No. Things are heated now, everyone is upset. In 100 years it will be generally agreed who is right at is moment in time. Future people aren’t better than us…yet we all agree we are better than past people.
If you were alive in 1933 and your friends, neighbors, and co-workers were Nazis, what would you think? What would you do?
The Nazis didn’t seem like the Nazis until well into the 1930s. They just seemed like a bunch of fringe cranks who dressed comically and said outrageous shit, but a lot of people probably didn’t take them that seriously - the ruling conservatives certainly didn’t. In the same way that Mitch McConnell and Paul Ryan felt they could use Tea Party and Trump rage, German conservatives probably they thought they could use them to their benefit and rein them in before going too far.
But it doesn’t work like that. Once you take tribalism and make it a mainstream thing, that’s lethal politics. People are going to die as a result. People already have died - Charlottesville, Pittsburgh, ICE detention. People have already died as a result of the ethnic animus, and people will continue to die because of it until this country decides it’s not going to tolerate it any longer. I don’t take that lightly. Neither should the rest of us.
I lurk (and occasionally post) on r/AskATrumpSupporter because 1) I’m genuinely curious about the mentality of people who continue to support Trump and 2) I was eager to have my misconceptions about Trump supporters shattered. I didn’t want to be another “libtard” stuck in an echo chamber. I wanted to see if I could form some bridge across the ideological aisle.
It hasn’t happened yet. 95% of the Trump supporters who post regularly are truly “deplorable”. Immigrant kids being fed spoiled food and being left in vans for days on end in the middle of the desert? Their parents shouldn’t have brought them in the country! Trump obviously obstructing justice? Well, it’s not a crime because no collusion! Trump lies about the weather for the nine millionth time? You libtards are fools for taking him so seriously! Trump has spent eleventy billion dollars playing golf? Obama played golf too! Trump’s ignorance on something he should know is exposed to the world? He’s a genius but he doesn’t have to know everything! On a rare occasion, a Trump supporter will concede that Trump shouldn’t have done or said X, but the concession will always be followed up with a dismissal (“We knew what he meant to say!” “What do you expect? He’s a salesman!” “It hasn’t happened yet, so it’s not a big deal!” “All politicians do it!”)
I know people who voted for Trump who aren’t teh evil. I believe they were conned by a consummate conman, so I have some compassion for them–even if I’m also frustrated by them. But Trump supporters? I have never met a Trump supporter who wasn’t an absolute dickhead. The Trump apologists on the SDMB all seem to be on the dickhead spectrum. I’ve tried to give them a fair listenin’-to, but honestly all I’ve been hearing is garbage.
It’s not so much prioritization of bigotry over other problems, but it’s that bigotry is a different sort of problem. Bigotry is about people’s attitudes, and undeserved hate directed toward your fellow man. It’s about feeling that other people don’t deserve the rights that other people have, and that they are somehow less valuable people than everyone else.
None of that bigotry is necessary for supporting any side of a political issue. You don’t have to be a racist to be pro-life, you don’t have to be a homophobe to support lower taxes or firearm ownership or universal health care.
Frankly, if a person can’t find a non-racist who supports their ‘bigger fish’ issue, maybe they need to take a closer look in the mirror, because that fact may be a feature instead of a bug.
The larger problem is that Americans don’t all live in the same reality. The media you consume will define your worldview, and if your chosen media are deliberately, methodically and constantly misrepresenting what is happening, you will assume that people who are getting other worldviews from other media are the ones who are deluded. Never mind political positions - we can’t even agree on **reality **anymore.
I believe that was actually Roy Moore’s campaign slogan.
Why don’t you care? I mean, it’s entirely possible that he will never understand this, or that he does understand this and doesn’t care, and it’s not your job to ‘save the unenlightened’, but OTOH he’s never going to learn if no one talks to him and he’s a lot more likely to change his views if people with different views are friendly with him.
I’m genuinely curious what “rights and freedoms” you assume Democrats would strip away from Republicans (note that “being allowed to discriminate against others” isn’t in itself a right or a freedom). Is this specifically about guns? I mean, I’m not denying that Democrats can be oppressive assholes but I’m not seeing an equivalence in the present party views in terms of actual existential threats to the opposite sides.
You have to pick your battles. I try not to talk politics at work
Fair enough.
There is a whole lot of majority privilege on display in opposition to my very modest and practical advice.
In each of the examples there are places where the person in question would not be oppressed. Not only that, but fleeing would be very simple and relatively inexpensive. They may just need to move to the burbs in some cases, or the city or country in others. So no, it is not dumb to escape state predation. People have been doing it for centuries. People have uprooted their entire way of life to escape state predation I know that if I had a good chance of being locked up for some BS I’d flee in a minute.
People move to escape less onerous state predation all the time. Many people move to Texas and other states like Florida, Delaware and Tennessee to escape a few percentage points in taxes. Yet it is dumb to escape state-enforced bigotry? You lack coherence.
So no. Not dumb. Staying and stamping an indignant foot at injustice is dumb. Of course as I said, if your goal is to martyr yourself, it is totally rational.
The only difference is that modern Nazis claim they are different from your father’s Nazis. That requires the least amount of knowledge possible to to tell.
I wonder who notorious bigots, racists, homophobes , Right Wing zealots and neo-Nazis like Jerry Seinfeld, John Cleese, Norm MacDonald, Chris Rock, Martina Navratilova or Dave Chappelle would tell you the overall most narrow-minded, judgemental, shrill, hypocritical and vitriolic people in 2019’s America are, liberals or conservatives?
Who is calling these people “bigots, racists, homophobes, Right Wing zealots, and neo-Nazis”?
Shrill, oh dear, not that.
And what’s significant about this particular group of six people? Are they the panel for a new television show called “America’s Got Vitriol”? Or were they just the easiest cherries to pick?
I hate to admit it, but on the morning of Nov. 4th 2020, when my fellow liberal Americans (“Smartest, Hippest!”) wake up to find out that the revolting, rancid pile of pigg feces in humanoid form they call Donald Trump was re-elected and then stand around whimpering to each other “I don’t understand?”, a small part of me will be chuckling to myself, although the rest of my heart will of course be breaking for what happened to America.
Of course, thankfully I will still be half a world away, far removed from the insanity, drinking 50 cent bottles of cold Czech pilsner and trying to explain to my Polish friends about what became of what was once the greatest country in human history.
Thank you for this weird, content-free pontificating. You’re welcome to actually engage and discuss, and respond to questions (and ask your own), if this interests you.
Thanks, I’ll pass, but maybe when my fellow liberals (and for the record, I have NEVER voted for ANY Republican candidate in my nearly 50 years) manage to regain a bit of common sense and (for example) no longer allow the fringe, ultra-radical elements of our side to paint someone like Martina Navratilova, a woman who has spent her entire life fighting for tolerance, equality and acceptance for all, as some kind of vile, sadistic, hate-filled bigot simply because she committed the unspeakable sin of saying that perhaps it isn’t really fair that a biological man who announces to the world “I’m a girl!” should then be allowed to compete against females, well, then maybe I will be a little more hopeful for “My Side” again.
(but if not, well, my occassional $20.00 roundtrip flights to Brussels, Berlin or Budapest console me quite well)
No idea what you’re talking about. I presume some random internet person somewhere who called theirself a liberal criticized Navritolova, but I have no idea what that has to do with anything in this thread, nor why you’d feel the need to extrapolate the words of a presumably small number of random internet people to the entirety of liberals and progressives.
Is Martina a 2020 Democratic candidate for president? It’s really hard to keep track of all of them.
There’s a rumor she was born in Czechoslovakia rather than Hawaii but we haven’t seen the long-form birth certificate yet.
I suspect this is about the accusations that Martina is a TERF but even that is giving RN’s smug incoherence too much credence.
I’d add freedom of religion and freedom of speech to the list of “rights and freedoms” that are threatened by the political left.
The environmental movement tries to dictate the minutiae of people’s lives: how much water their toilets and showerheads can use, which kind of lightbulbs they have to use, how many MPG their vehicle must get, what type of gas can is acceptable, etc. Perhaps calling those things “rights” would be overwrought, but there’s certainly less freedom to be had when environmentalists get their way.