I have a friend who's kind of hard to characterize politically, I'm starting to get through to him

[Fumesucker]

The guy follows several financial type news websites quite closely, definitely not a teabagger, loathes the cable news including Fox and socially pretty liberal (at least for this area), doesn't care about gay marriage one way or the other, vehemently pro choice on abortion and so on but he thinks the government is spending too much money and he's also a bit of a gold bug and prepper/survivalist but not full blown nutso over it.

A while back I caught him in front of his computer and he was on a mild rant about George Soros "interfering" with politics, I said something about the Koch Bros and he gave me a blank look, never heard of them. So I gave him the Cliff's Notes version on the Bros Koch and he started reading up on them and realizes how much they are screwing with politics. He read up on them and now loathes them as much as I do.

A few days ago I was talking to him and he started the "government is spending too much" nonsense again so I mentioned that he was sounding like Pete Peterson.. Long pause, "Who's that?" was the almost inevitable reply. Hauled out the Cliff's Notes version on good old Pete and gave him a couple of chapters worth.

Today I saw him again and it was evident he's done a little reading on Pete Peterson and did not like what he had found at all.

We've talked over the years about politics and finance and world events but today was different, I got more respect for my opinions than he has given me in the past. My friend thought he was well informed about this stuff but I have now dropped two major bombshells on him about which he didn't have a clue and he's starting to take my opinions much more seriously.

If it weren't for DU I probably wouldn't know about the Bros Koch or Mr Peterson so I just want to let all of you wonderful posters who keep me informed about this stuff know that it's working on at least one person who would definitely be considered a swing voter.

[pangaia]

1. I AGREE 100%.

This is where I learn "stuff." And learn where to find out where to learn other 'stuff."

[tech3149]

2. Good Work! and keep it up it's a tough fight but worth the effort

It sounds like your friend still has a functional brain and is worth the effort. I had a similar experience with an old friend years ago. He was a total Foxbot and spewed that crap without even realizing how ridiculous and wrong headed it was.
It took weeks of intense conversations on many subjects, reasoning out viewpoints, exposing and exploring independent and reliable news and analysis sources. He would understand the logic and validity of my views. The problem was when I wasn't feeding him with information and challenging his views, he would fall back into being a Foxbot.
He never invested the time or energy to analyze or research what he was fed by the garbage commercial media.
At least your friend did some research on the limited information you gave him.

[Scuba]

3. One mind at a time. Nice work!

[mercymechap]

4. Yeah - Huzzah!

sometimes I find out stuff here first before I hear it on the new!

Yeah, DU! Gotta love it.

[A Simple Game]

5. Your friend is right about the government spending.

Well it's not so much "how much they spend" as it's "where they spend it". We should increase safety net spending by at least 50% and decrease military spending by at least 50%. The military reductions should be around 5% a year but the safety net changes could be much larger.

[Cracklin Charlie]

6. That is an excellent strategy.

That's kind of how I turned my husband...I let him think he was teaching me. I would start pointing out bits of things that I knew all about, and then he would go off, and look it up. I would say things like "Why would they do that?", or "What will happen if they do that?". When he would come back with the information he had found a few hours or days later, I would kind of pretend that he was giving me brand new information about the story, even though it was something I already knew. I also think that discovering the new information on his own helped him retain his interest in whatever was the topic much past the 24 hour news cycle as well. Lots of times now, he will mention some recent article that he has read, that related to one of our discussion topics from months before.

Your friend has made huge progress in his journey to the light side, you should be very proud. But don't let up now...we can't have him backslidin'.

ps. I have found with the government spending issue, it has been helpful to discuss what they would like for their tax dollars to be spent on. Almost everyone will answer with the same things, national defense, infrastructure, education, helping those that need help, etc. No one says unnecessary war, tax cuts for the rich, or fat contracts for huge corporations to supply shoddy goods. Discussing how the government should spend the taxes paid by the citizens seems to take them beyond the use of slogans like tax and spend, or entitlement society, or socialism.

[We People]

7. I'm encouraged by your patient and careful success

Thanks for sharing this. To me there's just so much indicting info out there, but hard to figure out where to start with certain friends/relatives. Now, thanks to you, I get a better idea how to proceed.

Kudos to you (and to your friend for being willing to learn)!

[Fumesucker]

8. It helps a great deal that he's not a TV watcher to any appreciable extent.

Getting through to people who absorb the conventional wisdom from the TV pundits is much more difficult, that garbage is insidious because it's repeated nearly infinitely by virtually all the Very Serious People.

Another point that made it easier for me is he's someone who has a questioning mindset which is to say he's not an authoritarian.

My biggest problem is with him is that he still connects government budgets to household budgets unconsciously and the idea of spending more when things are tight he has not yet come to terms with. For some reason he doesn't like Krugman (gold more than likely) so one of the strongest voices on the economic side is not really useful at this point.

I've been rattling him a bit on the gold thing though, he had a number for the total amount of mined gold in the world and we did some rough calculations to see what a world gold standard would entail given the current global domestic product and he was pretty shocked at what an ounce of gold would be worth in current dollars.