"We Need to Understand Them"
Of all the bullshit that was spouted during the '24 election campaign, the take I most loathed was the claim that Donald Trump was going to win re-election because liberal women weren't willing to date conservative men, and that that was radicalizing those men.
We just found out that a woman named Vera Popisova tried it. And after a year of trying, wrote up her experiences in an article for Cosmopolitan.
There’s no question that we’re living — and looking for love — in contentious times, where extreme political ideologies have all but divided
She went on one of the many conservative-oriented dating sites, honestly described herself (if under a false name), and started screening matches. (Including running professional-grade background checks.)
And having weeded out the most obviously dangerous, she started matching with, chatting with, and dating the rest, a couple of them more than once. (With a multi-layered safety plan.)
And what jumps out at me from her accounts of those dates was something they all had in common, from the most horrifying to the most nearly reasonable:
None of them cared enough about what she thought or how she felt to ask even one single question of her.
None of them were even slightly interested in why she was a liberal, they were only interested in mansplaining to her why she should be conservative.
All of them were there with one mission, to persuade her that she should be their solely-owned, wholly-owned slave. They had a deeply-researched (by their standards) argument based on "science" and "religion" why he would be happier, and she would be happier too, if she'd just submit to them, body and mind and spirit, in all matters, for the rest of her life.
And then they "naturally" expected her, having heard their explanation, to agree. No questions asked. What questions are there to ask, how could anybody possibly disagree? Once you heard their rant, wasn't it obvious that they were right?
Motivated reasoning? What's that? I've said it before, say it often, will keep saying it: confirmation bias is a hell of a drug.
