It doesn't matter what your reasons are for putting someone in power. You or others may support anti-immigration laws to protect job markets, housing, medical care, etc. Those are valid concerns, but it doesn't matter. Trump is not the change that these people are looking for. Votes are fuel; at the end of the day, anyone who votes for him is complicit in the rhetoric he uses, and bears responsibility for the further spread of hatred and bigotry towards marginalized groups in our society. You might say that those voting for him have nobody else to turn to, that the current political system has disenfranchised them to the point where they have no choice. You'd be correct. There is always a choice to defend those who cannot defend themselves; it usually requires personal sacrifice, and it always reflects on the character of those who make it.
If you chose to vote for Trump because of his economic policies and the benefits it would get you, you chose money over the safety of your fellow citizens. You felt your fellow non white citizens were less important than your 401k. That when white nationalists were chanting “Jews will not replace us” and the president would not condemn them you stood by him.
There is a massive list of horrible things this president has done. Many acts of fraud through out his entire life. An open child rape court case. Through all of this they have supported him. It’s not one cherry picked example. Trump supporters have nothing to hold up anymore. If you are one, look yourself in the mirror and say “I have been a terrible human being and American citizen, but I will work to be better”.
Trump supporters don’t deserve sympathy or respect. Trump supporting republicans need to earn that.
Trump ran on the platform of racism, xenophobia and hatred. To support him (aside from whatever legitimate grievance one had) is to support that. Everyone who voted for him is responsible for his policies, and it's really doubtful that many of them regret it.
Just because someone votes for Trump doesn't mean they aren't sick of his incompetence/dishonesty/corruption. It just means they prefer him to the alternative.
The thing that will sit deep within me for at least the next few years is that, no matter how you slice it, a vote for Trump is complicit acceptance of his divisive and harmful behavior. Of course you don't need to be a racist to vote for Trump, but you do need to fear the other options so much that you agree that his behavior and the way that he represents our country to the rest of the world is tolerable compared to what might come after him.
I was on the phone with my mom earlier and one of her friends called her up. She's a republican, but they avoid politics. She asked her, genuinely afraid, if she thought that Harris would steal the presidency and convert the country to socialism. She's not an idiot. She's a physician, but was still so caught up in fear mongering that she genuinely believed that the government would steal her income and that there would be riots in the streets as we turn into a third world nation. I'm going to think about her differently after hearing that.
This is probably the first time in my life where I am going to look at people differently based on who they voted for and I hate that. However, I can't get it out of my head that they voted for a president that has so disgraced the highest office in our country and that they did it because of a fear of the future burning so far inside them that they felt another four years of Trump was preferable to even as bland of a change as a Biden presidency will be.
If your attitude is to keep talking down Trump voters as being idiots don't expect any sympathy from me when Trump gets re-elected. In fact, the more you marginalise them the more radical and United they will get, before you criticize others for acting against their own self interest realise that you're doing the same.
> It's possible to be the victim of your own desperation, which is just what such people perpetually have been throughout history. Everyone sees that kind of person as a rube, Left, Right, and Center... it's always just a fight for their hearts and minds.
Yes, and the guy offering a bad solution looks better than the guy offering no solution.
If you voted for Trump then you've made those lives you care so much about worse, not better. Trump is someone who makes a lot of noise but who has absolutely no idea on how to actually implement any solutions and in the meantime he will remove the last little bits of the structures that keep those people alive. So congratulations on doing the wrong thing for the right reasons.
A majority of his voters did vote for Trump because they support his views on immigration. It's why they voted for him. To deny that is to simply deny reality just like Trump does on a daily basis.
Honest question - What will statements by tech CEOs do? Trump has a mandate given to him by the people of your country against the very elites this post is appealing to. The politicians are with him because they want to keep their power.
And am I misremembering all these powerful tech CEOs went grovelling to meet Trump and hoping to have a foot in the door with the new administration with Thiel?
If you vote for Trump, you are supporting a racist, misogynistic, Islamophobic, anti-LGBTQ fascist. You are in fact voting against the very principles of equality, liberty and diversity that this country was founded on. As such voting for -- much less, actually supporting Drumpf -- means you are endorsing violence against huge portions of the American public (e.g., sexual assault against women, imprisonment of Muslims, Latinos, etc).
Therefore, not only is there nothing wrong with forward looking organizations for excluding people as dispicable as Trump supporters, they have a responsibility to do so for the safety of their members who happen to be LGBTQ, Muslim, female, People of Color and basically anyone else who isn't a straight white male.
It's 2016, about damn time we send a message to the bigots that their hate is no longer okay and we're not going to tolerate it anymore. End. Of. Discussion.
I took some time to try to understand why so many americans happened to vote for Trump and I was left with the impression that the problem lies more with disenfranchisement than with vilifying and even dehumanizing scapegoats.
Beyond the usual conservative tropes of less state and stopping attacks on personal freedoms, I've seen Trump voters mention deescalation of wars and international tension and lower taxes. I've also seen Trump supporters criticizing what they perceive as lawlessness and pending threat of state-sponsored oppression, such as the demands to erode law enforcement. Trump supporters were also quick to point out that both Obama and Biden were behind escalation of targeted assassinations on foreign soil and also increasing attacks on privacy and personal rights doemstically.
More importantly, I've seen Trump supporters state they voted for Trump in spite of his despicable personality and failings, because they see in him someone who enacts the policies they want enacted although he comes off as kind of a loudmouth moron. Yet, they also state that the public persona is also very skewed due to all the media manipulation and blatant propaganda that is targeted at him.
Have you ever heard anyone give an honest, principled reason for voting for Trump? People who do stupid things usually don't understand why they're doing them.
There are two larges groups of people who are voting for Trump regardless of anything he does (as he said: he could shoot people down on 5th avenue and these people would still vote for him). The largest group of them are Republicans who will always vote Republican. My beef with these people is that I wish they were a little more loyal to our country's values than they were to their party, but fundamentally I've got no real problem with them.
The second group are all white nationalists. They honestly believe that Obama is a Muslim, that Jews control the banks and media, that immigration is bad for the country, etc.
I don’t know how anyone can rationally support Trump after he has clearly stated a desire to overturn a fairly contested election. In my book that means agreeing with him at this point is essentially saying you don’t value democracy. The man has had meetings to discuss getting the military to rerun elections injustice the states he needs to regain White House... He’s been trying to push violence to happen, he’s a racist. I don’t really know how he can be morally defended at this point. I would have had more respect for his positions and voters before the election but what he’s done to the US is a disaster that will take a long time to fix.
You are saying that every person who voted for Trump is an unreasonable and/or morally deficient person. It is highly arrogant to put yourself in the position to make that call and, as I've already said, only demonstrates a bigoted mindset on your part (that you think you can universally define such a large group of people as inferior based on a single, and very shallow determinant).
At this point, with the constant talk of how the election will be rigged and occasional talk of assassinating his opponent, a vote for Trump is a vote against the very foundations of democracy itself. It's no longer about decency, but about preserving the basis of our nation.
I respect everyone's right to express their views, whatever they may be, but there's no obligation to support people whose views I find reprehensible. And when someone supports those reprehensible views with a big chunk of cash, why shouldn't I object?
Did you grow up with 49% of the voters in this country, or are you generalizing them based on caricatured versions of your anecdotal experience?
I haven't and don't plan on voting for Trump. However, you can't generalize a group of people consisting of approximately 60 million very easily. Even if you can't fathom why they would support him, there's a wide variety of backgrounds, experiences, and ideologies within that massive group.
There are also many different political issues that have significant impacts on peoples' lives. Not everyone gets the same information about these issues. Even if they did, not everyone interprets and values them in the same exact way. I would bet most people voting for or against Trump are trying to do what they think will make the US a safe, fair, happy place to live. The problem is that many political issues are incredibly complex and most of them don't have clear cut solutions. Even in cases where they do, people still can't agree on the best course of action.
Some people like to hand wave the complexity away by taking the stance that "one party just wants freedom and equal rights for everyone and the other wants the opposite".
Lots of self centered emotionally driven actions and decisions most often leads to counter productive results though, so I don't know you can justify someone making things worse as not being his fault.
I also think you are speaking for other people with whom you seem to have no connection too. Maybe you think they're just voting for Trump, because they like his promess of bringing jobs back, or maybe, they're voting for him cause they want Iranians out of their country based on pure racism.
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