Inflation was the excuse bigots gave people for voting for Trump.
But it’s a bigotry that is not based on race, just like the UK where bigotry is not based on race . . . and I have that on the authority of the boards expert on bigotry, DemonTree!
I’m pretty sure i spoke with both bigots and with people who weren’t bigots, but really don’t understand economics, even on a very basic level.
I think i mentioned somewhere that my canvassing partner one day had a conversation with a man who was really angry that Kamala Harris had raised his local property taxes. Idiot? Surely badly informed. Probably selects really bad sources for information, too.
I wish i had a cure for that.
I fear the ‘cure’ is going to depend on the range to the target.
You do know that one can be a moron and a bigot right? I would argue that blaming a black vice president married to a Jew for local property taxes is a pretty good demonstration of that phenomenon.
The former typically being a prerequisite for the latter, IME.
My canvassing partner was Black, and did not say anything about his being a bigot. Apparently, the two of them chatted amicably for a while, and enjoyed his garden together. So while it’s clear that he lives in a different reality from you or i (or my partner), i am not confident that he’s a bigot, and don’t feel that i can brush off his opinion as “just another bigot displaying bigotry”.
I did talk with some people who were obviously or probably bigots. I believe that played a role in the election. But i don’t think that’s the only thing that was going on.
I think that white America has bent over backwards to avoid calling bigots bigots. That we twist ourselves in knots to excuse bad behavior from other white Americans.
i am completely over it. I’m completely over giving the benefit of the doubt to people who behave like little fascist shits.
But when you call people bigots without any evidence of actual bigotry, the term has no meaning anymore.
“I’m tired of people making excuses for bigotry so I’m calling everyone a bigot” is ridiculous.
That’s what happens when you get so mad you make yourself stupid. It’s human nature but it’s not healthy.
Good that madmonk28 didn’t say that they were going to do that isn’t it?
Also completely not what he said, or actually does.
What’s the best term for people who leap in to defend bigots with lies and bullshit just so they can play holier than thou?
I would argue that voting for the white supremacist candidate is evidence of bigotry.
This white naïveté about racism is just another form of white fragility. Whites twist themselves into knots to avoid seeing racism in other whites: he spoke amicably with a black person; we don’t know his heart, etc. etc.
It’s just utter bullshit.
And themselves, ‘I only attend lynchings for the picnics’.
I’m reminded of this passage from Fred Pohl’s 1964 story “Children of the Night”; the main character is a political consultant:
He said, frowning a little bit, “I think I’ll have to find out for myself. Anyway, frankly, I think people’s minds are made up and you can’t change them.”
“We don’t have to,” I said. “Don’t you know why people vote the way they do, Connick? They don’t vote their ‘minds’. They vote attitudes and they vote impulses. Frankly, I’d rather work on your side than against you. Schlitz would be easy to beat. He’s Jewish.”
Connick said angrily, “There’s none of that in Belport, man.”
“Of anti-semitism, you mean. Of course not. But if one candidate is Jewish, and if it turns up that fifteen years ago he tried to square a parking ticket — and there’s always something that turns up, Connick, believe me — then they’ll vote against him for fixing parking tickets. That’s what I mean by ‘attitudes’. Your voter — oh, not all of them; but enough to swing any election — goes into the booth pulled this way and that. We don’t have to change his mind. We just have to help him decide which part of it to operate on.”
I was wondering when you were going to show up with your unique brand of bullshit absolutely-not-white-knighting-for-bigots.
Well, it’s certainly evidence that the voter doesn’t mind voting for a bigot. Does that make them a bigot? It makes them bigot-adjacent, but a lot of people prioritize themselves over others when they vote.
Someone whose decision was:
- I don’t want to vote for a Black woman
or
- I want my president to drive out all those dirty immigrants
is not just bigot-adjacent, but actively bigoted.
Someone who is struggling to make ends meet, and remembers being more financially stable when Trump was in office last time is probably just an idiot, rather than actively a bigot. And i think the way to convince them to vote differently is different from what you’d have to do to get the votes of the active bigots.
And i spoke to all three of those voters, multiple times. Well, only one was honest enough to say the first, but a bunch talked about the importance of being tough on furriners, both inside and outside the country.
Yes. Absofuckinglutely. I’d say wake up, but it’s too late.
It’s possible that someone is so genuinely clueless that they don’t know about Trump’s bigotry. In that case, “bigot” might not be the right word for that voter.
There are plenty of other things one can call someone that willfully ignorant, though.
Since a large fraction of his platform was explicit bigotry, i think that’s pretty hard, honestly.
Look, if someone is going to vote for a bigot like Trump, they’re enabling and empowering bigotry. Which is either extremely stupid if they’re ignorant enough not to know about it, or morally bankrupt if they know and don’t care.
I’m not defending them, it has the same effect either way. I do think knowing what motivates people is useful, and if you just scream “bigotry” without bothering to actually examine it, that’s being willfully ignorant.
On a site devoted to fighting ignorance no less.
FFS, the ads talking about Trump stands for you, not “they/them” could hardly be more explicit.