Let's Talk to Trump Supporters

[ChickieD]

I did a little field research this weekend. I spoke to a friend of mine who voted Trump. She’s the type of person who could swing. She’s a yoga teacher but lives in a rural area of Pennsylvania. Her family owns guns and she just downsized from a 100 acre farm to 40 acre farm. She’s definitely got that hippie spirit - a Baby Boomer who left the girlfriend she left her first husband for in order to marry her now husband (of many years).

According to her, she wanted to shake up the system. She likes that Trump is a chaos monkey. She didn’t want Hillary to be “crowned monarch.” She wasn’t opposed to a woman being president, just this wasn’t the right woman.

She said of all the activism now, “Who called their congressman to try to get Obama’s Supreme Court pick onto the court?”

She and her husband were Sanders supporters.

When asked about any of the specific horrible things happening now she simultaneously distanced herself from it (I’m not watching the news right now) and she was also happy to see him shaking things up and making people get involved.

She was very upset with how angry people were with her personally and she is losing friends because of how people are coming at her. She was happy to talk about politics with me but was very surprised at how meanspirited some people have been about her voting for Trump.

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My commentary

From a personal point of view, my observation is that a lot of the Baby Boomers grew up in that Father Knows Best world. Even though they rebelled, I think deep in their hearts they crave a strong father figure and miss the structure of a world where everything was in its place. Despite all the arguments, I hear that a woman has to be the right woman but a man can be the totally wrong man as long as he is sticking it to the system. I think he appealed to that sense of rebellion and safety all at once.

[emo_pinata]

It sounds like she both believes strongly is us vs them partisanship (where were these people getting Obama’s pick for SCOTUS through, I want my guy), and at the same time never watches the news much or only a single TV source (Bernie fan that votes Trump shows a very superficial knowledge) - and that’s probably a common theme. I mean she knowingly voted for to “shake things up” by any means necessary and then wonders why the people she knows responded poorly to being shaken up, which is a lot of the experience I have had.

The Trump support in my circle has mostly come around now that he is in office, but it’s hard to talk to them when they were flagrantly racist about their pony in the race only to now wonder why people don’t want to associate with them and why Trump is being… well racist. Once “alternative facts” got uttered the people I knew were defeated and felt that it proved everything his opposition said about him was finally true. Only one has leaned in hard, and I think he might even lose his job over it the way he’s going.

[Israel_B]

@Haystack

“America is the best country in the world” goes hand-in-hand with “and if you don’t like it you can get out.”

Funny thing is the very first time I heard that phrase spoken when I was a kid, it was coming out of the mouth of the father of one of my school friends. It so happens that family was from Yemen.

As an adult in my travels around the world and living in Japan, I’ve certainly heard variations of the same phrase from the mouths of people in many countries. I dont think that sentiment is unique to the US or particularly related to walls.

@Haystack

Likewise, conservatives don’t look at immigrants and see the same yearning to be free; they don’t trust that their alien customs contain within them the same wholesome values as their own.

Just so you know, I tend to think of myself as “conservative”. I’ve also lived as an immigrant for the last 20 years (in Japan that is). Before that, my Japanese wife and I lived in the US and as a result I got to see how people treat immigrants first hand, “conservative” and “liberal” both. As observant Jews, my wife and I get to deal with that alien customs thing wherever we go. These things arent theoreticals to me.

@Haystack

The difference is that conservatives believe that the sacred is only accessible to people like themselves, … whereas liberals see it as something universal

Not so sure about that at all. Unfortunately my experience is that some of those “universal values” get used as a cudgel just as often as “exclusive values”. Shame really, but thats how it is.

@Haystack

diversity forces you to see real people instead of their caricature.

You can live next door to someone different for years yet never break bread with them, or on the other hand you can be like some die hard ideologists I’ve known who made damn sure to be there for the families of friends and neighbors who are different. It doesnt tie to if one is “liberal” or “conservative” really as far as I’ve seen. Theres good people and bad people on every voting list.

[anon95548275]

She was very upset with how angry people were with her personally and she is losing friends because of how people are coming at her.

“All I did was to help the arsonist set fire to their house because they didn’t choose the wallpaper I wanted! That’s no reason to get angry with me!”

[dfaris]

@ChickieD

she wanted to shake up the system. She likes that Trump is a chaos monkey.

@ChickieD

She was very upset with how angry people were with her personally and she is losing friends because of how people are coming at her.

This is what chaos looks like. Interesting that she didn’t think it would effect her personally.

[matt_ing]

All that means is, they will call in a crime if they see one. It’s easy to not notice one while working in the community. “Starbucks Hiring Veterans”.

[emo_pinata]

I feel that here has been a spike in “rugged individualism” as a trend, where there are a lot of people that don’t realize that their household isn’t an island. Something where expressing your personal individual interests in a unique blend of Yoga and guns and farmland is conflated (just the current example) into somehow existing entirely apart from government and society. It’s been documented that communities interact as local individuals less and less as more of it has shifted online, and maybe that means we not only don’t know how our neighbors feel and why but we don’t know how basic societal institutions benefit ourselves or others.

Then again, I live in Texas. It seems like the romanticized ideal of a cowboy has become gun-worshipping mega-church-attending suburban survivalist.

[anon95548275]

[anon95548275]

Then again, I live in Texas. It seems like the romanticized ideal of a cowboy has become gun-worshipping mega-church-attending suburban survivalist.

Pee Wee’s Big Adventure was right!?

Pee Wee -The Alamo

[MikeTheBard]

Watch FOX news, read Brietbart. Learn their tactics. Read up on your logical fallacies, and learn to use them.

Start with the emotional appeal, tie it into theirs, and start presenting the logical arguments AFTER you have them on your side. Optionally, you can hammer on the emotional side once they’ve conceded a point. For example, during the Bush administration, I used this one a few times-

“You know, every generation in my family has served this country from the Revolution through Vietnam. My dad and both uncles are vets.”
=general agreement on importance of military=
Then I’d start talking about my dad’s problems with the VA, and get them to share a similar story about someone they know. THEN I’d start in on Walter Reed and the deplorable conditions there.
Once I could see them catching a little of that anger, I’d switch it over to blaming the Bush administration and disparaging anyone who could support them.
If they started to argue with that, I’d pull out the “No, there is NO EXCUSE for fucking over our veterans. NONE. These are people who were willing to give their lives for their country, and if you can’t even give them clean sheets in a fucking hospital, you don’t deserve to call yourself an American. The people responsible for this travesty should be dragged into the street and shot.”

This creates the choice between defending the person they voted for, versus defending their patriotism. If you can get them that far, you can usually push them into getting angrier and angrier at the establishment for forcing that choice on them. Obviously, you want to reinforce that it’s them, and not you that’s putting them in that position.

Is this a fair or moral debate tactic? Fuck no, but this is war. These people are 5 states away from being able to ratify a Constitutional amendment.

And one important takeaway that we educated, intelligent liberals tend to forget is that some people will listen to reason, some people won’t accept anything more complicated than “hit it with a rock”, and some people will listen to reason AFTER you hit them with a rock.

Really- If someone voted for Trump because they think he’s a strong leader, they will never listen to anyone they perceive as weaker than themselves. Kick their ass, prove to them that you are their superior, and then they will tend to agree with whatever you tell them.

Sorry, but smart people sound stupid to stupid people. You need to learn to engage at the level they will understand. Yes, I know that you want to take the high road, and not lower yourself to their level, and encourage a higher level of discourse, but while you’ve been doing that, the Tea Party has elected 33 governors and a veto-proof majority in 17 states.

It’s WAR. There will be a need to do unsavory things in the interest of survival- If speaking at a 4th grade comprehension level is the worst thing you have to lower yourself to, count your blessings.

[Daaksyde]

@jsroberts

I think it can be good to see some liberal/conservative differences as cultural or cognitive rather than right/wrong

Having grown up in deep south conservative land and immigrated to the liberal northeastern seaboard, this is important. People are raised to believe that their culture is ‘right’ and Others are ‘wrong’. It’s internalized in their sense of right and wrong. The differences may just be cultural/cognitive, but that’s not how people’s brains process them because they’ve been trained from birth to the right vs. wrong dichotomy. Cultural relativity comes across as some lame attempt to excuse wrong behavior or weakly accepting wrongness.

That includes liberals believing that conservatives are wrong and, having not lived in that culture, being unable to accept that things are different for them - that their sense of right and wrong is different due to the different culture. We like to think that we’re different/better, but let’s face it, liberals think that conservatives are wrong. And it’s basically the same thing. To respect each other’s differences, we have to also understand our similarities (even if the similarity is in having opposite viewpoints for the same reasons).

@ChickieD

I hear that a woman has to be the right woman but a man can be the totally wrong man as long as he is sticking it to the system. I think he appealed to that sense of rebellion and safety all at once.

Sounds like if Hillary had been a woman who would stick it to the system (a female Bernie Sanders, maybe), your friend’s opinion would be quite different. But Hillary was seen as the opposite of rebellion “more of the same, but with even more kickbacks to corporate sponsors at the expense of the working class and middle class”, so it’s no real surprise that your rebellious friend voted for Chaos Monkey Trump. Had she been a totally wrong woman, she would have been the right woman (by virtue of being totally wrong) and could have gotten that vote.

[emo_pinata]

Bernie doesn’t “stick it to the system,” he’s a principled career politician who has been convinced he needs to work with the institution in place now that independent candidates do not exist anymore. Bernie is a cog in the machine, and always was - that is what makes Bernie such a good candidate.

[LDoBe]

@Haystack

They don’t think that a same-sex couple is capable of providing their kids with the guidance that they remember from their childhoods.

Worse, most people I know who will openly claim to be conservatives appear to assume with a conviction that gay and trans people are pedophiles.

This comes up sometimes when I mention I resigned my Eagle rank to people.

Interlocutor: “Why’d you do that?”
Me: “I can’t accept an honor from an organization that discriminates against LGBT people.”
I: “Well, we do have to keep the kids safe…”
Me: “Safe from what?”
I: “You know.”
Me: “You mean protect them from gay people?”
I: “Yeah!”
Me: “I’m not straight. Do you think I’m a pedophile?”
I: “Uh, no… But…”

We can continue from there.

It helps that I completely pass as hetero. It catches them off guard pretty hard.

[hecep]

Mucho thanks!

[ChickieD]

I’ve tried this at times and the problem is that people feel that it’s not really my values; they feel like I’m trying to trick them. It’s like when someone who isn’t Christian talks to someone who is and tries to talk about Christian values but it’s like, “I know you are trying to talk my language, but it ain’t workin’, bro.”

[hecep]

First: Great post!!!
Second: Are you, perchance, related to E.E. Cummings?

[LearnedCoward]

They assume anyone who would molest young boys would also identify as gay. That’s not true at all. Also, a ban on gays in scouting would keep a lot of good people out while having no effect at all on keeping sexual predators out. If I were a sexual predator, I would make every effort possible to pass myself off as a normal guy, especially if that could help me get closer to my victims.

@LDoBe

It helps that I completely pass as hetero. It catches them off guard pretty hard.

I’m not even sure if this is the case, or if homophobes are so sheltered that they expect all gay people to be completely flamboyant stereotypes, and feel betrayed when that’s not the case.

[navarro]

no, i just have a tendency to be shiftless, so to speak, unless i am writing formally.

and thanks for the compliment.

[hecep]

Hey! Better Cummings than McKuen.

[hecep]

Sadly, smack dab on the nose.