And surely you and the OP must realize there are a lot more than three anecdotes of left wingers behaving badly/violently as a result of Trump being elected.
Relevant articles…
http://moviebob.blogspot.de/2016/11/heres-what-i-dont-get.html#more
The whole articles are both worth a read, and both pretty firmly encapsulate my thoughts. These guys voted for someone who is going to hurt my friends in very explicit, meaningful ways. They knew he was going to do that. He advertised that he was going to do that. And they voted for him anyways, because… Reasons. And we’re supposed to be the ones to reach out a fig leaf? What?!
Yeah, urban legends about her giving speeches for hundreds of thousands of dollars to Wall Street that she wouldn’t reveal. But the ones we know about are pretty damaging to a candidate who claims she can clean up wall street, stop the flow of cheap labor into the country and the flow of jobs out of the country.
Urban legends about her erasing emails while they were under subpoena.
Urban legends about how the DNC was in the bag for her and when they fired Debiie Wasserman Schultz, she officially became part of the Clinton campaign.
Urban legends about how the media was feeding her debate questions ahead of time.
Urban legends about what a nasty person she is.
These urban legends are not myths.
Invoking Hitler is not just an analogy, by Godwin!
And your subsequent “analogy” is insufficiently analogous to be of use.
Trump convinced a large number of people that by engaging in protectionism and building a wall and something-something-because-Trump, he would get them their jobs back. And you want to tell these people that voting for him out of self-interest (given that they bought this) is something they should have rejected out of hand as unacceptable, and that the only moral choice was to vote against their self interest, and for a candidate they apparently had grave reservations about. They disagreed and exercised their right to vote the way they wanted to. Because for them it wasn’t between a bully and a saint, it was between two candidates with warts, only one of which represented change and was promising jobs.
Now, you can argue that they are wrong about Hillary’s warts, and are grossly underestimating Trump’s. And that for acting on this they are morally deficient and worthy of contempt. You can, but it does nothing. In examining why Trump won, saying his base is racist, or shouldn’t have voted for him gets you exactly zero more votes next go-around, because it doesn’t get you anything you can do different next time to get those vote(r)s.
Lol. It doesn’t work like that. People don’t change their minds because someone coddles them into thinking their actions are immune from rebuke. People don’t change their minds because someone downplays the harm their choice has caused to others. It’s like expecting a crack head to put down the pipe but refusing to be frank and honest with him at the intervention. Speaking truthfully is the only way you get through to people
But guess what? Even if the truth didn’t change their minds, that doesn’t mean we should shy away from it! Because I guarantee if the Democratic Party becomes known as the party of self-flagellating weaklings who would rather placate and woo and cajole conservatives than be the voice for the minorities antagonized by these conservatives, the same thing that happened this election will happen next time. Minorities will stay home or find their voice elsewhere.
Biden doesn’t owe you anything, especially he doesn’t owe anyone to spend years of his life doing something he doesn’t have the heart for (i.e. running for and then serving as president).
Who else wanted to run as a Democrat this year, who held back in favor of Hillary’s “turn?” Not a whisper from anywhere.
Your bitterness is making you irrational. Bitterness is only the third stage of election grief. Time for you to move on to numbness, and then to determination (that’s where you put some actual skin in the game by helping to re-build the Democratic party from the ground up so that it can take back it’s rightful place as the majority party in the House).
Damn right, Hitler won a medal for bravery in the army. Trump couldn’t be spurred to action.
Also, Trump is a piss-poor dancer.
No, they weren’t. Because there’s literally no reason to say it unless you are opposing Black Lives Matter. It only exists as a response to that.
That doesn’t mean they couldn’t have been talked into supporting it if they understood it. But they were in fact opposing it.
Not that anti-BLM sentiment really had anything to do with this election. Again, Clinton lost because fewer Democrats voted for her. Trump won even though fewer Republicans voted for him.
No one didn’t vote Clinton because of BLM.
(And, yes, I will eventually get to the point of not paying attention to politics directly. But it’s hard right now, when it’s all everyone is talking about!)
The urban legend that, even cumulatively, the seriousness of those was enough to prevent her from being an excellent President who was prepared to serve the nation well. :dubious:
I’d add all the other -ists to this as well, frankly.
I happen to think that minorities, women, gay people, transgender people, etc. deserve all government and social protections as anyone else.
And I’m supposed to think that people who respond, “no, they don’t” are NOT bigots, and that I should care about their hurt feelings when people are literally dying because of that opinion.
No one has yet explained to me how that is a reasonable thing to demand, ESPECIALLY to those who belong to said demographics who feel personally attacked at best, and being killed at worst. “Well, you won’t convince them if you’re mean to them.” mind boggling
I think the best explanation for why Trump voters must cop criticism is from John Scalzi, The Cinemax Theory of Racism.
Quoting a snippet wouldn’t do the piece justice.
I promise to not call a Trump voter racist if he or she will admit to being merely stupid.
Well, that’s pretty much what defenders of the Republicans have been saying for decades, “they don’t* really know *what they are doing”. The Democrats have for decades been trying to pretend that the Right doesn’t *really *understand what it’s doing, and if everyone just sucks up enough to the Right it’ll suddenly realize it’s in the wrong and start acting nice.
But they* do* know, and* aren’t* stupid. Just evil. And now the fecklessness of the Democrats has given the worst people in America pretty much total power.
All you are being asked to do is reject the racism or sexism that YOU find. Direct quote, with my bolding added:
Of course, if you never manage to see any racism/sexism even when it is right in front of you, then yes, you will disappoint. How are you feeling about Steve Bannon’s appointment, if I may ask?
Biden wasn’t running.
Maybe we should blame you for an astoundingly insensitive jerkish remark.
I still remember Biden saying, quietly and eloquently, that he didn’t feel he could run. Everyone understood why. No one could possibly have imagined how events would play out.
If you’re looking for somebody to blame, uninformed racist ignoramuses is a good start. Misogynists who can’t stand ambitious women gives you another cohort to blame. And ideologically blinded diehard Republicans who would elect a feces-throwing cebus monkey as their president as long as it had an “R” after its name.
On the one hand you might be right. On the other, “If only the victims of institutional racism had been a bit nicer, people might have started caring about their feelings” is a rather depressing thought.
Wouldn’t surprise me after this campaign season.
Next up on Straight Dope Theatre: The Angina Demagogues
Maybe if only the bigots had been a bit less bigoted people might have started caring about their feelings.
I’m not condoning violence and property damage at all, but the two sides are not equivalent here.
Why should she have? Private speaking engagements are a product that all high profile politicians sell for stupid amounts of money. Demanding that she release her speeches is like demanding that Herman Cain give everyone free pizzas.
Compared to whom? The guy still holding a grudge over the “short fingers” remark decades later?
And on the point about lack of transparency, Trump not only never released his tax returns but constantly lied about the reasons why. On pretty much every metric that Clinton scores poorly on, Trump is worse.
But no, those tiny nuggets are not the urban legends we’re talking about. We’re talking urban legends like the vast and groundless bullshit around Benghazi, the one about how the Clinton Foundation “kept 90% of the money (which somehow the Clintons kept”, and one that Clinton deliberately used a private email account to avoid scrutiny rather than for personal convenience like her predecessors. Your attempts to pick sweetcorn out of a pile of turds doesn’t change the fact that the lies were the overwhelming narrative.
Frankly, claiming to not be a racist after having voted for Trump is like claiming to not be a rapist because all you did is hold her down while all the other guys raped her. A distinction without a practical difference.
A vote for Trump was a vote for racism. Period.
Why, that’s tantamount to demanding personal responsibility. (As opposed to merely using the phrase for personal political benefit as a talking point buzzword.)
Hint for innocent doe-eyed Trump voters: A vote for the man who promised a total and complete ban on all Muslims entering the country, was a vote for racism. What’s that? “Muslim” means religion, not race? Don’t let your obfuscation and denial cloud your vision.