Kathy Watson is stupid. She has diabetes, high blood pressure, and two cancers. Her husband lost his job, she lost her health insurance, and because of her pre-existing condition, no one was going to insure her at a reasonable rate…until the Affordable Care Act came along.
She voted for Trump.
Yeah, you know that was going to be the kicker. She voted for Trump.
Watson also voted for Donald Trump, believing the businessman would bring change. She dismissed his campaign pledges to scrap the Affordable Care Act as bluster.
Jesus Christ, Ms Watson, but you are a dumbass. Not only did you make a choice that is probably going to kill you, you made a choice that is going to wreck our country.
Also, LA Times and every other goddamn newspaper on Earth, I’m getting more than a little tired of these inane stories written to squeeze out a little sympathy for Trump voters. They’re not working. I have no sympathy for the Kathy Watsons of the USA, and all you’re doing is convincing me that humanity doesn’t deserve any more chances.
She’ll blame “The Left,” too. They always do. Standard formula. Hell, even most of your Beltway media outlets do it too. Mentioning the naked corruption of Nixon? “But Clinton something something blowjob!” Warmongering idiot Bush #2? “But Obama’s a Muslim something something communist!”
And on it goes. They’ll present their foot for shooting and blame The Left for the hobbling that ensues.
What in the fuck. This is much worse than the few people who thought ACA was different from Obamacare. Yeah, I can’t work up any sympathy either. If you’re going to toss your vote to someone who openly campaigns on hate and destruction, it’s a little late for the crocodile tears afterward.
It’s odd to me how they’re prepared to dismiss the most feasible promises/threats as bluster while buying whole-heartedly the completely implausible bullshit ones.
Under normal circumstances I would have had a certain degree of cynicism about Republican attempts to repeal the Affordable Care Act too. After all, it is so obviously and so undeniably beneficial to large numbers of people that even if you are ideologically opposed to it (to be honest it baffles me how anyone could be ideologically opposed to keeping people healthy), the consequences of repealing it in terms of damaged reputation and lost votes would be too great. Especially for a party that relies on large numbers of elderly voters susceptible to poorer health. It is still very possible that if they do go ahead then the chaos and death the repeal causes will seriously damage their support base.
But these are not normal circumstances. If your vastly too long election cycle has any advantage it’s that the character and foibles of the candidates have plenty of time to become apparent. Nobody could have sat through the excruciating year and a half of Trump electioneering without at least some idea that he and his supporters would actually do something like this.
Also… in what universe does “he’s a businessman” translate into “he’d be good at running the country”? There are few descriptions of a person that would make me vote against them faster.
“‘I never thought leopards would eat MY face,’ sobs woman who voted for the Leopards Eating People’s Faces Party.”
Yabbut at least those queers and sluts and n**gers and muslins and wetbacks are going to be put in their place!
Trump voters require us to revise the old saying “Never assume malice when stupidity is an adequate explanation”, to something like “Never assume that the stupid are not also, and primarily, malicious”.
Well i feel sorry for her ,nice to put a name to some one who’s stupidly came back to hurt her .
Just after the Election i was arguing with someone in the comments section of the British Independent .
I said that the snatch snatcher was going to get rid of the ACA ,he replied that was more liberal lies .
It’s amazing people choose racism over life, but here we are.
But Hillary’s e-mails!!!! And Benghazi!!!!
Republican version of health care is the path to complete elimination of government support. Every person will be on their own, the way the founders had intended.
I hear the Border cops are looking for recruits; they get health insurance. You have MS? Tough shit!
Well, she’s not wrong about that. He is bringing change because nothing about his regime is normal.
Also, thanks to Republicans even more people are going to get sick from the poisoned air and water. I’m at the point where I’m wondering if having people die is actually part of their long-term plan.
That’s what gets me about these idiotic people. They tell you that when you hear Trump say some outrageous things they’ll say “Oh he didn’t actually MEAN that, it was just campaign talk”, implying that his words don’t matter literally. But then when they supported him they’ll say “He’s the only one talking about…” implying that every word DOES matter literally.
So this person deserves what they got because they were stupid and didn’t listen to what their candidate actually was saying. They only heard their own imagination and thus ignored the bloody axe in the man’s hand when they invited him into their home. How they want us to feel sorry because the axe is buried in their wall? F.U. !
Not to minimize the disaster that is the orange buffoon in the Whitehouse, the real tragedy is giving complete control of Congress to the GOP. The damage that they will do to the last 50 or more years of progressive legislation will be catastrophic. From the removal of any sort of control of the financial markets, to the environment, to public lands, to health care, to retirement plans, to your 401k, your home, your taxes, education, they now have the ability to tear it all apart and we’ve just begun to see that happening.
As bad as this is going to affect me, I hope it just devastates the idiots that voted to make this possible. It may be decades before we recover, if that will even be possible.
Ah you don’t fool me, you do too have sympathy. :)
This happened back in the Obama-Romney race as well. When told of the Republican Party’s extremism even back then, a lot of Republican-leaning voters simply refused to believe that they actually held those beliefs and wanted to put them in place. The sense of impunity is very strong, although perhaps now they’re feeling it considering the turn-out at Republican town halls.
Fuck, I screwed up the link closure.
You harvest what you sow!!!
It’s right in their magic book. One of the good parts they never seem to be able to find.
One estimate I saw, was 6 million Trump voters will lose their ACA coverage.
She voted specifically for someone who promised to Fuck Over those “Others”. And now she is getting Fucked Over too. Yeah, I have difficulty working up too much sympathy in this case.
“Suicide by vote.”
Jebus Chrust, may He ever leaven, it’s terrifying to think that things are ever so fragile in your country that is even a thing. Yet it’s been that way pretty much forever, hasn’t it?
Where the freaking fry did political apathy even come from?
The problem with the Kathy Watsons of the world is that no matter how worse off their voting choices leave them, they still won’t recognize the cause. She’ll probably still be blaming liberals and democrats as they disconnect her feeding tube and kick her out of the hospital to die on a park bench somewhere.
@cartomancer #4:
They don’t want the wrong sort of people to be kept healthy. The poor and vulnerable are meant to suffer. And if you’re not poor or vulnerable but are struck down with a terrible illness and lose your house and your life savings, it’s a perfectly valid judgement by God upon your sins and a lesson to your family. We can’t have the government stepping in to protect people from God, can we?
By “bluster” she means “will only apply to minorities and thr lazy and will never touch the privileges of snowflakes like myself,” and by those standards she might still be right.
A little unsolicited advice to those who consider voting a certain candidate just to make a change: first think what kind of change it is you actually want, then vote accordingly. Please.
Of course she lives in Florida.
#17: “6 million Trump voters will lose their ACA coverage”
I saw that estimate too. That’s one hell of a lot of stupid.
Its amazing that a society can incubate and support such an immense load of it without falling to pieces within a fortnight.
I gather I’m in the minority here, probably a minority of one, but I must say it is alarming to see so many otherwise good liberals damn the “stupid” people who helped put an ideologue in the White House. I do have sympathy for these folks, especially when they have serious and immediate problems — like life-threatening health issues. Call me crazy but I think we should have sympathy and we should endeavor to help them, since they seem — at least within the strictures of this country’s ridiculous electoral process — unable to help themselves.
What does it mean to be “stupid”? It means these people do not have the information or reasoning powers that PZ has. Maybe it even means that they are spiteful or that their misogyny or racism was too much of an obstacle for them to vote or act in their own interests. Or maybe they were so thoroughly disenchanted with the Democrats’ alternative to Trump, they decided to take a chance on a cartoon character from the television. So what? For this we should kick them to the curb? Perhaps it feels good to rant, but what good does it do? It does not gain a single convert nor sway a single mind. I think it almost certainly alienates people who may not be as well-read or -adjusted as you’d like. It also fits into the right-wing narrative that the left doesn’t truly care for the downtrodden.
Trump is a conman, and he is a very good conman. Just look at how otherwise intelligent people — Van Jones, Chris Cillizza, etc — fell for his shtick last week. You cannot — or anyway, you should not — slam simpler folk for falling for the same con. I suspect that PZ and others are writing such people off as irredeemable — and in many cases they may be right! So, what are we going to do about it? Insult? Shun? Perhaps that feels good (although if that’s true, there are deeper psychological issues at play here), but whatever gratification one gains from the rant has no practical value in the broader political picture. We need more votes than we got in November. Now what are we going to do about it?
It was especially dispiriting to see Markos Moulitsas fume along these lines after the election. My objections then were dismissed as “virtue signalling,” and I don’t have a problem with that. It is virtuous to have sympathy for the less fortunate, in my view, and it’s a little bit sociopathic to revel in the misery of your political enemies, especially when they are essentially powerless.
tl;dr: I’m with Paul Cowan. PZ really does have sympathy for these people. Either that or he’s not the guy I thought he was.
“I hate them colored folks and them Mozlems more than I like my health insurance”
*votes for racist anti-healthcare president*
“Waaaahhh… my healthcare!”
Yeah, no sympathy from me for sure. You vote against my best interests and your own best interests and want sympathy?
#26: Ah, the ‘uneducated’ excuse. Mustn’t ruffle feathers and call people bad names because they are proud of their ignorance. Would ‘silly’ be acceptable?
Your own prejudices are showing….
@12 Mamba “So this person deserves what they got because they were stupid and didn’t listen to what their candidate actually was saying. They only heard their own imagination and thus ignored the bloody axe in the man’s hand when they invited him into their home. How they want us to feel sorry because the axe is buried in their wall? F.U. !”
I’m with atcg @ 26, a minority or two,sir or madam. I’m wondering what is wrong with all the good people here. First of all, the Trump supporters are not all racists or misogynist by a long shot. Even the ones who are don’t deserve to lose their health care, possibly all their money, homes, and their lives because they are wrong or stupid. Since when is stupidity a reason to die. And it’s not stupidity as you must kmow-ignorance, a different philosophy perhaps, others to things but not low level intelligence though it seems like that often. These people are not psychopaths you
know. Sure, some are mean-spirited racist, etc., some are Nazis, but what about the rest who aren’t. I think some here aren’t using all their knowledge – Trumpsters are not monolithic I think. I’m used to more nuance here. Some of you sound as un-nuanced as they do.
If people vote against their own interests and are not mean spirited-there are some, know a couple- and against my interests I don’t see that as a reason to vilify them. Depends on their motives I guess. Even If they motives are bad I don’t wish death on them.
Here in Oz I remember it was rude to discuss politics or religion. Now people do it online and mostly sort into agreement groups. I’ve started having discussion IRL at cafes with the regulars regardless of weather we agree with each other. That’s how I think we solve this. People talk with people about the big stuff without losing it. I find it hard and stressful but I do it anyway.
I find it hard to talk to people who abhor my existence.
You know how sometimes when you’re someplace high you look over the edge and have that urge to jump? I don’t mean being suicidal, just that irrational, momentary urge to do something completely crazy just because it is completely crazy? Sometimes I wonder if at least some Trump voters were, to some extent, motivated by that sort of impulse, and are simply trying to rationalize their decision in retrospect. I mean, how could someone seriously put more credence in vague, grandiose slogans like “Make America Great Again” than in specific, feasible (albeit disastrous) policies like “repeal Obamacare?” Why would you elect someone whom you assume is lying to the most powerful position in the world? I mean, I realize at this point we’ve gotten used to assuming that all politicians lie, but it seems to me that there’s a big difference between “I did not have sex with that woman” and “as soon as I take office I’m going to do the exact opposite of everything I claimed during the campaign.”
I’m also with atgc #26. I do feel sorry for people like this Mrs. Watson. And I feel we need to try our very best to convince them that their vote is a. wrong and b. against their own interests. It probably takes an effort to first understand where they are coming from and then employing all the empathy we are capable of to reach them.
It is not good enough to write people of, make it an “us vs. them” situation and be content with that. More of “them” need to be pulled back to “our” side. We need the numbers.
I use “we” in the most general sense. I am not American and have nothing to do with your repucrat and demoblican affairs. But we are having an election in my country soon and there are certainly comparisons to be made. The same values are at stake all over the world, it seems.
Sarah A #33:
I guess people are fed up with the system & want to smash it up / set fire to it. They are not entirely wrong about that.
@30 hotspurphd. Another thing to consider is the extent to which we do not choose our ideology, to some extent it chooses us. And not tjust ideology but personality and choices. I’m reading an Interesting book “The Psychopath Whisperer”,by Kent Kiel, which recounts some of the latest research on the brains of psychopaths. It seems they are,to a large extent, born, not made. Their brains really are different from ours and we can’t blame them for that. Hard to feel sorry for the criminals among them but they really are unfortunate human beings. And being a liberal or conservative has a lot to do with personality-see all the research on this. We can change with information and reflection but it ain’t easy usually. See the book “mistakes were made but not by me” by two well know psychologists.
Many voted for trump because they believed Hillary was the devil. T he campaign against her was very effective. People really believed she should be locked up. And some who didnt like trump thought she was worse and that we needed an outsider.
#26
I feel pretty strongly that “simple” is more insulting than “stupid,” but that’s just me.
In my experience people vote Republican for one or more of the following reasons:
1) They’re rich and selfish
2) They’re implacably anti-abortion
3) They’re bigots
4) They absolutely HATE liberals
I went to college in a Trump Town, and people there absolutely hated places like NYC, not because drag queens were riding the subway with Muslims in niqabs, but because of all the rich people eating fancy food and boning attractive people and having fancy conversations about books. If something upsets Leo DiCaprio and his model of the month plan, they’re all for it. And they know quite well that the Democrats are the adults in the room, which is why they voted for him 2008 when the economy fell apart. Voting for an imbecile like Bush and the river of innocent blood he unleashed in Iraq was something that gave them great pleasure, and they’ll only abstain from it when they have no choice not to.
My response is that it is *really* difficult to educate people who are anti-education and many Trump voters are solidly in the anti-education camp (not only obvious creationist Betsy Devos).
And of course creationist Mike Pense.
Trump automatically reflects every accusation. He is criminal? Hillary is criminal because emails. He is doing illegal deala? No Obama is doing illegal wire tapps. He has the advantage of not needing to provide support for his innuendos smears and lies. His worshippers lap it all up.
The Sunday after the election, I had brunch with someone who is much like Kathy Watson. This person, and her spouse, have both suffered from unemployment in recent times. Both of them have struggled with expensive illnesses that would have bankrupted them, if they hadn’t had insurance. Neither of them would have had insurance without the ACA, due to preexisting conditions, and it’s unlikely that they’ll be able to keep their insurance when the repeal goes through.
This person spent most of the two hour brunch railing against the protests that sprung up immediately after the election. She gloated over the fact that the protestors (and everyone else she didn’t like – “thugs,” moochers, losers, liberals, the “PC snowflakes,” queers, etc.) were going to get what’s coming to them. She didn’t say what that meant, exactly, but it was clear from the context that she meant all those people were going to be beaten into submission, imprisoned, and/or killed.
Now, I’m supposed to dredge up sympathy for people like that, just because they thought they’d be exempt from the mass killings? Because they were sure their awful king just meant those people would suffer, and not good people like them?
I try to follow the dictates of mercy and compassion. What this means is that I support providing the necessities of life (food, water, shelter, education, and healthcare) to everyone. But to ask me to make some kind of special consideration for the right-wing fools who followed their hatred and greed to their own destruction is a bridge too far.
I will not hold right-wingers hands and tell them that they don’t deserve this suffering. Because, whatever they may say now, the fact remains that they absolutely meant for this to happen. Just not to them.
I do believe that no one deserves to die in ditch, not even these despicable fools. But for the foreseeable future, my sympathy goes first to their victims. If I have anything left over, I’ll spare a thought for the ‘Kathy Watsons’ of the world. Right this moment, however, all I can stir up is a bit of pity, with all the contempt that ‘pity’ implies.
What’s a bit baffling to me is idea that it’s all good to spend billions upon billions (trillions?) of government dollars on police and military to protect us from suffering and dying at the hands of the “bad hombres”, but it’s very very bad to spend any government money at all protecting citizens from suffering and dying at the hands of the bad bacteria, virii, environmental pollutants, etc. Or indeed, it’s even bad to spend money to keep people from starving to death or dying of exposure. Seems desperately inconsistent.
Count me in as another “no sympathy” vote. Fuck her, fuck people like her, fuck people who voted like her. I’ve seen friends die because of that sort of vote, and it’s happening again in front of me and there is nothing I can do about it.
She, and all who voted like her, can go to that Hell they all have such a permanent hard-on for. I’ll come visit them with a bag of marshmallows, some graham crackers, and some chocolate and make s’mores over their sulfurous screaming spirits.
US voters always fall for the change candidate. As far back as 1932, the following patterns have held:
–if there’s no incumbent running, the candidate who has the better claim on being the outsider wins (the only exception being Bush the elder; you could argue that he was elected essentially as a third Reagan term).
–only outsiders (usually governors) can beat incumbent presidents (FDR in ’32, Carter in ’76, Reagan in ’80, and Clinton in ’92).
“Throw the bums out” is always an attractive slogan in US presidential politics. So from that perspective, it’s no surprise that Trump beat Clinton (for the record, yes I was surprised); he probably would’ve beat Sanders as well. And if the Dems want to beat him (or Pence, if it comes to that) in ’20, forget about Warren or Sanders; they need to find a charismatic governor (pro tip: not Beshear) or mayor to run.
I’m with $26 atgc and others who still do have that compassion for Trump voters. For many of the reasons they listed, but also because, as Thomas Frank has written about in “Listen Liberal”, and as Mark Blyth, Richard Wolff, Michael Hudson, Yves Smith and other economists have documented ad nauseam, the Democrats have been complicit with shitting on the working class for 4 decades. Are they WRONG thinking Ds are no better than Rs? Sure. Case in point above. Have they been so screwed by the political class that they wanted to throw a brick through the establishment window? Yes. And that they did. And right fucking NOW, Democrats are trying to figure out how to “re-message” and “re-brand” and “make sure the people know their values”… even though whenever they SAY that, they don’t specify those values, because they are devoid of values and have been since the 70’s when they sold out FDR. Unless the Justice Democrats can primary the hell out of them and progressives can win, or Bernie can successfully lead the birth of another party (structurally doubtful according to Thomas Frank), they are going to continue to lose because they refuse to change. The 44% who call themselves Independents CAN be rallied to a progressive cause, not an establishment Democratic one. https://justicedemocrats.com/
funknjunk @ 46:
The problem with angrily ripping off the hatch of the submarine is that it’s not just you that drowns.
vucodlak @42. Well, if some people are really as you say then it’s hard to have any sympathy for them and hard not to hate them. I do not know anyone like that myself. That’s pretty horrifying to me. But is it the majority of Trump supporters?
But your guess is wrong, as tends to happen when you guess without bothering with the facts. Trump won more votes than Clinton among whites, men, people over 40, and people with household incomes over $50,000. Clinton won more votes than Trump among all the converse groups. That tells you that Trump voters are more likely than average to be doing just fine out of “the system”. You might also consider that hardly any incumbent congresspersons or governors were defeated – which hardly suggests an anti-system uprising.
No, he’s not a very good conman, he is at best a mediocre conman, who wouldn’t fool anyone who does not want to be fooled. He told people like Kathy Watson he was a threat to their lives, and they voted for him anyway because of their bigotry. That Van Jones and Chris Cillizza fell for his schtick last week is evidence that they are not, in fact, intelligent, or more probably, chose not to exercise their intelligence, because a “Trump becomes Presidential” story fitted their personal interests as journalists better than “Trump tells some more lies”. As for needing more votes – Trump won because poorer and younger people are less likely to vote that richer and older ones. The USA has a remarkably – and disgracefully – low turnout. Focus on those who did not vote at all. Make sure they have what they need to vote – that’s going to be even more important in the face of increased voter-suppression efforts by the Republicans. Work to ensure that they have candidates worth voting for, who will actually make a difference if elected. And not just at Presidential level, but at every level.
What’s your evidence for that extraordinary claim? A voter for someone who has spent a year demonstrating that he is a racist and misogynist, over someone who hasn’t, doesn’t get to claim they are not a racist or misogynist. You might also benefit from reading this article, on what Trump voters were actually saying about themselves in October.
How does the fact (if it is one – I haven’t read the book) that psychopaths’ brains are different from those of non-psychopaths show that they are “to a large extent born, not made”? How does Kent Kiel, or whoever he’s citing, know what their brains were like when they were born?
Sorry – failed to close the link@50.
I suspect that if I were USAnian I might feel about Trumpists much as I do about Brexiters; I do feel pity for those who were lied to and who fell for demagoguery (thank you, run-down education systems!) when in reality many of them are among the first who are going to suffer … but I also feel blindingly angry with them for not apparently caring about any of the suffering from the damage done and incoming until it finally sinks in that they are in the line of fire too. Sure, our anger is mostly reserved for those telling the lies – but there’s some for those who lapped them up.
They “won”, after all. If there is any healing of divides to be done, why does no-one seem to expect the “winners” to do any reaching out?
Olav, #35
Which group(s) of people do you think is fed up with the system more?
What are these system-imposed hardships which are unique to white people?
And lastly, Trump’s nightmarishly racist visions of his administration were front and center. Talk of torturing Muslims and banning Muslims, rounding up immigrants from Mexico, saying I wish we could be back in the days when black protesters were attacked*. These were not only out in the open, but they were straight from the horse’s mouth. They weren’t rumors being spread by the Democrats. Therefore, all Trump voters are racist assholes. They voted for all the vile bigoted fascist stuff. That they chose to do it at the expense of their own healthcare is supposed to get them sympathy (especially from the people they voted to destroy)?
* we still are in those days but that’s a different point.
I can’t believe people even here eat this “Trump voters were fed up with the system” horseshit right up.
What exactly about the system were they fed up with? And why did they choose someone who was clearly and stronglyfor that system? (Hint: What else was this candidate clearly and strongly for?)
And which groups genuinely had the right to be “fed up with the system” and how come they overwhelmingly did not vote for this piece of shit?
Trump voters aren’t victims but perpetrators. To Godwin this: pitying them is like pitying Germans in 45.
They are suffering the consequences of their own actions.
Tell me, are white people in the USA less intelligent, educated, wealthy and privileged than black people?
If no, please spare me the stories about how those poor souls were tricked.
I think the big problem with the white Republican voters in the US is their sense of entitlement. They did not have the privileges that their parents had in the 60’s and 70’s when a person could work for a company almost all their life and retire with a pension. That was sort of the promise of the time. The mass technological changes that completely changed the face of industry and global forces that were beyond their control insured that their career paths would be very much different from their parents. This sense of entitlement (everything should be as it was when my old man was working) I believe is what is behind all the people who consistently will vote against their own interests when con men like Trump say they will recreate the 50’s and 60’s and “Make America Great Again”. Their time came and went, and voting for Trump was their melt-down.
Whether one should or should not have sympathy for this narrative is a matter of personal conscience. I wouldn’t want to prescribe or condemn the emotions of others. However, I do wonder whether this narrative of the betrayed victim might be useful on a strategic level.
Not for those who didn’t vote for the abomination and saw through his slime from the beginning. It’s not a narrative that’s likely to work for such people on any level. But maybe it is a useful face-saving narrative for the Trump voters who are having second thoughts? Nobody likes to admit they were dead wrong, much less that their wrongness caused major devastation to others. By painting themselves as having been misled they might be more amenable to learning the lessons, standing up to the tyrant and not doing it again. It is possible that a narrative which paints Trump as deceptive and treacherous – a breaker of trust – might work better to change some people’s minds than just pointing out his obvious evils. Perhaps those so convinced will go on to re-examine their bigotries and short-sightedness in good time?
I don’t know. It might be helpful, or it might not.
It’s certainly more palatable to see yourself as having been betrayed than as a dupe or worse.
(and on our side of the pond, I do accept that this is probably a more productive way to go. Unfortunately it takes people with more fortitude and eloquence than I could dream of to get this across, though fortunately there’s no shortage of people with more fortitude and eloquence than I have; unfortunately the Daily Heil narrative is well entrenched. Also, the concatenation of circs is such that we’re stuffed for the forseeable, and I can’t think of any of ameliorating the fuck-up short of getting lucky in the Lords, of all places O.O ).
To all the people saying be kind and talk to Trump supporters, have any of you actually talked to them? Last week I talked with acquaintance who reluctantly voted for Trump because Hillary was the devil. He has now bought in full bore to whatever Dear Leader says. He’s on ACA, but has faith the Republican plan will be better because Obama care is a “disaster”, even though it paid for a surgery he needed. He kept saying we needed a change and to give Trump a chance. He told me Trump isn’t racist (that’s the liberal media) and and problems I brought up were met with “FAKE NEWS”. When I mentioned Trump ramping up the military and the impending war(s) we would be getting into, he said “Why would you think that? Trump is a pacifist!”
How do you reason with someone like that? There is no bringing them around, they will still be smiling as we all sink into the ocean.
Some people just cannot be reasoned with. It’s like they just can’t admit they made one of the biggest mistakes of their lives. It’s like they are so invested in their (poor) choices that to admit that it was a terrible, terrible mistake would cause a catastrophic brain explosion.
Cartomancer:
No. Fuck that noise. Why on earth would lying help? This fucking country is already neck deep in a pile of shit covered lies. No one was betrayed, I don’t care whether or not they want to believe that. As I wrote elsewhere:
No, I do not have sympathy for them, because they have none for anyone, they were firmly and flatly in favour of bigotry, hatred, and misogyny, and any of them who claim they weren’t, they are liars. Trump’s whole fucking campaign was nothing but a constant litany of bigotry, hatred, and misogyny, as well as a paen to the might of white, and a psalm sung to the filthy rich.
The whole excuse of “well, some of them just wanted to throw a brick at the establisment” is a fucking lie, too. One Big Lie. If those people truly wanted to buck the establishment, Trump would have been dumped and Sanders would have ended up in the white house, and we would be moving towards a properly socialized government. That would have been tossing a brick at the man. Voting for Trump? For fuck’s sake, how could you possibly get more establishment? The excuse of “they thought he was a good business man!” won’t wash either. Trump’s constant failures over the years were not a secret. His incompetency was out there for all to see, during the whole campaign. The regime voters chose to ignore it. The excuse of “oh hey jobs”? No, doesn’t wash either, because what all those white Trumpians meant by that was “stomp all over those brown peoples!”. They never have anything to say when you point out that they don’t want to work cleaning toilets and peoples’ houses.
No, no more fucking excuses. The assholes who voted in the regime who are now crying? They’re only crying because they weren’t supposed to get bitten on the arse. They wanted all those others to get fucked over.
The only way those Trump voters could redeem themselves would be to loudly join the resistance. Don’t play the victim and expect the people you wanted to get hurt to pity you.
@# 29: “Your own prejudices are showing….”
To this I say, ‘Absolutely!’ I think everyone in this thread is making a qualitative judgment about Ms Watson and her ilk. One might call them “stupid” or even “deplorable” (How’d that work out?) or think of them as simpler than the likes of Cillizza and Jones, as I do. C&J not only have a great deal more information at their fingertips than Joe or Jane Sixpack, their careers revolve around making daily analyses of current events. I imagine I’m simpler than they are on those terms as well.
#50:
As for the suggestion that Trump is not a master conman, I have no words. That’s not true, I do have words, and they double down on my assertion and then some: Trump is almost surely the greatest conman who ever lived. Start with the obvious: he is the president of the freaking United States! A year and a half ago he was the star of a crappy reality-tv show (also a con). I defy you to name someone else who has successfully executed a bigger con in the history of cons. Even if it’s true that his minions all wanted to be conned in the first place (which I doubt, but never mind), no one else has managed to corral so many willing marks for a scam on this scale, ever. Huge!
And while I can agree that CIllizza and Jones might have been filling in a predisposed narrative, I think something even worse is at play. As neither of them are investigative journalists, their main currency is access. Their fawning approval of Trump is their way of currying favor so they can score the exclusive interview down the road. That’s what courtiers do.
Caine, #61
Why would lying help? It might help because people are very keen to construct narratives to validate and justify their bad decisions, and an “I was tricked, I’m furious with Trump” narrative is better than an “I voted the right way, things will turn out for the best, I will support Trump” narrative. While an “I messed up badly, this is my fault, I will try to make amends” narrative would be better still, I doubt too many people are capable of such contrition. Particularly not the sort of people who vote for someone like Trump in the first place. If allowing these Trump voters with buyers’ remorse an opportunity to save face facilitates their detachment from him and turns them into effective opponents of his regime, I think it could be a sensible point on which to concede. If it’s a choice between them lying to themselves about their role in bringing Trump to power or them lying to themselves about whether Trump’s policies are good for America then I’d far rather the former than the latter.
If hammering them with the stupidity and harm that their support for Trump has caused is a more effective strategy for making them change their minds then fair enough. I doubt it is, with human psychology being what it is, but it might be. It could be suggested that condemning them will make them more likely to double down and support Trump all the harder, but I’m not sure that’s true either. The issue turns on what the most effective strategy would be.
My point was that there may well be a disjunct between a truthful narrative and a helpful one in terms of winning the fight. If there is then we may well need to weigh up whether assigning blame appropriately or changing people’s allegiances is more important.
All the establishment interior decorators keep arranging my china shop in the same old shelves and aisles. Why not let this bull here have a crack at it?
Cartomancer:
You don’t get it, at all. These people have already made life a fucked up misery for untold millions, and most of them aren’t at all unhappy about that. They are absolutely fine with that, unless, and only if it bites them in the ass.
Jesus fuck, how hard is that to understand? If some of the Trumpians claim to have ‘seen the light’, they can do what Giliell said, and join the Resistance, and work their asses off like the rest of us, fighting fascism. If they aren’t going to do that, what in the fuck do I care about some sort of half-baked, idiotic strategy which has to do with massaging their bloated, privileged, over-entitled egos? You don’t think there isn’t enough work to do?
No, Trumpoids can fuck right off (and their stupid apologists, too). I’m not wasting one bloody moment on them. They want to sit in the corner, crying crocodile tears, fine. What the hell is that doing for all of us who are being victimized by the regime? Don’t be asking what I can do for those fucking assholes, ask them what they are doing to make things right. And if you asked them, most of them would say they don’t have a regret in the world, it’s all working great!
Chas @ 65:
Well said. By the way, you’re always welcome at Affinity.
China is screwing us! Vote bull!
While it’s natural to hate Trump voters, I’m trying hard not to. It helps, I think, to remember that we belong to a species of large-brained primates who developed language and advanced social cognition only over the last few million years in relatively small social groups on the savannas of Africa. Our brains didn’t evolve to effectively defend against the sophisticated manipulations of well-funded PR spin and fake news stories. That takes inoculation with the basics of critical thinking, something large segments of the population are actively inoculated *against* (i.e. via religion).
Hatred, division, resentment- these are actively promoted by would-be dictators. I don’t want to feed into that process. It doesn’t help.
@50
First of all, the Trump supporters are not all racists or misogynist by a long shot. – hotspurphd@30
What’s your evidence for that extraordinary claim? A voter for someone who has spent a year demonstrating that he is a racist and misogynist, over someone who hasn’t, doesn’t get to claim they are not a racist or misogynist. You might also benefit from reading this article, on what Trump voters were actually saying about themselves in October.
Polls. Some voted for trump because of the Supreme Court seat-antiabortion folks. Not necessarily racist. Others because they r wally believed Hillary was worse. They weren’t necessarily voting for him be cause he was racist. You sound as if you think all trump voters were like.they weren’t. Not all voters were saying the same thing about themselves. It’s not that simple.
@50. Kent kiehl is a prominent neuro-psychologist who has done research which shows that psychopaths brains are physically different and process some information differently than normals. That with the fact that their behavior is markedly different from others from a very young age in the absence of apparent environmental causes has led to the inference that their brains are different from birth. Not proven yet but decades of research,esp. Recent fmri studies by Kiehl strongly suggest it.
HTML lesson
Doing this
<blockquote>paste copied text here</blockquote>
Results in this
<b>bold</b>
bold
<i>italic</i>
italic
72.HTML lesson
You’ve told me that before. If I ever get my computer fixed I’ll try it again. I haven’t been able to with my iPad.
hotspurphd #73
I do everything on my iPad:
copy/paste
ひらがな
カタカナ
???❤️??
on
a
virtual
keyboard
one
character
at
a
time