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

[postman]

Any and all illegal aliens dirtbags that suck up our resources. I see no reason for any distinction between one type of criminal invader to another.

Then you are seriously devoid of common sense.
To put the illegal alien hairdressers at the same priority as going after Osama BinLaden.

 

[Anomalism]

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.

You’re not actually responding to what I said. You’re rewriting history to make your current worldview the hero of the past. You claim that “most of the world didn’t approve of slavery” but that’s simply false. Slavery was a global norm for thousands of years. It existed in empires, tribes, democracies, monarchies, and religious institutions alike. The idea that it was always some fringe belief is a comforting revision, not a historical truth.

You then pivot to Christianity as the moral force that ended slavery, but let’s be honest. Christianity also defended it. For centuries. Slaveholders in America quoted scripture to justify ownership. Entire churches blessed the system. Christian conscience didn't suddenly awaken; it split. Some used faith to liberate, yes, but others used it to oppress, and did so with just as much conviction.

You’re trying to rescue the idea of moral certainty by pointing to its eventual evolution, as if that evolution proves certainty was right all along, but it wasn’t. The fact that Christianity, like every other institution, had to change, proves my point, even the most “eternal” truths have had to confront their errors, and yet, instead of asking how we confront those errors, you go back into a familiar pattern.

“That wasn’t real morality.”
“That wasn’t real Christianity.”
“That wasn’t the right kind of certainty.”

That’s the shield that keeps people from growing. Whenever the old view breaks down, it’s dismissed as a fluke or a distortion, never a flaw in the system, never a sign that the framework might need to be interrogated, not just inherited. You want to believe that your current worldview is the fixed point from which all truth flows. That’s understandable. We all want moral clarity, but if your system can’t admit when it was wrong, or needs to rewrite the past to preserve its purity, then it’s not a moral compass. It’s just a security blanket.

You mentioned slavery still exists in the world. You’re right. That should bother all of us, but if it does, ask yourself how many people today are using modern equivalents of “eternal morality” to justify exploitation, exclusion, or cruelty? Will the future look back on those people the way we now look back on the defenders of slavery? History is not proof of moral certainty. It’s a warning about what happens when we think we already have it.

 

[LAUGHatLEFTISTS]

If a MAGA voter hasn't changed their mind about Trump after Jan 6, then nothing else matters.

That's just the reality.

There was no insurrection that’s just reality.

 

[Anomalism]

You aren't even representing what I posted honestly though. I challenge you to post anything I've said in its full context that fits how you are characterizing me.

Let’s go straight to your own words, in full context.

“I no longer believe [Democrats] want good things for America. Their long game is to dismantle and destroy America as it was intended to be and to install a totalitarian government they control.”

“I was once a good Democrat. I cannot imagine anyone with a heart or brain or ability for any measure of critical thinking belonging to that party now.”

“I can’t imagine changing my mind about [the MAGA vision].”

This isn’t a mischaracterization. It’s a direct reading. You explicitly described an entire political faction, tens of millions of people, as enemies of the country. You implied that intellect, morality, and patriotism are impossible for anyone who doesn’t share your current alignment, and you closed by suggesting your beliefs are unchangeable.

That’s not introspection. That’s ideological totality. No room for doubt. No margin for evolution. Just the certainty of one side as righteous and the other as irredeemable. I’m not distorting your position; I’m testing it. You were invited to ask yourself what beliefs you’ve earned through reflection versus absorbed through loyalty, fear, or media saturation. Instead of answering, you insisted you were misrepresented, but the quotes above speak for themselves.

So I’ll say it again...

If you’re truly confident in your beliefs, they should be able to withstand uncomfortable questions, but if your first instinct is to discredit those questions as attacks, then maybe the fragility isn’t in the way I’m reading you. Maybe it’s in the certainty you’re clinging to.

 

[Dr. Phosphorous]

There was no insurrection that’s just reality.

I know you feel that way....because you are mentally ill.

 

[Rogue AI]

Then you are seriously devoid of common sense.
To put the illegal alien hairdressers at the same priority as going after Osama BinLaden.

Every illegal invader should live in constant fear of ICE kicking their door and sending them where they belong. Clearing out the lesser riff raff will make it harder for the rest to find the aid and comfort you wish to provide.

 

[Anomalism]

Anomalism

Are you on a fishing expedition?

You should have led the way by telling us the last time you were seriously wrong

Instead you let others be the guinea pigs

The last time I was seriously wrong was believing that if I just explained myself clearly enough, people would want to grow. That honesty would naturally lead to introspection. That if you offered someone a mirror, they'd thank you for it. What I missed is that most people don’t protect ideas. They protect identity. They don't hear questions as opportunities. They hear them as threats. I thought conversation was about clarity. I was wrong. For most people, it’s about reinforcement. I used to think belief was earned. Now I realize for many, it’s inherited, cemented, and then guarded with righteous emotion to avoid ever having to confront how little of it was chosen. So yes, I’ve been wrong.

More political? I used to be comfortably somewhere on the left side of the field. I thought ring wingers were just stupid at first. Then, after realizing they are not stupid, I thought they were just bad people. After realizing I was wrong about that too, I came to the conclusion that my entire framing of the situation was wrong. That caused me to drift into something I guess you could call centrism. What was I wrong about in politics? I was wrong in my belief that right wingers are stupid or bad people. I realized I was ignorant.

Now let me ask you...

If I had started this thread by listing my errors, would it have made you more honest? Or just more comfortable?

 

[j-mac]

Because that isn't the reality.
Trump may have said go after the criminals first, but he also said he wants so many thousand detained each day.
And the only way ICE can reach that numberl with their limited resources, is to go after tax paying, church going illegals, where you know where they work, where they go to church, or when they show up for immigration appointments.

Oh get off it…your precious illegals are going back. End of story.

 

[Anathema]

This is not just rigidity. It’s ritualized absolutism. A worldview where questioning is equated with betrayal, and obedience is mistaken for honor. Your response isn’t about truth. It’s about control masquerading as legacy.

You just made my point for me. You say questioning right and wrong is embracing wrongness, but if something falls apart when it's questioned, was it ever right to begin with? Truth doesn’t fear examination, only dogma does.

And then, as if to prove the power of that fear, you described a literal family ritual where dissent is punished by erasure. Not debate. Not reflection. Erasure. You’re not preserving morality. You’re enforcing conformity by exile. That’s not tradition. That’s authoritarianism.

You speak of righteousness, but you treat belief like a bloodline, something to be inherited, not earned. The branch you’re cutting? That’s not weakness. That’s someone strong enough to question the script, and that terrifies you, because deep down, you know what it would mean if they’re not wrong. It would mean your whole tree might be rooted in something unexamined.

So go ahead, update your fabric. Pretend erasure is justice, but one day, someone in your family will look at that empty branch and wonder why questioning became the unforgivable sin, and that crack, however small, will be the beginning of truth's return.

Yes it is absolutism and authoritarianism. Those are the concepts I’ve espoused my entire time on this site and everybody’s place I’ve been online and irl for the last half century.

As for the family ritual… that erasure has, in at least one previous case lead to the end of life (died of exposure after being thrown out of the parent’s home) back in the 1960s. The tree gets redrawn so there isn’t an empty branch to be seen. The individual will not even spoken of in the future.

 

[Anathema]

Of course there is an objective right and wrong. It's not about questioning whether right and wrong exists. But if you think you have ALWAYS been right about everything in your entire life, that is extremely unrealistic and rooted in pride and stubbornness imo. You're basically saying "none of my beliefs have ever been wrong." If that's the case, you haven't grown, learned or genuinely examined all your views with a desire to always put truth first. Because the ONLY being who has ever been right all the time is God. And you aren't God.

We don’t need to grow. We learned RIGHT and WRONG at the beginning so there’s nothing else to be learned. We do not challenge or examine these beliefs… they are as they are.

 

[Anomalism]

Yes it is absolutism and authoritarianism. Those are the concepts I’ve espoused my entire time on this site and everybody’s place I’ve been online and irl for the last half century.

As for the family ritual… that erasure has, in at least one previous case lead to the end of life (died of exposure after being thrown out of the parent’s home) back in the 1960s. The tree gets redrawn so there isn’t an empty branch to be seen. The individual will not even spoken of in the future.

Then you’ve answered everything. You’ve confessed to being exactly what I said, not someone devoted to truth or morality, but someone devoted to obedience, control, and legacy at any cost. You don’t just accept authoritarianism. You celebrate it. You wear it like virtue, and in doing so, you reveal the terrifying smallness of your moral universe.

You’re not defending righteousness. You’re enacting cruelty with ceremony. You speak proudly of a ritual that doesn’t just exile dissenters, but erases them, even from memory. You celebrate a death, a literal death, as though it was a just consequence of questioning inherited beliefs. You don’t mourn it. You institutionalize it. You redraw the tree so that the shame is hidden, and the guilt can be ignored. That’s not tradition. That’s ideological violence.

This isn’t strength. It’s cowardice, ritualized over generations until no one even remembers how to question anymore. You’ve mistaken loyalty for love, fear for faith, and silence for unity. If your moral code demands the annihilation of someone for asking a question, it is not moral. If your family must redraw reality itself to erase dissent, it is not righteous, and if your values are preserved by death and denial, they deserve neither reverence nor survival.

History will not remember your silence as virtue. It will remember it as the wound that truth eventually tore open.

 

[postman]

We don’t need to grow. We learned RIGHT and WRONG at the beginning so there’s nothing else to be learned. We do not challenge or examine these beliefs… they are as they are.

We also believed that the earth was the center of the universe.
That everything out there, revolved around our little blue marble.

 

[Failzero]

2014-15 ( I was very unsure about Trump , thought he was a Pro Choice New York Liberal and an Amateur )

 

[BrokeLoser]

That response says a lot.

You say I’m not being profound, but you basically just admitted it made you uncomfortable, so much so, you had to reduce it to “wordy nonsense” just to dismiss it without having to engage.

You heard a challenge to inherited certainty, and your reaction wasn’t to examine it; it was to shove it away by painting it as foreign, fringe, or “unconventional.” That’s not debate. That’s deflection. You needed to reframe me as some caricature, some Berkeley professor or nose-ringed activist, because if the person saying this sounds even remotely like you, then you might actually have to listen. But you don’t want to listen. You want to feel safe in a story that says, “We’ve just been doing it the way it’s always been done here.” Do you hear yourself? That’s not patriotism. That’s autopilot. That’s tradition used as insulation from responsibility. You say your views are the same as the “good Americans before us” as if morality was settled in advance, and questioning it is inherently radical.

Every moral leap this country has ever made, every expansion of freedom, dignity, justice, was made by someone willing to question what came before. If you think “doing it the way it’s always been done” is a defense, ask yourself what that same logic would’ve said to abolitionists, suffragettes, civil rights leaders, or anyone who ever stepped outside the line. You’re not upholding virtue. You’re preserving comfort, and that’s fine, until you start mistaking that comfort for truth. If you’re so sure your convictions are strong, they should be able to withstand questions, so why do you keep dodging them?

You premised this lecture on a question that has been answered over and over throughout the thread…you simply don’t like the answers you’ve been given so you press on.
You’ve made your assertions crystal clear…You believe core Americans should always be bending and compromising with the more advanced thinking, new-era, ‘progressive’ minded intellectuals…The ones with neck tattoos, nose rings and purple hair…the ones who believe gender is chosen, the ones with all the lost and confused children committing suicide and living life on depression and anxiety meds. I say F that.
Since the emergence of these new-era ‘intellectuals’ this nation has fast slid down the shitter in many ways. We are not a better nation by any metric as a result of the ‘forward thinking’ blue hair people ideologies.
Those before us handed us down a tried and true, very proven instruction manual and the further we deviate from it the further we slide down the shitter. This isn’t an opinion, the evidence is all around us.
That said, I ask, why wouldn’t you want to keep our foundational beliefs, values and moral order intact? Why would you hope to encourage those who are committed to protecting and preserving those beliefs and values to abandon them?

 

[Hollie]

I changed my mind. NJ is messed up. What is this lady supposed to do? Stop, get out and fight 100 ANTIFA BLM Commee crminal POS? Swarm her car, get hurt, blame her? 2nd video.

As you might expect, the attackers went after an older woman.

 

[BrokeLoser]

We also believed that the earth was the center of the universe.
That everything out there, revolved around our little blue marble.

This thread isn’t about technological advancement. I suspect you already knew that?

 

[Anathema]

Then you’ve answered everything. You’ve confessed to being exactly what I said, not someone devoted to truth or morality, but someone devoted to obedience, control, and legacy at any cost. You don’t just accept authoritarianism. You celebrate it. You wear it like virtue, and in doing so, you reveal the terrifying smallness of your moral universe.

You’re not defending righteousness. You’re enacting cruelty with ceremony. You speak proudly of a ritual that doesn’t just exile dissenters, but erases them, even from memory. You celebrate a death, a literal death, as though it was a just consequence of questioning inherited beliefs. You don’t mourn it. You institutionalize it. You redraw the tree so that the shame is hidden, and the guilt can be ignored. That’s not tradition. That’s ideological violence.

This isn’t strength. It’s cowardice, ritualized over generations until no one even remembers how to question anymore. You’ve mistaken loyalty for love, fear for faith, and silence for unity. If your moral code demands the annihilation of someone for asking a question, it is not moral. If your family must redraw reality itself to erase dissent, it is not righteous, and if your values are preserved by death and denial, they deserve neither reverence nor survival.

History will not remember your silence as virtue. It will remember it as the wound that truth eventually tore open.

You live your life as you will and we will live ours as we will. Nobody will ever remember anyone soon enough. This world is coming to an end. We can only hope the next one is better than this one.

 

[BluesLegend]

Well I used to hate Democrats, then I changed my mind and double hate Democrats now.

 

[BluesLegend]

I know you feel that way....because you are mentally ill.

No stupid, it's because he knows the definition of an insurrection.

 

[Dr. Phosphorous]

No stupid, it's because he knows the definition of an insurrection.

Trump lied to you about the 2020 election.....and you still support him, anyway.

Because you are mentally ill.