What's the point in explaining how the world works to people anymore?

I recently caught my chud family member watching some dumb youtube video about "experts lying about COVID" (yes, chuds are still malding), and like, what's the fucking point anymore?

You can be as gracious, understanding and in good faith as possible, but people will believe whatever nonsense some idiot influencer says is the truth. It makes me so mad, and unable to argue with these people, because their irrationality makes me irrational. Fuck.

Anyway, how are y'all doing?

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As revolutionaries, we don’t have the right to say we are tired of explaining. We must never stop explaining. We know that when the people understand, they cannot help but follow us.
- “No altar, no belief, no holy book... have ever been able to reconcile the rich and the poor, the exploiter and the exploited. And if Jesus himself had to take the whip to chase them from his temple, it is indeed because that is the only language they hear.” - Thomas Sankara
  Sankara was a real one.
  
  If I were taught this version of Jesus, I would likely be religious. Also, did Sankara write any books?
  
  Also, did Sankara write any books?
  Some of his speeches and interviews have been released in book form, Thomas Sankara Speaks.
  (https://library.agnescameron.info/revolutionary%20history/Thomas%20Sankara%20Speaks.pdf)
  
  Thanks!
  
  The only time in the bible that Jesus genuinely lost his shit with people.
- i can't help but feel like this quote doesn't really apply in the same way to america in 2025. nobody in sankara's burkina faso benefitted from the status quo the way the typical white dipshit in the imperial core does and therefore actually had a reason to listen to communist arguments.
  some people are just never going to listen to reason because of their material conditions and need to be reeducated or shot, and a lot of those people are white americans
  
  I don't think Trump gets elected if the white dipshits are content with their material conditions, though?
  I think there's real discontent in America in 2025, even with how privileged Americans are globally. I think that discontent is ultimately a result of getting squeezed by capitalism, and that most folks aren't aware of that. Trump won by acknowledging that "the system" is broken, which most people know- he just pointed them to bigotry instead to protect capitalism.
  That's not to say that American's material struggles are comparable to Burkina Faso's - I think white folks in America are soft as shit - but I don't think people feel like they're doing well, and that's ultimately what drives their actions.
  
  They're not content not because they're exploited. They're not content because they're not as privileged anymore. Treats are more expensive and they can't call Blake people the n-word anymore.
  
  Exactly!! People are exploited and they know it, they're just often ignorant of the cause.
  America is deeply racist, and fascists stoke those flames to explain why people are exploited.
  I think the quote is still relevant because a ton of our work is explaining to people "no, treats aren't more expensive because woke, it's because capitalism."
  
  White American by and large aren't exploited, fascist propaganda speaks to them because it takes advantage of their fears of losing their privileged status.
  
  Oh sorry I just reread your post and I missed the second "not" in you first sentence, which really changes the meaning haha
  I definitely had a different view: that white folks were also exploited under capitalism, just to a lesser degree. I looked up a few stats and I still think that generally, but the gap is way bigger than I thought.
  63% of America is white, 12% black, 11% multiracial, 6% Asian
  59% of Americans in 2025 don't have enough savings to cover an unexpected $1,000 emergency expense
  It's not a perfect measure, but I'm comfortable saying "most Americans are living on the edge." Even if we round down to 50% and assume every single non-white person is below that line, that would still leave 13% of America white folks living on the edge.
  Which is more than the entire population of black Americans (12%), which tbh I did not expect. (Note: I'm kinda suspect of the 'multiracial' bucket as it applies to how folks experience systemic racism, since iiuc that tends to be more like the family guy skin color ok/not ok meme. i.e. I assume that there are a decent number of folks in the 11% 'multiracial' bucket that experience anti-black racism)
  I really like this article, too, specifically median wealth by race and the households by "teirs" of wealth.
  Because holy shit there are so many well-off white folks and yeah, as a whole they're rolling in it.
  "Households with no wealth or in debt" (poorest 11% of the overall population) shows 9% of white households have zero or negative wealth, compared to 24% of black households. Applied to the overall population, that's 6% and 3%, respectively. Which... challenges my intuition. I would not expect white folks to make up the majority of the poorest group of Americans.
  Honestly, I think the biggest takeaway for me is that there's an absolute shitload of white people. As a group they're incredibly well off, but there's also a huge number of struggling white folks.
  What I'd really like to see is the racial makeup of each wealth percentile, something like this graph, but scaled by the absolute number of folks in each category, not by the percentage of a given race that falls in each bucket. Looks like the underlying data is published by the government, so I might try to do it myself sometime.
  
  Read Settlers
  
  yes the millions of mcmansion owners in flyover suburbia are just exploited and ignorant
  
  I did a bit of a dive into race and wealth in the other reply here. Yeah, white people as a whole are extremely well off. The surprising take aways for me is that 1. there's so, so many white people and 2. that most of the poorest folks are white.
  And re ignorance: kinda yeah - I think most people just kinda believe what they're told, right? Humans are social more than rational.
  My parents were Republican and Christian, so I was Republican and Christian. As I got older, I believed what my friends believed. It wasn't until I had a partner specifically, persistently ask me what I believed that I started to develop my own independent value system.
  Everyone should decide what they believe for themselves, but I think tons of people live their whole lives just based on the vibe of their social circle. That goes double for white folks, who the system works great for and who would rather not even think about race (see: "I'm not racist, I don't see color!").
  I also think our perceptions of the world are shaped by the media we consume. Capitalists own the majority of that media, and they have a vested interest in people not coming to the conclusion that they are suffering under capitalism.
  Imo, ignorance is much more likely than malice for white folks, and so yeah I think that requires education and explanation (like the quote says).
  Oh, but it should def be white folks teaching white folks. I don't mean to put that on other groups.
  
  We really need to stop doing this thing here where we post quotes from leftists living in totally different times and material circumstance and act like it's applicable to people trying to organize in the modern imperial core.
- I understand that, but for those who refuse to listen? What then?
  
  I'm in the same situation. I just don't talk to these people anymore and tell them to shut up if I can't get away. I've spent years like you probably trying to carefully explain things and they just revert to saying heinous shit about women, immigrants, tree-hugging liberals, etc. the second I'm not around.
  
  It's not like there are other ways to make people support us, so we have to just keep chipping at granite edifice of capitalism.

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