still working that “both sides do it” riff, eh?
well alrighty then. . .
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Yep… I’m just like a white supremacist because I don’t tolerate white supremacist.
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Does wanting millions of people to be pulled away from their homes and families and sent to a different country make you a bad person? Does not only not wanting to help those struggling to flee persecution in a war torn country, but suspecting those people of being terrorists make you a bad person? Does supporting someone who openly advocated for violence against African-Americans at their rallies make you a bad person? Does anything at all make you a bad person?
The problem with aiming for universal tolerance towards all viewpoints, is that tolerating the viewpoint that the US would be better off without a whole bunch of the population so we should literally deport/ban/imprison them is wrong. Trump doesn’t just have different beliefs, he’s calling for actions that will literally persecute and harm millions. Supporting that is deplorable.
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Yet all the white supremacist types have aligned themselves with one particular candidate.
I don’t know about anybody else, but if I found out I was voting for the candidate backed by the KKK and the American Nazi Party (among others) I’d have to take a step back and try to figure out what they saw in that candidate.
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Yeah, that’s the defense going around, a strange treatment of not tolerating racists as somehow the same as not tolerating Mexicans or not tolerating Muslims or what have you. It is similar form used to mask dissimilar content taken to its most extreme, and it is nonsense. It is not bigotry to be intolerant of bigotry; it is mandatory to be tolerant of everyone else.
Right now you cannot respect both the Republican platform and any number of minorities in America. This is not the fault of confirmation bias or of the minorities in question. It is the direct the result of the content of that platform, and there is every indication that content has gotten it half its support. If you don’t like that dividing us, you should being trying to get that party to drop its supremacist platform, not faulting the rest of us for not closing our eyes to it.
The cruel irony here is that for all the complaints being made about PC language, and Clinton not being honest enough, all that has happened here is that she has spoken the plain supported truth in non-weasely terms.
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Like BARACK HUSSEIN OBAMA?
I’m sorry, I just couldn’t help myself. I’m a bad man. Ignore me.
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Just like if you replace “polio” with “Jews” then Dr. Jonas Salk becomes one of history’s greatest monsters.
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So about half the country are nonredeemable monsters? Is that what I should walk away with? And one shouldn’t try to understand how and why they feel that way?
Tribalism isn’t a uniquely conservative trait, that’s fo sho. We all define ourselves by what we are not.
To be clear, I can understand why people don’t want to give bigots the benefit of being full people (it’s not like history hasn’t catered to them!). For one, bigots don’t give that benefit to other people, so it feels kind of inherently unjust. Contrawise, it’s “just” to deprive them of the same benefits that they’re trying to deprive other people. I don’t think that it’s wrong to hold this view, either - the people who want the bigots to feel shame and opprobrium are right, 100%. When Hilary said that, she was being GENEROUS, factually speaking.
But, they aren’t effective, because bigotry is in a place of power, and making the powerful feel shame for being powerful and trying to keep that power in place is not a great maneuver, tactically. To a large degree in America today, the bigots control what it means to be respected and ashamed in the public eye. Folks telling them to be ashamed of themselves has no effect on them. Trump’s a sterling example of this - he doesn’t need or seek the approval of anyone who disagrees with him, and he might be President for it.
Compassion for actual bigots and hatemongers is a tactical choice, here, made in recognition of the fact that these people can’t be effectively shamed out of their awful, awful positions. Maybe in an ideal world, but not in America in 2016 they can’t. The way to take the wind out of their sails isn’t to stop the wind, it’s to cut down the sails - to let the fear and anxiety that make bigotry feel like a sensible choice go toward MORE sensible choices, wherever possible.
The only way we stop fighting the same bloody race war we’ve been fighting since our country was founded is to give someone who might be prone to bigotry some other, better hope for the future.
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I’d put it at about 20%, personally, but, yes, about 1 out of 5 Americans is the sort of authoritarian follower who would happily elect fascist dictators so that they have enabled a “strongman leader” to give the followers permission to act violently on their xenophobia, and, because of their dogmatic worldviews, they’re essentially unapproachable and, in the short term, unredeemable. The remainder are sticking with their in-group for exactly that reason–it’s their ingroup.
And, yes, this is something that causes me significant concern as well; I don’t want to have to write off that large a chunk of the populace, but, due to their psychology and sociological structure, there’s no effective and practical way to actually reach them.
It’s a good start, but, as you note, it’s not exactly a good takeaway on its own. The question to ask after one has come to the realization that a significant fraction of the national populace are authoritarian followers is simply, “Okay, if we have a significant portion of the populace primed towards accepting dictatorship and fascism and actively supporting those ideologies, how do we keep them from bringing that about?”
No, of course not! Feel free to study and understand them, even empathize with them; just be careful about starting to agree with them. Heck, that “The Authoritarians” book that is so popular on this forum is the summation of an entire career of trying to understand how and why they feel that way!
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Clinton was referring to roughly half of Trump supporters. So that’s at most 25%, though really less, since Trump’s support isn’t 50%, and even less since we’re talking about registered voters. It’s totally fine to want to understand why those people are racist, Islamophobic creeps who support harming millions of non-whites. Don’t suggest it’s just because they’re poor and disenfranchised, though. Trump is a pampered billionaire and he’s a racist, Islamophobic creep proposing harming millions of non-whites.
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No one said that. Especially not Clinton. Go read that article that @chgoliz, as it makes the case for the problematic demographic of Trumps supporters. It’s a subset of Trump supporters who are WHITE SUPREMACISTS.
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They are full people. I want to hold them responsible for their shitty beliefs, not round them up and put them in camps… which is what many of them want to do to people who don’t look like them.
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You should walk away knowing how deep your confirmation bias is, and honestly question why you are twisting your opinions so strongly to fit a “everything is equally shitty” narrative. You should shoot for perspective instead of misrepresenting what has been said to you, and coming out with a sentiment equal in quality to #alllivesmatter.
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OK, clearly I am encouraging general understanding, while others are convinced we are only talking about a small subset of horrible people who are nonredeemable. Though to an outside observer, it is hard to see where these labels always lie and what constitutes a person under said labels.
I’d get into it more, but I actually have things I should be doing, so maybe next time.
Which is what they would say about the other side too. But empathy and understanding is the beginning of giving them an alternate view point. And if one encourages properly thinking out problems, it shouldn’t be about adopting viewpoints, but adopting what will ultimately be the truth.
And who knows, they may be completely wrong about Mexican rapists, but right about some other issue. In which case you both learned something new and grew together.
Clearly, I am misunderstanding what is being said to me.
ETA either that or no one is understanding what I am trying to say.
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Holding them responsible for their shitty beliefs would be great, but they’re running the place at the moment, so that option isn’t really on the table. No one is going to hold them responsible for their shitty beliefs between now and November, and maybe not for 8 years after that.
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We didn’t get marriage equality in my state by refusing to engage with the people who were bigoted or afraid, or by chastising and othering them. We went to the Christian churches and pointed out that Jesus told them to choose love over hate, and we demonstrated our own willingness to do that by going among them and treating them with empathy and compassion. If we’d stayed home instead, no matter how many times we posted online about how awful those deplorable people are it would still be impossible to for gay people to legally marry in our state.
Tactics matter.
PS: I agree with what Hillary said!
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Unless they are having their polling places closed, their votes misdirected to uncounted ballots, and their party colluding against one candidate. Sure - except for that they decide…
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Only half?
Not really; in pretty much every effort of communicating “what we believe and what our values are” from the GOP over the last several years, and especially the last year, any call for empathy or understanding with anyone that is not a conservative is so rare as to be statistical noise.
These are not people that are saying, “Study and understand, even empathize with Mexicans/Muslims/Jews/Gays/Women/Blacks, but be careful about starting to agree with them”. They’re not. They’re talking about rounding up people that are Other and getting rid of them. They’re talking about taking control over people that are not like them. They are talking about purges and ideology tests. They use slurs and negative stereotypes as a matter of course. And this is coming from the rank-and-file as well as the ostensible leadership.
I debated on saying this because it felt too trite and “gotcha”, but the truth is, reality has a well-known liberal bias.
That old saw aside, we aren’t seeing people in the Republican party being willing at all to think out problems and come to any sort of logical conclusion for years.
Such as? The environment? No. Austerity policy? No. Immigration policy? No. Police brutality? No. Educational policy? Hell no! Sex Ed? snort I literally cannot think of a single actual policy held or implemented by the GOP that isn’t or hasn’t been either a disaster, bigotry, or sheer wanton authoritarianism when put into practice. looks at Kansas’ attempt to create a low-tax paradise
Heck, I’ll bite: can you name any actual formal policy or issue that is presently pursued by the GOP that you think that they are correct on? (and, no offense, I’m going to add one caveat and say, “Aside from gun laws”, because we know that we already disagree on that point, and there’s no point in turning this thread into another gun control debate)
Believe me, I’ve tried to help them learn, but, in every case that I’ve tried to have them even examine the internal contradictions of their worldview, it’s become blatantly obvious that they aren’t interested, and are actually actively afraid of examining the contradictions.
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