>The relevance here is that my trainer is a
>liberetarian. Early on I identified myself as a communist, laying the
>ground for having a shared premise of contempt for liberals and
>Democrats. That has led to many interesting and quite friendly
>conversations -
This is why I don't think anyone here has been advocating telling people to fuck off or dismissing them out of hand. The point has only been to ask what's the point of talking to them as some kind of political program or action.
Dwayne and Dennis P. have given examples of talking to people with views not only not their own but of a type that get curiouser and curiouser as the conversation continues. In Dennis P's case this has gone on for years. So who is dismissing flyover country?
Nor have I seen anyone saying, as you suggested the other day, that anyone not on the left is stupid. It's easy to come up with a list of people who are smart and whose politics lean away from left. Doug says all the time how much he learns from people, like Karl Rove, that he doesn't agree with.
It's easiest to think of people in entertainment and the arts whose work you like but whose politics are another matter. This has also come up here often, usually about high brow dead people like Ezra Pound or Celine. But off the top of my head I can think of smart talented people who are active now and whose politics are far to the right of the norm on lbotalk.