And conversely, what DOES disgust them.
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And Holy Fucking Bananas I almost lost my shit at the comment of his I heard last night: “Winners make policy, losers go home”. That’s one hell of a way to govern the whole country, Mr. Majority leader.
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You’re probably correct, yet I am always reminded that most Germans were good Germans.
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This is the possibly the greatest tragedy of their victory. The Betsy Devos confirmation was heartbreaking.
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To a degree, but the Reagan Democrat types did bring us Bush II and Trump - and are pretty damn proud of it.
Some of them are disgusted by him, but the world is a scary place in their world view, and they need someone that will protect them. That person may be horrible, but they can overlook that horror because of what they think is even more horrible, the unknown. That said, increasing exposure with an aligning world view can override their disgust, and they can even start to like Trump because he seems to be the only one on their side. They can become everything you mentioned that you can’t stand about Trump as he molds them in his image.
Whether he is conscious of that power, I don’t know: when I look at Trump, I see someone desperate for validation. He wants to be the people’s choice, that is why the “3-5 million illegal votes” are so important to him, because it means that he was chosen because of his views (Regardless of the fact that they frequently change). He disregards news that criticizes him, because it undermines what he sees as his validity. It’s impossible for him to conceive that he might be wrong, because that doesn’t fit in his world view, in his world view, as far as I can tell, he is our savior from a dark and terrible world, and he is desperate to believe that.
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They are most certainly bigots, but bigots are not certainly evil. I’m not sure how this is so confusing to what seems like everyone.
If you supported Trump you are 100% without a doubt bigoted, and accepting that is 90% of the steps a Trump supporter needs to take to understand why Trump is a problem and why so many hate him. Also, you need to realize you can be bigoted without being “euthanasia would solve our problems” bigoted. There are degrees to this shit.
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For a group that’s constantly calling me a Snowflake every time I get on Facebook, they sure are a sensitive bunch…
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If you get killed solely because of who you are then no one who stood by and let it happen can say they were “better people”. I know that’s simplistic and I know that finding ways to stand up to intolerance and even violence without violating one’s moral conscience is complicated, but I hope I’m working from a reasonable starting point.
I’m disheartened by a lot of the rhetoric on this thread, Mark. As progressives, we’re supposed to value diplomacy over fist-shaking; reaching out instead of drawing lines in the sand. I’m a lonely progressive swimming in a sea of GOP and Trump voters. They’re not a monolith of hate and prejudice. The ones who can be won over – and I believe their numbers are larger than many here suspect – will not be won over with anger and name-calling and blanket condemnation. The one thread running through them is not hatred, but fear. Work on that fear with compassion and hope and facts, one contact at a time – and please don’t meet any buyer’s remorse with smugness and superiority, for God’s sake. Admittedly, we won’t win all, or even a majority, of them over, but if we leverage our best instincts against their fear and remorse, we might win enough of them over. Maybe it’s because of where I am, but that seems to be a big part of the mission of getting the country back on track.
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I will make a guess here: Are you a white, middle class, educated man? Is any part of your identity or existence being threatened by the current political developments?
If my assumption / bias is correct than your first task as a liberal / progressive / what-ever-you-want-to call-yourself is to understand the mortal threat that the current US President represents to real-now-living-breathing sections of the US population: undocumented immigrants and black inner city kids for starters.
When you are willing to throw yourself between an ICA officer and a Mexican Mother who is being dragged away from her kids or a emboldened white nationalist cop who is pointing a gun at an African-American teenager in Philadelphia, then you get to be sanctimonious about presumed lack of empathy and misunderstanding of the bigots who voted trump and the TGOP in over the past decade.
If you are not willing to protect the victims than you do not get to say how to treat the perpetrators.
Understanding the fear driven psychology of haters is interesting and relevant for progress, but only in parallel to practicing Realpolitik in the German / pragmatic sense: which is about judgement and taking a stand.
You don’t ask women and children to understand and empathise with their abusers. You fight to ensure they have a safe spaces away from their abuser. Period.
As a woman and Mother of two daughters I am not willing to emphasize with men or women who think that a known and self-acknowledged sexual perpetrator and predator is worthy of their vote, let alone their respect.
@markfrauenfelder Fair enough. But if you don’t want Trump to win a second term, it’s important to understand how his supporters think. Otherwise we are screwed.
No I don’t think so. The silent majority didn’t vote and are disengaged. Engaging them is a far more worthwhile task than pandering to people, whose actions are determined by hate (including self-hate) and fear.
Change happens differently. Change happens by the silent majority re-gaining their voice and by people in position of power, e.g. white, middle-class, educated men amplifying the voices of the powerless.
Listen to this interview with Adriaan Vlok, the last Minister of Law and Order in Apartheid South Africa, on coming to terms with the consequences of your actions.
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This is a problem I have as well. Report the Russia, Crimea, Exxon oil story and report it loudly. If you work in media, every time the anyone considers reporting on a tweet, stop. Realize that Trump tweets are already readable by anyone who is interested. We do not need that kind of ‘reporting’. Leave it to his fans. Report on Russian election manipulation, Trumps business dealings with Russia and how he claims he has none. Stop being a megaphone for anything his tiny hands tap out on twitter and do some god damned reporting.
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Fear is a symptom of racism.
Watch how this refugee went thru more security screening than ANY of the persons in Trump’s administration and it’s still not enough to keep these assholes from being scared of him.
The only hope is that urban centers grow into huge mega cities merging into other mega cities that grow into rural communities forcing these folks to live side by side with people of color. And guess what only then will they realize that it isn’t scary at all.
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The best line in any Disney movie “We don’t like what we don’t understand. In fact it scares us.”
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I really am so torn about how to feel and react to these kinds of divisions and differences.
Morally, some of these divisions may be fundamentally unbridgable. Like abortion. If you believe a zygote is an ensouled human being, you cannot permit someone to murder it. If you do not, you cannot permit someone to violate a woman’s right to control her own body. Or immigration. If you already believe that all humans ought to be part of your circle of concern (a la Emma Lazarus), you will end up focusing more (though not exclusively) on the global poor and refugees etc. than on the (still very real) problems facing poor Americans (especially when those Americans are actively rejecting and opposing the very policies that might actually help them). If you already believe that it is right and proper to care first more your local community, you will probably come to the opposite conclusion.
Tactically, insulting those who disagree with you is not useful. But rousing those who agree with you to act, is, and that requires calling out the actions of others that you find, yes, deplorable. Plus, while I agree with Michelle Obama that going high is better than going low, it might actually be tactically advantageous if not everyone on the left takes the high road. Would the nonviolent civil rights movement have gotten as far as it did without riots and threats of violence from other groups? Civility winning also depends on the civility of the opponent to some degree - India won independence from Britain nonviolently, but if the British had been the Nazis they might have just exterminated millions.
I try to have enough understanding of the right’s range of worldviews and justifications to at least talk civilly to people in their own language. I also try to understand enough of human psychology to understand why people believe what they believe, and continue to believe it over time. But so much of the literature is about how humans are fact-resistant, and the people susceptible to logic tend to either favor simplistic “solutions” that might help some but don’t account for the range of other human’s tendencies/capabilities/resources/experiences, or to already agree with the left far more than the right.
Strategically, I end up just seeing that the authoritarian right presents a mostly unified front, while the left (though nominally larger in number) gets whale cancer and undermines itself with constant infighting. But debate and reliance on reasoned argument are an important source of strength and the reason I lean left in the first place, so I can’t even be sure this is a problem or an advantage in the long run.
So what do I do?
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From a purely theological point of view, I don’t need any laws from the government. God will judge everyone and I should theoretically be satisfied by that. If we are to have any sort of social order (unchecked crime/violence creates chaos), then we need the government to step in. Question: how much chaos do you think would be caused by people being able to legally abort fetuses? Now ask the same question about “regular” murder. I see a stark difference.
But we all know what’s really going on is that human nature makes people want to impose our views on everyone around us. That’s a huge problem when views are based in myth – those views represent “unchanging truth” and therefore nearly impossible for someone to change their mind.
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No, that comment comes from someone acting like a small child. You think you made a mistake? You have options - apologize, mitigate the damage you did, etc. None of those options are demanding acceptance or forgiveness from people you hurt or angered. If you want a person to forgive you, be someone worth forgiving, don’t act like it’s their responsibility to make up for what you did. (not you, you)
This is the thing. You have a chance. Just fucking do it. It’s your own life, do what you want to do. Saying people have to stop being mad at you before you change what you are doing is something I’m struggling with with my five-year-old. I don’t need to do it with grown-ass adults.
That’s what it looks like from the outside, yes (I expect more a peaceable break-up of the country because Americans don’t have the stomach for an actual war on their own soil). But you aren’t going to stop it through appeasement.
No. The idea that somehow coddling and patronizing people who voted for Trump is a good “tactical” move is bullshit. Anyone who voted for Trump has a path to start working against Trump. Donate to Planned Parenthood, the ACLU, the EFF, or countless other organizations. Show up at protests. Write to your representatives. If you have expertise in a useful area (like law) donate your time to help. You don’t even have to say you voted for Trump.
You know, do all the exact same things that people who didn’t vote for Trump are doing. You don’t need anyone’s permission. And if someone vents their anger about people who voted for Trump, feel bad for a minute. Do you know how bad people affected by Trump’s shit policies feel right now? There’s a lot of bad feelings to go around because a terrible thing happened. Lots of people got hurt and lots will continue to get hurt and at the triage station getting deported, losing access to healthcare, and being targeted by racial violence all come before hurt feelings.
People are never going to grow up if they are treated like babies their whole damn lives. The American president is living proof of that.
We are all going away. Trump supporters sooner than others.
Loudly condemn them so the next generation hears the argument and makes up it’s own mind on the subject. Wait for people to die.
No, you’re a person on the internet who has better things to do than coddle Trump voters. We’re in triage mode. People with hurt feelings can take a back seat.
This is the truth. Democrats do better when they lean towards justice, not worse. The whole “bigotry won Trump the race” has turned into “Democrats should be more bigoted.” No. Every time Trump showed up with a big scandal it hurt him in the polls. It just didn’t hurt him enough. But that was because people saw Clinton as a cynical status quo politician who wouldn’t really make things better.
I don’t have respect for people who voted for Trump (I’m sure I’d respect some individually if I knew them, there’s a shitload of them). Everyone deserves compassion. Go to a hospital, find an old nurse who doesn’t seem to like anyone but who somehow has spent 30-40 years of their life diligently caring for people anyway. They don’t respect you are all, why not? Because they care more about you than you are willing to.
People who voted for Trump and now want to be shown respect need to pay attention. These people protesting in the streets? They are cleaning up the mess you made, they are treating you for self-inflicted wounds.
If I had to make a list (non-exhaustive) in order of who deserves respect it would be:
- People who opposed Trump from the beginning
- People who voted for Trump and have since started resisting his policies
- People who voted for Trump and still believe they did the right thing
- People who voted for Trump and say they don’t agree with him but won’t do anything about that except demand emotional labour from others.
Damn right! Fuck everyone who says you need to listen more compassionately to your death threats.
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Please excuse me for interrupting but I felt part of this was applicable to me.
Yes.
No.
I do feel a desire to make things better for people who are put at an unfair disadvantage solely because they’re not like me, but I’ve felt that way most of my life. The only thing that’s changed is the sense of urgency.
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I disagree. It’s important to motivate a sizable percentage of the people who could have voted but didn’t. And help those of them that would happily vote if someone could just keep an eye on grandma & grandpa and the babies for the 5 hours it takes to stand in line long enough to vote.
Because I don’t have a lot of patience for this type of bullcrap:
“Based on Trump’s history before politics I don’t believe he is racist, sexist, homophobic or bigoted. If that were true it would supersede everything else since it would be even worse for individual liberty and freedom than any freedom of speech restrictions or increases in government size proposed by the Democratic Party.”
Anyone who could believe that after either living through or reading/hearing about how Trump bought ads to support innocent black kids being convicted/executed is not worth my time.
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But this “fundamental” viewpoint developed only very recently in U.S. history. It dates all the way back to the founding of The Moral Majority by Jerry Falwell…in 1979.
Before that, individuals might have had a personal opinion, and the Catholic church had already been convinced (it’s a relatively recent assumption on their part as well, historically speaking), but it had not been a cornerstone of belief for Evangelicals and others who were brought together at that point to take over the Republican party.
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