I hate to say it, but this essentially sums up my experiences (and frustrations) in trying to talk with Trump supporters.
18 Likes
Yeah, thatâs about the size of it. In these parts, the wearers of MAGA ball caps are still quite content. Their boy is doing exactly what they want - heâs shaking things up. If some people whoâve been hard-working tax-payers for years get deported, or some workers are exposed to more on-the-job hazards, or people lose health coverage, or refugees are arbitrarily returned to danger, thatâs fine with the MAGA crowd, and is a natural part of shaking things up.
One might ask: How does appointing Wall Street insiders fit in with shake things up and drain the swamp?
MAGA Answer: Trump has the best people. If the best person for the job is a Wall Street insider, thatâs fine.
7 Likes
You know what Iâve found pisses them off in a really satisfying way?
Ask them what they like about tRump. String them along and pretend to agree for awhile. Then give them a minor example of how tRump is just doing what they said Hillary would, and while theyâre trying to respond just casually drop:
âHey man, you sound like a cuck. Like, reeeeeeaally a cuck.â
9 Likes
Sums up my experiences.
âHe outrightbsaid grabbi women by the pussy.â
âSo?â
1 Like
I think a lot of this thread is related to this: people are rationalising, not rational. We like to think that we are governed by truth, logic, justice and equality, but we can be very tribal in our employment of these things. One of the problems is when we think itâs only the other side that does this. Iâm not claiming equivalence of scale in terms of cognitive dissonance (since there is none), but it is a pretty fundamental way that people work. The longer we try to see it as merely a war of ideas
The right way is simple. Go to the people you need to convinceâthe ones who arenât willing to resort to any dirty trickâand say âlook, these people are liars. Everything they say, and everything they do, is a lie.â Ignore the liars themselves; youâll have better luck getting blood from a stone. Go to the people who retain a shred of humanity, make your case, and pray that there are enough of them left to tilt the balance.
I think in general this is what needs to happen. Flaming Trump supporters wonât do any good at all (I guess flaming could work as an adjective or a verb here). I think the best hope is to build something positive that people can identify with, even if they did vote for Trump. Actively listen to each other as people before looking at things like political identification and address basic psychological needs that we share as human beings: autonomy, competence, and relatedness. Emotions, perceptions and fears do matter, even if they are irrational â or rather, they matter in part because they are non-rational and influence human behaviour. This wonât change everything at all, but showing that we can identify with each other and pursue these needs together is important.
I thought this was an interesting look at one part of the Trump phenomenon: a group that is generally considered to be firmly in the âdeplorablesâ basket. While they are still privileged in comparison with many people, a downwardly mobile young middle class with high unemployment has historically been a great breeding ground for authoritarianism. Itâs easy enough to argue that Trump is at least as bad as Clinton in every area, but she wasnât good enough for many people to abandon nihilism either. According to them, society is absurd and meaningless, Trump is just showing everyone that truth. Itâs a complete mess, but itâs what weâve got to work from.
For the sake of fairness (and since hearing peopleâs own descriptions of the situation can be revealing, even if you disagree with their perspective), hereâs a response from a channer:
4 Likes
I think one area where we can try to use conservativeâs own logic is in issues like Black Lives Matter. âActually, all lives matter.â âOK then, so you want to fight for anyone whose life is threatened. We stand together for each other. This means that you canât look at black people losing their lives and say that itâs a problem for the black community to sort out. You canât look at refugees or illegal immigrants and say that their lives arenât our problem; their lives should be defended with as much enthusiasm as anyone elseâs. If you reject identity politics as a matter of principle, you should reject Blue Lives Matter too. If you do support Blue Lives Matter, you should also support Black Lives Matter, because those lives are much more threatened. Even if you donât agree that black people have it worse than others, you could support the movement because black peopleâs lives are a subcategory of all lives, and also because highlighting threats against them will have positive effects on other groups. Whatâs more, unless we only care about whether people live or die, we should also care about their well-being, access to healthcare, safety and other issues.â
The same goes for pro-life or many conservative responses to liberal calls to support people. People will disagree on certain points, but you donât get to ask people to care about you when you donât care for them and when they are the ones being threatened more than you. If you believe that compassion is due to everyone and other people are too focused on their group, you should prove it by supporting others with no strings attached, and only then do you have any credibility to talk about an overly narrow focus. Where people claim to be governed by a laudable principle (e.g. not supporting abortion because life is so important to them), itâs important that they demonstrate this convincingly in areas that are less controversial â like supporting the well-being of the women who they think should bear the brunt of the cost of their principles. Some people do actually care about life and do try to follow these principles, so the difference should be relatively minor among the many things we can agree on. I think this could be more productive than arguing about opinions that quickly become marks of association with a particular group. It doesnât matter whether you think pro-life or All Lives Matter are misogynistic, racist, wrong or whatever; what matters more is whether people are following it consistently everywhere, and showing that this is actually the motivation behind their actions (rather than misogyny or racism). Take semantics out of it and donât let them hide behind it.
5 Likes
Both those links suck. The first what sounds like an old man thinking /b/ is the driving force of 4chan, while the second is a /pol/ poster who put some pasta they keep around to ârefuteâ points by claiming how diverse they are.
The chans just get a lot of traffic for being a famous seedy corner of the internet with a lot of free porn and weird stuff. People stay for the hobby boards, and some of the tens of thousands of users become addicts and wander into the more deplorable boards. /tv/ and /v/ and the like are heavily influenced by /pol/ while /co/ is still toxic but is more like what users claim all of 4chan is like. A huge part of the people that post there want /pol/ removed, but /pol/ remains as an extremely popular board with dedicated users, and a third group thinks the response from /pol/ users with /pol/ removed would be worse than keep /pol/ around. When moot left the first perposal bumped constantly to the new owner was to remove politically incorrect from the site entirely, and /pol/ responded by streaming into hobby and porn boards to be racist shitheads that claim without getting their way this would be the new normal.
So no, 4chan isnât a homogenous place. However, it is packed to the brim with Nazis, people that have not realized they are Nazis yet, people that are âjokingâ they are Nazis, and people who are cool with Nazis if it means no abortion and/or they get to keep their guns and have lower taxes.
4 Likes
Just as an FYI, the US .mil is strongest in large part because the US spends on upkeep of .mil to a greater degree than anyone else. Really itâs just like factories or IT or any other operations & logistics centered group, upkeep to stay still is expensive and getting better even more so.
You can say on general principle that having the worlds strongest.mil isnât what you want, but as phrased itâs questionable as to your intention.
Okay, I think itâs unnecessary for the US to spend more on its military than the next five biggest spenders combined.
3 Likes
Just a copy and paste of a thing going around The Facebook, not my handiwork.
2 Likes
I think Iâve hit on an idea that could work. Itâs clear from all the research that Iâve been doing that one thing that unites a lot of Trump voters is this belief that he is stickinâ it to the man. So what if we start talking about what a sellout Trump is - not to the rich assholes on his cabinet, but to The Man, to Beltway Culture?
5 Likes
Attacking the idea of POTUS Trump to his supporters is going to get them to dig in their heels.
I think that he understands that the more opposition that there is to him the stronger he appears to his supporters. There are people I know who seem like they could flip but itâs unclear how to get to them. One is my accountant, who I know from my temple. Yeah, she is Jewish. I feel like there is some way to connect to her Jewish values.
2 Likes
Duteronomy 24:17-22
17"You shall not pervert the justice due an alien or an orphan, nor take a widow's garment in pledge. 18"But you shall remember that you were a slave in Egypt, and that the LORD your God redeemed you from there; therefore I am commanding you to do this thing. 19"When you reap your harvest in your field and have forgotten a sheaf in the field, you shall not go back to get it; it shall be for the alien, for the orphan, and for the widow, in order that the LORD your God may bless you in all the work of your hands20"When you beat your olive tree, you shall not go over the boughs again; it shall be for the alien, for the orphan, and for the widow. 21"When you gather the grapes of your vineyard, you shall not go over it again; it shall be for the alien, for the orphan, and for the widow. 22"You shall remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt; therefore I am commanding you to do this thing
Thatâs OT right, so itâs safe to assume itâs in the Torah?
As far as I can tell, itâs saying that you need to be kind to foreigners, to treat the alien, the fatherless and the widow well enough that they can get by. That itâs an obligation, commanded by your god. To not do so is a sin, for the Jews are to remember that they were once slaves in egypt.
And here we are with tRump actively attempting to turn the downtrodden and destitute into enemies. Surely heâs an agent of the adversary?
4 Likes
Yes and itâs also in Gleanings, these same instructions to leave food for the poor.
2 Likes
I hope itâs relevantâŚ
It was the first thing that came to my mind when considering tRump vs the bible. He literally seems to be anti-humanitarian for the sake of engaging the cruelest instincts of comfortable people.
The old testament is a very mixed bag in relation to whether the Jews are supposed to follow rather despotic leaders or resist them, but thereâs many good ideas about charity and acceptance of the alien in your land to find there.
Honestly though, I think jesus is much more easily interpreted at a humanitarian figure.
tRump doesnât give a single fuck about human wellbeing and itâs so obvious you have to literally ignore everything he says and does. He doesnât care about america or people in general, so why should a good person ever support him without being tricked into it, much less a good Jew?
Iâm not a Jew. Not even close. So let me know if Iâm overstepping here, but I was raised fundie, and have a pretty thorough education in the old laws, and jesusâs stories. At least from an evangelical point of view. Then later a closer reading from my current atheist point of view.
Considering the kind of sources Trump and many of his followers get their information, itâs hard to know what positive message wonât make supporters dig in their heels. I mean, short of giving him free rein and letting him screw up the country so badly that even the alternative news canât hide it. One idea would be to make it clear that both the Republicans and the Democrats have let their supporters down, being open about the failings of people like Obama, acknowledging the good that conservatives do and so on. Basically taking off the party hats and approaching people as fellow humans, and finding ways of pointing out Trumpâs flaws that donât involve gloating over or shaming voters.
I live with three people who have consistently been Republican voters; my wife voted Clinton and encouraged others to do the same (which was a big thing â sheâs never voted for a pro-choice candidate before, and we had a number of discussions about the ethics of doing this), while my FIL voted Trump. My MIL wonât say, and I havenât asked her (aside from the fact that itâs probably wise whoever she picked, the right to a secret ballot should be respected). I do know that sheâs been very critical of Trump from the start though. The main sticking points with my FIL and some other Evangelical Republicans have been:
- Abortion (obviously)
- They see Mike Pence as a good pick and a moderating force to Trump
- They want a conservative majority in the Supreme Court
- Their focus on âreligious libertyâ, since they feel railroaded into positively supporting particular ethical stances, not just tolerating them
- Different narratives about Obamaâs legacy
- Particularly with people like my FIL, their ânewsâ sources are so out there that weâre not dealing with the same picture of reality. Heâs a nice guy, but easily led and he has a lot of hours of listening to Rush Limbaugh and watching Fox News under his belt.
I think itâs good to remember that in online discussions, there is often at least an order of magnitude more people reading than the ones you see actively liking and commenting. Convincing individuals is not the primary aim.
7 Likes
MI think getting people to be rational about their reading of the Bible is not a winning plan ;-). Iâm getting ready to go to my weekly Torah study. It is a fascinating book but sometimes I wonder why it is so important to our culture as there is a lot of strange stuff in there - a time before laws, when things were done on a handshake (or touching the genitals), when gods were tethered to a plot of land. Iâm currently in Exodus and the storytelling is so good but the inconsistencies make me scratch my head (âwait, I thought we killed all the beasts in the Last plague?â). Itâs definitely a book that has spiritual truth but logical truth, no.
My rabbi trained with the scholar who translated the text we read, and if I were just to dive right in and do a straight up reading without guidance, there is so much Iâd get wrong because the customs of that time were so different. A lot of it does not apply to our own lives easily. I enjoy the friendship of our group and understanding better the stories that have shaped our culture, but itâs rare that I read any portion that I feel applies to my own life.
Maybe the New Testament is different, but I worry why people feel itâs important to follow the Bibleâs teachings. Itâs not that clear, for one thing, and rules for a tribal culture for another.
3 Likes
âJewish valuesâ is a really slippery thing, totally different at the secular/Reform end to at the Orthodox/Charedi end. We even have very different ways of understanding the Torah which is almost the only common thing across the spectrum. See right below for example
OK first of all even there is a commandment here, its not open ended. Also it has to be understood in context and in the context of similar laws. While it looks entirely like a moral imperative, it is mainly civil law thing.
Also youâve picked a Christian translation which is rather different in ways that change meaning. See here instead for Deut24. The âshow Rashiâ includes the commentary of one of the most authoritative Rabbis for plain text meaning. Example:
17You shall not pervert the judgment of a stranger or an orphan, and you shall not take a widowâs garment as security [for a loan] .
Rashi on 17
You shall not pervert the judgment of a stranger or an orphan: And concerning a wealthy person, [meaning anyone, not necessarily poor], one has already been warned, âYou shall not pervert justiceâ (Deut. 16:19). However, [Scripture] repeats this prohibition here in reference to the poor man to [make one] transgress two negative commandments [for perverting the justice due a poor man]. Since it is easier to pervert the judgment of a poor man than that of a rich man, [Scripture] admonishes and then repeats [the admonition].
and you shall not take a widowâs garment as security [for a loan]: not at the time of the loan, [but when the debtor has defaulted].
I wont quote all that passage, you can see for yourself. Point being that any knowledgeable Jew isnt going to respond to that
Sadly you probably learned it all wrong if you learned in a Christian context.
4 Likes
I think we can certainly agree there for different reasons.
In anycase, thank you for the context and insight.
Itâs kind of funny, I was taught that the entirety of the bible was the inerrant word of god, and that it is obvious what it means. Reason being: if god is perfect then he couldnât make a book thatâs hard to understand or misinterpretable in any way.
I think thatâs one of the reasons why literal readings and fundamentalism are so prevalent in middle america. Oneâs uneducated interpretation is exactly as valid and âtrueâ as any seminarian or scholarâs.
4 Likes
