If you’re sure you already know what other people think, I guess there’s not much point in asking them their opinions? You’re not going to listen to their answers anyway.
All you really want to know is what category to put them in.
> Voting for Donald Trump is unarguably an evil action in my book.
I'm not sure why I'm bothering, but I'll bite.
I didn't vote for the guy, don't like the guy, never have.
Trying to understand _why_ people _did_ vote for him is much more important than declaring half the country (really like 30-35% of the country, more people didn't vote than did vote for a specific candidate) evil.
If we need to assign blame, Biden should have dropped out long before he did so the democrats could have found their next Obama, or something.
Or maybe, just maybe, people were desperate for a change and they were manipulated into a false sense of illogical hope.
The question is, why did they need hope? What was so wrong, in their mind, that we all ended up here?
Or, just declare them evil and hold a useless sense of moral superiority. This solves nothing, but I suppose it makes you feel better.
I’m not I the states and only see America through the media and social media like this.
You ask why did they need hope, do you have an answer why did they need hope? What’s so bad in America that people could be manipulated as you put it.
It feels a like a repeat of Brexit, where people vote against there own material gains to punish others because that’s the quickest high they can get https://youtu.be/GPgatTnVvVY
Brexit is a good example. I think many people just can't extrapolate/predict the results of their actions and understand the policy (assuming politicians are even honest about it in the first place). For most objective smart people Brexit seemed terrible (hey lemme reinforce my ego a little) but expecting your average person to be able to understand that is tough. Also there is a parallel universe somewhere where Brexit maybe has a positive outcome. These things aren't fully deterministic. Similarly people always seem to buy the immigration crime and jobs schtick. And it's also not false that if you open your borders to a stream of people it is likely to change what your country looks like. There's a reason most countries don't have completely open borders and give everyone citizenship the day they set their foot past the border.
What's so bad in America? You'll be surprised how many people have hard lives in America. A lot. And I think when it's bad there, it's really bad.
Okay, but I've known a lot of people in America who've had fucking terrible lives--with the same kinds of problems that Trump voters have--and didn't vote for Trump.
I mean what's your point here? Okay, so this guy I know had a terrible life and now he's a Trumper--you want me to say it's just okay that he wants to kill my trans friends in a very literal way (as in he's accumulating guns, touts the "kill your local pedophile" slogan, and openly states that trans people are pedophiles)? Sure, I can empathize with the guy having lost everything when he was younger, but empathy doesn't mean we have to ignore the danger he poses.
It's never ok to threaten or use violence against people. But there is a range of opinions on trans rights from should man who declare themselves to be female allowed to participate in woman's sports (why do we have woman's sports in the first place?) or use woman's change rooms, to whether the state should fund sex change operations, to questions around when minors can make decisions about their body vs. parents opinions vs. protection of children rights.
What you're describing is never right and should be dealt with by law enforcement. That's likely far from where many of Republican voters are on this topic.
> What you're describing is never right and should be dealt with by law enforcement. That's likely far from where many of Republican voters are on this topic.
I mean, sure, even the guy I mentioned doesn't directly say he wants to kill trans people.
But you remove all healthcare and social support for trans people, and they start committing suicide--as anyone would given those conditions. You remove all protections for trans people, and they start getting killed. Republican leadership can keep their hands clean--they just look away and let the fringe do the dirty work. And the same is true for a dozen other groups. For example, there's no real controversy about the homeless (most agree that homelessness is bad)--you just look away and do nothing and they die of homelessness.
All that adds up to that a vote for Republicans is a vote that results in these people dying. Whether your opinion is that those people should die or not, is sort of irrelevant, if your vote results in them dying.
You seem to be under the impression that if a Republican voter feels that trans people deserve to live in their head, that means they aren't voting for trans people to die, but that's simply not the case. If you believe in your head that trans people deserve to live, and then vote for a guy who does a bunch of stuff that kills trans people, you're voting to kill trans people, and your fuzzy kind feelings in your head are irrelevant.
And finally: what country do you live in where trans people can safely call law enforcement? Because it's not the US.
> But you remove all healthcare and social support for trans people
What does that even mean? Healthcare is a mess for everyone already. Social support? What does “social support” in the context of trans people actually entail? Spending enough time and resources to normalize the concept? Support what? How?
If you think somehow bigots will eventually change their tune, I have a bridge to sell you.
Most Trump supporters are pretty explicit that making people like me feel bad is their primary goal. There's a lot who just want Mass Deportations Now, and a handful of hard single-issue voters on something or another, but the cruelty is the most common thread. The Republican party is right now selling official merchandise (https://shop.gop.com/products/liberal-tears-mug) celebrating the fact that they've successfully upset me.
Why should I believe that they're disguising some secret, more sympathetic motivation? I spent a long time hoping that was the case, because I don't want to believe that so many people favor inflicting harm for its own sake, but there's a point where trying to understand someone in terms I find reasonable becomes falsely putting my own ideas in their mouth.
Or... Trump isn't evil, he loves America and is doing the things he said the President should do since the 1980s. People who blanket think Trump is evil are victims of propaganda. People who voted for him are the ones paying attention.
I'm not voxl, but I do want to point out that he didn't declare anyone evil. He declared an action evil (the action of voting for Donald Trump).
That's an important distinction to me because I believe people can change and start choosing better actions.
But, a whole lot of people haven't changed, still support Trump, and until that changes, those people are dangerous.
And sure, we can empathize with the reasons that got them to do that, but it doesn't follow that we should just pretend what they did was okay, especially is they continue to do harmful things.
I said it was an evil action, I didn't call them evil. This is the standard essentialism fallacy of morality. Doing an evil thing does not make your inherently evil. Holding slaves in 1800s is evil, but I don't think the people are inherently evil.
I have a pretty good understanding of why people didn't vote, the block I care about a lot more. The people that did vote for Trump specifically either are ride or die conservative, fell victim to misinformation, or are otherwise uneducated.
Trying to say that Biden and the DNC is "too blame" for someone picking a president that is happy sending citizens to an El Salvador prison is something. I expect a bit more from the electorate myself, and think they should take some accountability for their own mistakes.
This sort of morally superior "trying to get the last word" thing is childish.
You didn't acknowledge the distinction between calling a person evil, and calling a person's actions evil. There isn't a way to "restate your point" that voxl said something he didn't say which would make it any less of a straw man argument.
You're not talking past him--he responded directly to what you said--you're just incorrect.
And you don't even have to admit you were incorrect: you can just have a little red-faced moment alone by yourself in front of your computer and then move on with your life without posting a response. And that would be better than posting this posturing thing where you pretend that some restatement of the singular incorrect point you made would be more correct if only it weren't so exhausting being correct.
I'm a Trump hater. I'd vote for a jar of mayonnaise before voting for him. I think he'll be one of the most impactful presidents in US history for terrible reasons.
> The people that did vote for Trump specifically either are ride or die conservative, fell victim to misinformation, or are otherwise uneducated.
But this take is very dismissive of Trump voters, trying to find an easy way to avoid the conclusion that the majority of them are sane and rational people who liked what he was saying. Perhaps because it's an uncomfortable truth.
While I admittedly despise Trump, I'm under no illusions that I'm somehow meaningfully better or superior than those who support him.
If you're sane and rational and decided that you liked Trump's promises (with "rational" implying that you were actually listening to what he'd do, and not blindly accepting his nonsense about "I'll make everything perfect immediately!"), that leaves only the possibility that you're evil. Or a Russian operative, I suppose.
His promises on things he can actually do are exclusively for things that are wantonly destructive and incomprehensibly stupid (tariffs, mass layoffs), hateful and incomprehensibly evil (mass deportations without due process), or straight up treason (pardoning J6 insurrectionists, breaking alliances). If you voted for this person, you have to either be so stupid that you believe his obvious lies, or so evil that the things that aren't lies are things you like.
Many people who voted for tribe X voted for tribe Y a few years back. Have these people irredeemably changed in your eyes? Are they stupid for doing so? Is it possible for stupid, easily believing people to choose tribe X again? Does it make their stupidity disappear?
Does choosing a correct tribe increase intelligence and reduce gullibility?
One increasing view we hear today is of the "uneducated ignorant malleable masses". Should we think of our fellow tribe members this way?
The question being asked by people in tribes are "what to do with stupid/evil people" and history shows examples of tribes attempts to answer that.
I don't think you're disagreeing with me. The comment I responded to says that calling Trump voters ignoramuses was -
> trying to find an easy way to avoid the conclusion that the majority of them are sane and rational people who liked what he was saying.
My point is that to vote Republican in 2024 you must either be insane, irrational, or outright evil. It doesn't make you that way, it reveals that you already were.
> Many people who voted for tribe X voted for tribe Y a few years back. Have these people irredeemably changed in your eyes?
I think that Biden->Trump voters, or Obama->Trump voters, are incredibly stupid or short-sighted. There is no good reason to have done that. If you were a consistent Republican voter you might instead be a selfish racist piece of shit, but if you've switched from the Democrats in recent years the only option I have is to assume you're a gullible idiot.
And to be clear, yes, I think this is specific to the time we're in. I don't think I'd say this in 2000, for instance - it was pretty obvious that W was not going to be a good president, but he was not an incomprehensible choice, and you could imagine people who thought Gore's brand was tainted by association with Clinton's various forms of griminess. But Trump and his merry band of lunatics are not simply "the other tribe". They are an obvious and unprecedented threat no matter what your values are, unless your only value is breaking shit for the lulz.
One way perhaps is to think about the permanence of judgements.
Think about how many people would need to switch sides for the next election. Would their status as lunatics and gullible and idiots be instantly revoked and become mentally healthy, rational and intelligent after they are on the correct side?
Many politicians would say they would remain idiots even when they vote for them and that a cynic might say that politics is just about two tribes warring against each other on a battlefield where they seek to manipulate a group of idiots to their side.
I would suggest that thinking about one's allies as idiots isn't a good thing. (Maybe their status does change instantly - in that case the idiots have the potential to be intelligent which weakens the original judgement) However it's also a difficult thing to do as it would compromise one's own group identity. It makes the binary groups more fuzzy. It introduces an overlap in the venn diagram of us vs them. Thinking of an "other" as potentially one of "us" reduces the internal coherence of the "us" group - it opens the borders.
People in groups like to keep the group strong and the borders secure. To open the borders is a difficult and painful thing. It's understandable that the binary tribal politics remains strong as it benefits both tribes.
All you really want to know is what category to put them in.