cynical (/ˈsɪnɪkl/) adjective

• concerned only with one’s own interests and typically disregarding accepted standards in order to achieve them.

Technically all corporations and enterprises in a free market have to adhere to that description, by design. Corporations are fundamentally social structures built for one and one purpose only - creating value for shareholders.

It is a pointless view that solves nothing. Flip it around, say “all (on both sides) are not guilty” and you might have a starting point.

Should I just declare to never talk about politics with them again since it’s pointless?

Yes. I thought that was obvious, when have you ever seen children being able to convert their parents?

Social skills are not something you can “learn” by questioning things like this. You have to live more of your life among people.

It’s like swimming - you can’t learn to swim no matter how much you study about it, read books or ask questions. You have to get into the water. And the first couple of times you’re in the water you’ll drown, tire out, may even feel frustrated or bad. But you’ll only be able to swim by going back in, over and over until you start floating. So it is with socializing with people.

I have found that most of the problems that have been around for a long time and whose solutions seem “so easy if only anyone would bother to do it”, are not actually that easy once you actually think about it.

Those AI ones like Perplexity.ai, Kagi FastGPT and even Copilot (Bing Chat) give good results not just in the responses, but also in the links they return.