perfectly rational

What I love about that mindset is that nobody is actually that way. We are all irrational to a certain degree.

When I was an earnest liberal - I once had a protracted discussion with a redditor in r/libertarianism. At the time I assumed everybody in that sub was a libertarian but of course that wasn't true. We were talking past either other but doing so in good faith. He (I assume he was a guy) must have had the same thought as me - Why can't he understand my point of view?

I finally said to him something like - imagine you are a black woman in Alabama. It's 1930 so Jim Crow is in full effect. You're pregnant and actually giving birth. Your coworkers brought you to the white hospital because nobody had a car and the black hospital is 10 miles away. But the white hospital doesn't even let any of you through the door. So you give birth next to a building on the grounds of the hospital. I went on for a while more but you get the idea.

I don't think he was a racist but I do think he was insane. He kept telling me stuff like "market forces" would force the hospital to change. I reminded him that 1930 was an arbitrary year during Jim Crow and for another ~30 years the same thing would have happened. The hospital continues to be racist and people continue to suffer and die because of it. "Market forces" never will do anything in a racist society. Jim Crow was finally forced to begin to end due to the federal law of the Civil Rights Act. Of course - he made excuses how thing would have changed "eventually". I was already tired out so I decided to just drop a discussion of the benefits of the federal government.

That conversation happened a long time ago. I think about 10 years ago. I wonder what happened to that guy. I changed for the better. Did he change? And if so - for the better or for the worse? Trump's stranglehold on the GOP has made 10,000,000s of people proud to be awful and repulsive. Did he jump on the Trump train?