#heres a secret: these are also things they teach missionaries. effective strategies work often regardless of sides

[siphonophoresupernumerary]

You gots to have the patience to teach, walk people through things. It looks like a LOT of people did not understand the full ramifications of their vote, and they need someone to explain it to them. A lot of conservatives are conservative because they don't feel like they are welcome amongst the left, and while they weren't so conservative before, they became more conservative later as they spent more time away from people they thought rejected them. And to be fair a lot of them are complex people with bad beliefs and not enough experience in cultural diversity to play ball with communists and anarchists, but so long as they feel welcomed or at least tolerated they will find their spots, some will become anti-fascist and allies and some will become left leaning centrists. And that is ok. Massive action hardly ever happens, it requires everyone to be on the same page and it worries me how everyone is forgetting that you only KNOW the things that you HEAR, and there's so much conflicting information to hear! And everyone gets caught up in how they feel and what they've heard before and what they've heard before creates ideological momentum in what they will believe next. No one is immune to this effect.

In high school I was a homophobic fascist who hardly knew any better and couldn't grasp how these beliefs, when acted on by others I helped put into power, would effect the world and those around me. But I was also a self described communist. I recognized the power and unity of fascism and the mutualistic power and unity of communism. I still had a lot to learn about myself and political ideologies. Coming out of high school I was a sexist too depressed to be a fascist(other people get depressed into fascism, I'm probably weird) socialist-communist who has started to put together theories on small mutualistic communities being fairly stable governmental structures, but my depression told me that there would be a constant backslide into power grabbing and pain and war.

Had I not been friends with my partner (something my ex was against) I would have wandered amidst whatever ideologies came my way over the internet and at the pulpit at church and on the radio(which was always NPR thanks to my parents). My parents gave me a liberal christian upbringing, an oddity among christian culture, but I was able to deviate from that all on my own, to good and bad places. My partner who was already gay and trans and poly and not Christian, who had built up trust over the dark days of quarantine and was not afraid to correct me gently enough to not hurt my feelings (though she will claim he was mean about it) led me by the hand farther left than my parents.

There is a world where instead of the nonbinary mostly pan transwoman who is proud of her weirdness, I am a man full of hate from high school that never healed, a strict judge, a nationalist with a penchant for authoritarianism. I could have strayed into racism, transphobia, ableism, as it was I struggled to let go of my eugenics ideas until I understood that the slippery slope can taint any belief. Being able to gene edit your children leading to Gattaca (1997) or the eugenics wars in Star Trek. The socialist Soviet Union failing because it was an authoritarian nationalist state with a growing oligarchy rather than communism simply not working. No governance works off paper for too long, even anarchy will eventually create a government on it's own.

What helped me most was a firm belief that no one deserves to die, and no one deserves to suffer, and no one gets to chose to kill or inflict pain on others. Christians believe in Loving Thy Neighbor, but they also believe in hard work and earning their way into earthly prosperity and heaven after they die. Some suffering is ok, it's just god testing us. What you need to do is impress upon them the importance of loving thy neighbor. It is second only to "Loving the Lord Thy God". A lot of christians won't be moved by this, and that is ok, conserve your patience and energy to apply it where it is needed most. You cannot be mean if you want them to join you, and I know they can be so so annoying, but the constant sniping and yelling only serves to solidify factions, which is what the rights leadership wants. They want us to divide and fight between eachother. It is up to us to be kind, but also take no shit. Some values you will not be able to change, but if you can make them feel more comfortable with us than them then they'll get closer to us and see things our way.

The issue with conservatives is that their leadership is lying to them, about so much. Their system of beliefs is so much about faith in unreachable authority figures, and their leaders know this and manipulate it. And now we see illegal immigrants who voted for Trump getting reported by their Trump voting neighbors and deported. The economy is genuinely in a bad spot but to them it's so much more dramatic and they're promised fixes if they just have faith and keep voting red. At the ground floor, christians are generally Nice, though not necessarily Kind, and that is welcoming for a lot of people who are looking for community, safety, and direction.

The issue with liberals (and by that I mean literally anyone left of center) is that they love to nitpick and talk and argue. They're Kind but not Nice and that drives people away. Plus they tend to reject any bandaids because it's not the perfect size bandage for any given wounds, and so things don't get done in a hurry and no one is happy with what you actually end up with. Also the aforementioned fractioning of factions helps induce this inability to compromise with eachother, and the people on the right who create their rhetoric draw acceptable lines in unique places depending on who they are and who they appeal to, creating so many levels of acceptable variations. Then when that rhetoric meets the leftist shores it feels disjointed and impossible to appease, and that's true of the most staunch supporters. In reality most people have their own unique nuances and lines that they've made, and they can be reached.

There IS racism and sexism and homophobia and transphobia and antisemitism and more in both groups. You would be surprised to see how little in some conservative spots, though on the whole the left has more of a handle on it, though again, they're Kind but not Nice and that gets them into trouble and fractioning with themselves.

My mother's side of the family lives in the poorest county in the state, directly on the bible belt, mormon for generations even, some of them went west with the pioneers. That land has been in the family since it was colonized, and I'm told it was purchased from the indigenous people who lived there, though whether it was a fair deal I have no way to know. Most everyone there is a republican and Trump supporter to boot. But my family has been a pillar of liberalism in spite of it all around them. Generations back a great great great (or so) grandmother wrote a feminist essay about how she ought to be treated the same as men, women were always a huge influence in the family, it was the wife who had the family move back from out west, they are educated, almost all women in the family on recent generations were and are teachers of one form or other. They hold such beliefs as "military bad actually" "Universal Basic Income is really good and also The Future" and "illegal immigrants are literally our neighbors. Be nice to them they're normal people". They vote blue, and they try to have civil conversations with their red neighbors, they don't always get queer stuff but they were fine that I have a trans boy partner, and have attended pride events.

City leftists love to hate on rural folk, and honestly they have earned the ire, but so many of them are ignorant, stuck in the rut of Fox News feeding them stories of terrorist immigrants and litterpans in schools. They care a lot about economy because they're poor. From what I hear from city folk complaining about things they've heard about country folk, it appears to me to be influencers wearing the trappings of poor working class country folk while they have spotless or neatky cluttered kitchens and time to wear makeup all the time. My family has lived next to a burned up husk of a house for around 15 years. I don't remember the last time they had a clean house and I was around shortly after it was built. Drugs run rampant in the country, anything to distract from your own poverty and give you some feeling of control until it tears families apart.

You HAVE to be kind, you HAVE to be patient. If you don't have the energy then just ignore them. Stick up for yourself, and be willing to give them time to change on their own too. A mind isn't usually changed in just one day, especially when its a long held belief that has been unchallenged, or refined in the fires of seeing weirdos on the other side and being told what they think and why by people who don't have their best interests at heart or are cynics who call themselves realists. Be firm, but also open minded, sometimes they'll agree with you in a really annoying way, show that you do care about them and their feelings, but don't roll over and let them walk all over you. If they won't listen then they won't listen, you have done what you can.

Good luck out there