I am under the impression that davida03801’s “Spoken as a true progressive” was sarcastic, but he can clarify himself.
If you examine dictionaries thoroughly, you will find there are essentially 2 parts to the composition of bigotry. However, first, you must examine the term intolerant, for which there seems to be two general senses. In one sense, intolerant is used generically without regard to whether it’s reasonably justified (e.g. a law banning murder could be described as intolerance of murder) and, in the other sense, it entails an unreasonable justification. The second sense is essentially a synonym of bigotry. Generally, you will find that bigotry consists of simple intolerance paired with an unreasonable justification. This unreasonable justification is usually described as prejudice (drawing conclusions without evidence) or obstinance in the face of contrary evidence but I’ve also seen it described as merely “unreasonable” as well. Because of this, one can’t be “bigoted” against bigotry because it is not unreasonable to refuse to tolerate bigotry (because bigotry itself is defined as an unreasonable point-of-view).
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So much irony wrapped up in this short post. I think I’ll save it for posterity.
Political parties change over time.
Back in the 1840’s it was the Democrats that supported slavery, and in the years after the Civil War it was the Democrats that ran the south bringing about the Jim Crow laws, encouraged the KKK, and in any way possible keeping black folk down. This you can’t deny as the history is pretty clear. This era only ended in that 1980’s when the last of the old line southern dems in the Senate became gone. It was a Democrat of Robert Byrd who was the last former proud member of the KKK in the US Senate.
It was the Republicans under Lincoln that freed the slaves, and under T Roosevelt in the 1890’s that broke up the trusts. Additionally all of the civil rights legislation, and other social legislation, of the 1960’s would not have passed without Republican support. In fact the civil rights legislation had a higher percentage of Republican votes than Democrat.
So to say that only libs, democrats and progressives are the ones on the side of improving the cause of those down is bullshit, and historically not accurate.
Furthermore from the point of view of those whose incomes have dropped a significant percentage in the past 10-12 years, or who in that great mass of people no longer working but want to, plus a whole other series of issues it seems to them the Dems, libs and progressives of the world are concerned with everything else except them.
Your post demonstrates a fundamental misunderstanding of political history. In specific, you appear to have coupled the qualities of liberalism and conservatism to political parties when this is improper in a historical context. Today, this is often the way our parties are conceptualized, and rightly so. However, in Lincoln’s day, the Republicans were generally considered the liberal party and Democrats were the conservative party. Indeed the term “Radical Republicans” indicates that portion of the party would properly be considered “far left” on a modern left/right scale. Over most of American history, however, our parties were not so polarized. Indeed, individual parties have often included liberal and conservative wings on various classes of issues. For instance, when you say Republicans voted for the Civil Rights Act in 1964, that is true but those folks were generally social liberals in the vein of Rockefeller & Eisenhower. The social conservatives at that time were heavily concentrated in the Democratic Party, particularly in the south (hence, the reason filibusters against civil rights legislation were lead by southern Democrats). Those folks are still concentrated in the southern states but they’ve since switched their allegiance to the Republican party.
I don’t recall him saying anything about his own experience(s) for me to comment on - you’ll have to fill me in on exactly what those experiences of his were.
He can be truthful however much he wants about his own experience - since when would I call that into question?
Then you disagreed with that statement, then?
I can provide an example, or rather, several dozen (that I know of).
I have union brothers and sisters who are going to vote for Donald Trump and they are not motivated by ignorance, fear or gullibility. I described them here.
They are angry and disillusioned. They feel they’ve been cheated and lied to for decades. And they don’t give a flying fuck about the system because as far as they’re concerned, the system isn’t working as it is anyway.
It’s important to understand this, IMO.
Did you read the 1st line of what I said ? Appears not. You are agreeing to my point that political parties change roles over time.
Perhaps another change is coming along now. Who knows and time will tell, but signs are there as I view the political landscape. There are many Trump supporters that fit in the old Regan Democrat mode. There is also a great many other types who no longer feel the Democrat party represents their interests. The Dem elites are interested in everyone else except the concerns of the average guy. That is as I see it at the moment.
Trump is tapping into that. Will he pull it off remains to be seen. However the OP puts out a blanket statement that all Trump supporter are ignorant, racists, and bigoted plus some other insults. That most certainly not true. They are looking out for their own self interests and no longer see the Dems as a solution for them.
With all the anger and betrayal that a Trump supporter has rightfully felt, to then sublimate that disillusion by buying into the ludicrous Trump platform is, at best, not in their best interests. If they think Clinton is dishonest and won’t represent their needs, then they’re in for one nasty fucking surprise if Trump gets in office. And it will be their fault that such a loathesome piece of shit got voted in there in the first place.
Absolutely, but I disagree with the historical association of liberalism and progressiveness to the Democratic party. Consider the post you were responding to:
And within your response, you stated the following:
If fact, QuickSilver’s statement is historically accurate. He did not associate the Democrats with liberalism and progressiveness, historically. You did that.
Say, why don’t we deal with what Democrats and Republicans are doing and saying in 2016 instead of what they did and said a hundred and fifty years ago? I think that might be a little more germain to the conversation.
Returning to point this out to davida03801, but I see others were kind enough to do it for me:
As to this:
The news sources I read say quite the opposite. Trump is the antithesis to Reagan in so many ways. I can’t quite reconcile what a Reagan Democrat would find in common with Trump’s policies. Particularly those pertaining with his admiration of a Russian authoritarian.
That sentiment explains the popularity of Bernie Sanders in this election. Now that Bernie is no longer in the running, I would like to see reliable data that shows these folks are embracing Trump in statistically significant numbers.
It seems a reasonable conclusion to draw given abundant evidence of bigoted and factually unsupported rhetoric that Trump consistently promulgates to loud approving cheers of adoring crowds at his conventions.
It may very well be in their own self interest to scapegoat immigrants and minorities for their economic and social challenges, but that just makes them either ignorant or bigoted, or both. Thus, QED.
I don’t think he would do any of those things Talk is cheap especially if Trump is the one doing the talking.
If we were talking about religious followers of a particular person, whose religion just became a thing in the past couple of years, I think we’d make the same determinations. In fact, we have basically done so by hating the Westboro Baptist Church.
It’s really hard for me to call it bigotry when, at this point, the only reason to follow Trump is that you support what he is saying. And what he is saying is wrong. It’s not like most religions where you were raised in it, and come from a long line of people who were raised in it.
People like to bring up Islam, so I will, too. It’s possible for someone to stay a Muslim but get rid of the bad beliefs they were raised in. But if you get rid of the beliefs that come with Trumpism, what reason is there to actually support Trump?
Now, this doesn’t mean that attacking people for being Trump supporters is good, and perhaps that is enough to call something bigoted–that attacking them for it is unhelpful. But even I find it hard to allow the word to be weakened that much.
If they’ve been cheated and lied to for decades, that seems to be pretty strong evidence that they are, in fact, ignorant and gullible.