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Edited by Mrph1 on Nov 30th 2023 at 11:03:59 AM
Voting Republican is not a mental illness, and it is not a crime, either. Talking about putting Republican voters in asylums or jails is a very dangerous route to go. Criminalizing and psychologizing entire groups based on how they vote never leads to good outcomes.
Hope shines brightest in the darkest times![]()
,
Izeinsummer's comment was less a prescriptive thing and more "how can anyone believe this shit and still be sane?"
It's disbelief that people with full mental faculties seriously think what we need is four more years of...all this.
It's not like we're in any way shape or form equivalent to the Trump supporters at rallies chanting "LOCK HER UP".
Also, have we forgotten that it's not just because of their voting patterns? A good number of these people also engage in hate speech and conspiracy mongering. It's been pointed out that fucking Qanon believers are gaining power in the GOP now.
Edited by M84 on Aug 17th 2020 at 7:45:33 PM
Disgusted, but not surprisedYou should not tolerate talk like that, though. It is highly undemocratic.
People have the right to vote Republican, and they should have that right. To say people who would still vote for Trump for whatever reason should be jailed is not democracy, it is despotism.
Talk like that is why people vote against democrats even when they are not really republican, because they keep hearing this kind of off-kilter rhetoric from the left. Don't alienate people who would vote for you by suggesting they should go to jail or an asylum for voting against you.
And we should certainly do something about that, but it does not automatically make voting for Trump a crime. People have plenty of reasons to vote the way they do, up to and including voting against democrats because of overgeneralizing rhetoric from the left.
Edited by Redmess on Aug 17th 2020 at 1:50:03 PM
Hope shines brightest in the darkest times
I already pointed out that this was not what they were saying. Izein at least sounded more like expressing disbelief that anyone sane would want four more years of this. And Rainingmetal was clearly talking more about hate speech laws and what not.
Again, what is with your tendency to assume that people on this thread are idiots or worse?
Edited by M84 on Aug 17th 2020 at 7:54:10 PM
Disgusted, but not surprisedI did not blame anyone. I was just trying to point out that you should reach out to people across the aisle who vote Republican for reasons other than racism or sexism.
Look, I'm sorry if I don't always come across clearly due to my autism playing up, but I respect you all and I am on your side, I promise.
Hope shines brightest in the darkest timesPeople who are voting for Trump aren't insane, crazy or stupid(in most cases)...
They are brainwashed into cult-mentality by the propaganda-talkshow FOX.
And brainwashed people are way harder to deal with than mere ignorant or insane ones.
That's all there is to it.
(Alos, people who are voting for Trump, aren't voting "Republican", but "Trump" and "Trump" alone. Which is why other Republicans trying to imitate Trump to harvest voters has failed so spectacular every time anyone tried.)
(The Trump Death Cult only wants "Trump". And trying to make them realize the reality about what he has done and damaged, is going to be impossible unless they themselves wants to see it for what it really is.)
(That is the kind of people that would vote for him. Cultists. Without any loyalty to politics whatsoever.)
Putting aside that he's an experienced politician who has familiarity with the job thanks to two terms as Vice President of the United States, he has what is, to me, the most important qualification of all: He's not Donald Trump.
People can say whatever they want about Biden, but there is nothing so bad about him that it makes a second term of Donald Trump a preferable option.
Yes, it was a rhetorical device. On consideration, not a very well chosen one as mental health systems have been abused for political ends in quite a few places.
That said, I do visit conservative spaces on the internet, and some of the things people say there are just absurd. The sanest of them are blatantly isolated demands for rigor - Complaining about the V Ps pick record as a prosecutor is, for example a fair complaint (D As do a lot of evil shit, and cali was not an unique bastion of righteousness during her tenure) but compared to the utterly-lawless enforcement Trump-et-all stand for, it is text book "Look to the beam in your eye before your neighbours splinter", and it goes down hill from there very, very fast.
Epistemic closure is a very anodyne term, but near as I can tell it is damn well going to be the ruin of the united states of america.
It's also not the way that that term is used in Philosophy which personally annoys me, but what can you do.
Either way I think it is somewhat dangerous to assume that Conservatives aren't acting in their self-interest. I mean, it's easy to think that they are being duped by economic snake-oil, but I think if you look more closely you will find that many conservatives are relatively economically secure (at least compared to other Americans) and are not really concerned about economic issues (even if they act like they are sometimes). Their main concerns are cultural and social, the preservation of an ideal concept of "America" that is white, christian, suburban, capitalist, imperialist (I don't really know what else to describe the desire to remain the world's preeminent economic, political, and military power common among conservatives), etc.
This is also why I don't like that people say that Trump's populism is "fake".
For one, populism really isn't a coherent political theory so much as a kind of rhetorical style. And two, his rhetoric was always more focused on cultural and social issues then economic issues so in that sense he is more or less following through and his rhetoric and just because some of this will hurt some of his supporters economically does not negate his rhetoric which was primarily focused on other issues.
Economic security depends on political stability, and the republican party is lighting it on fire. The USPS thing is a near-platonically-perfect example of how they are acting very, very directly against the interests of their voters.
The post is important to business! And retirees. And just the economy in general. I mean sure, fewer letters than there were, but also lots, and lots more packages.
If you are a farmer, and you are direct-selling honey as a side-hustle, that is the postal service. You retired, and making some extra money engraving walnut stocks for hunting rifles ? Postal. Ect. Ect. Killing it would hand an unconscionable percentage of a lot of small businesses margins over to UPS.
Not to mention the goddamn ridiculous stunts like turning down medicaid expansion. That is just leaving money on the table for no good reason. And what Trump did to US agri-buisness. That tradewar of choice he started with China? That was *ruin* to a lot of farmers.
As a preface, let me just add my voice to people saying it: do not conflate evil with mental illness. The mentally ill, and I mean this in full sincerity and not as an Insult to Rocks joke, do not deserve to be blamed for Trump. My best friend suffers from paranoid schizophrenia and I'd sooner have her in the White House than him, because she is at least capable of human empathy.
Conservative thought is not a mental illness. It's a fundamental shift in worldview. If you want to better understand the thought process that leads to shit like Trumpism, I recommend this video from The Alt-Right Playbook, a series dissecting the motives and methodology of American Nazis.
In this video, Innuendo Studios explains some of the central tenets to conservative thought and how they differ so vastly from the ideals of a democratic nation as to directly undermine democracy in exactly the kinds of ways we're still seeing from Trump today. If you want to understand how Republicans can look at the things Trump's doing and not see authoritarian red flags and warning bells, check out this video.
Short version: They do see the red flags. But undermining democracy to preserve power hierarchies is what they want. Conservative ideology is fundamentally undemocratic, and Conservatives have no illusions about that. They believe in capitalism above democracy, but more than that, they believe in preserving the existing power structure from which they benefit; regardless of what form that takes.
Have you ever had a Conservative unironically tell you that the U.S. is not a democracy? I've had that conversation with my dad. Don't write that off as, "This guy's super wrong about a thing." That person is telling you a core point of what they believe. Republicans think that the U.S. is not, and should not be, a democratic nation.
Edited by TobiasDrake on Aug 17th 2020 at 8:10:59 AM
My Tumblr. Currently side-by-side liveblogging Digimon Adventure, sub vs dub.

Well, here's an ABC poll with Biden +12% lead with RVs and a +10% lead with LVs.
It's also worth noting that CNN's polling this year has been crazy swingy; in June Biden was at +14, and in May he was at +5.