I think this is a great question because it absolutely gets the point. The enemy is the system, not the people. This informs you both who and how you fight back. So when someone is saying something bigoted for religious reasons, the problem isn’t necessarily that particular person, but the religious system that brainwashed them. In fact, it was a specific flavor of that religious system.

I think a more clear distinction can be found in feminism. Feminism isn’t about fighting men, but fighting patriarchy. So, sure, there are men who are dickhead misogynists, but they are also potential allies that are also hurt by patriarchy. It’s the system and those who specifically aim to perpetuate said system. Social philosophers tend to point to systems rather than people constantly, because it’s so common for people to point out symptoms rather than the cause. So when we know to identify patriarchy rather than misogynists, yeah, we’ll still call out misogynist men for sure, but also women that perpetuate patriarchy.

So if I’m blaming the system rather than the person, maybe I’m recognizing the religious person’s commitment to truth and appealing to that rather than labeling them the enemy and writing them off completely. I think something that gets lost in all the polarizing bullshit as of recent is recognizing that a great way to make another bigot not exist is to persuade them to not be a bigot anymore. The enemy isn’t people, it’s the fucking system. Like the great poets have said: “Don’t blame it on the Needy, don’t blame it on the Poor, don’t blame it on the Jew, blame it on the system. Blame it on the fucking system.”

Speaking in a more meta-context, this is exactly it in the political world. In playing politics, you gotta play the political game. There are plenty of things to criticize the dems for, but man do most people in semi-recent history tend to oversimplify things. It’s just not as simple as throwing a filibuster at ‘the other side’ every now and then, you’ve gotta consider political capital, optics, legal maneuvers, precedence, etc. If you run up on the congressional floor and decide to filibuster all on your own with no support, you’re just a jackass wasting everyone’s time, likely harming your own cause in the process. Politics isn’t speeches back and forth with some money thrown around, it’s about building and wisely wielding social power. That includes knowing how to build solidarity with others in other constituencies.

Oh, your English is great and legitimately feels natural, because I think you’ve communicated your point quite well. I can’t really dispute much of anything without sounding like I fundamentally agree with you, but I do have a seemingly small/semantic distinction that I think is important; I don’t think America’s primary core issue has been education or overbearing religious douchebaggery, but this weird extreme epistemological weight given to every individual’s opinion. It’s similar to the bullshit fuzzy philosophy the nazis would use to justify their ideology by insisting everyone should respect their deeply held beliefs. While I don’t think your assessment is perfectly accurate, I do very much believe it shows you’re paying way more attention than the average American.

It really is just simplistic bullshit that seems to trip them up, isn’t it? As a passionate lover of philosophy, I’ve come to a pretty good understanding of the sheer magnitude of what it takes to be considered an “expert” in any subject. And, hoo boy, my radical commitment to what is true has only served to illustrate to myself how much I lack in understanding… pretty much anything. I’m not one of those jackholes who do that smarmy-ass “I know nothing”, so I’ll admit that I understand a hell of a lot more than the average person in political theory and general pragmatic governance. So it’s both infuriating and baffling to me how often the average ‘right-winger’ decisively demonstrates how little they understand any political subject they have no business holding such a strong and certain opinion on. And really, that also applies for most people willing to talk politics in America. Like, how the fuck are people’s opinions so fucking strong for how shallow their position is???

Right, climate change, the thing that boomers caused and definitely not these huge corporations perpetuating a system making humanity dependent on fossil fuels. It was a generation defined by generally common experiences and not some dickheads on the boards of fossil fuel corporations covering up and then spinning up a disinformation campaign against the overwhelming evidence of anthropogenic climate change. No war but class war; know your enemy.