Racists are too cowardly to admit that they’re racist. David Duke denies that he’s racist.
So I take this to mean that we are no longer trying to provide rational explanations for their turning a blind eye to Trump’s lies and mean rhetoric, Trumps nod to bigotry, or their willful ignorance. We’re left with trying to excuse it because they are “angry and desperate”.
That ***is ***the rational explanation. They’re angry and desperate, politically speaking, and that leads them to embrace and/or overlook someone like Trump.
To return to the football analogy, if you’re losing big in the fourth quarter, you don’t want a quarterback who only plays it safe and careful with five-yard checkdown passes. It’s time for someone who lets bombs fly deep downfield with his arm. It’s time for someone who scrambles for twenty yards with his own feet, someone who takes risks even if it means a higher chance of interceptions.
Whether Trump ***is ***any of those things matters less than that he was *perceived *by his voters as being those things.
So the rational explanation is that they aren’t acting rationally?
The more interesting question, to me, is why it takes 4 pages to state the obvious truth that their support is not rational, it is emotional and delusional.
Apparently divisiveness is in the eye of the beholder. You get absolutely N-O-T-H-I-N-G for being a Donny Dimwit enabler.
This “person” sounds suspiciously like “Hurricane Ditka.”
Those all sound like perfectly true statements, to me. I thought Donny Drumpf enablers were all about “truth”? No? Oh, then I guess all of you have been L-Y-I-N-G about that all along, haven’t you?
Please, for your own sake and the sake of whatever reputation you have - just stop. Outside of the right-wing bubble you should know what you come off like every single time you post. For your sake I’m hoping you quit posting anything but, frankly, I’m not holding my breath on THAT count.
The mistake of the OP is asking Conservative and/or Trump Supporter to RATIONALLY explain. Because it’s about as rational as Yankees and Red Sox fans declaring for their team. They are likely fans depending on which metro area they grew up in. And they don’t care about which team is objectively “better” based on stats and record and whatnot. They just want their team to win.
Conservatives will harp on Hillary Clinton’s emails or Benghazi until the end of the earth as the most egregious abuse of power. But they will willfully overlook anything you bring up about Trump as exaggeration, taken out of context, “fake news”, or “not as bad as Clinton’s emails and Benghazi”.
From what I can tell from my friends on either side of the political spectrum, there’s a fundamental difference in thinking as well.
Conservatives seem to be look at things as “this is pro / against America”, tend to support the legitimacy of authority like the police, big business or government (so long as it’s Republican), and prefer to maintain the status quo.
Liberals tend to be "this is the morally correct thing to do’, tend to question authority, and tend to favor disruption.
So the rationale of Republicans / Conservatives is "Trump is doing a great job because he is the President of America. Any mistakes or misteps he made earlier is due being distracted by Democrats trying to impeach him, Chinese lies, whatever.
Of course, if you don’t cite anything specific, you’re only going to get generalities. I encourage you to cite the 2 or 3 most serious examples. I’ll respond in detail to them if you do, but I won’t address something broad and vague.
Something else that would be helpful for balance is to seek examples of Obama’s dishonesty. The view of most people, is that what is claimed as Trump’s “lies” are mostly misrepresentations and libels by his political enemies, especially by the far left advocacy media (CNN, NY Times, MSNBC, LA Times, etc.). A recent, aggressively promoted example of this is the myth that Trump called the corona-virus a hoax, but I could easily cite hundreds of other such myths. In other cases, it’s the press quibbling with Trump’s wording. For instance, when Trump stated in 2015/2016 he had been “wiretapped,” the press ridiculed him. When it came out that he had in fact been surveiled (probably illegally), the press dodged by quibbling about whether the word “wiretap” was appropriate. Finally, in cases where Trump has stated something that’s not literally true, it’s generally hyperbole, not actually malicious deceptions. On the other hand, Obama’s lies were not only more numerous, but they had a qualitatively different character; they were genuinely malicious and destructive.
I am encouraged by your statement that “I am truly curious to understand.” If that is the case, you will eventually understand. In my personal experience, I’ve never known anyone on the political left who had a genuine desire to understand the other side, who did not end up rejecting the left. However, it usually takes about 1 to 3 years for the whole process to unfold.
If you truly want to understand this, I suggest tuning in to the Mark Levin show for a while. Levin’s website makes recordings of past shows available for free, so you can put the shows on in the background while you’re doing something else. Levin, like me, is a Trump supporter who initially opposed Trump.
One of the many reasons the “debate” about these sorts of things is so one-sided and boring to people like me. Are the people accusing Trump of anti-semitism really unaware that Trump’s daughter was married in a traditional Jewish wedding? And that Trump has the most pro-Israel foreign policy of any recent president?
Of course, the whole argument vanishes into thin air as soon as you ask for facts.
Nixon had Kissinger in his cabinet and virtually saved Israel once. It did not prevent him from being a bigot.
I strongly disagree. The value system of “liberals” tends to exaggerate the importance of equality, which is at best an amoral value, but is arguably incompatible with morality. They also actively promote values which seem clearly immoral, such as government dependence, diversity and identity politics (a form of racism), and promote conflict generally along all demographic divisions. At the same time, they underrate values which are clearly morally necessary such as honesty, integrity, industriousness, even handedness, meritocracy, etc. Religious belief, reverence for enlightenment “classical liberalism,” human dignity, and liberty, are all very strongly identified with political conservatism, as is a strong duty to charity (which has been shown in studies to be higher among conservatives), and service to country and community.
Most conservatives are very disturbed by the lack of a “moral compass” on the part of the left. For instance, all of the most murderous and genocidal political regimes/tyrants of the past century have been some form of socialism (Nazism, Stalinism, Maoism, Marxism-Leninism, etc.), accounting for hundreds of millions of deaths and unfathomable ecoonomic destruction and misery. The political left seems extraordinarily callous about the magnitude of the crimes or their responsibility in them.
It is my personal view, that precisely because of moral insensitivity, the political left has been in retreat domestically, as well as globally, for decades, and has no credible future.
Again, this statement is very strongly at odds with most people’s views, myself included.
Where would you suggest I go to to get a rational, unbiased perspective on modern Republican goals and political philosophy? It’s certainly not going to be the SDMB.
And this is my favorite trope, when the opposing side asks me to do the homework to support their position. Sorry buddy, my position is that they’re bunch of angry lying crybabies with no rational or moral foundation. If you think that’s wrong, then find an appropriate source. And don’t even think about rolling the goalposts back to a never-Trumper rightie rag like National Review.
That’ll get you a warning for accusations of lying, racepug. You’ve been here long enough to know that’s not allowed.
Please don’t do it again.
Fine. Let’s go back to your original statement.
To examine what Republicans believe, I looked at an actual Republican source - they’re own website. You’ve rejected that. Fair enough. The GOP website is certainly going to be biased and self-complimentary, although I personally think it’s honest about Republican political beliefs. So instead of using the source that you’ve rejected, I asked for a better, neutral source. You’re now declining to provide one, because you don’t want to do my homework, while doubling down that “they’re bunch of angry lying crybabies with no rational or moral foundation.” What foundation are you actually looking at? What is your non-biased source for what Republicans actually think? I’m guessing your source is a combination of your dislike of Trump, the fact the he won, the actions he’s taken that you disagree with, and your own biases. Your packaging all of those up into a bundle of malevolence and then attributing that bundle of malevolence you’ve created as being core Republican beliefs. Sorry buddy, my position is that that’s irrational thinking.
Let’s see-
1- I think it’s fair to say that Republicans are indeed the enemy of Hispanics. You’ve got a guy in the White House who on the day he announced his run talked about rapists and drug dealers and criminals coming over for Mexico, then campaigned on building a wall to keep brown people out.
2- Obama was obviously not talking about physical violence, it was in fighting rhetoric and lies from the other side with truth.
3- People do cling to their guns and religion. For some their guns are their religion. He put the truth in terms that are too harsh for some snowflakes.
You win a degree from T***p University.
I would also add that a lot of Trump voters vote based on their feelings and their core attitudes. In my experience (and I’m pretty sure this could be supported by evidence, too), conservatives view the world in terms of their own instincts, their own life experiences. And nowhere is the contrast more on display than in their attitudes toward Obama and Trump. The facts show that Obama’s actual policies better prepared this country for a pandemic, and Trump’s have been abjectly worse in that regard. Obama has hired better, has retained staff longer; Trump has an entire administration full of “acting” directors and secretaries. And yet, Trump voters (mostly white) will likely say that Trump is more competent than Obama, that he’s a businessman and yada yada yada, and though they’ll never admit it, it’s most likely rooted in their bias that businessmen are white males rather than white women and/or black men.
This is why I’ve said that it’s time for rural white America to experience the worst of COVID. They need to get a reality check. My life experience tells me that there is no guarantee that personal experience will change attitudes - people could experience all of the worst of Trump’s incompetence and still find ways to blame anyone but Trump. But my life experience tells me that experiencing the pain first-hand, directly is probably the only way they can change. And some will change their minds. Some will wake up and ‘get it,’ and that’s what I hope. The rest of us who have taken the time to educate ourselves have been paying a heavy price for their ignorance for years, and we will continue to pay that price regardless of how depraved our Schadenfreude becomes. Whatever - it’s time that they start paying that price now.
But if Trump does not tell them that its okay to be racist, how will racists know that it is okay to go out and commit hate crimes? It is not like racism or hate crimes existed before Trump became president.