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@Neinstein, don't get me wrong, I want you to be correct. My experience and yours already differ in this particular matter.

@nvoigt, there really is good advice here. Thank you for your honest reply.

@keshlam, shunned doesn't suffice as a description of what people are capable of. And anyway my point is that the question must be taken seriously as written; we don't know everything about the situation, like you didn't know 45 minutes ago your were explaining 'othering' to a person who has been pretty thoroughly othered.

@keshlam you can be as sure of that as you wish, until someone has a dead Ukrainian uncle, a grudge, an irrational grief and a pocket knife. All we know is that OP is uncomfortable, and people are not generally known for being homogeneously level headed and fair. There's good advice here. But dismissing or making light of the OPs desire to not talk about it at all is to pretend that people are wonderful in the midst of a rising tide of people not being wonderful.

Would you give the same advice to an Iranian living in South Texas, say, around December 2001? Or a German expat living in London in 1950?

@BsAxUbx5KoQDEpCAqSffwGy554PSah, are ... you suggesting the existence of atheist dogma? Because I can think of only exactly one point that all atheists definitively agree upon. It's starting to look like you came here to have an argument, and that's down the hall with John Cleese.

@Marianne013, then congrats! You're probably an "in" group. I'm not. I live quietly in the closet in Texas where my employer (the CEO!) is cheering for fascists. I served in the Navy under "Don't Ask Don't Tell," which is a hell of a time to find out things about yourself. I was told to take my own life, daily. All I want you to do, is nothing. Leave folks alone, and if you have it in you, push back for the ones that really just have nothing to say. They'll appreciate it.

@Marianne013, make no mistake, I'm not trying to make this personal in any way. Everything worth doing is worth questioning, and if you aren't willing to burn down your assumptions and set fire to your comfort zone, you didn't question it enough. How many terrible engineers have jobs because they 'fit'? How many bad doctors? Bad professors? Bad managers? Fit be damned, especially when the people making that call are pushy, arrogant extroverts who can't conduct their own technical interviews because they aren't qualified.

@Marianne013, your suggestion to immediately capitulate tells me that what you know from experience REQUIRES capitulation rather than meaningfully respecting people's wishes or boundaries. If anything other than the work, basic decency, and respect for others is causing problems at work, there IS a culture problem, and it's almost certainly not with the quiet one who is working instead of socializing. Introverts don't need to be fixed, and extroverts shouldn't be the default benefactor of social expectations. Tackle THOSE problems.

@Marianne013 Translating: "I value social interaction, therefore, you should be disingenuous and make people like me more comfortable." Look, going with the flow is one thing, but I've been candid for YEARS about my social anxiety. Furthermore, I'm a development lead. My bosses have come to expect nothing less than radical candor on my part, including the part where I dislike company in general and abhor other's taste in food and conversation.

Anyway. I'm really done now, and, we really won't come to any conclusion here. I won't be back.

And they aren't denouncing the couple of openly stupid congress people who are standing directly by the rioters, because they need the seats, and the votes of the people who think that invading the Capitol was justified, no matter how nuts that is.

Let's face it, if it was about the violent idiots who stormed the building, Republican leadership would have done everything to separate themselves from the actions of the violent idiots. That's... definitively not what they did.

@DavidGudeman, politically motivated describes any attempt to define policy, governance, law and order. What happened that day was not tourism, and the only reason you even care that I used the word is because you worry about what it means for people who WEREN'T inside the Capitol. Demanding the effectiveness of existing law is a cornerstone of American Conservatism and it comes before demanding new law.

Anyway. We won't see eye to eye here. Maybe it's enough that we agree people can be better. I have to get back to work.

They know exactly who they're carrying favor with and why, and it's because a party split would completely end their chances of a majority in either chamber.

@DavidGudeman, the confederate flag was flown by enemy hands in the Capitol and my own capital C Conservative senators tried to legitimize those people and provide them cover. A representative of mine hand delivered a flag to a convicted insurrectionist. This isn't just online, they're promising more violence every day, and the only reason a politician ever opens his mouth is to get reelected.

And... well, I don't want to go on. People should talk less in terms of labels and more in terms of actual policies. So many people have disingenuously hefted the aegis of conservatism that it's no longer possible to determine what it means to them when they say it.

So it's all finally coming to a head and the anti-semites and literal Nazis William F. Buckley Jr. tried to delegitimize ages ago are talking openly about actual violence.

Sure, Kaya's wrong. Fine. Great even. Point made. Racism is bad yes? Okay. You say conservatives are the only true anti-racists. We both know full well racism lives on in the movement, and it hasn't been meaningfully rebuked because without the racists, the conservatives can't form a coalition capable of getting enough votes. It can't. And that's not the fault of actual conservatives, but rather duplicitous Republicans, who, more and more, aren't in fact conservative at all.

@DavidGudeman, you're generalizing, and making an appeal to your own authority. The people most loudly trying to represent conservative values are doing it in front of a television camera, haven't read a book in years, and loudly and publicly rebuke common core conservative principles. The movement is whatever it is at the time. It's why I left.

This will probably quickly tire me, and I really oughtn't jump back into the fray. Work tomorrow and all that. Let me short circuit my point. Kaya has preconceived notions about conservatism. So do you. And other conservatives are out there busily absorbing any remaining credibility around the word conservative and filling it with things that would make the founding fathers eat their wigs.

@DavidGudeman, this seems like a fairly reasonable statement. It's a stance I also held to be true, twenty years ago. Setting that aside, that stance says nothing about policy positions, or the way people should or should not treat each other, or society's role in providing assistance to those ultimate individuals. Tell me what your VIEWS are. Jumping in a bucket with 'conservatives' doesn't tell me enough.

@DavidGudeman, surely you aren't proposing that there are exactly zero racists who purport to be conservatives or libertarians? That seems equally as unlikely as there being not even one racist Democrat.

And don't go waving the libertarian distinction until they have some kind of answer for dealing with bears. (See how easy it is to cherry pick a dismissal?)

@user76284, your opinions are your own, and you are entitled to them. But only one ideology has any candidates seriously suggesting that history and social studies be removed from the basic K-12 curriculum. I am a product of the Texas public system from the eighties, and I can tell you it was lacking then and it is lacking moreso now than ever before.

@ScottRowe, Humans are only rational with effort. Emotion is not rational, culture does not fall away when inspected, morality is a human construct, and it has non-linear, non-causative dependencies external to any 'is X moral' question. Human euthanasia, the death penalty, death caused during self-defense, and of course, the question of the consumption of meat - all great and terrible because there is no unifying answer, and culturally, many are concerned that something, somewhere is judging our morality and keeping score. That's culture for you.

@ScottRowe, so you spend your summers on an island retreat to get away from Detroit, had access to horses and boats, and - what? You think cows will stop existing because people can't be bothered to have their own animals? And apparently all culture is just that which has been unquestioned, and should fall away in the face of logic? That kind of logic was used to justify Indian Residential Schools, Manifest Destiny and colonization in general. Human thought is non-causative and logic doesn't work in that space that way.

@Obie2.0, we're both camping the page and you caught a comment I retracted after you edited a comment. All in all, you've understood my frustration and made valid counterpoints, and I think we understand each other.

@Obie2.0, thank you for responding substantively. Reality on the ground here is... bad. Police do not handle threats and threatening behavior until they witness it, sometimes even with video evidence. No one can afford the lawyers to bring accountability - the people who could afford it do not live here. And my point was of course that I, personally, would prefer to have my prior action result in a misdemeanor warning or misdemeanor, rather than this ongoing danger rave. Actually, you have a nice day, alright?

@Obie2.0, I live in Southeast Texas and am constantly reminded that I am surrounded by people who would shoot me if they thought they could get away with it, thanks to the imminent lawless threat test. They just... say it. Out loud.I'm atheist, and bisexual, among other positions. And you're right about rates. But the number of assaults and murders is still HUGE, and escalation of a fight is the number two cause of handgun deaths after suicide. I'm going to take my handgun and go to work now, in case the specific people who have threatened me harm decide today is the day. You wanker.

@ReinstateMonica 'fighting words' laws have already effectively been neutered by the Supreme Court of the United States, leaving the imminent lawless threat test (brought to you by the KKK!) and certain kinds of mischief or public nuisance laws intact. Thanks to that chicanery, we have to wait until someone gets properly assaulted or killed for peace officers to intervene, and the felony incarceration numbers for the United States show that's exactly what happens. My point is, nanny-nanny-boo-boo, absolutist free speech is for Federalists with cooties.

I've done wrong, and I've done right. I've philandered and adulterated, and I've taken those who would be homeless into my own home. I've had to personally order the removal of both of my parents from life support. The world is awful and the beauty in it does not make up for it. I've seen enough and I do not want eternal life, but I can stand here and offer advice to a stranger who still believes, and I can tell them that winning is not what that man said was important.

@Matthew, I left the church. I left. That's a book. Books teach. Being good requires nothing except a commitment to be the least bad I can.

@Matthew, you're still not getting this. Stop trying to win. Go read Jesus's New Law again. Do the work. Give and love. All you're going to accomplish here is make more people like me.

@Matthew, for context, Baudrillard is a recent philosopher who largely held that there is nothing real anymore, and he approached it with logic. Sometimes the approach is just automatically going to be absurd.

@Matthew formal logic only works in rigidly causative frameworks. If you try to bring it into real space you get Baudrillard doing a jig on reality's tombstone. It doesn't work unless the case is exceedingly simple. Like acrania.

@Matthew It's preposterous to attribute causation to thought like you would physics for the very same reason that I cannot explain to you the trauma a woman will suffer giving birth to a child with no skull in any way that will make you change your stance meaningfully.

@Matthew you're doing fine.

@Matthew, Darwinian evolution makes no measure of what man should or should not do with the knowledge of selection pressure. That's a slippery slope fallacy, just like it would be if I accused that Christianity always leads to violent extremism.

@Matthew I'd accept that humans keep choosing suffering. But whether creationist or not, the capacity for suffering is God's choice. And apparently mandate following original sin.

@Matthew, oh no, you're not sidestepping this with free will. The First Cause cannot be both the First Cause and blameless.

Also, whataboutisms are here, as everywhere, a distraction. I already KNOW what you think about my morality. I can't NOT know.

I made no position on eugenics, because I disagree with it.

@Matthew, people who believe that abortion and euthanasia are evil have never once in their lives encountered someone living a fate worse than death.

@Matthew, I'm the one who thinks God is non-existent, powerless, or wicked. I'm the one who actively rejects your teachings and tries to make the world around me better ANYWAY. I don't think I'll be ANYWHERE when I pass. You actively flaunt disregard for your own manual on how to operate eternal life.

I left the church decades ago because eventually, people like you @Matthew showed up and leveled your self-righteousness at others, when the clear demand has been made to love the sinner. The righteousness is NOT YOURS to wield, only to live in.

@Matthew, I've got no history with you at all. I'm an atheist. I reject the ontological argument as nonsense, the teleological argument as a massive non-sequitur, and the written gospel as a calculated attempt to use superstition to control people like you.