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I'm curious how you think one can understand without spending bandwidth.

You can't. But not everyone deserves my bandwidth. Empathy and intellectual curiosity are my only prerequisites. If a person can't meet those, I don't have the headspace for anything they have to say.

The less energy I spend being my own gatekeeper, the more I have for things that truly enrich my life.

As painful as it is you have to engage with people like that. If your own family is chugging Trump, it's a chance to try and nudge them, incrementally, away from their extremist positions.

Like maybe admit that Hillary might not be literally the devil. Baby steps.

I can't tell with this particular topic - are you making a bad joke or do you legitimately feel this sort of smug behavior would be helpful?

I'm saying if you've got a family so far gone they're doing lines of Alex Jones on their Facebook page every day then there's ways of getting them rehabilitated.

This isn't smug. This is fact. Facebook is filled with toxic garbage. Simply nudging people away from that and to something more rational would be a huge step towards civil discourse.

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