Except that literally no one in this thread has made that statement, and in fact the people who point out that they don’t want to be friends with a trump supporter have consistently said the complete opposite. Would you seriously be friends with someone who believed that you (not some ‘other’ group like muslims) should be rounded up and put in camps for their safety? Or who wanted to revoke your ability to get married? It’s really easy to frame things as ‘disagreement’ when they don’t affect you personally, but it’s intellectually dishonest.
Again, no one has said anything remotely like that, but so many people on the internet don’t seem to understand really basic English usage like the difference between all, some, and none. There are plenty of topics where someone can have a different opinion without being stupid or evil, but not all topics are ‘just a different opinion’. Would you really want to hang out with someone who was pro-slavery? (That’s not a hypothetical or exaggeration BTW, I have encountered that more than once.)
Pantastic, I don’t always agree with you on things, but I’m 100% with you on this.
Not all politics are the same, folks. There’s “I believe in small government, tax policies that favor the rich and middle class, and a strong military” kind of politics. And then there’s “I’m willing to waive basic civil rights for millions of innocent people–none of whom look like me or have last names like mine, so I don’t have anything to worry about–in the name of national and local security.”
I’m not willing to be friends with someone who will gladly push me into the violent clutches of the police just because I have brown skin and look like a terrorist and/or criminal, all so they can continue with their delusional way of life. Someone who is a Republican isn’t necessarily for this. But a Trump supporter is, expressly or tacitly.
You can vote for trump, and not need to be stupid or evil. You can be against hillary, and not be stupid or evil. But to actively and vocally support Trump? You either don’t know what he stands for, or you agree with what he stands for.
Why not? I have friends who believe in destructive economic and tax policy. Policy that would cost my family over a hundred thousand a year. They believe economics is a 0 sum game and the poor and unproductive are being robbed of their rightful wealth. How someone sitting in a double wide, neglecting their babies and smoking meth has “rightful wealth” is a mystery to me but I digress.
I have plenty of friends with whom I disagree, thank you very much. But Trump is in a class all by himself. I have greater respect for child molesters than I do for Donald J Trump.
Brexit is a tempest in a teapot compared to the shitstorm that President Trump would be. For the entire world. Unfortunately, there are enough stupid or contrarian or flat-out bigoted people in my country across the pond that that’s a very real possibility. And it scares the shit out of me, as it should you.
Well, of course. Here’s a fun one to scroll through on some of his views on foreign policy: Donald Trump on Foreign Policy
This guy rising to power seems pretty terrifying to me. I honestly don’t know if it’s overly alarmist to think he’d push us a lot further towards WW3.
Though I do think Brexit is pretty dangerous as well, albeit mostly economically. The best hope the world actually has there is if we completely screw ourselves over, setting an example to other EU members so as not to destabilise the EU completely and have knock-on global economic effects.
I’m not sure that ending friendships, as was the topic of the thread, is really the way to handle the problem of Trump’s popularity though - again, it just widens divisions and continues to ignore the rather uncomfortable-to-talk-about concerns people have (immigration, for example) which will keep pushing them further towards the extremes. I really don’t think this view we keep seeing of “I think you’re a racist bigot and don’t want to talk with you ever again” and the unwillingness we’re seeing from both sides (let’s say right and left for simplicity) to talk a little more calmly and come to compromises is constructive at all. For the most part, people are not monsters - they’re often like this because they’ve been convinced that everyone else are monsters, after all. Yet that’s what we’re often seeing, even this idea that our friends are turning into them.
If a friend here in Australia (we tend to be more reticent about our political affiliations) told me they upheld the tenets that Trump adhered to, they wouldn’t be on my Christmas card list this year…
My argument is after you’ve talked to them, and let them know what he believes. As your friends, I assume they would not think you were lying to them or stupid and believing lies.
I’m talking people who are still okay with Trump after you let them know what he really stands for. Not people who say “Okay, I don’t support Trump, but I still have to vote Republican due to the Supreme Court stuff.”
I mean people who actually still support him. I think, at that point, your friend is actually telling you that they support the stuff Trump says.
But, hey, I’ll admit I’ve not had to deal with this. Pretty much all my actual friends think Trump is horrible. The worst I have are people saying they’re both horrible. Most of the people I might call “casual friends,” we’re not close enough to discuss politics. And I keep my Facebook politics free, so I wouldn’t know if they say it on there.
I don’t have enough time or energy to keep up with all of the people that I WANT to be friends with. So why should I take time away from people that I actually like and that aren’t actively trying to destroy the lives of people that I like to maintain ‘friendships’ with people who are actively dangerous to me and my friends?
Why do you think it’s unconstructive for people to avoid spending their personal time, energy, and money with racist bigots and those who cheerfully support bigots and their agenda? You seem to think that racist bigots are entitled to my personal time and energy for some reason, but they’re simply not.
And there isn’t any room for compromise on issues like ‘should trans people be treated as people,’ ‘should we lock Muslims in camps’, ‘should gay people get equal rights’, any more than there should be compromise on issues like ‘should interracial marriage be allowed’, ‘should there be whites-only lunch counters’, and so on, so there’s no way to reach an effective compromise position.
I’m not making any suggestion for how *you *should choose your friends or that they’re entitled to anyone’s time - merely stating my own philosophy on retaining those who I don’t entirely agree with. The examples you give are frighteningly extreme though - I don’t know anyone that bad and can’t see myself befriending someone that awful in the first place. I was thinking more along the lines of people who just somehow have managed to have been convinced that Trump is a good idea, and that locking Muslims in camps, removing gay rights, removing interracial marriage etc aren’t something that he’d actually do (to be fair, that may indeed be a bit of a leap). If I’m friends with someone it means I see the good in them, and in that case they’re probably just… not very intelligent. If ever I gain decent debating skills from haunting this forum, maybe I’ll be able to change a few minds.
Not that I can currently think of any friends who are Trump supporters, but I suspect one would be because he just likes to be edgy, much like when he was Brexiteering.
The bizarre thing about this thread is that, on one hand, people say ‘gosh, you guys are so narrow-minded for not being friends with a Trump supporter’. Then when you bring up major Trump campaign points, people say 'oh, that’s frighteningly extreme, I wasn’t talking about something that bad."
Am I the only one who is disturbed by the notion that having any standards about who you call a friend is inherently “close-minded”?
I wouldn’t expect someone who is deeply religious to befriend me. I can be quite irreverent. I’m given to cursing. Sometimes I laugh at dirty jokes. I hate superstitious/magical thinking. I don’t appreciate people saying stuff like “I’ll pray for you”. I will never agree to going to someone’s church. I’m not overtly hostile or mean towards religious people, but I wouldn’t expect a deeply religious person to want to be around me. Because I’m likely to say something that would rub them the wrong way. Why hang out with people who are going to rub you the wrong way?
Because it’s good for your soul. It’s unhealthy, imho, to live in an ideological bubble. Real life isn’t a college “safe space.” It helps to challenge and have challenged world views. That’s how you grow as a person. What’s unhealthy is trying to coerce forcefully changes of opinion. This is basically the very topic that got me posting on this board to begin with.
I could be friends with a Romney supporter, or even a McCain supporter. I could be (and am) friends with a Mormon, despite my quite extreme negative views on all religions. I could be friends with all sorts of people with whom I disagree on a wide variety of topics. I could not, however, be friends with someone who wanted to destroy the country I love. I can talk to a Trump voter and even be polite to one. I could be coworkers with Trump voters. I could not be friends with one, any more than I could be friends with a Klan member, or a person who refused to issue marriage licenses to a gay couple. We all have to draw the line somewhere I draw it at supporting Trump. The man is utterly unqualified to be President, and anyone who doesn’t see that or doesn’t care is not someone I wish to be friends with.
You know, I just searched the thread for the word “minded”. The only results apart from “conspiracy-minded” and “reminded”, were people defending themselves against a nonexistent claim that they’re closed or narrow minded.