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Edited by Mrph1 on Nov 30th 2023 at 11:03:59 AM
I fully believe you could vote for Trump without being a racist and believing in any number of other abhorrent things. You'd be VERY IGNORANT but I believe that was theoretically possible.
I believe if you vote for him now you are a racist with no care for the lives ruined by the man.
Edited by CharlesPhipps on Jan 7th 2020 at 5:29:05 AM
Author of The Rules of Supervillainy, Cthulhu Armageddon, and United States of Monsters.If you voted for Trump, you turned a blind eye to racism, are in denial about its very obvious existence, or considered it the lesser of two evils.
I mean, considering the "LiBerAls aRe tHe rEaL RacIstS" takes the GOP often come up with, I can find it very easy to believe that they'd believe that both sides are racist in different ways, and so they basically cancel each other out.
Edited by GoldenKaos on Jan 7th 2020 at 1:59:47 PM
"...in the end the Shadow was only a small and passing thing: there was light and high beauty for ever beyond its reach."Speaking from personal experience, I know a few people who pull the, "Everyone's corrupt anyway, so why not vote for someone who's corrupt in a way that will benefit me," line. Oh, and the, "It's all fake news anyway, so I'll believe whatever I want," line.
Basically, they adopt maximum cynicism as a defensive mechanism. It's impenetrable, too. No matter what evidence or arguments I bring up, they revert to one of those two strategies: "it's fake" or "all politicians are corrupt".
Edited by Fighteer on Jan 7th 2020 at 9:12:40 AM
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"It got glossed over, but I have address the other side of "both sides are equally bad" argument, because the Democrats aren't bad. No, this isn't just blind "all Dems are automatically good", that's bullshit. Democrats are good because they support helping people, saving lives, giving people medical care, preventing bigotry, and saving the planet.
Fuck "there is no Black-and-White Morality", fuck "both sides are bad", fuck "no politician actually cares about you", fuck all of that, and fuck anyone saying that. That's bullshit. Not all Dems are good people, but 90% of them are, and not all Republicans are bad people, but 90% of them are, and the remaining 10% of Republicans are either spineless cowards or gullible idiots. Being a politician does not automatically make you a greedy asshole, fuck that. Politicians have some of the most stressful jobs in the world, and the pay they get isn't even all that much, people don't go into politics for the money, they go into politics because they want to make a change.
Edited by PushoverMediaCritic on Jan 7th 2020 at 7:21:42 AM
I mean there are probably a number of Trump supporters who weren't actively racist or homophobic but at best they didn't take trump seriously when he said those stupid things that made it obvious the man was a bigot, and all the various facts that showed he would be an inept president. they should have known better and yet they voted for him anyway.
I think people often have a misunderstanding here where they think "liberals" think everyone who voted for trump is a raging white supremacist when that's not really the case. We know that people voted trump for all sorts of reasons, the thing is that doesn't change the fact that he was ultimately a terrible candidate promoting xenophobia and white supremacy, and now they have to deal with the fact that their actions have consequences and one of those consequences is some people aren't happy with their decision. Thems the breaks.
Edited by Draghinazzo on Jan 7th 2020 at 10:53:33 AM
The problem with trying to go "back to normal" is that there's a reason politics today have escalated the way that they have. It isn't just about Trump. It's about what Trump has revealed about half of the country. Things that have been seen and heard that can never bee unseen and unheard.
I grew up in a staunchly Republican household during the Bush Administration. We were a family that supported Bush, supported the War in Iraq, supported our cops and our soldiers, and saw capitalism as a meritocratic system where people succeed or fail on their own personal ability and effort.
I was pretty sure we were good people. Crime's bad, we said. Why would you support crime? And socialism just sets a government up to fail, we said, because of all the lazy people who just want to take government handouts. Why shouldn't people be motivated to achieve success? Isn't that how America got this far? And America should be the world's police, we said, because America is the only country in the world advanced enough and powerful enough to do it. Saddam Hussein was a bad dude, so taking him out was a net good for the world.
I was an introvert that didn't pay a lot of attention to politics and would rather be playing video games in my basement, so I didn't connect to my family as much as I could have. But I agreed with all those things, because that was the common knowledge in our family. Government can't tell you what to say, guns keep the bad guys away, and the winter season is the time for Merry Christmas. I was pretty sure we were good people.
As I got older and became more political involved, my politics shifted significantly. I learned a lot about the things that I didn't learn growing up in that environment. Racism's bad, but that's fine because we weren't racist. Sexism's bad, but that's fine because we weren't sexist. The way Muslims and the LGBT were being treated is bad, but that's fine because we weren't doing those things. I was pretty sure we were good people.
But we were wrong about some things, and I was like, "My family needs to hear this stuff I'm learning. They need to know that we made some bad assumptions and learn the cool things I've learned!" I was pretty sure we'd all embrace these new facts like I had and recognize that supporting policies that are hurting people is bad. Of course they would. I was pretty sure we were good people.
Since Trump has taken office, I've heard the following statements from people I admired and respected.
- Muslims should be monitored, because all terrorist attacks are committed by Muslims.
- The reason there are more blacks than whites in prison is because blacks are more prone to crime. Most violent crimes in this country are committed by blacks.
- I'm not happy with everything Trump's done, but I sure do love what he's done for my bank account!
- I voted for Trump because the Mexicans down the road, who I'm pretty sure are here illegally, have a nicer truck than mine. Illegals don't pay taxes, so they can afford a better lifestyle than real Americans, and that isn't right.
And I've had to come to terms with the fact that it's not ignorance. We are not good people. We never were. We are, and have always been, part of the problem and there's very little I can do to drag my family back from that.
That's not going to stop being true in 2020. There is no way to put the blinders back on and resume pretending that my family are people I can admire and respect.
Edited by TobiasDrake on Jan 7th 2020 at 8:10:35 AM
My Tumblr. Currently side-by-side liveblogging Digimon Adventure, sub vs dub.
yes thats the ultimate problem with wanting "things to go back to normal". It's not just about trump, it's about the fact that a lot of people in the US have different and incompatible values and that isn't going away anytime soon. That's putting it charitably of course since a depressing amount of the time it's "some people think it's not ok to lock up people just because they're brown, and some people do or just don't care".
I actually made a student film about that very thing at the end of last year. It was about a centrist girl who meets a guy who seems charming and charismatic, so they decide to go on a date. While on the date, the guy says some bad shit which the girl brushes off and ignores. At the end of the date, the girl discovers that the guy is actually a Neo-Nazi and she dumps him. The film has an epilogue where she meets a new guy, but she's become smarter and more careful from that experience so she makes sure he's good before going on a date with him.
https://www.newsweek.com/2018/12/21/evangelicals-republicans-trump-millenials-1255745.html
This article from 2018 basically talks about how the culture war within Evangelicals has been one of the big things that has been fought in silence. In simple terms, White Evangelicals have always been fighting the Race War but it's been lost by them in modern times as the people they raised on code didn't get the hidden meaning and, well, aren't a bunch of racist homophobes. So, their latching themselves to Trump has only alienated them further from the new generation of believers. People disgusted by his behavior, racism, and homophobia.
They seem to be missing this and doubling down on it, though.
Edited by CharlesPhipps on Jan 7th 2020 at 7:48:10 AM
Author of The Rules of Supervillainy, Cthulhu Armageddon, and United States of Monsters.
x2 Also, Evangelism has been growing amongst minority populations, not white populations. Continuing to be racist towards minorities ultimately hurts the Evangelicals growing base of Black, Latino, Arabic and Asian members, which is also why many Evangelical Leaders (who are still predominantly white old men) are starting to tone down the dog whistling racism. Not all of them, but a lot of them.
Sooo apparently a Captain in Trumps "Detention Centers" is a self described fascist and neo nazi.
I mean, we could make stuff up like employees owning slaves, making fighting rings (animal or human, it doesn't matter), putting Justin Trudeau's brownface to shame, making bootleg video games, endorsing microtransactions, and pushing people, and it could easily be Accidentally Accurate.
ASAB: All Sponsors Are Bad." it's about the fact that a lot of people in the US have different and incompatible values and that isn't going away anytime soon."
a lot of people have incompatable values and yet dosent decent into the polarized madness that is US today, and while this isnt going anywhere soon I can see that people can return to a time were everyone wasnt on edge, expecting fuck ups from the other side to bash then in social media.
At some point there need to be a social deescalation on both side, otherwise it seen the only way one side can deal with another is expecting them to be beat forever and ever in time.
Now, HOW to achive that?.....that is the tricky part.
"My Name is Bolt, Bolt Crank and I dont care if you believe or not"![]()
Sure but there's a limit to how incompatible your values can be before you just aren't going to get along. When your neighbors start tacitly or openly endorsing white supremacy or other things that you feel strongly about you're not really going to see them in a positive light or have that be something you can just "live and let live".
Edited by Draghinazzo on Jan 7th 2020 at 3:16:25 PM

One thing that I've learned over the years is that you don't have to be a "bad person" to do terrible things, you just need to think what you're doing is right and not know any better.
I'm sure there were many people who voted for trump with at least some measure of "good intentions", or at least an absence of bad ones, but at best they made a terrible decision that has had extremely horrible effects on not just the US but the world as a whole. And we'll, they just kinda have to live with the fact that a lot of people aren't going to look at them fondly because of that, because "good" isn't something we are, it's something we do.
Personally, much like Bolsonaro supporters where I live, my sympathy for them is rather limited given that Trump's horribleness was rather self evident for anyone who bothered to actually look into the matter. They were either too naive, misinformed, ill-intentioned or a mixture of the three. Everything that Trump has done is exactly what people said he would do. You can't be a lamb, vote for the party of wolves and still expect your interests to be protected.
Edited by Draghinazzo on Jan 7th 2020 at 9:24:58 AM