You probably don’t want to read any more replies, but this is for you because it’s going to be buried. I agree with your sentiment here, and the trend being on this subreddit seems to be that the cartful of apples is spoiled. We know that people aren’t apples (I hope), and that it is a shame to sit here and label any one mind as spoiled when it’s body has years of mileage left. Yet the trend is to say ‘if you voted for Trump you are... brainless, heartless, a lost cause, unforgivable” and so on. I felt this way too around election and for a few months after. It’s time to put that away and try to rebuild bridges.

There are boundaries— healthy ones. We won’t let people walk all over us or think that they have their own set of facts or can say whatever they like without challenge. We do accept the reservations and concerns of Trump voters who are supportive of the investigation or even curious about the possibility that Trump is not the guy they’d hoped for.

This is going to require some serious humility and use of the Socratic method. It’s not disingenuous because the whole point of the Socratic method is to lead others to truths we think we know while being challenged and re-evaluating our own convictions along the way. We need to stop slinging the talking points du jour and begin an honest, original dialogue with those we speak to on and offline. We need to ask questions and listen and, when the opportunity arises, share information that is pertinent to the issue at hand.

I fell into the same pit everyone else has, and I unlearned a lot of the most important lessons I’ve had in life through philosophy: on dialogue, language, reason, and humility. There’s a difference between being cool and composed and being a passive and agreeable person. We don’t need to be agreeable, right? We just need to be zen and rational.

Sorry late night rant but I’ve been thinking on this a lot lately.