Speaker 1: Let's hear from people in the audience. We take calls via discord at David Pakman dot
com slash discord. You can not only engage in moderated, polite discussion about whatever is
important to you on the discord, it's also how we take calls. Let's start today with Brad from New
York. Brad, welcome. What's on your mind today? Speaker 2: Hey, David. Thanks for taking my
call. My pleasure. I think what I wanted to discuss was I've been seeing a worrying
trend in that I am pretty far left and I like to debate conservatives. And something I'm noticing
nowadays is people are willing to be openly racist or openly bigoted to get their points across.
And I'll give a very quick example. I was debating somebody. I said illegal immigration
is not an issue. Very vague, very open. And he said the only way to save America is to
prevent the white race from being bred out. Right. And I've never encountered somebody
just being blatantly racist like that. I have no idea how to how to respond to that or if they're
even worth engaging with. What would you suggest? Speaker 1: My instinct is that they're not worth
engaging with. But if you wanted, what I would find really interesting is to figure out where
they got those ideas. And I would start by saying, Oh, that's really interesting.
So what makes you say that? What are the differences you, you believe exist between white
and nonwhite people? Like really drilled down to exactly what the origins of their beliefs are?
When did it first occur to you that white people are superior to nonwhite people in
the ways that you're describing? I would find it very interesting to really get at
where those beliefs came from. But in terms of changing those people's minds, I mean,
I think it would be great if we could do it, but I don't know that I would necessarily put
too much time into it if I were you. Speaker 2: Yeah, my emphasis isn't
changing that person's mind. It's more of the people that are listening to the debate have of
picking their ideas apart. And it just, I guess, becomes more difficult because you can't really
logically dissect something that's rooted in logic, theory or really an illogic very easily.
Speaker 1: Right. And I think what you're getting at is you can't
help people reason their way out of positions they didn't reason their way into to begin with.
Speaker 2: Exactly. Speaker 1: Yeah. No,
I would really out of in order to I think the most useful thing in that type of situation
is to I don't mean generally I mean really specifically get to why they believe those things,
because sometimes they might say, well, you know, my dad is the one who originally instructed me on
this. And then I would say, Really? Was your dad ever wrong about anything? You know, I think it
would open up an interesting conversation to learn from. But like you're saying,
not necessarily to change that person's mind. Speaker 2: Okay. Yeah, because typically what
I'll do is I'll ask for evidence because I believe in data and they'll say to all
1352 or whatever other white supremacist
talking points they have an offhand yeah. Speaker 1: Often they don't even understand
their own talking point. So I also think it's worth getting them to
explain their views for that reason. Speaker 2: Okay. Thank you. That was
really helpful. I appreciate it. Speaker 1: My pleasure. Thank you
so much for the call. Yeah. That those those conversations are both incredibly frustrating,
but also can be really illuminating if you sort of are prepared and know and know what to ask.