I don’t think we’re very far apart here. I am most definitely impacted by the policies of the far right, which is why winning is important to me. And I’m not suggesting we work with the Paul Manaforts and the like. I’m saying there are a bunch of people out there that were Trump supporters that could be won over in the time between his fading and his replacement. It’s an opportunity. And I’m not suggesting changing the DNC platform either. I’m saying that the marketing of the platform in the rural areas could be changed to shave off enough people to make a difference. Bernie was doing pretty well with the rural people I know. When he lost, they jumped to Trump.
Disagree. The GQP has been very successful in convincing it’s folks that the Dems are demonic, in a very literal sense, and that any hint of cooperation or even listening to us will lead to eternal damnation. Being nice and understanding to fascists has never ended well, and will not here either. We would do much better supporting and empowering our own base and leaving the right to catch up as best it can. The want us dead, and offering to “just let them kill us a little bit” is not going to get us anywhere but dead.
18 Likes
So true:
19 Likes
My point was that the political malpractice was on the Republican side. Two generations of Americans have been largely denied access to functional literacy, numeracy, and critical thinking skills. This is the result. The Democratic party has a lot of issues needing improvement, but that’s not the reason for what we’re seeing here with this truck convoy, or in coal country.
18 Likes
And the undeniably imperfect and corrupt Dems are simply NOT “equal” in this level of fuckery; no matter how hard anyone tries to ‘both sides’ this shit.
17 Likes
.
This was my response as well. I was disappointed to see upthread the word has already been used in another context commercially
1 Like
Why do you think that? What has given you the impression that they give a shit about anyone but themselves? And they are less than half of the GOP, just the loud, proudly racist half.
They CHOOSE to embed themselves in far right propaganda. They can change the channel and watch somethign other than fox news, but it reinforces their already existing bigotry and makes it seem an acceptable political position. As I think it was @j9c (I think) posted in another thread, making bigotry unacceptable in the public discourse would go a long way to pulling these jack asses in line.
What won’t help is acting like they’re not really bigots, but just confused poors.
21 Likes
Not where I live he wasn’t fwiw. I’m sure there’s regional differences there but it’s worth pointing out because y’all are talking about a national election.
16 Likes
Right?
I thought a more general sense among rural white folks was that he’s a commie lunatic, at best out of touch with things because he’s “so old.” And for some, his being Jewish was at best suspect too.
14 Likes
10 Likes
Yeah my perception was that the ones who considered themselves sensible rural conservatives saw him as at best a moon-eyed hippie Jew with no morals taking advantage of people with communist lies.
The ones we’re not hiding anymore thought he was a satanist abortionist christ-killing Jew being used to push Hillary’s evil feminist agenda on us all and enslave white men by forcing them to work to pay for the lives of degenerates. I wish I was kidding but that shit was already here a long time. It isn’t like Q invented that kind of narrative.
14 Likes
Yeah. Trying to convince that lot by being nicer to them just seems like a gargantuan waste of time and resources. I mean, I hate to give up on them, but man, it’s a big hill to climb.
13 Likes
Lemme just fundamentally change this person’s perspective on life real quick!
12 Likes
Sadly, the reality is that we can’t change everyone’s minds… all we can do is push for a better, more equitable, more kind society around them and ensure that they can’t take away already hard won rights.
14 Likes
I objected to the “dimwitted coal miners with hearts of gold” narrative in 2016 and I still object to it now. Yes, Trump threw out a line about coal jobs. He was also a transparent liar, and it was just as obvious before he was elected as it is today. His campaign was entirely centered on hatred and racism. That was his platform, and that was why those, yes, MORONS voted for him. Not because Democrats weren’t being nice enough, but because they wanted to hurt brown people and they didn’t care about any other consequences of electing an incompetent reality TV star into the highest office in the land.
Edited to add:
Deciding that such a large number of people are too stupid, or racist or whatever to deal with is not a great strategy.
What do you do when that’s the reality, though? When Trump was elected, a lot of Democrats (and Republicans, for that matter) were shocked, and ironically because they’re so nice, immediately started blaming themselves for being too “elite” and not doing enough to win over these people. But the past four years have shown over and over and over and over that Trump’s supporters are fueled by racism, sexism, transphobia and homophobia, conspiracy theories, violence and white privilege. Some of them are literally Nazis and KKK members, and many are living in a completely bonkers alternate reality where equality is oppression, 5G networks transmit disease, vaccines contain magic microchips, Democrats meet in phantom basements to drink the blood of babies, and wearing masks accelerates pandemics instead of suppressing them. The past half decade has been spent trying to reason with these people, confronting them with evidence, appealing to their decency, attempting to win them over by showing them how they’re working against their own interests, etc. etc. Do you think we’re just a few magic words away from winning over people whose own families have been forced to cut off contact with them because of their odious views? Does it seem like playing nice with them and treating them as merely misguided has BEEN a great strategy so far?
16 Likes
It’s also a way to blame the victim: oh, if you’d just treated me better, I wouldn’t have had to take away your human and civil rights because my fee-fees were hurt.
15 Likes
No, you’re never supposed to stop with them and all the horrible things they’ve been doing. It always has to be something the left – or at least liberals, the difference isn’t important – did. I know superficially it might look like the Republicans are at fault for everything from concentration camps to war crimes, but that means you just have to dig a little deeper to find who is truly to blame.
13 Likes
And, ultimately, real empathy for them doesn’t involve taking everything they say as valid but actually working to make their lives better.
That’s the hard work that the GOP is unwilling and uninterested in doing, that progressives do every damn day.
12 Likes
Oh, we know who they really blame, they just use euphemisms like “liberal” and “internationalists”… Almost all right wing politics comes down to conspiracy theories, and it always comes back to the Protocols.
10 Likes
9 Likes
