Hey, anybody?
Oh - so you do want the cites for the behavior of Trump supporters. Sure. No problem.
- Here’s a recent Boston Globe article talks about conservative Trump supporters’ hoping for bloody revolution.
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Trump says the election is rigged — and his supporters are furious
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Republican Nominee Donald Trump is actively harming America by undermining our democratic tradition. His conservative supporters are also harming America by looking forward to an opportunity to bust their opponents’ heads.
- Cite for the Trump Supporters planning to bomb the apartment building in Kansas -
Sometimes, I find the Times’ circumspection amusing. In this case, the murderous conservatives had Facebook pages where they posted right-wing memes, including their support for Donald, the usual nonsense about Hillary taking their guns, and hatred for Muslims.
We all know which Republican Presidential Candidate has been talking about banning Muslims for months now.
You can view those memes and facebook posts at the Heavy.com -
Curtis Allen, Gavin Wright & Patrick Stein: 5 Fast Facts You Need to Know
- Cite for armed Donald Trump supporters menacing Democractic political office -
[quote=]
Parks stood outside the offices for almost 12 hours. Dittmar volunteers say that the protest was disturbing.
“If he wants to support his candidate that’s fine, but don’t come here and stare into the office all day,” said Su Wolff, a Fluvanna County resident and Dittmar volunteer.
Parks was eventually joined by another protester, and Wolff said that the most troubling part of the protest was that both of them started to expose their firearms.
“He turned sideways to be sure that we would see that he has an open carry gun, which is legal, and is fine, but it’s intimidating,” she said.
Parks said that his firearm is legal, and that he had no ill intention by carrying it.
[/quote]
The disingenuousness of all that’s pissing me off here. He’s just casually making threatening gestures - but of course he’s not ill-intentioned! How dare we suggest that he was being threatening when he threatened people with his gun. Whatever, loser. We all see you. We all see that you’re a coward who needs a gun to stand in a parking lot for twelve hours.
- Next up! Cite for Trump supporters attacking people:
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Trump Supporter Charged After Threatening Black Woman in Albany, NY
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Oh, hey - I found an omnibus thread about recent attacks on women by Trump supporters recently. I’ll just quote a few for illustrative purposes.
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There Have Been at Least 9 Violent Attacks on Women by Trump Supporters
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I’m bored now but I’m point remains: Donald Trump and his supporters are dangerous idiots who are actively behaving in violent, un-American, ways. They are undermining both public decency and America’s electoral foundations.
These are the people that we Liberals are being told that we have to approach with delicacy and tact. This is nonsense. If they are to be approached at all, it should be done with bear spray at the ready.
But really - how does one reason with Trump supporters who want violent revolution and domestic terrorism? How does one even start a conversation with a conservative who’s still supporting Trump, despite Trump’s unAmerican and frankly appalling behavior? How can a rational person explain to an irrational fool that no, America’s electoral system should not be discarded for violent revolution?
It’s a waste of time trying to have a rational discussion with Trump supporters. Supporting Trump is not a rational thing to do. You can’t reason people out of a position that reason didn’t get them into.
Sorry I don’t have any actual answers for you, Ulfreida.
Confidential to **bomberswarm2 ** - everyone here can see that you don’t actually understand the concept of free speech.
Obviously a lot of us here have a political bias, as this is a liberal board.
But we aren’t talking about ‘everyone who isn’t a progressive’, because only about 15-20% of the public consider themselves progressives, meaning 85% of the public are not.
However right wing authoritarians are a serious threat to democracy and order. And they make up about 1/2 to 1/3 of conservative voters.
[ol]
[li]They live in a delusional bubble free of facts and information[/li][li]They do not respect the civil, political and human rights of their opposition[/li][li]They react to threats with overpowering responses, which can cause instability (Trump’s asking why we don’t use nukes if we have them, etc)[/li][li]They have little respect for concepts like liberal democracy (free elections for example, or representative government)[/li][/ol]
Trump’s campaign is one that is motivated by RWA types. His movement is one of people who think stripping away the rights of muslims, blacks (wanting to give police more power to oppress blacks in the ghetto), latinos, women, etc is acceptable. Who think that when they lose the election is it because the election was fraudulent. At the core, RWA types do not respect modern democratic traditions. Normally they aren’t a major issue, but they can cause issues when they come to power and empower groups like Islamic jihadists, military juntas or fascist movements.
They are a serious issue that needs to be discussed. These are people who lack respect for basic democratic tenets like representative government and human rights.
Libertarians, who I disagree with politically, do not do these things. Libertarians do not live in a fact free bubble, they do not call for the oppression of their political opposition, they do not lack respect for democratic traditions, etc.
The only thing we can do about Trump supporters is to wait and let them discredit themselves to the point where they become so toxic that no person would ever want to be associated with them. However, people are going to get hurt in the process. Other than voting against it, I don’t think there is anything we can do except sit back and watch in horror. What must happen is that those who supported and reached out to these voters must be held accountable and voted out of office.
Don’t get your hopes up. The GOP will eventually get back to its usual self. All Trump did was fulfill a personal vendetta for being publicly mocked at the White House Correspondents’ dinner in 2011. (If he’s such an outsider, what was he doing there?) He just took advantage of the political climate.
Really, he’s no outsider upsetting the system. In fact, he’s the ultimate bullshitting politician who will say anything to get a vote, with no intention of helping any of his supporters. He pulled off the biggest con job in the country’s history. And now he has a goldmine of a mailing list of dupes to scam–people who will buy any crap whatsoever.
That’s fine, you could certainly argue that I’m straying offtopic but in my eyes there are a lot of parallels between Trump’s campaign and what was Brexit’s, which is why I’m throwing my own 2p in from across the pond, and as far as I’ve read the immigration issue is oft mentioned there as well.
Neither side is absolutely pure and innocent, I think that’s my main point on everything else.
We have a few actual violent racists here yes, but I wouldn’t say everyone on the Brexit side (many of whom were friends and colleagues) were people who want to hurt {in our case generally Polish people and Muslims, even though most of the Muslims originate from outside of the EU, but there’s no accounting for the intelligence of a racist}. Just as I wouldn’t say it’s wise or correct to tar all Trump supporters with the same brush.
The Cracked article that is doing the rounds suggests several other motivations that don’t involve being hate-filled raging demons who don’t like Mexicans.
I’m worried.
As someone living in Tennessee, I’m nervous.
Some of the locals are becoming rather serious about post-election violence.
Well, not just Obama and Bush - a lot of presidents have pushed those limits. The check is a strong congress, not a petulant one.
Well, right now the judiciary is chewing on that one, and if the legislature has abdicated its responsibilities, of course the president will take advantage. The current popular myth among Trump supporters is that he’s a man who can get things done but won’t screw over everybody else. I’m not sure how they can cling to this except though extremely wishful thinking.
Vox: Trump supporters aren’t the ones suffering from economic trends. They’re pretty well off and the thing is, they’re pretty much supporting Trump because they’re racists.
According to this NYT study last March, the highest correlations are
1.lack of a high school diploma
2. self description of race as “American”
3. lives in a trailer park
The next two highest are an ‘old economy’ job and having voted for George Wallace. Having a job is a negative correlation.
Now, you can drop out of high school for noble reasons but one of the less noble and more common reasons is that you are not intelligent enough to grasp either the concepts or the consequences.
I’m going to imagine that well-off Trump voters might be either racists or anti-abortion voters clinging desperately to the slimmest of hopes.
I like the first quoted paragraph … though any solution is easier said than done.
But I clicked reply because of the second paragraph! Nice prose! … but it’s hard for me to conceive what sort of Revolution is likely in America. The French revolt in 1789 occurred when people were starving and suppressed by foreign mercenary soldiers. America’s recent revolt was led by millionaire cattle rustlers who wanted to continue to rob the public. Trumpists are well-off suburbanites subconsciously vexed by their own lifestyle choices. The idea that Trumpists and white Appalachianites will join hands with the ghetto thugs of Detroit strikes me as absurd — racism is a guiding principle of white American rage.
Lets hope they start getting some proper representation because an awful lot of people would be rather pissed off by now, what with living in a notional democracy an’ all.
btw, life expectancy in Tennessee is shit:
I know plenty of Trump supporters who aren’t backwoods hillbillies. Although interestingly enough, pretty much all of them are jerks. They were jerks when I knew them in high school and college and they are presumably still jerks now that they support Trump.
How is that anything more than an irrelevant exercise in smugness?
The risk of post election violence is real.
Yeah, there is no telling. If the election doesn’t give them the results they want some may become violent. I’m not sure how that will end up, or what acts of violence they will commit.
I’m not saying that you’re off topic. I’m saying that, as a Brit, you might not be familiar enough with goes on at Donald Trump rallies.
This “Both sides are equally as bad” false equivalency is part of why Republicans are in this mess. It’s a way of deflecting criticism so that they can avoid admitting talking about their problems. Even if it’s true, that Democrats are also in thrall to a hate-filled rage demon (and it’s not true) - saying that everyone is to blame is not addressing the issue.
Lots of people suggest lots of things. I, otoh, am simply posting the words and deeds of Trump followers. If their own words and deeds reflect poorly on them, well, that’s their own fault.
For example - here is an article from the New York Times, last August, with an uncensored sample of what goes on at Trump rallies -
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/04/us/politics/donald-trump-supporters.html
They highlight the two most important points:
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This behavior is not normal at any other political rally
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Even the polite people in the crowd are comfortable with the violent display
If the well-behaved Trump supporters want to argue that they shouldn’t be tarred with the brush of the hate-filled, then they need to take some concrete steps to separate themselves.
If anything, behavior from the Trump fans has gotten worse in the last few months since it’s become clearer that he’s losing. Trump himself hints at assassination and anti-semitism. Just a few days ago, one of Trump’s supporters at the Republican Convention tweeted calling for pitchforks and torches against our corrupt government -
At this point, the onus is on the Trump supporters and their apologists to provide actual evidence that Trump followers are against the violent rhetoric coming from their candidate and his surrogates. The onus here is to provide evidence that Trump supporters reject violence.
Good luck with that.
What about all the shamefully decaying infrastructure the US has? What would happen if there was a big infusion of government cash into rebuilding bridges, roads, sewers? What if there was a WPA type program providing the able-bodied with respectable non-professional work repairing and upgrading parks, schools, public places?
Would that improve our political life?
I"ve been saying, long time, that the extreme polarization of our parties in the US is leading us into armed conflict, again.
Suggestions: effective immediately, news organizations should carefully select the coverage of those candidates who call for extreme measures to regain their “America”. The effect of repeated lies and slurs on any given group of the electorate is sure to arouse a significant percentage of well intentioned, but weak-minded people. Limit the propoganda by not having a policy, as a news organization, of featuring the oddball, the extremist, the iconoclast speakers and candidates. Not restricting their freedom of speech, rather, don’t feature it constantly.
Second, remember that most Trump supporters think of themselves as hyper-patriotic. They think of themselves as the keepers of the flame of liberty. Opponents of the iconoclastic candidates must refute their claims constantly by holding up their version of patriotism as the finest example,
Third, the root of stupidity is lack of education. Schools in many parts of our country, especially those where states tend to be red and Trump is most popular, are underfunded and are influenced overmuch by conservatives who are mired in bullshit beliefs concerning science in particular. If kids aren’t taught to respect our institutions and to look to science to improve our lives, what you see today is what you get. Hamm comes to mind.
Right, thank goodness for the balanced, intellectual approach of the GOP’s strongest supporter, Fox News.
So, the other side are not violent? http://www.charlotteobserver.com/news/politics-government/article108627627.html