You can find unflattering footage of anybody's supporters.
I was never a Trump supporter, but as someone who has friends and family who are/were supporters, I resent the situation where people think like you do.
In fact, I think that attitude is part of why these people end up voting for Trump. They know what the cool kids on the blue team say about them when they aren't in the room (hell, even when they are in the room). Not to give all Trump supporters a pass, but they're not all (or even most) the cartoon character you have in mind.
I had friends who became Trump supporters, and I unfriended them. I believe in morals. I believe in God. There's no way I can be friends with people who, at best, only pay lip service to those concepts while using them to further patent evil.
To be clear, I'm not really on the "blue team" either. But that's a team that hasn't been taken over by the worst of its fans, nor is it motivated by things such as xenophobia, willful and prideful ignorance, and malice.
I think the view that you are advocating for basically bends morality to accommodate the fact that so many people have to do and believe x. I'm a religious person. I don't believe in changing the criteria just to avoid an unsavory conclusion about people.
(To be clear, I mention the God thing not so much as a "holier than thou" thing, but in allusion to the fact that these differences cannot be bridged--I find it incredibly idiotic when people say things like "we need to talk to each other more to stop the division". Such a thing would only fuel the division, in my opinion.)
Your examples are so many degrees removed that I do not think they are apposite. For example, people who supported Trump did so with full knowledge of his attitude towards immigrants, asylum seekers, etc., his rhetoric about building the wall (which many of his supporters cited specifically as their reason for supporting him), his "birtherism" re Obama, etc. Thus, they can much more strongly be said to affirmatively support those things than, for example, an American taxpayer whose money goes to help the Israeli government bulldoze Palestinian homes, or do any of a number of other foreign policy things that qualify as "evil shit".
So indirection washes away the evil? Is complacent support that much better than affirmative support?
Compare actively supporting "birtherism" to passively supporting blowing up brown kids with drones.
I think you're better off looking for common ground with the people around you, rather than putting up barriers based on which politician panders better to them.
Edit: Case in point: we disagree here. I don't hate you for it, I'd hope you don't hate me, and I think this is a fine conversation to have. The alternative is we could each say fuck you and go our separate ways, and the world is a slightly worse place for it.
> I had friends who became Trump supporters, and I unfriended them. I believe in morals.
Ironically, the behavior you describe is immoral in my view. I also am a religious person, and I also don't believe in bending morals or that talk will heal all disagreements. However, with political opinions, the primary reason otherwise well intentioned people support bad things is that they don't understand that they are bad. Shunning someone actively makes that situation worse. Sure you can't win people over by arguments, but you can influence them gradually, and if they are your friends, you should want to do that for their own good.
I understand your perspective, but I do not think that they do not understand that the things are bad. From what I can tell from conversations those people, they, for the most part, just don't give a shit about what's good and bad.
Added to "don't understand" and "dont care" is a third option: "don't agree", based on different upbringings and cultural values, some of which you or I would find abhorrent, because of our own upbringing and cultural values. But I think you should recognize that there is a good chance you'd have the same beliefs if you had the same life experience.
> But I think you should recognize that there is a good chance you'd have the same beliefs if you had the same life experience.
What's the point of this line of thinking? Ok, maybe we'd also join the Taliban if we grew up in orphanages in Pakistan after Russia invaded Afghanistan. So?
The thrust of your arguments here (the article and the life experience thing) seems to be to not hold anyone morally accountable for anything.
The point is to recognize the humans on the receiving end of your judgement. They aren't inherently bad people. There was a series of events that led them to where they are, just like you. They are capable of all the same things you are.
Once you recognize that these people are human, you have a chance at maybe effecting some kind of change. Looking at them as animals means you will never effect any positive change, and you'll probably contribute to an even worse us-against-them kind of environment.
Agreed, I did the same. I decided a couple years into his presidency that I'm fundamentally morally incompatible with people who could support such an abhorrent asshole. Not to mention their incredible propensity for confirmation bias, which is frankly reason enough on its own to remove them from my life. I lost a few acquaintances and one friend during the latter Trump years. I value my friends highly, but I regret nothing, and would happily do it again.
It is good to see someone else doesn't believe that we should start moving moral goalposts just because society starts sliding into depravity.
What would all these people objecting to this do if they were in a time and place where some real shit was going down? Lynchings, genocides, etc? I guess they'd stand by and be ok with it and rationalize those things.
That was my point in another part of this thread though: we are in a time and place where real shit is and has been going on.
Just look at some of the numbers for casualties in the middle east as a result of US adventures over there. And most of us are standing by and funding it.
Trump is distasteful. But castigating people who feel like he has something to offer them where nobody else does isn't doing anything to improve things, it's just further galvanizing them.
But the ones who aren't cartoons don't really do enough to counter the ones who do. Just a bunch of whataboutism and "anything to own the libs" mentality.
And honestly being supporters of a person instead of a policy or a position is itself a psychological failing.
> You'll get no argument from me on that front, but I think that's a pretty bipartisan failing.
Not really? Has there been any cult of personality like Trump's not only among Dems but also among Republicans, aside from him, in American politics within living memory? (awk phrasing, but I think you get the idea).
Maybe Reagan? But even then, it wasn't this level of incredibly personal devotion.
Think about it: we never used the terms "Obama supporter" or "Romney supporter" in 2012, or "Obama supporter" and "McCain supporter" in 2008. And people supporting those candidates didn't wave flags with candidate names on them, etc.
I guess I was thinking more in the sense that people follow parties instead of picking individual issues.
But on supporting people, I think Obama definitely had devoted fans. Bernie did as well. I don't think Romney or McCain had the kind of draw to build up a big fan base. A lot of candidates that come along just aren't very exciting to anybody but their corporate handlers.
It's not all that surprising that an Obama or Trump character gets a strong following. Both of them reached out to people who felt like nobody in power cared about them.
> I guess I was thinking more in the sense that people follow parties instead of picking individual issues.
Yeah, we definitely have a problem in this country with limited options. I think a sizeable majority likely want at least one or two other parties in the mix.
> Seeing footage of Trump supporters and speaking with them is sufficient to expose them as bad people
You just classified 46% of voting Americans as bad people, as if they have no other motive than to do evil. I didn’t like him either, but give me a break and try to let go of that media narrative. His supporters were just people. Both sides have outspoken nut jobs stealing the spotlight
Absolutely this. Media had my neighbor yelling in my face and threatening to fight me over our differences in opinion over masks. Objectively he's not a bad guy, and I told him that I think we have more in common than not, then went inside.
We really need to stop this cycle of hate. I want to feel safe in my neighborhood and get along with folk. We don't need to agree, but we need to recognize that we are Americans and on the same damn side in the end.
I believe this "further your own goals" thing is a particularly American thing.
There's a saying that Americans vote with their pocket-books. It does appear to me that whatever other policies they claim to espouse, when it comes to the crunch they vote for tax reductions.
I suppose that's partly because of pork-barrel politics, and the huge tides of money that wash around US election campaigns. If all the politicians are bought and paid-for, then they can't be trusted to handle taxpayers' money properly.
That's the "basket of deplorables" thinking. You'll hear less-dressed up terms like "garbage people," like someone ought to be thrown out with the trash, applied to huge populations. It's kind of wild.
> You just classified 46% of voting Americans as bad people
So? You judge the moral and intellectual merits of things by how popular they are? That's your call. I don't.
> Both sides have outspoken nut jobs stealing the spotlight
Not really. Only one set of nutjobs actually stormed Congress in an attempt to overturn the results of an election. You've bought into a narrative that minimizes what is an insane fact.
Washington D.C. is a high crime city, but you can safely walk in the National Mall at any hour of the day or night alone, and people do. If it were anywhere else it would be a place be a place most people wouldn't feel safe at when alone late at night in a city like DC.
Know why?
Because Capitol Hill and the Mall are secured six ways to Sunday. It is the seat of the US global empire. Congressmembers and high officials are common sights all around DC and they move around pretty freely. It is common to see them around town. It would seemingly be easy for extremists to find these people and intimidate of harm them, and yet this almost never happens.
That's because DC itself is highly secured, at least where the government people live and work. Congress and the Mall are a secure fortress within a secure city. There are soldiers, air defenses, snipers, and heavy surveillance everywhere.
The J6 protesters had no guns, no supplies, no secure communications, no central command. They were no match for capitol security. The police officers who allegedly died that day are not listed at "line of duty" deaths, i.e. no one says they were killed by J6 protester violence. Capitol security shot and killed an unarmed woman protester, the only death attributable to direct violence. This was also not the first time protesters had occupied the building.
I don't claim to know what actually happened on J6, but it is quite obvious that many of the media narratives about it are highly incompetent at best.
You can only lie to my face so many times before I start to question your credibility.
? This is just dumb. Who cares whether they were armed? The point is that they had the motive to do wrong and they took action in furtherance of it. They don't deserve leniency for being various forms of incompetent.
It's pretty disgusting you'd make the moral choice to peg the media as lying instead of being appalled that people stormed Congress and fought the capitol police.
QAnon nuts don't represent all conservatives, just as the people inciting riots and looting during BLM don't represent all liberals. Black and white thinking is stupid in this day and age yet it seems to persist
Not all of the people who stormed Congress believe in QAnon, nor did I even cite that as a reason at all, so who cares? Can't really see why you brought it up except to try to strawman.
> QAnon nuts aren't all conservatives, just as the people inciting riots and looting during BLM don't represent all liberals.
Logical error here; your point would make sense if someone said "all conservatives are QAnon believers".
The problem isn't "black and white thinking"; it's somehow shrugging your shoulders at the fact that a former president of the US incited a mob to storm Congress in an attempt to stay in power, as if this is some kind of third-world country. "Oh but don't hold people voting Republican accountable for that", you argue. Why not? Party hasn't even held him accountable and are likely going to nominate him again.
The ideals of Qanon were implicitly accepted into the American right, and have been working their way into the mainstream. How do you think MTG got where she is?
The Republican party is the party of conspiracy nuts. If you don't like it, then kick them out. But you can't, because a significant percentage of your group would be gone, and a larger percentage don't disagree with much of what the Q-tards believe.
MTG got where she is because she's a representative from a small, hard red district. The whole country could absolutely hate a representative and it makes no difference because it's the populations of those small districts that vote.
It seems you don't read and are the one that is fucking obtuse. Your link says 25% (not a larger percentage) agree with some "central tenets" of QAnon (as do 16% of the population as a whole), the central tenets that is mentioned in the article being a pedophile ring in the government, which to be quite honest is not that far fetched considered the whole Epstein ordeal, so not surprising to see these stats.
It's easy to see why such a large portion agree with that CENTRAL TENET (capitalizing so you can read it when you skim this).
If you actually go into the study you might even see that compared to the 25% of republicans, 14% of independents and 9% of Democrats are also QAnon believers. So to say that it's solely a Republican issue is disingenuous no matter how the media paints it (even the article you linked over exaggerating its source).
Don't be so fucking obtuse and learn to read past headlines
Now you're being deliberately obtuse, and/or disingenuous in your response.
> the central tenets that is mentioned in the article being a pedophile ring in the government
The central tenets (plural) of the study the article references are as follows:
-The government, media, and financial worlds in the US are controlled by a group of Satan-worshipping pedophiles who run a global child sex-trafficking operation.
-There is a storm coming soon that will sweep away the elites in power and restore the rightful leaders.
-Because things have gotten so far off track, true American patriots may have to resort to violence in order to save our country.
Quite obviously that's significantly more extreme than your ridiculously watered-down interpretation of the survey's questions.
More interesting tidbits:
-43% of QAnon believers are Republicans, compared to 19% of Democrats.
-QAnon believers are 2.7x as likely to be conservatives than liberals.
-QAnon believers are 4.6x to get their news from far-right sources than from mainstream news outlets.
QAnon is predominately a right-wing problem. Trump rallies were rife with Q imagery. It also permeated the January 6 riots.
In your mind, "both sides" is valid. In reality, "both sides" is complete horseshit. The right is full of morons and assholes, and imo intentionally obtuse and/or disingenuous people such as yourself fall squarely into the latter bucket.
They represent all conservatives who vote republican. Literally, in congress and as our last president. If you vote for a qanoner you can't say they don't represent you.
Nah, about 15-20%. Hillary's "basket of deplorables", as stated (IIRC "about a third" of Trump supporters was how she put it—her entire point was that most weren't actually awful). That was just true. Generous, even. The rest were along for the ride for various reasons, often because they felt compelled to vote for the candidate most likely to support a pro-life position.
Maybe not 46%, but c'mon. No Democrats ever came up to me at a restaurant and told my three year old they hoped Daddy was smart enough for vote for Hillary. I don't recall any attempts by Democratic supporters to run a Trump bus off the road. I've never seen the equivalent of "Fuck your Feelings" flags flown by liberals. Remind me of the years long conserted effort on the part of liberals to claim a Republican politician was born in some other country. How many of that 46% you refer to believe to this day that Obama is a secret muslim or Kenyan? Please be honest.
Really? Recognizing that people who vote out of bigotry and ignorance are trash is what led to that? Calling out people who openly and proudly believe in conspiracy theories is what led to that? Assuming you aren't a Trump supporter, what would they have to do in order for you to believe they are bad and need to be called out as such? Start lynching Blacks en masse? Firebombing the offices of lawyers who represent asylum seekers?
My impression from this thread is that you'd make an excuse even if they started doing those things.
It is of course ironic you take a condescending tone while trying to convince me I am judgmental and condescending.
I don't engage with any social media, and I'm out there in the world plenty. I read the news, I've spoken with people. We can all hear what Trump says, we know his policies.
I have had Trump supporters say to my face that asylum seeking children getting separated from their parents and never seeing them again is A-ok and deserved because it was the parents fault for trying to escape their country and come here. Those are the people you're defending. You think speaking further with them would make me despise them less?
> You really think 42% of the US are bigots who will lynch blacks and firebomb lawyers?
Why do you think my hypothetical is about literally every single one of them engaging in those things? If the Proud Boys and such groups started getting more active and doing such things, do you think most Trump supporters would care? Or would they keep at it with their far-right politics and support for him?
You don't engage with social media? What are you and I doing right now?
I've had terrible experiences with people on the left, but unlike you I don't paint half the country with the same brush. It's not an accurate representation of realty and completely unproductive.
You're basically doing the same thing the worst people on the right do - condemning millions of people because of the beliefs of a few.
And if you adopt a moral framework that emphasizes those common ideas in defining the category of “bad people” (or perhaps “deplorables”) then you’ve got a powerful justification for elites to dominate ordinary people.
It’s an inversion. We used to hate GOP voters for working on Wall Street and at McKinsey and laying off workers, while bombing Afghanistan and Iraq. But now the target is the traditional views of nationality, sexuality, etc., that GOP voters have in common with those laid of workers and Iraqis and Afghans.
