Until we actively remove the barriers to equality at minimum, “white people” are kinda guilty, too.
We’re benefiting from racism, whether we are happy about it or not.
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I’m not disagreeing at all. It doesn’t change that Hillary’s “basket of deplorables” statement backfired in a big way for her.
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I didn’t hear it as assuming that people were racists assholes, but rather saying we won’t, and don’t need to try to, win over the racist assholes.
Here’s the whole quote:
know there are only 60 days left to make our case – and don’t get complacent; don’t see the latest outrageous, offensive, inappropriate comment and think, “Well, he’s done this time.” We are living in a volatile political environment.
You know, to just be grossly generalistic, you could put half of Trump’s supporters into what I call the basket of deplorables . (Laughter/applause) Right? (Laughter/applause) They’re racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic – Islamophobic – you name it. And unfortunately, there are people like that. And he has lifted them up. He has given voice to their websites that used to only have 11,000 people – now have 11 million. He tweets and retweets their offensive hateful mean-spirited rhetoric. Now, some of those folks – they are irredeemable, but thankfully, they are not America.
But the “other” basket – the other basket – and I know because I look at this crowd I see friends from all over America here: I see friends from Florida and Georgia and South Carolina and Texas and — as well as, you know, New York and California — but that “other” basket of people are people who feel the government has let them down, the economy has let them down, nobody cares about them, nobody worries about what happens to their lives and their futures; and they’re just desperate for change. It doesn’t really even matter where it comes from. They don’t buy everything he says, but — he seems to hold out some hope that their lives will be different. They won’t wake up and see their jobs disappear, lose a kid to heroin, feel like they’re in a dead-end.
Those are people we have to understand and empathize with as well.
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More fallout
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Empathize with people who regard empathy as contemptible weakness? This seems like a flawed strategy.
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A good example of what I mean. CNN has a history of both-siderism and Trump and his rabid base consistently decry CNN as the worst media outlet. Outlets that don’t give the bigots quarter, they have less to say about. While I don’t believe it’s a good idea to fight like the Alt-Reich using their tactics (don’t wrestle a pig), fought they must be.
Meet the opposition, but meet the opposition on your terms, not theirs. You don’t win by courting bigoted voters with bigtry lite and you don’t win by mirroring them. You win by having something to stand for and standing by it like AOC.
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What about the huawei controversy. I heard Trump has allowed them to work with the US
Give that fatboy a push and let gravity do the rest?
Oh, you didn’t mean literally…
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It was clumsy more than anything else. “Basket of deplorables” sounds exactly like jargon that someone on her campaign’s marketing or stats team would have used in an internal report, and she rolled it out in public. It’s another example of what a crappy campaigner she was.
This statement by Biff, in contrast, is deliberately throwing red meat to the racists in his base. The regime knows exactly what it’s doing here.
It’s as much of a mug’s game as trying to educate them about how they’re voting against their own economic self-interest (which they take as patronising no matter how it’s put to them – suckers hate being told they’re suckers).
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Don’t play chess when your opponent is playing Calvinball.
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Exactly; they tend to play both sides in the name of ‘editorial balance’, I suppose, but it comes off as spineless pandering and trend-chasing. For the moment, while people are furious about Trump’s blatant racism, they’re calling it what it is and even mocking the GOP for not responding.
But I guarantee that as soon as the initial anger dies down, they’ll run some headline like “TRUMP FIRES BACK AT DEMS” with an accompanying front page op-ed by Tucker Carlson praising his strength or some BS.
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I wish she and other conservative* Democrats had the same concern for the people to the left of the
democrats who feel like that. Maybe our problem is that we think the republicans are worse and won’t vote for them either. Remember that non-voters often outnumber the votes for the major parties. How many votes have been lost to disillusionment and apathy?
* I don’t mean conservative as an insult. I consider the right wing of the Democrats to be the continuation of conservatism as their economics and attitude of we’ll support something if 50%+1 of the population agrees with it fit perfectly, and the GOP are now mostly fascists and reactionaries.
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THIS.
Family and friends who still voted for and still support Nostradumbass get so pissed at me when I rail against him on social media and slam his supporters as racists and enablers. They scream back “I’m not a racist! YOU think I am a racist?!”
I reply every single time: Did I say YOU were a racist? No. I did not. I labeled his supporters racists and enablers. So YOU choose which one YOU are. Because you can claim you aren’t a Nazi because you aren’t wearing the uniform…but if you are standing right next the guys who are wearing the uniforms and you are saluting der furer AND you are championing the message of hate…well, in my book, you are just an off duty Nazi.
make a fucking choice. This really is us vs them.
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Not at all. I’m saying Trump supporters’ lack of empathy for their fellow human beings is a bigger part of the problem than their lack of education.
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Ugggggh, trump IS the grocery store racist.
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My mistake. Thanks for clarifying.
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The hard part about making the guilt by association thing stick is that they can just say that they support the things that they agree with, and not support the things that they don’t. You need to explain why that’s impossible.
I mean, I supported a lot of what Obama did, but I couldn’t support his heavy use of drone strikes and his inexplicable persecution of whistle blowers. It is possible to support some of a President’s positions but not all of them.
And calling them nazis will not persuade them to change their mind. It will just make them dig in their jack boot heels.
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Having talked with people who’ve flipped positions - and as an exvangelical myself - one thing became clear. Tone doesn’t matter. Consistency of opposition does.
So, go right ahead. Dunk hard. There are some people you will never reach. And you gotta be at peace with that. We can’t save everybody, but we can protect people from Trump’s supercallousfragileego’dracistasssupporters. Deplatform Nazis and they melt into the night.
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