You are confusing “Trump himself” with “people we are going to have to share the US with, like it or not, and who might be capable of changing their minds if we treat them with respect.”
I have friends and relatives who supported Trump. Yes, my personal view is that this was idiotic on their parts. However, they aren’t idiots overall. I’d like to believe that they are indeed capable of watching what happens next and possibly having a genuine discussion about it.
When you express yourself as the OP did, you are only hurting the cause. Why give Trump supporters another reason to hate us? We only push them farther and farther away by refusing to treat them as human beings.
What the hell happened to “when they go low, we go high”? It may have been nothing but empty campaign rhetoric to those of you who would rather nurse your anger than save the country, but I happen to believe those are good words to live by.
It’s not that I don’t see your point, but I think it’s more constructive to focus on what’s the best thing for us and for the country as a whole. Not to present it through the lens of how Trump supporters are going to feel.
Many Trump supporters have been very vitriolic and fingerpointy lately, largely, I suspect, out of a suppressed sense of creeping buyer’s remorse and a desire to find someone else to blame for it if it continues to worsen. It’s not surprising that some of the rest of us get a little impatient with being constantly scolded for not being careful enough of their feelings.
Respect is a two-way street. Not being in the US yourself, as you note, you might not have a very clear sense of how much “respect” Trump supporters have been showing for their ideological opponents recently. Or since long before recently, for that matter.
Do you really believe that he talks this way to his trump relatives? Like this is his life story?
You’re being a scold, and repeating things that we are sick of hearing, because they have been coming from trump supporters trolling. We believe someones lectures might be better delivered to someone else.
Liberals are subject to compassion fatigue too. Treating donnies voters as human beings right now seems like a very asymmetrical relationship.
Well Trump said that the people were not going to be ignored. The OP is venting because many like him will be. I however don’t think that using that wide a brush and hate is helpful Thing Fish.
We only need to show a few misguided voters in the rust belt and Florida how wrong they were. Don’t mind much the ones that will never learn. But do not put all in the same column. Do contribute to groups that will help control the current Trump abuses and the ones to come. And do get involved in ways to help Democratic candidates in the coming midterms.
Look, if the OP didn’t want responses, he wouldn’t have posted. I know you don’t believe that only posts agreeing with the OP are allowed, because tolerating dissent is a liberal value.
The violence and nastiness of Donald Trump is no excuse to respond with violence and nastiness. Dehumanizing and demonizing people leads to…well, a Trump administration. Humanity has GOT to prove itself capable of something better, or we’re fucked.
You mean like “I hope that your children also get to see you die so I can laugh in their faces, after I spit in them and before I gouge their eyes out and fuck them in their eye sockets.” I’m not seeing anything in the OP that “focuses on what’s the best thing for us and for the country as a whole”. There are light years between “treating the opposite with respect” and what the OP said. Perhaps we only poke out their eyes and NOT fuck them int he eye sockets. That would be a start…
:dubious: Where did I imply that there is? As I mentioned in post #2 of this thread, I definitely support more positive and constructive ways of manifesting discontent with the current political situation.
My remark to CairoCarol was not intended to endorse the OP’s sentiments, but simply to suggest that insisting on the importance of treating Trump supporters respectfully may not be the best way to disagree with them.
One of the things I find most nauseating about the Trump campaign (and, it looks like, his presidency) is the way it forces those of us on the other side to stoop to his level. It’s really a very crafty strategy, if you think about it: if you act so hatefully and unreasonably that you reduce the other side to mirror your behavior, because they are at a loss for how a constructive approach would work, then you win, because you’ve essentially reduced the dialogue to “no, u” – and every mindless accusation can be flung back and forth by both sides, accomplishing nothing.
FUCK Trump supporters! To paraphrase Woody Allen’s Manhattan (1979):
Isaac Davis (Woody): Has anybody read that Trump supporters are gonna march in New Jersey? Y’know, I read this in the newspaper. We should go down there, get some guys together, y’know, get some bricks and baseball bats and really explain things to them. Party Guest: There is this devastating satirical piece on that on the Op Ed page of the Times, It is devastating. Isaac Davis: Well, a satirical piece in the Times is one thing, but bricks and baseball bats really gets right to the point. Party Guest: Oh, but really biting satire is always better than physical force. Isaac Davis: No, physical force is always better with Trump supporters.
And that’s how the cookie and the empire usually crumbles. So we are agreeing that some given approach may not be adequate? That it’s a very sticky wicket and we are on unfamiliar terrain for democracy.
Well there’s a time and a place. I was mostly red about the idea from another poster that liberals are responsible for making the country look bad. I was accusing you of being a scold but not preventing you. This is the pit. I took the meaning of the OP as that he has just had it. Not that he is going into some kind of dark army to hate. If you can’t understand that that’s OK too. You notice no one else is piling on and lighting fires. We are just empathizing.
Liberals are supposed to be the party of the people. Not understanding why people voted the way they did isn’t the way to win future elections. Understanding them doesn’t mean you have to agree with them, btw. You can call them racist, bigoted and threaten to skull fuck their kids all you want, but it is unlikely that will get them to vote any differently in the future.
You can blame the people who voted for Trump all you like, but it wasn’t their fault the Dems ran a turd sandwich as their candidate.
What other board members? AFAICT, the rules of the forum don’t forbid wishing harm on generic categories of people. So why are you complaining that it ought to be moderated?