Not exactly – it might loom larger in their minds, but that’s a bit different than accusations of bias. I’m saying that they’re no more likely to be biased against Trump based on this issue than other voters are to be biased in favor of him on this issue.
No, but I think anyone who asserts what Trump asserted has just asserted a bigoted thing.
Not the end of the world – I’ve said bigoted things in my life. When I’ve recognized them, I’ve apologized and tried (and still try) to improve myself and not say or do bigoted things any more.
I don’t think this is the same thing as bias or “conflict of interest”. This sentiment just makes it easy to dismiss any concerns (for example) from black people about disparate treatment – they’re just biased because they’re black. No, they’re no more likely to be biased about this issue than any other group, even if they think about it more.
To start over a bit (and end the hijack I participated in), my OP was not in any way intended as a shot at conservatives or even Trump supporters. I’m quite heartened that most of the response from Dope conservatives has been heartfelt agreement.
Not even the part where you said that a more than insignificant fraction of Trump supporters are driven by bigotry and xenophobia and will move forward with their disgusting agenda anyway they can?
You said you had “fears” that there was a “significant element of white supremacism among any significant number of Trump supporters”. You weren’t specific about what constitutes a “significant number”, but I assumed you meant anything greater than a small minority of people.
Since roughly half of the US population voted for the man, for there to be a proportionately large number of white supremacists in that group there would have to be a proportionately large number of white supremacists in the US population. I don’t believe that to be the case, our culture would be dramatically different if it was.
Andy - If you can wade through what’s going to be a lenghty post, I think you’ll find out why the tone for expressing your fears and anguish is notable even if some are challenging pieces of it as I typed this. Oh and …Thanks!
This thread about Trump supporters had a great, but lengthy link, to a paper by Karen Stenner “Three Kinds of ‘Conservatism.’” (Thanks again Sampiceros. )It was pretty clear before I stopped bothering to read the thread the numbers that bothered to read her research was low. A much shorter read is an Atlantic Article from a couple days ago that uses her work with some others “Making Up Is Hard to Do.”
I think, since it’s coming up in seemingly ever other thread at the moment, at least the Atlantic article is important reading for a community which says it values fighting ignorance. The first couple of paragraphs in the longer journal article does quite a bit to break out different strains of conservatism which is relevant to what you ask. The Atlantic article is not necessarily easy reading for someone highly partisan on either side. Stenner challenges some common stereotypes of what conservatism. Her assertions challenge perceptions about racism and how to respond. Her research also points to racism as a natural response by authoritarians to certain stimuli that have become increasingly common in our discourse.
The three strands of conservatism Stenner identifies (quotes from the Psychology Press journal article):
Authoritarianism - “an enduring predisposition, in all matters political and social, to favor obedience and conformity (oneness and sameness) over freedom and difference.”
Status quo conservatism - “an enduring inclination to favor stability and preservation of the status quo over social change”
Laissez-faire conservatism - “a persistent preference for a free market and limited government intervention in the economy”
As the Atlantic story points out those last two strains of conservatism tend to work against your worse fears. Good news, you didn’t need to appeal to a lot of us. We’re already predisposed to reject the things you fear most. Even most of the people I know who voted for Trump fall more in those categories and wouldn’t want to see your worst fears come true…just for different reasons.
I’ll shortcut the “both sides don’t do it the same” response. It doesn’t matter if we’re not equivalent. It doesn’t matter if my side started it or are most active in promoting the divisiveness; I’d agree in a lot of cases we have. (Seriously, did “they started it” or “they are worse” work on any of our parents as kids? :D) We can all own the pieces, however big or small, that we personally can affect. We can all take the initiative to challenge not just our opponents hyper-partisanship, but the hyper-partisanship inside our own parties and our own echo chambers. That applies to the more limited conservative numbers on our board. That applies to the larger number of liberal posters; help us, help you. It applies to any and everyone of us that’s politically engaged.
Because if not… Well, I have personal experience in the aftermath of what happens when we don’t stop going down this trail. I got to see the results of ethnic cleansing in Bosnia. I walked the still bullet scarred, years later, streets of Srebrenica and visited key sites involved in the systematic massacre of thousands based on their ethnicity. I’ve driven into Sarajevo seeing graves anywhere there was available ground, like road medians and former Olympic venues. I’ve driven past a hotel overlooking the Drina where a paramilitary force systematically raped and murdered scores of women before dumping the bodies into the river from the room balconies. I had a friend come back looking ghostly from a site where the UN was exhuming a mass grave (IIRC it was a secondary or tertiary site, i.e. it was the rotting bodies they’d dug up and moved to try and hide them from war crimes investigators.) A house roped off because of mines or boobytraps wasn’t even notable. Minefield sides on the side of the road were more common than billboards in some areas. This was in the part of the former Yugoslavia that had a** reputation for multiculturalism.**
I’m not saying we’re at that level; it’s not even close. It absolutely is vital that we keep in mind just how bad things can go if we trigger our authoritarians long and hard enough. Ordinary, decent, rational people who weren’t authoritarian, racist, or particularly extreme eventually picked up arms and started raping, torturing and murdering neighbors of a different ethnic group. Like I said, IMO, we’re not even close. It’s a good time to take a look much further down the trail. It’s a good time for all of us to take a look at how we got here. It’s a good time to use the shock to break us out of our routine reactions so we don’t have a thin skin about it. It’s not time to point fingers. There are bitter pills to swallow for all of us non-authoritarians who are politically engaged. It’s the way we turn back from the trail that leads to blood, horror, and classifying mass graves locations by whether they are a “primary” site or not.
The second to last paragraph in the Atlantic article is a good place to stop, if anybody is even still reading.
Like last summer’s Democratic convention theme we’re “Better together.” On this, we better be together.
I don’t know what you’re talking about. Maybe some of the other conservative Dopers like Shodan can explain it better, since they seem to have very graciously understood and responded to my plea.
American society trains people especially minorities to be offended. X happens and then the liberal media screams how horribly racist or sexist it is. People learn to automatically become angry whether or not x is something they disagree with. Judge Curiel is human. He sees and reads all of these accusations that Trump hates Mexicans and it has to affect him at least a little. Perhaps, it makes him adhere strictly to the law to compensate or perhaps he becomes biased. We’ll never really know because it could be unconscious. If white liberals didn’t manipulate minorities, this wouldn’t be an issue.
Ideally, judges must transcend their personal sympathies and prejudices and aspire to achieve a greater degree of fairness and integrity based on the reason of law, but that might not be possible in all or most cases.
I think we heard the words that came out of his mouth. I also think that we shouldn’t be in constant need of interpreters to tell us what he is “really” saying.
But the Voter ID laws we were discussing were specifically and knowingly targeted to reduce minority, particularly black, vote. How is that not racist?
Because the 63% of Democrats who support voter ID shows that it is possible to support it for non-racist reasons. Perhaps we could discuss those reasons.
Misleading stat, even I do agree ID is valid, but in practice the Republicans are not helping minorities to get those IDs, in reality they make it harder for minorities and the poor to get them. And it is is not just IDs the reason for the complaints.
As I pointed many times before, most Republcians are not racists or jerks, but they end up voting for the ones that are or help them the most.
