I saw a clip of Trump at a rally rambling on in his idiotic rambling way and I saw his MAGA-hat-wearing-morons cheering on every word as it they were coming from the mountaintop and as usual I wanted to shout at the screen. WAKE THE FUCK UP YOU FUCKING IDIOTS!
Earlier in the night some friends and I were hanging out and somehow we got to talking about mass murderers, and if we hate them. We all said that we do not, there is just something wrong with them, their brains are deformed.
Now I an NOT saying that Trump supporters have deformed brains or equating them with mass murderers. But if I don’t hate a mass murderer, why do I hate misinformed, ignorant people?
Just try to imagine if all of your information came from FOX News or Rush, or from your respected uncle or brother or friend who got all of his information from FOX News or Rush. Of course you would think the Democrats are evil communists in disguise out to destroy the American way of life.
I have said this before in other threads but by saying it in an OP maybe it will stick. I have to stop checking the news and this forum several times a day to see about the latest idiocy from Trump and hoping that it will be the one that causes his popularity to drop a few percentage points.
My new theme song, from the great John Prine. If you know him, you know these lyrics. If you don’t, you must get to know him.
You can gaze out the window get mad and get madder,
Throw your hands in the air and say “What does it matter?”
But it don’t do no good to get angry,
So help me I know
For a heart stained in anger grows weak and grows bitter.
You become your own prisoner as you watch yourself sit there
Wrapped up in a trap of your very own
Chain of sorrow.
Agree with the OP. A few years ago I was on a trip and seated on a train next to a Trump supporter, and had a really nice talk with her. She was a wonderful person, very nice in every way. But all her news cane from Fox, so she believed some ridiculous things about Obama. How can we counteract that?
Years ago I was sitting in a car dealership half asleep/half listening to the lady next to me going on and on about the government doing something or another with our TVs. This was back when cable was switching over to digital signals and the government required all the cable providers to hand out converters so we wouldn’t all have to run out and buy new TVs. So, yes, in a sense the government was ‘controlling’ some aspect of our TVs (IIRC, ‘Obama phones’ were popular at the time too). However, it clearly ran a bit deeper in her mind. At one point she looked at the TV, saw the logo for the station and said ‘look, what’s that, Government Supplied News or something’. I politely explained that GSN is Game Show Network as I left the area.
At least in that case, it was just straight up CT, that’s not something she heard on Fox.
Unfortunately Trump supporters affect all our lives (and I live in England), whereas a single criminal does not.
On a holiday last year to Vegas, I took a long taxi ride with a pleasant driver.
At first he wanted to chat about England, but then he started to explain how magnificent Trump was. :smack:
I tried to keep out of it, but he was so keen and yet ill-informed. He politely asked me to say who the greatest US President was.
When I replied “Obama”, he was truly stunned.
He did listen as I explained about Obama being highly intelligent, caring, charismatic and wanting to introduce the wonderful Universal Health Care.
He was gobsmacked when I said that Trump was a lying, selfish narcissist whose ‘wall’ would never be built.
He explained that Trump has stated about my country:
our beloved National Health Service was overrun with bodies lying in corridors
there were ‘no-go’ areas in London where police couldn’t enter
Sharia law had been introduced all over England
Trump was wildly popular in England
Of course I was able to refute all of these - and to be fair he said he would think about what I’d said.
But it is scary when the President of the United States just lies all the time…
There may be some genuinely naïve votes amongst Trumpers, but I think most find something that appeals to their particular interests (the government is out to get us, we’re are losing our place in society due to newcomers, only a business man can fix the economy, I watch The Apprentice and I like and trust that guy, and, of course, the rest of his policies are distasteful but I am making Bank so it’s all good.
So, yes, it might be ignorance, but it’s ignorance rooted in some hateful and vile ideas, with some selfishness and disdain for others thrown in.
I may not hate all Trump supporters, but I think at best they are fucking stupid. At their worst, they are dangerous.
It would be better stated that I don’t hate Trump supporters, I get angry at them. I hate their beliefs and their ignorance, but don’t hate them personally.
For the most part. There are some that are Limbaugh-like racists, hate-filled fascists spewing nonsense. I hate them, but what I am trying to do is not let them make me angry.
But what you put in parens is ignorance. The government has never been out to get them. That idiot Reagan - "the most terrifying words in the English language: “I am from the government and I am here to help.” They weren’t complaining when the goverment built roads and bridges and highways and dams. Most of these southern states, Alabama, Mississippi, get far more money from the big bad government than they return in tax dollars.
I can’t do that. Even Fox News will say the bad things Trump does–things that are objectively bad and that his supporters formerly decried. Being nice doesn’t make up for that they clearly only pretended to care about certain moral things.
I honestly don’t get why people treat “being nice” as an indication that someone is not a bad person. Many horrible people are perfectly nice. The KKK member (and I’ve met a few, due to where I live) is perfectly nice to me, a white guy.
I don’t watch the rallies. The reason I “hate” Trump supporters is the hypocrisy. Every Trump supporter I know is part of the “Moral Majority” type, and now they don’t give a fuck about that. That’s what inspires my animosity.
I always knew the evil, selfish people existed. But I had deluded myself into thinking these people weren’t bad, just with some different principles than me. But now I know their principles change depending on who is in charge.
But it doesn’t, because I don’t choose to embrace ignorance and listen only to people who tell me what I want to hear. This is not North Korea, where we only have one source of information about the world. The people who listen to that garbage have the option to seek out information as to why it’s garbage. They’re swimming in a sea of truth and reality, and they hold their breath until they turn blue. They don’t want to. They want to be ignorant, they want their hatreds to be stoked and reinforced and praised, they want to be in a state of perpetual outrage.
Trump says so many false things that some of them are things that these people know are false. And if they can say to themselves “okay, Trump is calling this thing that I know is real fake news”, then they can say “what else is he lying about? What else do I take for granted as being true that’s just as much a lie?”
But they choose not to have that thought, because they are voluntarily wallowing in that ignorance. They like it. They get something out of being outraged. They’re offered a simpler world where brown people and gay people and whatever else ruin everything, it gives them an easy target for their hatred and makes their anger simple.
They are vile. They view even their own politicians not by what they can do to help them, but what they can do to make the wrong people suffer. They are spiteful, hateful, ignorant, and proudly so.
Here’s some more John Prine that could help inform us about Trump supporters. (Considering that John wrote this in the Bush 43 years it might more closely reflect his own thoughts on a similar subject.)
Some humans ain’t human
Though they walk like we do
They live and they breathe
Just to turn the old screw
They screw you when you’re sleeping
They try to screw you blind
Some humans ain’t human
Some people ain’t kind
Trump supporters say all kinds of things about why they like or support or voted for Trump, or why they will vote for him in 2020.
“I support his policies!” “The Trump economy is great!” (Except they can articulate exactly none of his policies, nor can they explain what he’s done to strengthen the economy nor connect an actual executive action to a concrete result.) “He’s draining the swamp!”
The unspoken (to you) reasons boil down to “He wants to hurt the same people I want to hurt,” and “He makes the libtards cry.”
I don’t hate them either. But my well of empathy for them has been drained to a very shallow depth.
I’ve got that album but don’t know the song. Clay Pigeons is one of my favorite Prine songs. So thanks for that. There is another one, People Putting People Down.
They started hating and fearing the government when it started being a force for desegregation, civil rights, voting rights, women’s rights, and other forms of non discrimination.
This all goes back to the basket of deplorables speech that got Clinton in such hot water. There really are two types of Trump supporters there are those suggested by the OP who are decent but horribly misguided people whose fears and paranoia have been stoked by right wing media, but then there are people are there for the hate and bullying. Those who marched at Charlottesville, who beat up protesters at Trump rallies and who revel in the idea of brown kids in cages. As to what percentage of each there are I’m not sure, but both groups are there.
“It is something decent people did to trigger all the xenophobic bigots to vote for Trump.”
“Its because Hillary called them deplorable”
Hell no!
There is a ~33% in every society that’s kinda dumb, looking for a strong daddy figure to hold their hands and tell them it is not their fault and everything is gonna be alright. It is the base for every Trump, Putin, Erdogan, Bolsonaro etc.
If the public discourse is such that those ideas are not shouted down at first appearance, they will thrive, sound reasonable to the impressionable.
It is not your (our) task to be nice to them, they’re bigoted racist assholes, it is your (our) task to out-organise, out-vote them.
Reasonable, nice people are the majority almost everywhere. Try to get them to vote.
