Yea, I think you raise a good point, you might not convince someone they are wrong, and maybe that's not really the point, its to convince everyone else more than anything. As a few comedians have pointed out, there are real Nazis living in america, like 7 of them, and they hold no political authority, so its best to simply expose what they are wrong about. Debate what you hate, if not for your opponents sake, for everyone else's.

Moreover, I kind of appreciate when I hear someone who says something I'm wildly against and is outside of the norm. When there is a person that's capable of living outside of the range of acceptable political views, there's a chance you get a Galileo, there's a chance you get someone who hates you for your immutable characteristics; the fact that you have neonazis is kind of a defacto demonstration that you can still hold a wildly controversial opinion, and that no amount of social conditioning will breed that out of humanity.

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The value of divergent opinions is overrated in some circles and underrated in others, unfortunately. A lot of folks say controversial things so that they can get “censored” and make themselves some sort of a free-speech martyr. The trick of being a good Internet citizen these days is to be able to:

1. Calmly, and cleanly debate people with the wrong ideas assuming good faith, while

2. Knowing when it’s not in good faith, these people are just trolls and it’s not worth your time.

It is possible to direct naturally contrarian people into productive uses of their brain that don’t involve Nazi nonsense.

Yea its not like I love edgy opinions, its that I appreciate that they exist. I hear people talk on podcasts and say terrible things that I think are coercive and wrong, I might shut the podcast off if they are just too annoying (like, exceptionally, lack of self control or self awareness annoying) or make bad enough arguments, I might even get a bit heated, but I still appreciate that they are able to say those things.

Right. I don’t have any particular animosity towards Joe Biden, but I do feel a small surge of patriotism when I walk around on July 4th and see “let’s go Brandon” shirts l.