Yeah, put another way, make something controversial and people will pick sides and stop their thinking then and there. If anyone, including themselves, thinks “Starbucks sucks” then they’re the enemy and should be disproven.
I’d argue there’s a great solution. Respect the people that go to Starbucks and their opinion. Understand it. And then, from a place of compassion and understanding see how you can help them. People respond a lot better to that. But I’ll admit that in this climate everyone is making things an us vs them controversy. So it’ll be hard when others are trying to create that divide and you are trying to bridge it.
I recommend the latest book by Peter Pomerantsev about the English guy who was in charge of counter-propaganda against Nazi Germany in WW2. I’m not through with it yet but it’s crazy what methods he used to get through to the German soldiers and general public. Basically he found out the reason why people follow obvious evil guys like Hitler, Trump, and Putin is because their showy evilness allows their followers to live out their own worst tendencies without feeling guilt. The only way to tackle that was to clandestinely give them a way to live out their best tendencies and reward them for it, because he thought that people enjoy being good even more than being evil. Although in the case of MAGA I guess it’s harder to find such a thing than with Nazi foot soldiers back in the days.
