I think this is where humans are really bad at making the jump from micro to macro level. The only macro level that exists in this case is made up of a bunch of micro cases. Every single person that moves away from supporting Trump contributes to a macro move away from Trump support; and there’s no way to stop Trump’s macro support except for moving individuals away from him.
No one here is talking about hating Donald Trump. We are talking about the actual damage of the policies he is intending to enact.
The one dearest to my heart right now is his promise to ban trans healthcare. I spend all morning the day after the election–having not slept the night before) convincing trans people that there was something worth living for.
If you don’t know, most trans folk take hormones that, among other things, tends to help eliminate their gender dysphoria. Dysphoria so bad that over half of trans people tend to kill themselves without treatment. And even if wasn’t that bad before, going back is so, so horrible that many would rather die.
The reason I will cut off Trump supporting people who refuse to listen is because I care about them.
And that’s ignoring my own issues, both with my gender and with the fact I’m disabled and SSI and Medicaid and other things I rely on are in danger.
This is not about hating vs. loving.
This is an interesting viewpoint, which I don’t disagree with, but over half of the voting public voted for trump. That’s a lot of Americans. We all have several people in our lives who we know or at least suspect voted for trump. Some of those voted for him because they actually do support his most hateful, racist, misogynist tendencies. But many are low-info voters who just thought he’d be the best bet to lower their taxes, or grocery bills, or keep them safe from imaginary marauding gangs streaming over the border.
My own younger son (19yo) voted for trump. Fortunately he’s away at college so I don’t have to look him in the eye right now, but he’s coming home for Thanksgiving. My older (21yo) son used to like trump, but now calls him a ‘clown’. So that’s something, at least. I have several in-laws who are perfectly nice people who I know voted for trump. My wife works in an office where she gets along fine with her co-workers, but many of them are trumpers and she was uncomfortable the day after the election hearing them say to each other things like ‘great day for America!’. Ditto with the office my sister works in.
How are we supposed to deal with relatives and co-workers who support trump, if tolerance isn’t an option? Should we loudly, publicly and angrily call them out for their stupid voting choice? Ignore them completely? Find a place to work with only anti-trumpers? I’m not asking this sarcastically, I really would like to know how you (and others with similar viewpoints like @BigT ) think we should deal with all the people in our lives who voted for him, especially this time around. Because I don’t have any good answers for that.
Except trump got 74M popular vote in 2020, and 75M in 2024. Doesn’t sound like talk is shifting people in the right direction.
It isn’t, though. Convincing others isn’t the only option. The votes Trump won by is less than the number of elligble voters who didn’t vote.
Trump’s strategy to win hasn’t been to spend much time convincing his opposition. It is to motivate non-voters. This is hypothesized as the reason why Trump could win while abortion rights initiative also won. The new Trump voters didn’t vote on anything else.
I’m not going to say to give up on loved ones, because loved ones are basically the only chance of convincing these people. And you care about them, and want them to do what’s right.
But don’t tell people off who decide it’s too much and need to cut them off. I’ve seen way, way too much of that since the election. Don’t be upset for them being mad at you for not cutting them off, either. Why wouldn’t they be?
Pretty much everyone I know who is in the activist circles has decided that “reaching across the aisle” was the wrong choice. That they’ve tried that and it failed as a macro strategy.
Thanks for the advice!
Because they would know that maintaining those ties as a way to move things forward is the more difficult decision, and because it’s the choice that makes a bigger difference in the movement?
I know plenty of activists who have decided that, but very few that actually made a concerted effort to use personal ties to persuade others to change their minds and who decided it had failed. Many activists have confused their very necessary self-care for an act of activism.
I’m disabled and seriously (well, terminally) ill.
I am the latter because of the “torch and pitchfork” non-college white men that Trump empowers and emboldens.
Do I understand the damage that political hooliganism, fueled by demonization of ‘others’ can do? I do. I’m living and dying it.
I have LGBTQ+ friends and family. I’m fearful for, and protective of, them and others.
It neither serves me nor the causes nearest and dearest to my heart to cut people out of my life who are basically very decent but horribly misled.
MAGA is a cult. I’ll be here (ETA: maybe) if and when they see daylight. To the extent I can help them to see daylight without blowing up the relationships, I will.
But if I can’t, then we either speak far less, don’t speak at all (but without active cessation of all diplomatic ties), or we speak but never about politics.
That’s me. I have no intention of telling you what to do in similar circumstances.
Which goes back to the individual level where one is likely still thankful to have fished their family/friend out of the stream even if the stream moves on.
Likewise, on an individual level, people are going to have differing circumstances. Sure, I would write off someone who said transphobic garbage, accused immigrants of eating cats and was riding the border on his horse with a hunting rifle and handcuffs. I would write them off no matter who they voted for. Someone who thinks stuff is too expensive these days and has some vague ideas of “We’re spending all this money on Ukraine but what about the homeless here?” is possibly a different story to me. There’s a spectrum there.
You are confusing the macro for the micro. Had those talks not happened, he might have gotten 80M votes in 2024.
Possibly. And if more people had voted for Harris, rather than John Galt, or no one, she might have got 84M. And that has nothing to do with cross-aisle communication.
This feels like a good place to say that asking a Never Trump Republican to cast a vote for Harris < cutting somebody out of their life because of politics.
The former is quite trivial in relation to the latter.
For some – I’m confident – failing on the former is adequate cause to effect the latter. Again: not for me.
I’ve read this three times and have no idea what you’re getting at here.
Apparently if something isn’t going to single-handedly change the election, it’s not worth doing.
Although changing the outcome of 2028 probably isn’t why most people are interested in maintaining a relationship with their loved ones anyway.
I’ve got this one:
I’m struggling with how changing one or two votes doesn’t have anything to do with cross-aisle communication, or how that doesn’t relate to the overall vote, or anything with this conversation. I know some people cast stupid third-party votes.
OK.
In 2020, Biden got 81M votes out of a total cast of 158M.
In 2024 Harris got 72M out of 149M cast.
Fewer people voted. And, as DavidNRockies noted, at least one person threw away their vote for John Galt.
So if more people had voted for Harris instead of staying home or making childish “protest votes”, regardless of what trump voters did, Harris would have won, and won handily.
And possibly some Biden voters from 2020 switched to trump in 2024. So people may have been converted, but the wrong way. I won’t say it was because Harris is a woman, but, Harris is a woman.
Of course some people were converted the wrong way, because the Right has an incredibly effective system for persuading people.
We cannot dismantle that system by refusing to persuade people ourselves. That’s not how any of this works.
If we look at the persuasion efforts and say, “Sometimes people are persuaded in the wrong direction, therefore we shouldn’t engage in persuasion,” we’re fundamentally misunderstanding the nature of human communication.
It’s like refusing to walk toward our destination because we see some people walking away from our destination and decide that walking gets you farther from the destination.
I wonder if folks are misreading this line to say, “There’s no way to stop Trump except for moving individuals away from him.” If I’d written that, I’d have been wrong. But I wasn’t talking about the overall goal of stopping him; I was talking about the secondary goal of eroding support for him.
Remember this thread is about family. My BIL is a write off. He can take his pre-existing conditions and his diabetes and go crying to trump “save me!” for all I care. And for all it’s going to get him. If he hasn’t figured it out by now, too bad. At least the gave up on the Arizona Rangers, or whatever name they gave themselves. Mostly because he can’t ride a horse anymore, but still.
I probably had an influence on some people at work, but they still have to figure it out for themselves. I’m not against trying, but sometimes you just have to avoid family for your own sanity. Be the master of your own life.
Again:
I am in no way blaming or judging anyone for cutting off ties. I might very well do the same thing.
I AM disagreeing with people who confuse this self-care with effective activism.