- Joined
- Aug 14, 2020
- Posts
- 4,121
TLDR: You are not going to be taken seriously with Trump as your leader, period. He’s the problem. Unleashing the bull into a China shop is a very quick way of getting people to stop listening to you and instead focusing on ending the damage the bull is doing.
I would try that tactic if they had someone sane and not a f*cking dolt. I will admit, maybe I’m wrong. I know the question wasn’t aimed at me, but it’s a good question. I did these things in 2012 when I strongly considered voting for Romney. What pulled me away was that Romney wasn’t able to run as Romney, he had to run to the right, which involved downplaying racism in his party, propping up the corporations, and backtracking on his previous stance on abortion (safe, legal and rare).
I have tried this tact before, but it’s always been under the umbrella of sanity and reason. The Tea Party squashed that, and Trump pissed on the debris. I have spent a lot of time listening to the arguments of Trump supporters. Some are reasonable. Some are not. Most are not, in fact. And the problem all lies directly and squarely with the person they have lined up behind. I don’t care what their reasoning is, they lose their justification when they choose a cartoon character,
I don’t care what reasons people have for still visiting psychics and faith healers despite all the evidence in the world it’s hogwash. A good reason for turning to hogwash will not stop me from calling hogwash for what it is.
This would be a discussion to have about Biden and Nikki Haley, or Chris Christie, or even someone like Mike Johnson, who I disagree with intensely but at least find him to not be a psycho in the traditional sense, beyond thinking he’s got Jesus on speed dial.
I have another theory about why they’re turning to Trump, and it loops back to your point about blaming it on MAGA idiots - I do believe I see what they’re seeing. They are seeing a country that used to be dominated by their culture, and it no longer is. It’s mostly their fight against a secular nation, which I hate to tell them, is constitutionally mandated, and has been for a long time, even if not in practice. It’s a sect of people who take it as a personal insult when they are told “Your right to make other live by your standards, morals and religious doctrine is over.”
It’s not a new thing to say, but some people feel controlling others is their right, and feel their rights are being taken away, when they’re really just being given equally to others.
I would like to point out to my Republican friends, nothing liberals or progressive laws have done ban straight white people from marrying straight white people, having white babies, going to a church of their choice, what books they can read, etc. So I fail to see what the inconvenience is for the religious right when those same freedoms are extended to others, and why they feel personally attacked. It’s because religion tells people it’s not only important to live a certain way, but they have a duty, a mandate, to make you do the same. A lot of these grievances would not exist if not for religion.
Plus, I’m not going to take opinions about things like affirmative action seriously from a guy who ripped all of his students off, and accepted them all. I guess that’s Trump’s version of equal opportunity. And I really don’t care what racists and bigots think, and there’s a disproportionate amount of them in the GOP compared to the democrats. I wasn’t always a liberal, I was pretty conservative when I was younger because of my religious beliefs, which were stronger than my politics. The GOP left me a long time ago, and made me far more liberal in the process.
