Moving to another country, especially when the native language is not English, that’s a massive challenge. It’s important that you’re going there for a positive reason. Otherwise you could have chosen anywhere, right? So your motivation to be a community member there would be low. So don’t just run away from Musk. Find other goals and reasons to aim for Italy.
Also, every country and city has some assholes loving in it. Not everyone is very kind. That’s life.
Step 1: Don’t generalize. Don’t say “Americans” when you mean “some Americans”. As you can see from browsing here and on other media sites, there are a great many vocal people who have voted Democrat for years but are entirely disappointed by decades of failed DNC leadership.
Step 2: Remind people that everyone is on their own side. Politicians might vote the way you want, or not, but their interests will never be exactly the same as yours. Don’t ever believe that the two-party system is an accurate description of our values.
Step 3: Share memes of Schumer.
On a general note. Older people want to say that social media has an echo chamber effect and reinforces bad beliefs. And you probably hear this from people with all variety of political beliefs.
I’ve read several studies indicating that’s not true. Indicating that people aren’t as polarized as others say they are, and also indicating that social media did not lead to greater polarization. But there’s tons of data I haven’t read, so don’t cite me.
Personal knowledge, from both myself and many of my friends, is that before the Web we were far more limited in getting information, which was a problem for people who grew up as minorities, in various ways. And I believe that was a far worse problem than whatever your Facebook group might be causing.
For anyone out there who doesn’t want to browse to TikTok, the short version is that the Reddit communications staff refuses to comment on information that’s being used for upcoming stories, and instead they say that they will issue corrections after the fact.
This is of course an old tactic that companies have tried to use to discredit reporters, but it doesn’t work very well when you tell everyone that you’re using it.
n many countries, including the United states, the core studies are taught through the end of Junior High School. And that’s when mandatory education ends. So you should expect to see a lot more variety in high school.
As a teacher myself, I don’t try to tell students what to believe, but I certainly don’t run away from talking about political issues. If you’re teaching English or science or social studies or foreign language, and you are working hard to avoid politics, you’re doing your students a disservice.
For example, suppose you’re teaching high school economics right now. Would you honestly not talk about the Trump tariffs? That would be the most ludicrous idea imaginable. Clearly the students want to know what’s going on, they hear it on TV, they read it in the newspaper, and you’re the expert so you should be telling them what’s going on. Right? And if you’re going to talk about them, you’re probably going to be critical of them with good reason.
But anyway, I’ve heard people express views similar to yours over the years, and essentially many people with that view think that school could be or should be talked entirely by mindless robots. I don’t think that’s a great way to teach kids, I’m happy I didn’t grow up in such a system, but if that’s what you want then more power to you.