Interesting [AP article today about Elliott County, KY:
](http://bigstory.ap.org/article/06e8c4950c364f66994d194b0ec64f50/trump-country-democratic-elliott-county-ky-23-points)Let me add that Judy Pennington has fantastic hair, IMO.
You’re still getting a warning for it. Do not insult other posters. If you must do so, you know where the Pit is. Go there.
I am going to say that, yes, I act entirely differently here than I do in real life.
In real life, I have a business, that could be harmed by upsetting the wrong person politically. Whenever one of my clients starts talking about politics, I lie to them, and tell them that I am too busy with my business to pay much attention to what is going on in the news.
All of my employees were fairly strong hillary supporters, so my discussions with them were not persuasive or argumentative, but simply factual and, after the election, comforting.
Amongst my friends, I did not have any Trump supporters. I had some anti-hillary’s who were going to vote for stein, some of which I think I may have convinced to vote for hillary, others I didn’t. I didn’t really push things or argue, but I did express my opinion in the most polite methods I could.
I have a very loose circle of acquaintances of whom I knew were voting for trump, and to be honest, I did not engage them very much. I didn’t really have time or energy for that sort of discussion, and also didn’t want to alienate anyone I didn’t have to, especially after the fallout from the 2012 election, where several of my “friends” took great exception to my Obama sign in my front yard.
There really is little consequence to actions here. There are some, sure, but they are all contained to this little board here. I don’t need to worry about losing friends or business over my views, so I am much more free to say how I really feel, rather than couching things in safe terms.
I assume that you act differently here than you do with your clients, your friends and family. If not, well, praise for your consistency, and if you want to call me a hypocrite for acting differently in public and in private, have at, but I do not see that as the most pragmatic way to conduct myself.
ETA: I know your comment was directed at Czar, but I hope you don’t mind me answering as well.
Okay, what you are saying is engage, then judge, then listen, then understand, then empathize.
Now, to be honest, in this election I kept my head down. I have reputation to protect. I didn’t talk about politics with many people, and even fewer that were highly disagreeable. Pretty much the only Trump supporters I engaged with at all were my family, and that’s a pretty tense relationship even before the election season started.
We can go back and forth, but it really does come down to the fact that the voters do need to take some responsibility. They need to inform themselves. The only difference between myself and the trump voter that we are trying to reach (now that we have eliminated the “deplorables” as reachable) is that I didn’t vote for Trump. I am in the same economic and social situation as they are. I grew up with the same opportunities and challenges that they did. These are my neighbors, my clients, my loose acquaintances. (And hell maybe closer friends too that voted for trump, but may not have told me that because they knew and respected my views.)
But I made a choice to be engaged, to educate myself about the issues, not to have the issues broken down into soundbites and slogans for my easy consumption. I sought out information. I came to this board and a few others to explore the different viewpoints of other people outside of my normal environment.
I do not see how we can reach the non-engaged, the non-curious. And yes, if you look at my posts here, you can see a frustration and even a bit of animosity towards my peers that choose to take the easy road. As I pointed out to bricker, I do act entirely differently here than I do in real life. In real life, I am actually very good at controlling my tone and body language. (I can tell a client that their dog was a sweetheart while I am still bleeding from its antics from the nail trim, and they believe me. ) I choose my topics of conversation and my battles wisely, in that I pretty much choose not to battle.
Anyway, I am not trying to argue, and I actually do find this a productive conversation fro a post-mortem point of view. There may be some nuggets of wisdom that I have gleaned from this thread that may allow me to make a more balanced plea for support in the future, but I am still analyzing. My only contention with your comments is that I feel that you are too optimistic about the amount of work that is required to reach the trump voter. I do not see it as impossible, but very, very difficult, and as I see it, any approach that may work for one, will likely turn off another.
We’re gonna need a bigger garbage barge.
I issue the same one every election cycle anyway. I dream of the day the GOP is disbanded, so I can stop.
And they’re decrees, not edicts. Get it right.
I would say that’s pretty accurate, except for the judging part. If you had written that in a much smaller type font and it was grey instead of black text, that might convey how much judging I think people should do. Trust me when I say that people react negatively to others who are judgmental; I know from experience in my own life.
In a perfect world, everyone would be able to do algebra, understand what a covalent bond is, and be able to regularly construct sentences with nouns, verbs AND adjectives. This isn’t a perfect world. Not everyone will have the education, the time or the inclination to focus on politics, even tho it will affect their life. Just like air quality affects us all, yet most of us have no idea how much particulate lead there might be in the air we breathe, not everyone will pay attention to politics (until it is causing them harm).
We reach the non-engaged by engaging them. That’s part of the point I’ve been trying to make.
And frankly, I doubt that you’re much different in person than you are on the Dope. I’ve noticed (and commented on) the even tone you are able to keep in some very heated discussions. Even when insults and invective were being hurled your way, you remained calm and patient, sometimes for far longer than I would have been inclined to. Between you and iiandyiiii, you guys could have a competition for Most Patient Doper, except you’d prolly both be like Chip 'n Dale: “You first.” “No, no; after you.” “Oh no, I insist.” “Please, I’ll hold the door for you.” Etc. From the way you describe running your business and treating your employees, I doubt you’re much different here than in meatspace.
Oh, I’m not optimistic at all about the amount of work required. That’s why I’m urging people to start this effort right now, not in 2 years of 4 years. Right now. We (royal we) need to adjust our attitudes, buckle down and get to it. Years of divisive rhetoric, from both sides, have contributed to this and it will likely take years to make it better.
But as I’ve said, I’m a believer in the long game.
I don’t act differently in my real life. There are situations where I don’t bring up politics, of course, like a visit to the dentist, but there are forums here like Cafe Society where I don’t, for the same reason. But my persona and methods here are very much analogs of my interactions in real life.
Not at all.
Then you cannot draw that conclusion-I have no choice but to act differently if I wish to keep my job. I get along very well with everyone at work, in fact I have easily survived the employee purges and changeovers that have happened through the two buyouts that have taken place during my 24 years of employment.
It’s ever so slightly ironic that Trump supporters and those who defend them are arguing that that progressives and Democrat elites are guilty of hurting their feelings because of the harsh criticism they’ve expressed for Trump voter positions.
Perhaps one of the things Trump will establish in the first 100 days are some safe spaces to protect the tender sensibilities of his electorate.
How much longer are we going to hear these “Never mind all the racists and misogynists that he cheered on and openly associated with, never mind the fact that we believed the words of a habitual liar just because he told us everything we wanted to hear, never mind all the scandals and frauds and outright failures that he is a part of-The only reason we voted for Trump was because you hurt our feelings. If anything happens, it your fault. We only voted for him” excuses?
I agree, that from that perspective, it is frustrating.
However, as SB and others point out, that perspective is not the one that is going to win the Democrats elections in the future.
I am struggling to find a perspective that allows me to continue to hold to my beliefs and convictions, while also relating to those who frustrate the crap out of me.
The last thing we need is infighting. We need to postmortem, we need to regroup, and we need to rethink.
I don’t know what the best strategy is. Part of me wants to take Trump’s strategy: bully, lie, scapegoat, and make vague impossible promises. I hate the idea, but if it is a winning idea, then the pragmatic part of me says we should do it, while the vindictive side of me really wants to do it.
There is the softer touch, reaching out and engaging the disaffected white voter. That’s going to be a harder road, though maybe a nobler road. It is worth trying out to see if it will also be a winning strategy. I have my questions on how to best reach out to those who do not wish to be engaged in the process, but we have time for strategy. We need to roll things out before the next midterm heats up, but we have at least a few weeks before we need to hit the road. This approach won’t work with the mass media, or candidate or rallies, as those voters are already turned off from those messages, and will not respond. This approach requires one-on-one interaction. This will not be efficient. This will not be easy. This may not work. This may be our only chance.
Who can you think of that rallied people to their cause and effected more long-term change than Gandhi and MLK, Jr.?
I can’t think of anyone in the last hundred years that had even close to the kind of effect they had on their own societies, (and indeed, on societies around the world) and they did it without demonizing the opposition, without being condescending, etc. And they did it while holding true to their own values and goals. They called out injustice when they saw it, and did so harshly but they didn’t castigate the people committing the actions, they condemned the actions.
Look at their playbook, borrow a few pages (or a few hundred; I don’t think they’d mind).
I don’t think the problem is a lack of “empathy”, however you want to define it.
The problem is that propaganda and negative advertising works-It’s a well-researched science. Giving people an enemy, demonizing said enemy over a period of years is a stronger motivator than giving them goals to work for. Telling them they can have what they want, and giving them an enemy to blame for not already having it, is a stronger motivator then giving them realistic goals that might actually be possible. A shouted lie repeated many times is more effective than a calmly worded fact.
A very recent example of what I’m talking about, from this very board: The OP wants to support Trump while making an accusation of those that oppose him, then says the she/he is not interested in any contradictory posts.
The OP’s join date is November 2016. I’m not sure how much he drove the earlier discussions here.
Ignorance fought!
I was using the OP as an example of the people I have to work with every day-people that want to spew out, but have no intention of listening to anything but like opinions.
How can you tell if a politician is lying?
They won.
Gandhi and MLK were throwing off the yoke of a very visible system of oppression. In today’s US, we don’t have the same sort of thing. We certainly have inequality that borders on, and maybe even crosses into the arena of oppression, but it is a much more ephemeral and insidious element than it was in the past.
When you have pictures of blacks being beaten and set upon by police for trying to cross a bridge, that mobilizes people. All over the country, whites could empathize with that. They saw what was happening, and they knew it was wrong, and they acted to stop it.
With the current setup, the issues need to be understood through statistics and graphs, rather than through pictures that get to you viscerally. That’s harder. I don’t mean to minimize our past leaders in civil rights, and I do not deny that there is much to be learned from them, but it is necessary to acknowledge that things have changed drastically, and many of their lessons are no longer valid.
The white disaffected voter still has it better than most minorities. Most minorities are struggling to get to the position in life that the WDV complains about not being good enough today. The reason that the democrats have concentrated so much on the issues of the minorities is because they are behind us in in the social and economic environment, and they wished to balance that field. Now, it seems as though that concentrating on the part of our population with the most problems and suffering backfired electorally, but I don’t know that it was the wrong thing to do.
Sure, they are thick on the ground.
But I can’t honestly say I’ve noticed that they only appear on one side of the political spectrum.