Honest arguments for Trump

Politics & Elections
61

One honest argument I heard, from the kindly friend, is that he thinks the economy is going to be better with Trump. He is a Salvadoran American small businessman, and says he has never felt safe at home until recently, under the Trumpy President Duterte. I suspect El Salvador did need a Duterte-type for a short time (unfortunately, he’s sure to overstay that time). And the U.S. has no such need.

Miriam Adelson is an Israeli born dual citizen that AFAIK is a single issue pro-Israel voter. She sounds sincere to me.

I believe reversing Roe v. Wade increased the number of abortions. But if you are a single issue pro-life voter, who has been dreaming of overturning Roe for many years, it will be sincerely impossible to accept that this backfired.

What about claims that Harris’s policies are less well known? This kind of claim has some truth behind it whenever someone who has been President before is running against someone who has not. I rate it as unfair but likely sincere.

I can see an honest person voting for Trump because of the assassination attempts.

Many Trump voters honestly like his isolationism. I think they misunderstand how extraordinary is the achievement of going for 79 years in a row without a nuclear weapon being used in war, and the part NATO plays. But theirs can still be a honest argument.

By personality, I favor tend to favor experts AKA the establishment. But sometimes the establishment is mistaken (U.S. invasion of Iraq). Many Trump voters honestly think things are so bad that Trumpian chaos is preferable.

62

Some logical fallacies are easier to see in others than to see in ourselves. I may think that Trump supporters are displaying confirmation bias, and that their arguments for supporting him are, therefore, illegitimate. But I’m just as human as they are, and just as prone to human irrationality. There may be confirmation bias in my reasons for hating Trump. I don’t see it that way; but that’s the thing about confirmation bias, you don’t see it in yourself.

I think this thread can be read with that in mind. The pro-Trump arguments are being largely dismantled (including by me). That doesn’t mean that the people who would make them are dishonest, only that they’re human.

63

There’s plenty of “honest” reasons for supporting Trump. It’s just that the honest ones are all irrational, false or malignant. He’ll hurt women, persecute brown people, and likely user in a new fascist regime culminating in genocide in and out of the country; and that’s what a great many people honestly want.

This is at best a centrist board, not a leftist one. And there’s no getting around the fact that right wing positions on social issues are all about hurting and oppressing people, with not a single virtue to them. If it’s not about hurting, exploiting or oppressing people, then it’s not right wing. The cruelty is the point.

64

Thank you. Yours is the post in total I would have made in this thread.

It’s no different than the old argument about the Civil War being fought over “states’ rights.” Omitting the part about it being the right to own other human beings. There’s nothing decent about that.

65

As a Salvadoran American Myself, I would say that that was a very ignorant Salvadoran there. When Bukele the actual president of El Salvador, Duterte was the asshole murderous former Philippines president.

Another ignorant thing is to conveniently forget how Trump disrespected Bukele because Trump continues to push the false idea that Bukele is sending Salvadorean criminals to the US.

So, mostly a dishonest argument, from a Salvadorean that could be deported in a possible 2nd Trump term, regardless if he is legal now.

66

Or self deluding; they wouldn’t be the first person surprised by getting their face eaten after they elected the face eating leopards.

67

My observation isn’t entirely dissimilar to this, but a little less racist. I suspect that the below is a not-uncommon feeling among (nominally) Christian, middle-class whites over 50:

"I used to understand America, and I was proud of it. I grew up in a time where America was the best, most powerful country on Earth, and we could do anything we put our mind to. It was us and our allies, against the Communists, and it was always clear who the ‘good guys’ were. People went to church on Sundays, they got married and had kids, and you could count on being able to work at a job that paid the bills and kept a roof over your head.

"But, things have changed so quickly, and I just don’t understand a lot of stuff now. Gays can get married now, there’s this transgender thing I don’t understand, jobs that used to be secure aren’t anymore, young people don’t go to church anymore, a lot of young people don’t even bother to get married, it seems like there’s crime everywhere, and there’s all these ridiculous laws that we didn’t use to have.

"Life isn’t always easy, but I’ve worked hard my whole life, and earned what we have…but liberals tell me that I’m ‘privileged’ because I’m white – that’s insulting, because I sure don’t feel privileged.

"All of that doesn’t feel like the America I grew up in.

“I worry about where the country’s heading, and when I hear Democrats talk about these issues, they make it sound complicated, and they make it sound like ‘there’s no going back.’ I just want things to be like they used to be, and be able to trust that this will still be a country I can be proud of, and a place that my kids and grandkids can live good lives in, and not be made to feel guilty or bad about being white.”

68

The Trump side is a coalition of people with different interests, albeit not as big-tent a coalition as the Democrats’.

The particular faction I’m most familiar with is that I know quite a few Asian-Americans who support Trump and will vote for him - or, even among some those who can’t vote for him (because of not having citizenship yet,) at least support him vocally on WeChat. One of their main, honest, motives is because they think that progressives have a double standard and don’t consider Asians to be a true minority. They acknowledge that conservatives can be racist but think that conservatives are at least consistent and apply a fair hand. (The main example is affirmative action - how Asian students were considered by Harvard to be “lacking in personality” without the interviewer even talking to them, and required to score hundreds of points higher on the SAT to have the same chance of admission as black students, or how the University of Maryland lumped Asians and whites together in the same category, and also how some Asians feel that liberals were okay with crime being committed against Asians during some attacks in New York City and the 1992 Los Angeles riots.)

So, somehow, to these folks, Trump’s insults about “kung flu,” while odious, can be shrugged off in the name of the bigger game, such as the Supreme Court issuing that ruling last year that struck down affirmative action.

69

“Jack, just say ‘Jewish,’ this is taking forever.”

70

It’s not just Jewish people (or Muslims, or Hindus, etc.). Church attendance has dropped dramatically over the past few decades, primarily among younger people, who don’t feel connected to traditional Christian churches, and feel that their morals and values don’t fit with Christianity.

71

The presidential name error was mine.

Given how popular Bukele is among Salvadoran-Americans, and his obvious Trumpiness and ties to Trumpworld, do you think that such arguments will result in Trump getting most of the Salvadoran-American votes? Or is the argument, from your POV, too dishonest/mistaken to work?

72

Dishonest still from Trump, as he only showed support for Bukele that was quickly tossed under the bus, as Trump showed a few weeks after at the RNC convention.

(What is with many conservatives not checking timelines?)

73

I have never heard bona fide defined as rational. Instead, the literal definition is “good faith.” Genuine, real, sincere, lacking intent to deceive.

[quote=“Der_Trihs, post:63, topic:1007576”]
This is at best a centrist board, not a leftist one.
[/quote].

So we disagree - at least to some extent. I am not sure what you mean by “‘at best’ centrist.” If you said centrist leaning left - and ALL THE WAY LEFT on many issues, I might agree. I assume you can point me to a number of threads in which folk advancing “conservative” arguments are in the majority? Maybe such threads and such posters exist, and I’ve just overlooked them.

74

I have not been around much for the last decade or so, but back in the beginning of the century we had plenty of intelligent, vocal conservatives and right wingers, plenty of them, and boat loads of threads reflecting their presence.

Bush v. Gore was fucking epic.

And I’m getting OK with this board on my iPad but not on my iPhone, which is what I’m on right now and I can’t see the handy preview so sorry if it’s messed up.

75

It is possible to honestly argue for Trump if you are a single issue voter focusing on your own priority.

The problem comes when you judge by what Trump’s stated priorities are. His focus is mass deportations, high tariffs, and locking up opponents. I’ve been reading his speeches off and on lately and cannot remember anything on affirmative action.

76

One relevant thing from that. (posted before in a different thread, but looks better here)

https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/address-conceding-the-2000-presidential-election
(Al Gore Concession Speech)
December 13, 2000

Good evening.

Just moments ago, I spoke with George W. Bush and congratulated him on becoming the 43rd president of the United States. And I promised him that I wouldn’t call him back this time. I offered to meet with him as soon as possible so that we can start to heal the divisions of the campaign and the contest through which we’ve just passed.

Almost a century and a half ago, Senator Stephen Douglas told Abraham Lincoln, who had just defeated him for the presidency, “Partisan feeling must yield to patriotism. I’m with you, Mr. President, and God bless you.” Well, in that same spirit, I say to President-elect Bush that what remains of partisan rancor must now be put aside, and may God bless his stewardship of this country. Neither he nor I anticipated this long and difficult road. Certainly neither of us wanted it to happen. Yet it came, and now it has ended, resolved, as it must be resolved, through the honored institutions of our democracy.

Trump never conceded, remains an unpatriotic git, and then dishonored the institution of our democracy. Leading to the deaths of at least 3 people and severely injuring many policemen on January 6th 2021.

Don’t vote from Trump, he is not really a Republican.

77

I don’t think a fake balance can be made on this board, where every left wing thread is counterbalanced with a right wing point of view. Reality doesn’t tells us if something is wrong on one side of the scale, something equally wrong suddenly appears on the other side to balance it out. If the far right gain control, that doesn’t make any that oppose them far left-it actually means that something is wrong and needs to be fixed. Frankly, the existence of Fox News and Breitbart and the positions they take doesn’t make ABC, NBC and CBS far left because those networks and others are just the same as they were before. What some call “The Far Left!” Is just opposition to what is wrong, ethically, morally and legally wrong.
Fix it. Don’t just say “They do it too!”

78

Most of them. What you call "centrist’ is conservative, and if you think this board is “all the way left” on anything it’s because you don’t know any actual leftists (and no, I don’t qualify, I’m nowhere near “left” enough to count).

The Republicans are fascist reactionaries and theocrats, not mere conservatives; the Democrats are mostly conservatives with some centrists. Actual leftists are small in number and have barely any political presence.

79

“Liberal” doggone it, the word for where this Board leans is “Liberal”. By the standards of American politics, of course. “True leftists” have little patience for Liberals so that should do fine.

Rightwing ideologues tend to live sort of outside of time. It makes it easier to have two contradictory things to be a fact at the same time.

…

But as mentioned by others, yeah, people too often talk as if “honest” or “sincere” somehow has to mean that which is honestly or sincerely held is to be seen as positive. That is not necessarily so. Someone can be honestly and sincerely wrong.

Single-issue voters have been pointed out as an example of someone who may make a “sincere, honest” decision to vote for the guy. It is in vain that you may counter the position of the single-issue voter with “nothing justifies it if it means Trump!” Because s/he is a Single. Issue. Voter. S/he Does. Not. Care. about all the other terrible things he represents. All those other terrible things? “Eh, the Universe will take care of that somehow, Donald promises I can count on The One Thing that is honestly and sincerely more important to me.”

80

Nope. It is a proposed ban on price gouging.

If you are a multi-millionaire, and have benefited from trump tax cuts and his attempt to shut down the IRS, I can see why you’d want to pay him back by donating and voting.