Your points are all well made, but entirely a straw man. This isn’t the “are all Trump supporters evil” thread.
I don’t think that that is something that is said by the vast majority here.
If you take the negative description of a trump supporter, and choose to associate it with evil, that is your choice. But you are the one who has done that.
Short sighted, selfish, dumb, misguided, unconsciously bigoted, consciously bigoted, easily misled, religiously intolerant, shallow, incurious, biased towards members of one’s ingroup, and morally failing is how they are described. You just took those negative descriptions, said that by using them, we were calling them evil, then said that those negative descriptions don’t mean that they are evil.
The only references I have seen to the word evil is in acts, not in thoughts.
As stated, I live in Trump country. 90% of the people I interact with, including my family, are Trump supporters. I don’t think that most of them are evil, but I do think that they are short sighted, selfish, dumb, misguided, unconsciously bigoted, consciously bigoted, easily misled, religiously intolerant, shallow, incurious, biased towards members of one’s ingroup, and morally failing. If you think that makes them evil, that’s your choice of description, not mine.
If they have made their political affiliations clear on their social media, then I would say that that is probably the case.
I live in Arkansas. It’s not the Deep South, but it is a red state.
Nothing you described means supporting Donald Trump. You described people who voted for him, but showed no indication they actually support him.
I have tons of Facebook friends who are like that. None of them actively support Trump in any visible way. The closest I saw was someone saying that they found one of Trump’s ads enticing.
There don’t seem to be any memes that support Trump that aren’t about hating on innocent people or with a trolling attitude showing their purpose is to piss people off. And if they don’t post that stuff, you have no way of knowing they are a Trump supporter.
Finally, your politics inevitably affects others, as that’s what politics is about. You vote to change how the country acts, which then affects the other people in that country. It can’t be private.
And, again, we’re talking people who support an evil person who is trying to install himself as an unelected leader, overturning the law. We’re not even talking what we used to call “politics” where different people have common values but disagree about how to best achieve them.
Finally, I would argue that, as I understand the terms, a moral failing and evil are the same thing. What is moral is what is good, and what is immoral is what is evil. The only debate is whether a particular moral failing (aka evil belief or action) makes the entire person evil.
We all have some evil in us, in the same way we all have some racism in us. We’ve all fallen short of true goodness. But that doesn’t mean we’re all evil people as the term is usually used.
I’ve said before that I think Trump is first undeniably, inarguably evil president that I know of. Even G.W. Bush seemed to be trying to do what was best for the country. Trump doesn’t even try to pretend to be a good person.
As I understand it, @BigT is claiming that voting for a president who does X means you are very likely willing to do X yourself. (Which I happen to think is pretty silly.) That is the only equivalency I am drawing here.
As for the question, I had a colleague who was fresh out of university and supported Trump, as well as voting for Brexit. It’s not exactly the same, but I don’t think supporting Trump in itself should be disqualifying. Some of the attitudes commonly associated with it might be.
Agree; however, I have to say that there is a time element here about when I would screen out Trump supporters.
IMHO right now there are plausible reasons for some supporting Trump, down to the pedantic: “He is still our president”. But, as soon January 20, 2021 rolls over, if an applicant is still yelling on Facebook that “Trump is still our president!!”…
Well, there would be other reasons why I would not hire him/her, and they will not be related about issues like stealing, but more about his/her mental health.
False equivalence. Bill Clinton always agreed it’s wrong to cheat on your spouse. Because he knew it was wrong, he went to some pains to hide it. When finally cornered, he admitted it and apologized. All his supporters admitted what he did was wrong, and the only point of contention was whether anybody truly believed he deserved to be removed, or it was a politically motivated stunt by cynical men who were later on proven to do the same thing (*cough cough Newt Gingrich).
Now, wanna do Trump on white supremacy or tossing kids in cages?
In any other situation, I would understand that. But the whole issue with Trump support is how often we find out that people who seem to have been decent people are actually willing to ignore their own morality when sufficiently primed to do so.
That’s what’s so disturbing about it. People I thought were good are willing to throw that all away in support of Trump. My only conclusion is that they were duping me this entire time, or that they’ve changed from who I thought they were.
(Note that this is only those who are supporting these things knowingly.)
Yikes. While I might be able to understand thinking Trump and Pence are pro-Israel (that would fit under being misled), that last stuff is full on bigotry. It’s not that he feels he can’t support them because they support a Palestinian state or something–an actual political disagreement. He can’t support the Democrats because they dared allow someone of Palestinian descent to be voted in? And that they actually believe in religious freedom, and so wouldn’t not vote in a Muslim for being Muslim?
That’s not being pro-Israel. That’s being bigoted against Palestinians and Muslims. It’s morally no different than a KKK member not being able to support the Democrats for having a black person in Congress.
I would worry that someone who is willing to do that would freak out if he found out that I was not 100% on Israel’s side in this conflict. I think they are wrong to not at least allow a Palestinian state, and I think it’s wrong to privilege Israelis over others. There are some legitimate issues with the Palestinians, but also a whole lot of bigotry and hatred going on.
And if he can justify supporting Trump despite his immoral actions, why wouldn’t he be able to justify screwing me over? I have always had a hard time trusting anyone who can set aside their morals for a single issue.
I don’t really think of Trump as antivax, so I don’t think that’s relevant. Being pro-science though would mean that he thinks that Trump was wrong to ignore the science resulting in the deaths of 100,000s of Americans. The only possible mitigating factor would be if he’s bought into the propaganda campaign that this isn’t true (though that would be a strike against trusting him to make decisions). I’ll be favorable and assume this is the case.
However, if he doesn’t think the election was stolen, why is he a Trump supporter in the present tense? He supports Trump trying to overturn the election? If he actually thought there might be a chance he won, then I can see a justification. But it he knows he lost, he should no longer be supporting Trump, as he is trying to overturn Democracy itself.
Based on your description, he sounds like someone I would not hire to be my accountant or anything else. Antisemitism is wrong as it’s a form of racism, so another form of racism is not okay. I would not want to financially support such hatred.
You did successfully convince me that you know he probably won’t cheat you. It’s the outright bigotry that’s the dealbreaker for me. I can tolerate unconscious bigotry, but not something so blatant.
And I think that, if bigots had to start keeping quiet about their bigotry lest they lose customers, it would be a good deterrent to them being able to spread their ideas.
Well, I was mostly responding to @BigT, who did seem to be saying that, but on reading his response, I think he may be making a distinction between “Trump supporter” and “Trump voter” that I was not making.
I have found a number of pro-Trump people of my acquaintance flat-out do not believe the worst atrocities, such as separating kids from parents at the border. I know another person who actually did do some work for Trump in the past and was paid in full on time - so he discounts instances where that is not true because it does not conform to his personal experience.
I still think these people are wrong, mistaken, and in denial, but as I said I seek to understand other viewpoints. Understanding is not the same as approval.
Um… you seem shocked that there might be bigoted Jews. Personally, I find it disturbing just how anti-Palestinian some Jewish people are. I get that there are Palestinian terrorists, but I don’t view everyone of Palestinian heritage as inherently terrorist - yet there are people who do. I’ve also known Jewish people who are bigoted towards Germans, even though not all German were/are Nazis (and not all Nazis were German). Jewish people are people, and they have the same range between tolerant and bigoted as anyone else.
There’s a reason I refuse to discuss the topic in many situations. I really don’t want to get involved in the sort of shouting match that can arise from that.
Yep, I’d have to agree with that.
Don’t conflate “Palestinian” and “Muslim”. Not all Muslims are Palestinian, and not all Palestinians are Muslim. I gather that the person’s ire is directed at Palestinians regardless of religion, and anyone who supports the notion of a Palestinian state. Not that I’ve discussed this, as on this subject he’s quite irrational.
Assuming you’re not Palestinian or pro-Palestinian it’s highly unlikely he’d have a motivation to do that. Actually, I think it’s more likely he’d simply decline to work for anyone of that description rather that swindle people. Outside of the target of their bigotry, bigots can actually be trustworthy. It’s not like they’re wholly evil, just as the tolerant are not wholly good, either. People are a mix of traits.
Here’s the thing: you actually deal with bigots every day of your life. You just don’t know they’re bigots, because (most likely) you’re not the target of their bigotry. If you attempted to cut all bigots out of your life and never deal with such people you might be hard pressed to conduct your affairs because they are that common.
Ethically, if I am paying someone with my money, I can specify any terms I like.
HST, I am ethically bound to full disclosure of the terms at the time of engagement.
This is not the same as the legal requiremen, as a public trust, when advertisimg publicly for a job.
If I have an unused space and and someone asks if he can rent it, I can ethically say No. But the minute I put up a sign For Rent, all my ethical rights are replaced by legal rights, which are not the same…
In the place I work we had a couple Trump supporters, really strong ones. One guy now works for another business owned by the guy who owns my workplace. He didn’t get fired, buy moved over, when he was seen on Facebook, wearing our companies shirt, maskless at a bar. Trumpists often don’t want to wear masks.
I don’t see that this addresses my point at all. Do you believe in general that voting for a person who has done bad thing X in their personal life means you personally would do X? That strikes me as a completely unwarranted assumption.
That question would pertain to this conversation if we were talking about a single “bad thing X”, but we obviously aren’t. We are talking about a shitload of "bad thing X"s and those that ignore all those "bad thing X"s because they think there is A “good thing X” they want to support.
Well, yes, that would be my argument too. People are willing to overlook politicians doing bad things if said politicians are also doing things they see as good. So there is no reason to assume the Trump-supporting accountant approves of defrauding people or is likely to commit financial fraud. But it’s a minor point in any case.
It obviously isn’t your argument too, because you repeatedly downplay the aspect of the situation I just pointed out.
Until “Hire the Ethically Handicapped” becomes a thing, I have no problem looking twice before hiring a Trump supporter.
Yes. Trump voter? Ok.
Rabid maga hat wearer ‘stop the steal’ conspiracy nut- Nope. whole lotta NOPE.
I don’t even know what you’re arguing about now. Do you disagree about the accountant?
If the person was a full-on MAGAt, then I wouldn’t trust them to take proper COVID precautions and would consider them a danger to my other employees.
I would also be concerned about having that level of authoritarianism on the team. A person who expects the boss to swing a big D around the office, will probably wind up insubordinate to a person as team-oriented and cooperative as I am. I don’t like having to play the game in order to keep folks like that productive. And in the end, that’s the art of hiring. There are usually quite a few people who can do the job. The question is how well do they fit into the culture of the office? If Trump is your sort of leader, then I am not.
This. The issue isn’t political affiliation or voting choice, it’s the extent to which the person is able to function in a reality-based environment (or at least compartmentalize their crazy so that it doesn’t affect their work). Many Trump supporters are perfectly fine, while others are openly (and loudly) delusional. That’s where the dividing line is.