The idea that people are being told what to think or believe- especially believe- is bullshit.
How can someone stop you from believing what you believe? It’s a ridiculous notion. To state it as fact, that it is currently happening, is bullshit.
So if I showed you an example of people being forced to attend DEI lectures as a condition of employment? How about people being forced to sign a personal diversity and inclusion statement as a condition of employment? If I could find examples of that, would you agree that people are having others’ beliefs forced on them? How about tenured professors being attacked and their jobs threatened for expressing their opinions? How about your pension fund forcing ESG investments on you, even if you don’t believe in them?
I could go on. You probably don’t see it because you agree with it all and it escapes notice. But if it was religion and you were being forced to take religious classes and sign a statement of your commitment to Christ, I’ll bet you’d have a big, big problem with it.
If these are meaningless and don’t change anyone’s opinions, why are we doing it? Kabuki theater?
What’s DEI, and whats ESG?
DEI = Diversity, Equity and Inclusion.
ESG = Environmental and Social Governance.
Are you serious that you had never heard those terms?
A lecture on diversity? I’ve sat through shittier group get togethers at work.
Are you serious?
And none of this proves the most ridiculous claim that Democrats are dictating what someone should believe.
No, remember he doesn’t personally believe any of that is really happening. 
And I’ve never worked for a union, all my work 401ks were invested in funds that I could choose a category of. Where the specific dollars went, I had no fucking choice. I had a choice to participate or not. Choose your risk category if you want in. Jeesus the victimhood from the right…
Right on – that is why Trump is still a viable candidate. He’s the one who reaffirms their “reality”, their own lived experience narrative, to borrow some terms from the hated multiculturalists.
We could reformat that prase I last quoted from Dr.Drake with some punctuation as: what THEY “know” to be true. With scare quotes, because rather than knowledge it’s a form of Faith, it’s something they have become fundamentally convinced of as what explains the world around them, with the generous assist of a lot of motivated propaganda.
Then, any attempt at getting them to rethink or reconsider “the way we’ve always done it”, can be portrayed by the reactionary opportunist politicians as an existential threat.
That a changed world means a world they won’t fit in. That they are not just being expected to tolerate the changes or differences, but to celebrate them, and to shut up about not liking it. This has been preached to them for 60 years, the result is a cultivated fragility, reactive brittleness instead of adaptive flexibility.
Easy harvest for a Trump type.
Both the Democrats and Republicans include people with a wide variety of views. There are corporate Democrats like Biden with traditional views regarding businesses and institutions. His views differ substantially from those espoused by Sanders and many younger Democrats.
Democrats might disagree, even with each other, on what speech is offensive, how immigration should be handled, the best way to help those who have faced historical discrimination or address climate change, how to provide services, or the balance between (for example) respecting the dignity of addicts and homeless yet wanting people to stay in treatment programs and feel safe within their communities. People with opinions on these matters vary in their tolerance of other views. All of them are difficult topics where reasonable people might disagree.
Of course people “believe what they believe”. But this is influenced and changed by many things - education, peers, values, the zeitgeist, history, social and traditional media, sociocultural factors, economic factors, geography, technology and so forth.
I can’t imagine why…
I don’t know . . . maybe it could be all that and more, but I’m sure you know I’m wrong.
That is a trump accomplishment that trumpists can call on. It’s a simple fact, without even needing any trumpy exaggerations applied.
But it took a huge assist from McConnell, who blocked Obama from appointing Merrick Garland, and them trump just followed Federalist Society recommendations. Nothing any ordinary R Pres couldn’t have accomplished— it didn’t take a philosopher king like trump to make it happen.
But there are two questions in play, when you’re discussing why folks would support Trump: why do you support Trump instead of the Democratic candidate, and why do you support Trump instead of some other Republican candidate?
I’d figure that his willingness to just follow those recommendations could be an answer to the first question — and you can, if you’re so inclined, frame that in ‘useful idiot’ terms — and that, starting from there, one could plausibly field the second question by debating whether Trump has better odds of winning against a Democratic candidate than any ordinary Republican candidate would in a straight matchup (as he gets backed by all of the Trump supporters, plus any Republican-leaning voters who can bring themselves to vote for him) or by arguing that it wouldn’t be a straight matchup (as it’d be unified support for the D candidate, versus an ordinary R that Trump supporters can be told to turn their backs on).
It’ a darn good bet that most of the R Establishment and their super-donors figured this angle real early as Trump began to be a real contender for the 2016 nomination.
They all grossly misunderestimated quite how resistant he would be to them pulling on the reins.
But in the places where, like the SCOTUS appointees, they could present him with their choices that he was incuriously indifferent to, they’d still get his sig on their agenda.
Re: DEI training
I was listening on the radio to a guy saying that he was tired of anti-woke being forced down his throat. When asked about a specific example though, he talked about a training he’d been forced to attend, more than 20 years ago, that was about not harassing coworkers.
It’s so bizarre how strongly some people can feel this sense of persecution based on not very much at all.
I started a new job about 2 months ago and I indeed have had to do a training about not discriminating on the basis of race, gender or sexual orientation. But I’ve also had to do about a dozen other non-job specific trainings, regarding anti-competitive practices, company IP, flagging product safety issues etc etc.
It’s so strange to me that someone would feel so put upon just because of one of these trainings, especially when it is just saying something as uncontroversial as “treat people fairly”.
I think you meant “woke”.
Yeah, that’s the one thing that really seems rub some people the wrong way and get under their skin.
True story: Once when I was on the afternoon shift I shared a desk with a guy who worked the first shift. On the desk was an industrial training manual titled “Common Decency”, and I was astounded that someone merited training in that regard.
Anti-woke training? Sound more like wokeness training. But I get your point.
But yeah, most of the complaints (ref @Sam_Stone’s excellent list of stuff he doesn’t agree with) aren’t that the offense is actually happening to the complainer. It’s that they’ve listened to e.g. Fox News tell them over and over and over that it’s happening “everywhere” to “everyone”. So soon enough the complainer feels (not thinks) it’s actually happening to them. It’s Munchausen’s Outrage by proxy.
I know you know this, but the real problem is deeper-seated.
The objectionable part of the message isn’t “treat people fairly”. It’s that “Those Others are actually people” and are therefore deserving of fair treatment. That’s the thing that sticks in racist / sexist / religionist craws: that Others might actually equally be people just like them.
I could see it being interpreted as an insult if it were something someone wouldn’t do in the first place, although that’s probably not the case here.
If you were required to attend a seminar called “Why you shouldn’t lick food off the floor with your tongue,” you might be either annoyed at someone else’s nonsensical behavior sentencing you to have to endure this mindless training, or even insulted at the insinuation that you would do such a thing if not instructed not to.
But yeah, that may not necessarily be the case here.
It is interesting to me that the right touts themselves as the side of morality and ethics. But yeah, for some reason they seem to have a problem without treating your neighbor kindly. Probably because of the Bible. I remember distinctly one of the parables being about turning a blind eye to those who are suffering.
Sorry yes, I meant woke.
That is to say, the people complaining call it woke, but it was just standard diversity and ethics training.