TLDR: How do you treat ‘pleasant’ reactionaries?
Long story short my cousin was visiting, but couldn’t make it. My family asked if I could show his friends around regardless, and of course I was happy to oblige.
I knew they were going to be sort of rich frat-bro poli-sci stereotypes from the outset, maybe a little bit ghoulish, but nevertheless I find Americans very entertaining in their ways and I’m a nice fella so I took them to some bars and some comedy.
Conversation didn’t exactly flooowwwww, but what can you expect meeting someone for the first time? I can’t tell if they had no opinions about anything or were embarrassed about the opinions they did have. And then I found out that they were descendants of CIA/NYPD.
I’m now going to be a joyless communist:
I just knew they were bubbling with totally oblivious reactionary ideology, but outwardly they were very pleasant and enthusiastic. We never did broach a topic that was too controversial. About the election, all they had to say was a quick sentence of ‘well, most people think both sides are bad… It’s a controversial topic because we’re unfortunately so divided…’ - just absolute platitude spoken very very seriously.
We also talked about the concussion crisis in contact sport, and again, they were just like ‘yeaahhh, seems inevitable really, not a lot you can do… anyway…’
Never have I met people so un-opinionated.
When the comedy acts came on, they had a wail of a time. One comedian was a stereotypically attractive woman, and as she came on stage, while everyone applauded her onto stage, these two 25 year olds were giggling like schoolboys, prodding each other, and shouting “lets fucking go!! Lets go bro!!!”. At other points in the set one of them especially would give a ‘lets gooooo’ to a punchline.
Very funny to watch. Americans are such a different breed. Still, they were just having a good time on holiday, and 2 of the sets were very gay and autistic, and they liked those too. And they bought me a couple of drinks as thanks for taking them. I would be lying if I said they weren’t nice and friendly guys. I would place them as Democrats or perhaps libertarian.
Anyway, what do you tend to do in scenarios where you know someone would find you a disgusting godless communist if they had any idea?
What I did was just to be normal, and genial. But it is an odd position to be in. Can someone truly be considered ‘nice’ and ‘pleasant’ when they harbour staunch ideology that is inherently racist and so on? How do you reconcile that? Aren’t like 90% of people like that (though some to more of an extent than others).
Never have I met people so un-opinionated.
this is a thing conditioned into us as being polite. the existence of online discourse and the sense of anonymity has blown this up completely, but in real life america it’s considered rude or unprofessional to voice “strong” opinions about institutions in public places or to strangers. i have a lot of opinions about that and how it seems mostly in service to the maintenance of an oppressive system, because it characterizes protest and collective action as necessarily “rude”. but here we are. satirizing and making jokes with an ironic detachment are one of the only socially permitted angles for public critique, so one can see why those are so popular.
but anyway, even people working for heinous institutions harboring atrocious values will maintain some self understanding that elides them of accountability and, also, generally they know how to be a pleasant person when they are a guest. especially if they are building a career in a large organization, where people are thought of as representing the public values of the organization. the cop on holiday somewhere is different in demeanor than the cop that stops you on the street.
so, what we get is a world where everyone is basically at an unending conference for work, being nice and polite and lacking conviction, efficiently funneling wealth into our capital formations and building the capacity for terror against our adversaries.
I think that conditioning to have it perceived as rude also goes hand in hand with vague pleasantries like asking someone how they are only to be met with sunshine and roses despite feeling like doom and darkness. It’s perceived as rude to tell someone how you really feel despite someone asking you how you are.
Worse I ever hear at work is “Hanging in there” or, if I say, “How’s it going?” and they respond, “It’s going.” And I respond, “I hear ya.” 🙃
yeah, it’s treated more like a call-response with the expectation that parties in exchange are expected to offer each other encouragement. it feels like kicking a puppy to respond with a discouraging remark to a casual acquaintance or a colleague saying hi.
the responses i like best are the ones that offer amusement and an out from further elaboration. like i used to work near this aged sales guy whose life was basically fucked in a job where the sales are not happening. of course, you can’t be that and be the sales guy, so he had a persona for clients of a happy go lucky guy for whom everything was clicking. when someone who knew the score would see him and ask, “how its going?” he would say the “just living the dream” line but in this hysterically oversold manner, like he was rich and day drinking on a beach somewhere. it killed me and we would all get a laugh. so years later, elsewhere i started using it when i was frustrated and people i worked with would ask, when they knew i was “in it”, emotionally.
another good one i’ve heard that is more earnest/less sarcastic, is to respond with a pleasant, “oh, i can’t complain” and let it sit for a beat, following with, “but i will” more conspiratorially, like i’ve got “secret” gripes that are super juicy gossip.
It’s perceived as rude to tell someone how you really feel despite someone asking you how you are.
I’ve found this to be contextual as well. Like with good friends asking how you’ve been, they actually want to know. There’s a line where if all they ever hear out of your mouth is doom and gloom, it gets to be overbearing, and it can definitely be rude to trauma dump unprompted. But generally speaking, friends want a genuine answer. Random coworkers you don’t know do not. And then everyone in between is on a sliding scale where they’re feeling you out, getting to know you and expecting more and more candid answers as that progresses.
And then of course once you get to know someone well enough you just know where their limits are because you’ve seen them approach those limits and get slightly uncomfortable before. Like I just learned my coworker doesn’t like to talk politics because I brought up some very mild school politics around charter schools and it stopped a perfectly good conversation in its tracks.
I feel very behind for having just figured this out in the past couple years, but it makes interacting with people a lot easier. Like I finally have basic script for small talk.
“what we get is a world where everyone is basically at an unending conference for work, being nice and polite and lacking conviction, efficiently funneling wealth into our capital formations and building the capacity for terror against our adversaries.”
very horrifically well said
Sounds like you’ve built up straw men in your mind to be mad at tbh. The only way to have a real idea of how they’d react to your opinions is to voice them. They probably wouldn’t have cared much. But I get it, not everyone wants to debate all the time. It’s tiresome.
Might be a cultural thing to be honest. Them giving you non committal responses to your questions was their polite way of saying I don’t want to talk about that. For reference Americans do not talk about politics with people we don’t know extremely and I mean extremely well. Maybe we should. Probably have a lot less psychos that way. But it is what it is.
Anyway unless you feel like arguing and willing to blow up the evening the way you deal with these situations is to talk about literally anything else. Especially if it’s people you don’t know and won’t see again. It’s okay to drink beer and have fun. The ghost of Mao won’t come back and claim your soul I promise.
Yeah, I felt that could be the case while writing it, although, I do happen to know that one is joining The Navy, and the other was on the military pathway before he got into big tech.
True, I’m sure they wouldn’t have minded so much, but I think they would’ve been a bit uncomfortable. And word would’ve got back to my family that I was a communist weirdo, lol.
That’s very interesting that you don’t talk politics. Unprompted, people bring it up over here. I can start the conversation about soccer and by the end someone is talking about how big money has ruined sports, or whatever. Film, people will talk about representation, and such. Everyone and their nan has something to say about Kier Starmer, once you go past ‘hows the weather’. It feels so inevitable because the political climate is so fucked.
What do Americans tend to talk about, then?
Sports, movies and TV are pretty safe topics of conversation. With other parents about kids.
But those are such political topics! Haha, oh well, it’s good to know for next time that I shouldn’t dive right in.
Americans also have no media literacy, so the discussions of sports, movies, and TV are extremely surface level and “did you watch the thing?”
It took them three years to realize homelander was a spoof of reactionary chauvinism
I think it’s our intense division. I live in the Midwest, and you never know which way the person in the grocery store leans, and we’re too much of cowards to actually ask or get into a conversation. Probably because we believe, if we have opposing viewpoints, a discussion won’t change anything. And also, we want to have friendly relations with the people around us, and politics turns people unfriendly.
I would’ve arranged a number of increasingly complex Home Alone-style traps throughout my home. When the ghouls look over after each embarrassing flub, I would simply shrug and smile. This would repeat until they left.
Its the kids? I dunno, most people can’t choose their parents and if its just a short visit with them I wouldn’t put them on the spot.
If there were more interactions, I’d probably keep an ear open during conversations that drifted into domestic/international politics and see if maybe their pappa’s brought any of their work home.
I wasn’t trying to put them on the spot, I just wanted to know what they thought of things. No matter what they said I think I would’ve gone ‘ah, yeah, yeah, true that’s understandable, for sure’.
Yeah, you can’t choose your parents, but they seemed to say their dad’s positions with their chest, rather than with a — ‘cop, yeah, I know right…’
Yeah, you can’t choose your parents, but they seemed to say their dad’s positions with their chest, rather than with a — ‘cop, yeah, I know right…’
With more time, I’d probably try to lead conversations into what they think their parents think about current NYPD/CIA operations. Like… “wasn’t there a recent shooting on the subway system by NYPD cops that left one bystander braindead… all because somebody jumped a turn style?” Then try to work backwards through historical misdeeds.
I think that could’ve been a bit blunt - I’d start with the CIA and the nice non-political topic geopolitics and assassinations.
I would be kinda pissed if I was asked to entertain literal CIA/JSOC vampires and pigs, but probably would have done something similar at the end of the day. You probably put too much effort into it.
Ah, but it made for a funny story to tell and characters to observe!
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Can someone truly be considered ‘nice’ and ‘pleasant’ when they harbour staunch ideology that is inherently racist and so on? How do you reconcile that? Aren’t like 90% of people like that (though some to more of an extent than others).
Americans think “ACAB” is hyperbolic and dehumanizing because a cop was polite to them once when they were in the same line for coffee. They also consider it “rude” and “judgmental” to push back against anti-homeless sentiment. You will be constantly interrogated as to why you don’t like their brother-in-law because you stand by your assertion that there is no such thing as an “ethical landlord.”
“Glad I don’t have a dog…”
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damn it’s a real shame all those people’s evil dads are still alive
Death to America
you could have kidnapped them and demanded their dads confess every crime they have committed and then kill themselves on livestream, or else you never release their kids.
a good second option was what you did.
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I read what this person said. I think everyone else’s replies suffice, but I will weigh in that no, my cousin did probably not warn his friends about me. Last time I saw him about 7 years ago we just hung out, smoked weed, went swimming, and played Black Ops for about 2 weeks straight. In his mind I would imagine I’m just his very British cousin.
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