair distinction. Could be compounded by the fact that in America the most widespread political opinions, either “liberal” or “conservative”, are built on a foundation of bigotry (racial, ethnic, national, etc).
The political landscape resulting from this both encourages the most small minded and inflexible worldviews that can’t deal with opposing views, but also a huge proportion of people who hold reprehensible bigoted views that should be intolerable to anyone with principles. I can deal with the occasional rare liberal who means well but doesn’t really examine their own beliefs, but there are so many die hards with calcified views inextricable from the chauvinism that just permeates everything in this hellcountry
Is it perhaps the tribal nature of US politics combined with the bigotry then?
IE, if you don't support x position then you must be part of that group of people who are bigots, therefore you're a bad person, therefore I should react extremely negatively to your disagreement with me.
I'm not suggesting that they're going through this thought process consciously, but that the emotional sentiment and training that they've undergone provokes it as a natural reaction.