Build the Firewall!
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Well, I wonder if the site creator isn’t a Trumo supporter, and just someone who identified a group of gullible people they could bilk.
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As someone who trends progressive I am nonetheless discouraged at the complete painting of all Trump supporters with the white supremacist brush. I’m friends with several Trump supporters who are not racist, just as most Hillary supporters I know do NOT (I assume) support amnesty for financial industry criminals and drone bombing wedding parties. People supported Trump for a lot of reasons; lots of disgusted Bernie supporters voted for Trump, for instance. Norm Macdonald said it best: “A lot of Americans hated Hillary so much they voted for someone they hated even more, just to rub it in.”
Same with James Damore, the kid who wrote that Google memo. Did the people smearing him in this comment thread even read it? I did, and I found it quite Integral and trying to open a dialogue (whether the science it it was valid or not). To see him smeared by an increasingly intolerant Left as an MRA, or a white supremacist, his memo an “anti-diversity screed,” was quite a lesson to me in how astonishingly reactionary the Left has become. The clash between how he was portrayed and what he actually said, both in the memo and in interviews, forever cured me of my assumption that the Left was more tolerant than the Right.
Intolerance of dissenting ideas is quite rampant on both sides.
“You cannot defeat your enemies with hate. Only love can do that.” MLK’s advice would be a good place to start. If you want to help Trump supporters see the devil’s bargain they’ve made in supporting him, it might help to reach out with compassion and love, not contempt and hatred. And to acknowledge there were valid reasons to oppose Hillary other than misogyny and fake news from Russian bots.
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You don’t see Hillary supporters driving over people, shooting unarmed people of color, stealing babies from their parents, supporting known nazis / KKK members and pedophiles, degrading women, etc. etc. Wake me when your patchouli wears off.
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Someone wiser than me once said, “Not all Trump supporters are white supremacists but every white supremacist is a Trump supporter.” When you confound those two groups you paint 30% of Americans with a brush that only belongs to a tiny minority…and you close any door that might otherwise open to the majority of his supporters.
Hatred and anger always feed the fire of division, always.
You are right. See above.
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I see it’s time to bring up John Scalzi’s Cinemax Theory of Racism, from November 2016. (Please read the whole thing, not just my quote below.)
I think you can very easily make the argument that a lot people who voted for Trump are not and would not actively be racist to another person in their day-to-day lives. I live among Trump voters, and the ones I live among are lovely and kind and perfect neighbors. They are what nearly anyone would describe as good people, me included. As are, I think, the majority of the people who voted for Trump.
But the fact remains that in voting for Trump, they voted for racism: It was right there in the package deal, front and center, and hard to miss. They voted for it anyway. And you may argue that voting for racism as part of a larger package deal does not a racist make, and I wouldn’t necessarily disagree, as far as what people do to others in their personal and day to day lives. But voting for racism will make personal, day-to-day life harder for the targets of that racism. Two days after the election, we’re already seeing that.
So, yeah. Not all Trump supporters are blatant White supremacists or open racists. But they did, and do, support a man who made no effort to hide his racism and xenophobia, who in fact made it front and center of his campaign, and who has supported far-right loons and racists throughout his presidency. The Trump voters and supporters, for whatever reason, find this acceptable. And if pointing that out makes them uncomfortable and defensive, good. Because they goddamn should be uncomfortable about what Trump and his administration have been saying and doing, and about their own responsibility in making that happen.
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Yes. I am entirely intolerant of ideologies that seek to see me as a second class citizen based on my gender, as well as those that seek to dehumanize people of color. That only leads to one conclusion, and it’s not a well balanced democratic system.
But of course, THEY don’t have to, right?
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Norm Macdonald said it best: “A lot of Americans hated Hillary so much they voted for someone they hated even more, just to rub it in.”
Then they’re astoundingly stupid and deserve all the scorn they receive. You’re basically saying they’re not actually racist and sexist, but that they voted for someone supporting openly racist and sexist policies out of spite, with no regard for the people who would actually suffer from that decision. I find that very difficult to believe to begin with, but even assuming it’s true, that almost makes them worse than the actual racists. Jesus. And that’s not even going into Trump’s flaws that aren’t based in bigotry, of which he is certainly not lacking.
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Put horns on it and have a Viking fedora. Brutal.
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