Frank wrote on Dec 4
th, 2024 at 11:13am:
Oh, so you LIKE getting up people's noses?? Just look at the emotional language you use. You think your bilge is calm and rational.
I doubt very much that there was a Texan couple and don't believe for a moment that they told you to **** off just because you calmly explained how the gun buyback happened after Port Arthur. Your account here is just made-up Bbwianesque shite.
My wife and I initially engaged with the couple because the other passengers on the boat, a family from California with young kids, clearly didn’t get along with them. The tension between the two groups was palpable, and even in June 2022, the societal divisions we witnessed felt as pronounced as the arguments one might encounter here on these forums.
It was slightly shocking how normalised the division was between ordinary people in the real world.
At first, we humoured the couple out of politeness, after all, we were all stuck on the same boat, heading to the far side of the island to reach the “good spot.” But almost immediately, they launched into a monologue about Trump. We found ourselves nodding along and pretending to entertain their views, which included parroting obvious fabrications that they had seemingly absorbed uncritically.
It wasn’t until they finally shifted focus and asked us about our origins, rather than talking endlessly about themselves and how their country was supposedly "better off" without immigrants, that the conversation took a sharp turn.
The experience was deeply revealing. The moment we stopped placating them and started challenging their assertions, mostly about Australia, they turned hostile. Their were trying to tell me the whole country was locked down and nobody could leave their homes and if this had happened to them they would have overthrown their government.
At first I tried to explain that like the US, we have different states, will of which had difference responses to COVID with various levels of lockdown and mandates, but that just had them dig their heels in because they'd "done their research" and the whole thing was a hoax anyway.
Their frustration at being unable to provoke us into an emotional reaction, mainly because we were just trying to be nice but also, we're on holiday on a boat in beautiful weather just relaxing, coupled with the fact that I could calmly counter their arguments because I'm a nerd who clearly spends too much time on these sorts of subjects here... it culminated in the husband snarling for us to “fu
ck
off back to the land down ‘undah’” in a stereotypical Aussie accent.
At least they left us alone from then on and we ended up talking to the other couple on the ride back which is why I knew they're from Cali.
But we got to see some turtles and it's nice being able to swim in such nice waters without having to worry about stingers.
Do you have to believe this story? Of course not. Does it matter to me if you do? Not in the slightest.
The point is, you seem like someone who has never been on the receiving end of the kind of hate you propagate, so you lack any real perspective on its impact. Not that it would make a difference, empathy doesn’t seem to be part of your repertoire, so even a dose of reality likely wouldn’t sway you.
As a side note, when we visited Hawaii in 2019, seeing 45’s Presidential Portrait as the first thing upon disembarking the plane was an unpleasant start to the trip. By 2022, those portraits were conspicuously absent. I don't mean since Biden was President that his was up in place, no, they were just gone.
I was expecting to see Biden's but I didn't notice it anywhere. It was on display in various buildings in Pearl Harbour though.
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