how many friends/family members have you stopped speaking to because of Donald Trump

I had quite a few friends who were Bush and Romney voters and none of our friendships ever ended for that reason. but those Presidents weren't saying shit like "we're going to ban Muslims" or mocking disabled people or using fascist imagery either.

Like I said, trump isn't exactly opaque - if someone is falling for all his bs then there's no hope for them. A dozen women allege he sexually harassed or assaulted them. Multiple people/vendors haven't been paid what they are owed by him. He refuses to release his tax returns. He acts like a petulant child ALL the time. And now he's picking his cabinet from a selection of people with horrible conflicts of interests. None of this is a secret or just shady rumors.

So yeah, I'm willing to cut people out of my life over this. My message to those people is this: if you won't stand for basic human, equal rights then the consequence of that is you're no longer in my life. I'm not gonna let you get away with that shit. I can't make someone change their views but I can do SOMETHING by cutting them out of my life.

otm

Got into a big fight with a friend recently about Trump. He told me it's pointless talking to me about Trump because I can't play devil's advocate. I told him that Trump's actions speak for themselves and if you support that, you're part of the problem. We ended up deciding to just not talk politics and stay friends, but yeah just1n3 is right, there's no hope for these people.

Like to me that's like saying "you can't play Devil's advocate about living in a burning house"

Every member of my nuclear family is conservative. Mom, dad, bro in law, grandmother, cousins -- Trump or, in my cousin's case, Gary Johnson voters. We have survived the last three months by discussing neither Trump nor the election. Not a word. I am skilled at storming out of people's houses, though.

your reading that people ITT just like, immediately ceased all communication w/ friends the moment they found out they were a Trump voter is reductive as hell, anyway.
― Neanderthal, Sunday, 5 February 2017 15:05 (four hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

everything about the concept of this thread and the subjects thereof and the attempt to enter discourse or not with a view to changing someones mind about politics or their beliefs is as reductive as hell anyway

W/e dude.

i think my folks are aware that if they start getting mouthy i'll leave and quite literally never come back. i can ghost lamf.

i also think they are embarrassed as fuck.

admittedly i live in a neighborhood where the clinton to trump voter ratio was something ridiculous like 40-1, so i don't really know any trump voters. well, maybe one of my high school friends. i don't know, one of them is pretty conservative but he also doesn't seem to like trump much. my aunt and uncle voted for trump and my aunt unfriended my brother on Facebook, probably because of his posting a lotta liberal memes. i rarely talk politics on Facebook except to lol at things, it just leads to dumb arguments with old co-workers who never pop up to talk about anything but politics, or my friends saying "so much this" or whatever.

we are all reducers

Like...not all viewpoints deserve validation through discourse. I am not going to engage with someone who either has racial motivations for supporting a candidate or someone who has no interest in anything but insulting me and repeating all caps slogans.

I could and did argue with opponents in previous elections, because it was possible to actually have a fruitful discussion...even if I thought my opponent was loony.

Whereas re: Trump, it's all ALL CAPS rhetoric like "FAKE NEWS" whenever you even try to engage, or you get called a "liberal pussy" at a party when nobody was even discussing politics to begin with.

If i was in a coma from May 2015 and woke up in January and read about President Trump, I'd probably report the page for vandalism because the absurdity of it would have been unbelievable.

Wonder what it's like for wrestling fans right now?

ecstasy

one in my family gets around in a maga hat, and this isn't even america. suitable given his history of outright bigotry, but advertising his fucked views is the line for me and i seriously cannot be fucked any more.

i talked about this on 77 a bit but the longtime neighbor across the street from my mom and where i grew up, some time in the twenty years since i've lived there, turned into a full on right wing lunatic. his bumper sticker is a simple and quaint "OBAMA SUCKS", but the massive white letters on the back window of his truck read SEALS GOT THE WRONG MUSLIM. anyway he will still, on days when there's a blizzard, wordlessly shovel my mom's driveway for her since she can't handle it herself. he used to have a wife and kids, who knows where the hell they are. seems he's devoted himself to a life of infowars asceticism.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fw1qw9VM8Bw

so you if have a genuine connection with someone, rather than use that unique opportunity to expose them to other points of view, it's better to embrace intolerance and isolation in the name of being right? i don't see how shutting people out, how promoting intolerance by ruining an otherwise fruitful relationship via this acid test, is helping in any way.

the person embracing intolerance is surely the person supporting the political movement that's entirely based on intolerance?

also, a Trump supporter either subscribes to race, gender and sexuality-based hatred or considers them unimportant enough to overlook. If you are not white and/or not straight, there is no genuine connection or fruitful relationship there and they have made that clear. Cutting them off is the kindest thing to do for all concerned.

Just1n3 otm throughout this thread. Politics isn't a parlour game or small talk to pass the time any more, if indeed it ever was.

also, a Trump supporter either subscribes to race, gender and sexuality-based hatred or considers them unimportant enough to overlook.

this is the critical aspect imo. plenty of vocal trump supporters claim "i like his position on jobs", i presume for the same reason these men would have read playboy for the articles. the fact that they're willing to tolerate trump's repugnant views and actions says everything i need to know about them, and is more than reason enough to jettison them from my life. i mean christ, if someone turned up to a party in a kkk outfit, no reasonable person would say "hey it's cool, (s)he probably just likes the kkk's position on jobs".

in theory it would be easy for someone like me (white, male, married to female) to say "oh, this (white, male, married to female) trump supporter is otherwise quite nice to me, so that's all right then". except it's not. to maintain a connection with these particular pro-trump fuckwits over everyone i know who's female/gay/muslim and nice would be the ultimate betrayal. i don't want to be forced to take fucking sides but i will side with the nice people who are on the back foot, every single time.

for real i've been ~advised~ to "just ignore it" and let the bigotry wash over me, like water off a duck's back. no.

We must learn to tolerate intolerance. But only intolerance.

some people aren't worth the effort though

Are Trump voters worse than Brexiteers? From here in the UK it seems like they probably are but that might just be that I don't know any in person.

Depends on the Brexiter but in general I think yeah.

Like if I meet someone who voted for Brexit I'm at least interested in unpicking why and what their reasoning was and whether they regret it now but my response to a Trump voter would just be one of horror for all the reasons already mentioned.

More wriggle room that Brexit wasn't explicitly a vote for or even alliance with racists, but given the tone of the campaign not as much as you might think

plausible deniability much less with trump

I mean there wasn't even a person to vote for with Brexit, although Farage was obviously a face of it there were a lot of Leavers who would never have voted for him personally. They were voting for an outcome or an idea, whereas Trump voters were literally voting for a racist serial sex offender.

I still have yet to meet a single person who's admitted to voting for Turnip (although I have my suspicions about some of my coworkers). So I thankfully haven't had to chuck anyone. My dad was a lifelong Republican who couldn't bring himself to vote for W. a second time so I imagine he would've refrained. And since he's dead, I have to assume that someone cast an illegal vote for Clinton in his name.

People I'll cut off: openly racist / sexist, people who prefer trolling to engaging in debate
People I didn't give up on: no real interest in or knowledge of politics, perhaps voted Trump / Brexit without being properly informed

Yeah, you might say this second group are equally culpable, but they are the majority and persuading them is surely the only way to get out of this terrible place.

Are Trump voters worse than Brexiteers? From here in the UK it seems like they probably are but that might just be that I don't know any in person.

One of my best friends voted Brexit, from left wing principles. No, Jeremy Corbyn is not one of my best friends.

I guess I was excluding the leftie brexiteers - even though I think their analysis is wrong they're not evil, racist, etc

There is a couple of online people I'm fairly fond of who supported Trump. They make lots of silly excuses for him but the main thing they were hung up on was the belief that with Hillary as President more people would die in war.

I don't think think they're all welcoming the intolerance or completely ignoring it, I think some people are just completely deluding themselves about it. I'm guessing that's what non-white and lgbt Trump voters do.

Director Alex Cox said something like "Hillary will start world war 3 but Trump is an unknown quantity". I think Julian Assange said something really similar. It's not very convincing because Trump was clearly going to be awful.
I really don't know how much war Hillary was likely to cause but I could easily imagine Trump creating war in all sorts of ways.

Bannon has openly said he wants a war with China in the South China Sea so

Bannon believes we're already in WW3 so

controversial opinion but i suspect the american military is actually bad and dumb and they wouldn't just have a lot of casualties but i think they would lose any war they got into with another actual country that's bigger than iraq.

Hillary will start world war 3

^ seems like an insane reading of her politics. HRC's right in line with the usual 'moderate democrat' policies of using cruise missiles, no fly zones, covert special forces raids, sanctions, or a few thousand "military advisors" on the ground to impose the USA's will on smaller nations. iow, she's for the status quo foreign policy straight down the line. Her Iraq War vote was purely a political insurance policy to keep her presidential aspirations alive. She was craven, for sure, but at bottom it was not a move made out of belligerence, but more out desperation.

they would lose any war they got into with another actual country that's bigger than iraq

nah

have about 20 acquaintances and extended family who are trump fans or at least sympathetic to his goals but they NEVER talk about it on social media or in life, at least around me and my immediate family. i'm sure they do some form of the trump voter support group that was linked on the rolling politics thread, but are very circumspect and secretive otherwise. it's kind of eerie.

seems like an insane reading of her politics. HRC's right in line with the usual 'moderate democrat' policies of using cruise missiles, no fly zones, covert special forces raids, sanctions, or a few thousand "military advisors" on the ground to impose the USA's will on smaller nations. iow, she's for the status quo foreign policy straight down the line. Her Iraq War vote was purely a political insurance policy to keep her presidential aspirations alive. She was craven, for sure, but at bottom it was not a move made out of belligerence, but more out desperation.

― a little too mature to be cute (Aimless), Monday, 6 February 2017 18:51

I think they believe that Hillary would be harder on Russia than Obama (which might be true and I'd hope that would be good) and they think that alone would start war with Russia.
Of course this might just be a cover for less savoury reasons to support Trump, but I don't know.

seems like an insane reading of her politics. HRC's right in line with the usual 'moderate democrat' policies of using cruise missiles, no fly zones, covert special forces raids, sanctions, or a few thousand "military advisors" on the ground to impose the USA's will on smaller nations. iow, she's for the status quo foreign policy straight down the line. Her Iraq War vote was purely a political insurance policy to keep her presidential aspirations alive. She was craven, for sure, but at bottom it was not a move made out of belligerence, but more out desperation.

― a little too mature to be cute (Aimless),

hi!

the "hillary will start WW3" shit seems to go right in line w/ the widespread notion among certain quarters of the left -- from counterpunch to salon to the nation -- that the u.s. was primarily responsible for the ukraine mess and putin is actually something of a hero fighting the good fight against u.s. imperialism.

at any rate no non-crazy president is ever going to go to war w/ a nation that has nuclear weapons. but the ppl who supported trump because they thought he was an "unknown quantity" or whatever managed to give us our very first president who might actually be dumb or deranged enough to do just that.

I haven't asked that many people about their vote because I don't necessarily want to know the answer. My parents both voted for him, and most likely my brother' suburbanite friends did.

I'm still thinking we're undervaluing the role that group belief plays in this, and how much of our conclusions and beliefs are shit we both inherit and take on trust from people in our social networks unknowingly reinforcing them again and again and again.

I mean, assholish behavior is only designated that by contrast or compared with group norms, right? And different groups have different standard for assholish behavior beyond the pale.

I'm p surprised by the number of people for whom it's ambiguous, cos while I have very few Trump voters in my circle, the ones that were made a really obnoxiously big deal about it on a near-daily basis

think they believe that Hillary would be harder on Russia than Obama (which might be true and I'd hope that would be good) and they think that alone would start war with Russia.
Of course this might just be a cover for less savoury reasons to support Trump, but I don't know.

― Robert Adam Gilmour, Monday, February 6, 2017 11:23 AM (one hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink
Based on who I was hearing it from, the "Hillary wants to go war w Russia" line very much seemed like a disingenuous excuse. In the fallout of an actual Trump admin in our lives, the closet thing to contrition you will get from some of those people is "I didn't think she would lose"

lol I realized that earlier I meant to "hi!" this post:

have about 20 acquaintances and extended family who are trump fans or at least sympathetic to his goals but they NEVER talk about it on social media or in life, at least around me and my immediate family. i'm sure they do some form of the trump voter support group that was linked on the rolling politics thread, but are very circumspect and secretive otherwise. it's kind of eerie.

― sciatica, Monday, February 6, 2017

I meant to "hi!" this post:

(aimless's friendly grin and wave back at Alfred suddenly freeze. he visibly slumps as he turns aside, dejected and alone)

I liked your post too!

Director Alex Cox said something like "Hillary will start world war 3 but Trump is an unknown quantity". I think Julian Assange said something really similar. It's not very convincing because Trump was clearly going to be awful.

some bigots justify their bigotry by saying things like "sure his views are bad but i can't bring myself to support the alternative". in 2013 loads of australians justified their support for a nasty bigot by claiming they "couldn't vote for labor", subjecting the country to a complete fucking disaster.