Let's Talk to Trump Supporters

I love this book!

And, your example is perfect.

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I like it very much. He takes a lot of the information I’m learning in the Communications course I’m listening to (from the Great Courses) and boils it down into actionable steps. I know it’s not as sexy and fun as pointing fingers and acting smug, but I think it’s worth trying to see if beyond the rhetoric we can find ways to discuss policy that are productive. If someone wants to believe Trump did it because that makes them feel good and the country is safe, I can live with that.

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I wholeheartedly agree. What other choice is there really?

I’ve looked at the Great Courses but haven’t tried any. What is it like?

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The Great Courses are overall very good. One of my professors at college, Professor Harl, is one of their popular teachers. Let’s just say, he’s the only professor, ever, that I saw get a standing ovation. He is amazing; like a one man encyclopedia on Ancient History. Honestly I find his audio a little tough to listen to because he is just soooo dense with his facts and footnotes and it’s hard to follow it all just with audio. His classes were incredible - the only person who brought all the people from history to life for me.

My husband gets a lot of their stuff and we often listen to the courses on long road trips. Most of them are great. Every so often there is one that is not so good. I bought the yoga one and was really disappointed with it - probably I just know too much, but honestly, for someone really new to yoga who is the kind of person who wants to understand things intellectually, it probably wouldn’t be a bad starting point even if a lot of it is not factually correct. There’s been a couple of others that feel “light” on the content. They have a streaming service now and I think you get a free month if you sign up. My library has a lot of their stuff, too, so that’s another way you can try them out.

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I don’t know. They’re not particularly nice to us, so why should we be nice to them?

I’ve been tone policed enough to know that no matter what I say and how I say it, I will be asked to tone it down.

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Because we are all in the boat together and they just voted a bunch of lunatics into office. Even if we get rid of Trump, we will still be left with DeVos, Tillerson, et al.

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I had a long discussion with one of my co-workers today about Trump. He’s a naturalized immigrant who is very conservative that voted for Trump because he wanted a conservative appointee to the Supreme Court. He figured he’d suffer through 4 (he jokes “more like 2”) years of Trump since a Supreme Court nominee is for far longer.

He had no idea about the recent fuckery going on around the EPA and environmental regulations being rolled back (“hey, I like the EPA. Wait, so it’s no longer illegal to dump mining chemicals into streams now?”) and to the rolling back of pro-consumer FCC regulations. This is what voting for Trump got you, pal.

For being such a smart guy he sure came off as a typical low-information voter. This is what we’re dealing with, folks.

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And don’t forget companies now getting the blessing to mine conflict minerals in Africa. Yay! death and misery for smart phone parts! Yippee! /s

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Precisely. We’re dealing with people who want one specific thing, and they don’t care who gets hurt in their pursuit of it.

But hey. That’s what you get when you support theocrats and people who put money ahead of justice. At least they’re not actively malicious folk like the Westboros- actually, they’re worse. The Westboros know they’re evil. And they are few. But these sleeping morons are many.

“But nobody gave me a leg up!”
“So that justifies supporting the murder, suppression, and starvation of black people?”

Some people cannot empathize. Fuck 'em.

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I can’t live with that.

The traditional way we internet leftists have engaged people is in writing long, well-linked essays. But there are limits to this logic-based manner: there are some issues in which the voter’s lizard brain cannot be overridden; on abortion, on immigration, on undocumented immigrants, on evolution, on LGBTQ* rights, etc. Faith is the substance of willful ignorance, the evidence of an unwillingness to be proved wrong. You cannot override their idiocy on those matters, no matter how hard you try. You’re welcome to, anyway.

Me, I was raised a right wing nut job, but my values were based around being a good person. On equality and fairness. On justice. Which is why I deconverted when I realized my religious peers did not match my values. They were Christianists, but they only took the hateful parts (“stone teh gays! and death to those who curse parents!”) and lived those. Brother, there is not a more hateful bunch than sincere Evangelicals.

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I am really not sure what the answer is. I feel that it’s important to try to change people minds but I also feel hopeless that there are so many people who are attracted to the authoritarian ideas of this administration. I feel like it’s going to take more than just fighting with people on Facebook, but somehow cracking people over the head with their own cruelty and making them come to grips with it.

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I work with a bunch of trump supporters and a conversation took place the other day about their complete disregard for bi-partisanship. They felt it was unnecessary now that trump is in office and complained ‘liberal commies’ spent too much time debating things. In addition to just being trumpers, I think that they see authoritarianism is just a way to 'get ‘er done!’ while ignoring or oblivious to the negative implications.

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I think it’s more deeply ingrained.They value their own obedience to authority over their own obedience to their own selves. They are seeking external rewards over what truly serves them.

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Last night I had a talk IRL with a Trump voter who is starting to turn. She is embarrassed by him. I have felt that, personally, I’m in a place where some of the Trump voters I know might flip. So, it was nice to speak to an actual person having second thoughts and know his voters are turning on him is not just a liberal fantasy of mine.

The problem I ran into, in talking to her, and I have had this problem in general with people, is that she figures she can’t be a misogynist because she is a woman. And she is a Jewish working mother who, I think, identifies pretty strongly as an independent woman. I’ve found that I don’t know how to share with women how they have accepted that men are better leaders than women and that even open minded people have ingested the values of our society.

I was wondering if anyone has information to help people new to the concept of, “Hey, maybe I am a little misogynistic” to learn about that. I’m probably using my words wrong here, so please use better language than this.

She is not the first woman I’ve tried to have these kinds of conversations with. I feel like I need to be better prepared to challenge their assumptions.

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You are talking about “internalized misogyny” - the idea that men are just better and certain things inherently that a lot of people have, including women. Its why we elect men more often and why CEOs are mostly men, we have just assumed that men are better at these jobs, for no reason at all.

I have found the only way to tackle that is by talking about children. If they have daughters the more the better. People will often accept a status quo for themselves that they reject for their children. (see the Audi ad on the super bowl) Good luck. I stopped seeing my stepfather during the Rob Ford years because his GF looooooved him so much. I got nothing. /sigh

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That’s a good tactic.

I had a very similar conversation last week with a lady engineer. Though I work in engineering, it’s rare I get to talk with a woman who is straight a trained engineer. I was a little sad to see that this one had focused her attention on the relatively low limelight job of Quality Assurance, though her personality is very detail oriented. I believe from my short time with her that she has leadership qualities.

I shared a little about the article I read last week about women in Silicon Valley and that some companies were instituting quotas now. She talked about how when she was at GA Tech that her female teachers wanted to advance a particular woman into a slot that opened up because they wanted more women in leadership roles, but she had advocated against that woman being promoted because she “wasn’t the best fit,” and that would undermine the authority of women in the industry. Then I ended up trying to explain that maybe her perception of whether this person was the best fit was skewed by internalized misogyny but it’s just a tough thing to deal with.

I’m so tired of people thinking they can work with the system and beat it. No, the old white guys aren’t letting you into the club no matter how much you act like them or try to please them. Their logical objections against quotas are not logical at all. They just don’t want women and people of color playing ball with them. Not because of our color or gender, but because we don’t view the world the way they do and that challenges their own world views.

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/me-sobs

I was QA for years!!

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She’s great at it (and I’m sure you were, too), but where I’m at, Product Development is king and I’d like to see some women in the high glory roles - especially when they have both the qualifications and the personality to do the work

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This really clicked for me. Thanks!

I would add that there seems to be some component of obedience to authority that specifically DOESN’T serve them. Like, if it’s good for them, that makes it bad and thus should not be obeyed. Calvinism, maybe?

For example, these are people who do not see teachers or scientists as authority figures. It has to be the right kind of authority figure to obey.

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