When was the last time you changed your mind about something politically important and admitted it?

[Correll]

You say the hatred of the left is constantly on display, but that’s not a political observation, that’s a mirror. You don’t see hatred because it’s universal. You see it because you expect to, because your filters are built to find it, and because your identity requires it.

OR, it's simply reality and I am dealing with appropriately.

When every example reinforces your narrative, that’s not clarity; it’s confirmation bias doing exactly what it’s supposed to do, protect the emotional story you've built about yourself, your team, and the people you're told to fear.

You don't want balance. You want enemies. You need them, because the second you admit the other side might not be pure evil, you’d have to examine your own side with the same scrutiny, and deep down, you know how fragile that house really is.

Nope. Does not describe me at all. Nothing would make me happier than an easy cakewake for America into the future.

So instead, you double down. You keep looking for monsters, but the more you do, the more your beliefs stop being about truth or liberty. They become a performance. A costume. A ritual of outrage that lets you feel righteous without ever risking self-reflection.

That’s dependency.

I'm extremely introspective. And engage in self examination all the time.

Again, your... conclusions are simply incorrect.

 

[Anomalism]

And you obviously have zero understanding of who I am, what I think, what I believe as you presume to self righteously judge me. Do have a lovely day.

You're right. I don't know you personally. I only know the version of yourself you've chosen to present here, and that version delivered a long declaration of absolute certainty, tribal loyalty, and moral finality, then walked away the second it was challenged.

That’s not about me judging you. That’s about you refusing to examine yourself. If you're confident in your beliefs, then scrutiny shouldn’t offend you, but when someone holds up a mirror and your first instinct is to say “you don’t know me” that’s not strength, it’s retreat. It’s the exact response I called out. Certainty so brittle that even the possibility of reflection feels like an attack.

You said you can't imagine changing your mind. I asked why that is. That’s not self-righteousness. That’s an invitation, one you just proved you're not ready to accept.

So I’ll leave it with this...

If your vision of America is so fragile that it can’t survive honest questions, maybe what you’re protecting isn’t the country. Maybe it’s just the comfort of never having to look deeper.

 

[Correll]

You're right. I don't know you personally. I only know the version of yourself you've chosen to present here, and that version delivered a long declaration of absolute certainty, tribal loyalty, and moral finality, then walked away the second it was challenged.

That’s not about me judging you. That’s about you refusing to examine yourself. If you're confident in your beliefs, then scrutiny shouldn’t offend you, but when someone holds up a mirror and your first instinct is to say “you don’t know me” that’s not strength, it’s retreat. It’s the exact response I called out. Certainty so brittle that even the possibility of reflection feels like an attack.

You said you can't imagine changing your mind. I asked why that is. That’s not self-righteousness. That’s an invitation, one you just proved you're not ready to accept.

So I’ll leave it with this...

If your vision of America is so fragile that it can’t survive honest questions, maybe what you’re protecting isn’t the country. Maybe it’s just the comfort of never having to look deeper.

OR, we are so used to dishonest and bad faith questions about America, that we are not open to discussion with hostile bad faith critics.

 

[Anathema]

This is the exact moment where righteous certainty reveals its fragility. You're not defending morality. You're defending dogma and calling it eternal to avoid ever having to question it.

You're not standing for morality. You're hiding inside it. You didn’t explain why your version of right and wrong is correct; you just declared it eternal, as if declaring something old makes it true.

You say these truths have been “proven through the annals of time.” But proven to who? By what metric? By whose power? History is littered with people who claimed divine certainty right before they were the villains in the next chapter.

You’re not upholding a moral legacy.
You’re protecting the comfort of inherited definitions you’ve never dared to test, because testing them might force you to change, and you've already said you'd rather be certain than correct.

The idea that truth requires no investigation is not strength. It’s cowardice dressed in tradition. If you're right, you shouldn’t fear questions, but you do, and that tells me everything.

To question RIGHT and WRONG is to embrace WRONGness.

For the seventy-third consecutive year, my family is gathering on a property which we have owned for more than a century this afternoon. They will spend the day eating, drinking, and celebrating our family, our beliefs, and the Patriarch of our family, who came here with his wife from Eastern Europe in 1910.

Among the activities will be an updating of the Family Tree… a massive sheet of fabric showing the entire family descended from my great-grandfather. The ladies will update the image, adding new entries for births, marriages, and deaths. Unfortunately this year the men of the family have the unpleasant task of removing a branch from the tree. A branch that chose WRONGness over RIGHTeousness and must now be cut off and all contact with banned. It will be unpleasant, but it must be done.

 

[IDIOCRACY]

Think back.

Not just something minor or trendy. Something you genuinely believed until you didn’t.

If that hasn’t happened in a long time, maybe you’ve stopped thinking. Most people don’t grow. They just settle into a political costume and call it wisdom.

They pick a side, inherit the script, memorize the heroes, and build their identity around never questioning it again, but if your views never evolve, maybe your values aren’t values; they’re habits.

If you can’t remember the last time you were wrong, then you’re probably still wrong about something right now.

Gay marriage perhaps, but only moderately. First off, marriage WAS in tune with building families, economics and such, fitting in nicely with nature and natural.

Then the libs came along who are easy to convince of the stuff MSNBC sells, and presto, men are chicks, homo and hetero are equal, etc. etc. Then what happened assholes? Chicks have dicks, and compete with women. CONSEQUENCES, do stupid shit expect to dumb stuff down.

But today I don't really give a flying ****, let them marry, current society as a mass of confusion anyhow. Note, I know lots of gay people, don't know any who are married. See ******* liberals, even a lot of gays aren't buying your BS.

 

[Anomalism]

You’re digging way too deep and getting way too philosophical.
This isn’t complicated….Strong-minded, strong-willed folks with firm convictions are rarely open to change. Whereas the weak minded usually have no real convictions, they can be told to believe men can become women by proclamation and they will. They can be told homosexuality is SOOOOOO progressive and advanced and they’ll explore and become gay.
We raise strong-willed strong-minded children who stay committed to their convictions…We’re that way and we actually want our kids that way, we don’t want them always questioning their direction/path, we don’t want them living a life on depression and anxiety meds and struggling with identity and beliefs.
I’ll ask again….what positions, policies or ideals should conservatives compromise with liberals on?
Don’t be afraid to say….we can see what you seek with your query.

You're not describing strength. You're describing rigidity. You say strong-minded people “stay committed to their convictions” but what you really mean is they’re trained not to think past them. That’s not conviction. That’s conditioning.

Conviction without self-examination is just stubbornness dressed up as virtue. If your values collapse the moment they’re questioned, were they ever strong to begin with? You think you’re raising children to be principled, but if they’re not allowed to ask why they believe what they believe, if questions become threats, then you’re not raising strength. You’re raising obedience.

You mock people for “struggling with identity” but what if that struggle is just the courage to ask the questions your worldview punishes? You ask what positions conservatives should compromise with liberals on, but that’s the trap. You’ve already framed compromise as weakness. In your world, asking questions is liberal, adapting is liberal, change is liberal. Everything but repetition becomes treason. That’s how ideological walls are built, and why you can’t see over them.

You’re not protecting strength like this.

 

[postman]

What Postman says is absurd beyond belief. If ICE targets some bad hombres, raids and other illegals are snatched up also, letting them go is counter productive. Why? So sometime in the future they have to waste resources to catch them again?

Maybe you don't know logistics.
Say in the raid, there are 5 criminals, and 100 illegals.

The resources to take in the 5 criminals is a 5 ICE agents and 2 SUV's.
To take in the 100 illegals, you would need 20-40 ICE agents. With multiple transports, ex: 3 buses, or 30 SUV's.
Then add the processing time for 5 vs 100, and you can see that would limit them to 5 criminals a day.

Where if they didn't bother with the other 100, they would have the time and the people to go after another 5 criminals, and another 5 and another 5 before the end of the day

 

[Correll]

You're not describing strength. You're describing rigidity. You say strong-minded people “stay committed to their convictions” but what you really mean is they’re trained not to think past them. That’s not conviction. That’s conditioning.

Conviction without self-examination is just stubbornness dressed up as virtue. If your values collapse the moment they’re questioned, were they ever strong to begin with? You think you’re raising children to be principled, but if they’re not allowed to ask why they believe what they believe, if questions become threats, then you’re not raising strength. You’re raising obedience.

You mock people for “struggling with identity” but what if that struggle is just the courage to ask the questions your worldview punishes? You ask what positions conservatives should compromise with liberals on, but that’s the trap. You’ve already framed compromise as weakness. In your world, asking questions is liberal, adapting is liberal, change is liberal. Everything but repetition becomes treason. That’s how ideological walls are built, and why you can’t see over them.

You’re not protecting strength like this.

Are you open to the possiblity that MAGA is right on this, and it is YOU that is failing to look at yourself and where YOU are coming from?

 

[Foxfyre]

I still cannot make up my mind about the death penalty.

That is a tough one for sure. But in my heart and mind, I think there are crimes so cruel, so horrendously vicious, so unconscionably brutal and horrible, that there needs to be consequences beyond life imprisonment. That is one in which I have changed my mind as I once opposed the death penalty.

 

[BrokeLoser]

You say the hatred of the left is constantly on display, but that’s not a political observation, that’s a mirror. You don’t see hatred because it’s universal. You see it because you expect to, because your filters are built to find it, and because your identity requires it.

When every example reinforces your narrative, that’s not clarity; it’s confirmation bias doing exactly what it’s supposed to do, protect the emotional story you've built about yourself, your team, and the people you're told to fear.

You don't want balance. You want enemies. You need them, because the second you admit the other side might not be pure evil, you’d have to examine your own side with the same scrutiny, and deep down, you know how fragile that house really is.

So instead, you double down. You keep looking for monsters, but the more you do, the more your beliefs stop being about truth or liberty. They become a performance. A costume. A ritual of outrage that lets you feel righteous without ever risking self-reflection.

That’s dependency.

Although I know I will, I don’t mean to offend you.
You’re starting to sound like that circle-talking batshit crazy Professor at Berkeley. You say alot of feel-good things using big neat shiny words but you’re not really saying anything profound or compelling.
You basically keep saying “Don’t forge a firm belief system that you can stay committed to, always allow others to morph your convictions into something else for you.”
Do you realize what that sounds like to people who share the same beliefs and follow the same moral order as all the good Americans before us?
Your lecture should have been aimed at the unconventionals exclusively….It is the Berkeley professor and the batshitshit crazy purple hair nose ringers who need to hear what you have to say…We’ve just been doing it the way it’s always been done here…nothing complex about it.

 

[Anomalism]

Give an example based on a concrete issue.

Sure. Let’s pick one.

Slavery.

For centuries, it was considered morally acceptable, even righteous, by empires, theologians, and entire populations. It was defended with scripture, tradition, and appeals to natural order. People claimed it was part of God’s plan. Eternal. Proven through the “annals of time.”

Until it wasn’t.

What changed? The facts were always there. The suffering was always real. What changed wasn’t the truth. It was the willingness to question the moral framework that made it seem acceptable. That didn’t happen through people clinging to unexamined certainty. It happened because someone, somewhere, dared to say 'What if we’re wrong?"

Your version of morality assumes that the truth was handed down, whole and unchanging, but history says otherwise. What you call eternal has often just been the dominant view left unchallenged long enough to feel like law.

People once used the same kind of moral certainty you’re using now to defend slavery, segregation, banning interracial marriage, and denying women the right to vote. They were sure. They were loud. They were wrong. Now, are you strong enough to ask "What if I am too?"

I can provide more examples if you like.

 

[Foxfyre]

You’re digging way too deep and getting way too philosophical.
This isn’t complicated….Strong-minded, strong-willed folks with firm convictions are rarely open to change. Whereas the weak minded usually have no real convictions, they can be told to believe men can become women by proclamation and they will. They can be told homosexuality is SOOOOOO progressive and advanced and they’ll explore and become gay.
We raise strong-willed strong-minded children who stay committed to their convictions…We’re that way and we actually want our kids that way, we don’t want them always questioning their direction/path, we don’t want them living a life on depression and anxiety meds and struggling with identity and beliefs.
I’ll ask again….what positions, policies or ideals should conservatives compromise with liberals on?
Don’t be afraid to say….we can see what you seek with your query.

I think strong-minded, strong willed people usually know WHY they hold the beliefs/opinions they hold and can defend them with facts, logic, reason, experience, evidence. And when their defense of their position doesn't hold up, they can change their position on it. But they aren't blown ever which way in what to think, what to believe, what to say based on assigned talking points or those who manipulate their thinking or direct their opinions. They require hard verifiable evidence for what they believe.

That is different from the partisan or ideological fanatic, whether on the right or on the left, who will not even look at any different possibilities and is contemptuous or angered by anybody who challenges his/her beliefs and opinions.

 

[Correll]

Sure. Let’s pick one.

Slavery.

For centuries, it was considered morally acceptable, even righteous, by empires, theologians, and entire populations. It was defended with scripture, tradition, and appeals to natural order. People claimed it was part of God’s plan. Eternal. Proven through the “annals of time.”

Until it wasn’t.

What changed? The facts were always there. The suffering was always real. What changed wasn’t the truth. It was the willingness to question the moral framework that made it seem acceptable. That didn’t happen through people clinging to unexamined certainty. It happened because someone, somewhere, dared to say 'What if we’re wrong?"

Your version of morality assumes that the truth was handed down, whole and unchanging, but history says otherwise. What you call eternal has often just been the dominant view left unchallenged long enough to feel like law.

People once used the same kind of moral certainty you’re using now to defend slavery, segregation, banning interracial marriage, and denying women the right to vote. They were sure. They were loud. They were wrong. Now, are you strong enough to ask "What if I am too?"

I can provide more examples if you like.

Would have been better if it were an example that Anathema held....

Or at least more recent in modern usage.

I'm not well versed in the pro-slavery arguments of the day. Mostly from what I've heard they were "shit talkers".

 

[Anomalism]

Except, if you look at a real world example, say, IMMIGRATION,


I would be fine if the deportations of the illegals, was done without fuss.

It is the LEFT that is rioting and threatening to tear this country apart, not me or MAGA.


so, no, my anger is not driving my behavior. My stance on the issues is pretty much the same as they have been since the 90s.

You say your stance hasn’t changed since the 90s, and maybe that’s the issue.

The world has changed. The data, the demographics, the challenges, and the root causes have changed., but your response hasn’t. That’s not consistency. That’s stagnation.

You brought up immigration. Fine, let’s talk about it. You say you’d be “fine if deportations were done without fuss” but the issue isn’t whether you’re personally rioting. It’s that you’ve become so used to seeing them as the threat that you’ve stopped asking deeper questions altogether. Questions like...

Why is immigration rising?

Who profits from keeping the system broken?

Who benefits when you're angry, distracted, and focused on the symptoms but not the causes?

You say your anger isn’t driving your behavior, but it’s in your tone. It’s in the framing. It’s in the fact that every example you reach for puts the blame somewhere else, and never turns the light back on you. You’re not interrogating. You’re reacting, and the real giveaway is that you say your views haven’t changed in over 30 years. Think about that.

No new questions? No new information? No growth? No shift in how you interpret events, or what deeper patterns you might have missed? If your beliefs haven’t evolved since the 90s, you’re not holding a position; you’re clinging to a fossil, and the longer you cling to it, the more any challenge will feel like a threat, not because it’s wrong, but because change feels like betrayal.

You say the left is threatening to tear the country apart. Maybe you’re right, but ask yourself what you would believe right now if you had been raised on the other side of the fence? Same values? Same outrage? Same timeless views?

If the answer is no, then maybe this isn’t about truth. Maybe it’s just about which team taught you how to see.

 

[Anomalism]

You sound like you do engage in intellectual honesty and critical thinking. But you negate that when you do not argue a concept but rather negatively judge the other's reasoning and thinking.

I have made judgments about things, but when I started organizing an argument to support that judgment, I found that my argument just didn't hold up or could not be defended. So I had to back off.

Intellectual honesty requires us to defend the opinions we hold. An opinion that cannot be defended by experience, facts/evidence, logic, reason unsullied by ideology or partisanship is an opinion not worth having. That includes our opinions about other people.

You're right. Judging someone's reasoning without arguing the concept itself can look unfair, but sometimes, the flaw isn't in the conclusion. It's in the architecture of how that conclusion was reached. In what was filtered out, what assumptions were smuggled in, and what emotional anchors are being mistaken for clarity.

That’s the trickiest part of intellectual honesty.
We all think we’re being logical, even when we’re building our logic on unexamined premises.

I've found that most of my own worst blind spots weren’t ideological. They were emotional. I’d form a position, build what looked like a solid argument around it, but only later realize the why behind my conviction had nothing to do with logic, and everything to do with fear, identity, or the need to feel like I was one of the “good ones.”

So yes, I value reason, but I’ve also learned that reason can be weaponized to protect delusion, and it often looks polite, articulate, and fact-driven while doing it. That’s why I don’t just interrogate the argument. I interrogate the motive, because sometimes the “facts” being defended are just scaffolding built around an emotional core nobody wants to admit is there.

If you’re doing the same, then we’re allies in something that’s getting rarer by the day.
If not, I’m not attacking you. I’m inviting you to go one layer deeper.

 

[buttercup]

Off the top of my head, I can think of at least 3 or 4 issues that I've changed my mind on, throughout the years of my life. (Not all of them are political issues.)

I think the reason for the change in those views was because I became a born-again Christian (many years ago) which changes one's entire worldview and causes one to see pretty much everything in a new way.

 

[postman]

Would have been better if it were an example that Anathema held....

Or at least more recent in modern usage.

I'm not well versed in the pro-slavery arguments of the day. Mostly from what I've heard they were "shit talkers".

Slavery is a matter of economics.
From building a pyramid to building the white house. Your labor costs are a fraction of what it would cost without slavery.

That's why they allowed child labor, who could work cheap, because they didn't have a family to support.

 

[leftwinger]

You can only select the period, Year, Quarter, Month,

Try again, but use "multi-point touch" ZOOM if you can't see.

If you look at a particular year, you can see criminals vs violators.

I did , as I posted. 2025 said ~26,000. Im not working here. I got real work to do. You said 5~500K? That was all back to 2020? Huh?

 

[Foxfyre]

Sure. Let’s pick one.

Slavery.

For centuries, it was considered morally acceptable, even righteous, by empires, theologians, and entire populations. It was defended with scripture, tradition, and appeals to natural order. People claimed it was part of God’s plan. Eternal. Proven through the “annals of time.”

Until it wasn’t.

What changed? The facts were always there. The suffering was always real. What changed wasn’t the truth. It was the willingness to question the moral framework that made it seem acceptable. That didn’t happen through people clinging to unexamined certainty. It happened because someone, somewhere, dared to say 'What if we’re wrong?"

Your version of morality assumes that the truth was handed down, whole and unchanging, but history says otherwise. What you call eternal has often just been the dominant view left unchallenged long enough to feel like law.

People once used the same kind of moral certainty you’re using now to defend slavery, segregation, banning interracial marriage, and denying women the right to vote. They were sure. They were loud. They were wrong. Now, are you strong enough to ask "What if I am too?"

I can provide more examples if you like.

But the part of the equation left out of your argument is that most of the world did not own or want to own slaves. Did not approve of slavery. Did not believe it was morally justified. In Biblical times, in Roman Empire times slaves were a class of people as were the elite. That was cultural influence and nobody ever thought that it needed to be justified. It was just the way things were. Same with our own Native Americans who had no moral qualms about taking and using people as slaves.

What changed all those cultures was primarily development and evolvement of Christianity and Christian conscience that would eventually change most of the world culture and eliminate slavery as a part of that.

Now I'm pretty sure there are no Christian doctrines that would condone or allow slavery and slavery is generally outlawed/unacceptable in most places. Under Islamic law slavery is not condemned or forbidden and still exists though very limited in some Islamic countries or by a few Islamic groups.

And apparently various forms of slavery--it likely isn't called that--still persists in the world. There are some surprising countries on this list. The 'slaves' are mostly those intimidated and threatened into servitude.

Countries that Still Have Slavery 2026

Discover population, economy, health, and more with the most comprehensive global statistics at your fingertips.

worldpopulationreview.com

More and more are seeking protection - including men for the first time

They arrive full of hope - and end up being exploited: the number of victims of human trafficking in Switzerland is increasing dramatically. FIZ offers them protection and a new perspective.

www.bluewin.ch

A study of the subject should give at least food for thought to those who are open minded and capable of thinking differently about something.

 

[Anomalism]

OR, it's simply reality and I am dealing with appropriately.




Nope. Does not describe me at all. Nothing would make me happier than an easy cakewake for America into the future.






I'm extremely introspective. And engage in self examination all the time.

Again, your... conclusions are simply incorrect.

You say you’re extremely introspective, and maybe you are, but here’s the test...

If your self-examination always leads you back to the conclusion that you're right, that your side is righteous, that your opponents are evil, and that your beliefs never need serious revision, then that’s not introspection. That’s ego maintenance dressed as honesty.

True self-examination costs something. It destabilizes. It disrupts your certainty. It forces you to sit in discomfort without immediately converting it into blame. You say my conclusions are incorrect, but have you asked why I’m drawing them, or did you just instinctively dismiss them because they don't fit the narrative you’re loyal to?

Introspection isn’t just about looking at yourself. It’s about being willing to see something you don’t like, and changing because of it.