A similar discussion in this opinion piece in today’s NYT’s Sunday Review.
And certainly less emphasis on such things as “white political power”.
Actually they won’t. As you say most Trump voters are not white nationalists nor would they support a white nationalist agenda and for that matter neither would Trump. Certainly he has radical ideas but they are very far removed from the goals of the KKK, etc.
Yes, the extremists are coming out of the shadows (although they’ve never made much effort to hide themselves) and they will be applauding many of Trump’s actions in government but they’re going to be sadly disappointed if they believe that Trump is a rabid Nazi under the skin. He isn’t.
I’m certainly not going to defend the media, but I have been around the world, and I’ve met all kinds of people from all walks of life. Some of them are scary. They are anti-semitic, they are anti-black, anti-gay, anti-liberal, anti-progress and anti-just about everything. Saying “I’m not really that” means nothing when you ALWAYS vote for that.
I know lots of “nice” Trump supporters. I know them well enough to know they are bigoted. Just not to your face. That makes them pussies, not “nice Trump supporters” who always vote the bigot ticket.
He doesn’t have to be a Nazi to be of service to them. We’ve seen no evidence from Trump that he has the integrity or moral compass to really push back on his most virulent supporters. As he has shown with his dodgy non disavowal of David Duke, his MO with these types is to feign ignorance of their agenda.
“White nationalists? What white nationalists? I don’t even know what that is, so you tell me. What am I supposed to do about them if I know nothing about them?”
The coyness fools no one, but his supporters take his cue and go along pretending that there’s nothing to see folks, nothing at all.
Then why does Steve Bannon have a White House job? Why all the fear-mongering over Muslims and Mexicans? Why all the promises of jobs for rural whites, but nothing but “law and order” for the inner cities?
You’re right, Trump isn’t a closet Nazi. There is no closet.
Balderdash. Not all Trump Fans are White Nationalists? Of course. Many are just deluded.
But your defense of these Nazi creeps is ridiculous. Some of my best friends are white males–and they felt no need to vote for Trump. They enjoy living in a diverse society.
Just like the coal miners who will continue to be out of work, the White Nationalists will eventually get that Trump is not one of them. Even if his campaign did encourage them. Their anger might be more dangerous that the poor coal miners.
My bold.
In fact, we’ve seen evidence of just the opposite, namely, that Trump has NO integrity at all and will say whatever his current group of listeners wants to hear. He has no center, no moral position, no consistent stance on anything. He is a tower of Jell-o.
I can’t see it. Can you just say what these incursions are that are so alienating to whites? I’m white and I don’t see the trend myself.
Are they insulted by electoral politics? Welcome to the club!
Is the insult so extreme as to warrant a vote for someone who is dangerous to them, just for the statement?
Why do you turn around and vote to eat worms? is it really because you don’t like being “condescended to”?
You realize we are talking about the election completely in terms of racial sensitivities?
A group saying there is too much sensitivity wants some for themselves and will destroy themselves to get it?
The irony of the “they voted for Trump because liberals are too mean to conservatives” meme is that it presumes Trump supporters don’t have the cognitive fortitude to reach a reasoned conclusion like anyone else. Which is pretty damn smug and condescending when you get down to it,
Would I be more inclined to vote Republican if conservatives hadn’t spent the last 8 years calling Obama everything but a human being? Would I have been more apt to vote for Trump if his online supporters had been less vulgar and crazy sounding and hateful towards Hillary supporters? No to both of these questions, and I’ll even go one further: Is there anything any Trump supporter could have possibly told me that would’ve changed my decision to vote for Hillary? Hell no. Because I trust my own judgement more than the judgement of some random yahoo, even one that talks “nice” to me.
I don’t know why I should assume big swaths of Trump supporters are wired any differently. Most of these voters have a long history of voting for conservatives. The bias is in their DNA. They are just as likely to vote Dem as they are likely to become Zoroastrians, and that will not change just because some liberal guy starts calling him buddy ole pal instead of calling him out on his racism when he says racist shit.
Trump has already announced his choice for highest law enforcement official in the land: Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III.
I think someone should start a GD thread, “Is Jeff Sessions racist or deplorable?”
The answer to that question may not be clear, but the case against the soon-to-be highest law enforcement official doesn’t look good:
[ul]
[li] He consistently opposes civil rights, hate-crime laws, affirmative action, the Violence Against Women Act, etc.[/li][li] He was accused, under oath, of calling a white civil rights lawyer a disgrace to his race for working on a voting rights case.[/li][li] Losing one hearing he allegedly said “Don’t be too happy, John, we’ll be watching you and the nigger.”[/li][li] He called the NAACP and ACLU un-American and Communist-inspired.[/li][li] He has supported anti-black voter suppression schemes.[/li][li] He fought the removal of the Confederate flag from public buildings.[/li][li] He voted against an amendment banning cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment of prisoners.[/li][li] He joked about the Ku Klux Klan (they were “okay until they started smoking pot”).[/li][li] He allegedly addressed a black assistant U.S. attorney with language like “Boy, you better be careful how you talk to white folks.”[/li][/ul]
Well, when you read the numerous articles coming out about why people voted for Trump, you pretty much have to come to this conclusion. Maybe smug and condescending, but read for yourself here and here. There’s not a lot of reasoned conclusions in these statements. Many were Clinton-haters who who figured after 25 years of smoke there had to be fire, and voted for DT on a lick and a promise. Like when you close your eyes, cross your fingers, and hope for the best.
ETA: From another thread-
Well, ThelmaLou, if all that is true, reasoned conclusions or not, it only shows the folly in attributing things that liberals say to conservative’s voting habits. If their minds were made up that Hillary is Lucifer in drag, it’s not like some college kid’s online ranting about microagressions is going to touch that, ya know? And if conservatives think America is conspiring against the white male, we can’t forget that there is a long and sordid history of this viewpoint that extends well before the era of PCness. The legacy of the Southern Strategy is still an active influence on politics today, so it’s disingenuous to portray “identity politics” as a liberal thing. Conservatives simply have been more covert about it. But that clearly is changing now with Trump at the helm.
Slight difference. Back in the day, it was that colored folks and immigrants were coming to take your stuff. Nowadays, its that they already have. That’s why the white guy has less stuff than he used to, its not that a bunch of rightards screwed up everything, economy wise. Its that the lefty liberals gave it all away to other people.
And the lives of those people is not so much better because of equality and progress, but because they stole your stuff.
I’ll give you an example that doesn’t necessarily involve race, but it nevertheless involves the ever-changing dynamics of political correctness. So I walk into a coffee shop and I give my order to someone who is clearly male but dresses up as a lady. A few moments later someone else behind the counter asks “Can I take your order?” To which I reply, “Oh no, he’s already taken my order.” Almost at that exact moment I detect an obvious change in his countenance, offended that I referred to ‘him’ as a ‘he’ and not whatever he wanted to be referred to as.
The above is a 100 percent true story. Perhaps somewhat isolated, but here’s the thing: all across the land in university bubbles everywhere teachers and students are exposed to diversity workshops in which they’re coached on the proper nomenclature of political correctness-speak. They’re taught about the importance of ‘trigger warnings’ and ‘safe spaces’. It’s not just academia either, though. Hell, a few weeks ago I was chastised here on one of these threads because I made reference to voters in “the ghetto”. I didn’t respond because I didn’t frankly give a fuck. I’ve honestly forgotten the context and honestly don’t care – I’m not going to be ‘educated’ by the PC police on how to speak. I know when someone is being a patently offensive turd and when someone is otherwise speaking about a potentially sensitive issue in matter-of-fact terms. Honestly, most white people, and frankly people across the entire different demographic spectrum are tired of being policed on what to say and what to think.
And that brings me back to politics:
No, of course not, but since we’re talking about politics, if you’re a white guy living in a Rust Belt state like Michigan, Ohio, or Pennsylvania, and you’ve watched Hillary Clinton travel to Detroit, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, and Cleveland, and largely ignore the suburbs or the more rural areas in the Midwest, then you begin to feel ignored. If you’ve watched the democratic party talk about the need for immigration reform (i.e. finding a way to make out-of-status immigrants legal citizens) and you’ve heard very little about how you’re going to get your job back, then you begin to feel ignored. If you’re a cop and you’ve watched the democratic party talk about Black Lives Matter but you’ve not talked about how quickly a traffic stop can turn into a fatal shootout, then you begin to feel ignored.
You can laugh or disregard these ‘grievances’ all you want – the democratic party did this pretty much all of 2015 and 2016 and look where we are now. It’s healthier if democrats focus less on using demography as a strategy and instead find the things that all working class people, regardless of race, have in common, and go from there.
Just to make sure I understand this story - the person didn’t say anything to you? They didn’t refuse to serve you? They weren’t rude to you? They didn’t correct you? They didn’t pass your order off to another worker? The only thing that happened was that their expression fluttered a bit?
That’s your complaint? That is, to you, “being an offensive turd”?
My God! His countenance changed. His ENTIRE COUNTENANCE! Are you OK? Do you need some counseling or a safe space?
How did you manage to handle this without crying?
You have convinced me that people like this should simply not exist, if they continue to make life a LITERAL LIVING HELL for good people such as yourself.
Voting for president is a thing that involves making a decision about someone who mostly doesn’t think about you and has a lot of irons in the fire and a hard job to do. I am already used to that and it doesn’t hurt my feelings. I want things to be fair.
As far as the bolded text: I was a college brat and have never lived in a town that wasn’t a college town. It’s hard for me to believe that this thing, if it is a thing, which is constantly repeated ad nauseum by republicans and others could serve as a reason to vote for or against anyone, or get anyone’s panties twisted at all. Like, we got to grow up. None of this speaks to Trumps win.
He won because we are in a reality TV, internet, immediate gratification era, and that condition is mixed with the one that a lot of us are liberal haters deep down inside our lizard brains.
Now try to separate that out from racism, and other fears of others. That would be a discussion.
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You had to be there.
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I never said he was an offensive turd. But he was clearly upset with me just because I made reference to him using a male pronoun. But like I said, guess you had to be there.
In another example, I know of people who have attended diversity seminars who were accused of being racist because they use “black” instead of “African American” or they were otherwise not up to speed on proper nomenclature of political correctness. You can dismiss it if you want - doesn’t matter to me because I know that their claims are 100% true.
Again, you can say whatever you want – my sense of ego doesn’t hinge upon whatever people say on SDMB. I’m more in touch with the cross section of voters than most people here.