A lot of it boils down to abortion. When you see abortion as baby murder, it would take an awful lot to offset that moral significance. In other words, many who support Trump wouldn’t exactly condone rape, corruption, etc, but they feel abortion is a much larger moral issue.
I see where you are coming from but I have direct experience with a decent number of these people, including my mother. She is kind, empathetic and generous but extremely fearful (not just of out-group humans - literally any unknown).
She has trouble understanding cause and effect despite being of reasonable intelligence and competence otherwise. She has been in conservative news circles for 40+ years. As you might expect, she is a straight-R voter for the single reason that she can’t risk the lives of pre birth fetuses.
She has an extremely short attention span and short term memory problems. Despite being willing to discuss issues, abortion is such a foundational topic to her worldview there is exactly no chance that she could change her understanding of abortion or Republican voting habits.
Edit: just want to be clear here, I’m a pragmatic anarchist and despise her worldview. However, I feel like it’s important to truly understand how people outside your bubble perceive reality, for the specific purpose of neutralizing their terrible opinions
I’m sorry to break it to you, but if your mother is a trump supporter, she’s not a good person.
At this point you have to be mentally handicapped to not know the man is an absolute monster, and anyone who supports him is complicit in the monstrosities he commits.
If she’s getting all her news from Fox or worse, it’s very plausible that all she’s ever heard about the bad shit he’s done is “fake news”, and that she genuinely sees him as a smart, kind man.
Everyone is picking the lesser of two evils in our electoral system. If you view abortion as the killing of nearly a million babies a year, what is that evil held up to the evil trump commits? If it was actually babies, I think even most democrats would pick Trump over the party that wants to be allowed to kill a million 1 month olds. Most people just don’t view those as the same thing.
I’m not claiming ‘morally good’ status for her and I personally avoid communicating with her any more than I absolutely have to. I just wanted to add perspective that may be useful for the discussion
Yep, no one is allowed to draw conclusions or to accept the truth about the people around them. They have to blindly do and believe what you tell them to, otherwise they’re unempathetic or otherwise bad people.
WTF are you talking about? I’m sorry, I can’t parse what you’ve said as a response to what I said. I do, however, hear that you are very angry. I’m sorry for your frustration and hope you are able to figure out some positive way to channel that energy. I agree, there’s a lot going on in the world that is super-upsetting. I just don’t think we’ll solve anything by dehumanizing broad swathes of the population. Sure, some people are assholes and they’re certainly over-represented among Trump supporters. But, for example, the other dude who responded about his mother. Someone like her is not such a black-and-white case. And, generally, more is accomplished by trying to understand the motivations of others than by dismissing them as bad people.
Edit: But, yes, some people are bad (Trump, for example). And, it is not a good use of time to try to understand their motivations. I guess it comes down to how and where to draw that boundary of empathy, so-to-speak.
A lot of it boils down to abortion. When you see abortion as baby murder, it would take an awful lot to offset that moral significance. In other words, many who support Trump wouldn’t exactly condone rape, corruption, etc, but they feel abortion is a much larger moral issue.
No, it’s not about abortion. They are just bad people.
I see where you are coming from but I have direct experience with a decent number of these people, including my mother. She is kind, empathetic and generous but extremely fearful (not just of out-group humans - literally any unknown).
She has trouble understanding cause and effect despite being of reasonable intelligence and competence otherwise. She has been in conservative news circles for 40+ years. As you might expect, she is a straight-R voter for the single reason that she can’t risk the lives of pre birth fetuses.
She has an extremely short attention span and short term memory problems. Despite being willing to discuss issues, abortion is such a foundational topic to her worldview there is exactly no chance that she could change her understanding of abortion or Republican voting habits.
Edit: just want to be clear here, I’m a pragmatic anarchist and despise her worldview. However, I feel like it’s important to truly understand how people outside your bubble perceive reality, for the specific purpose of neutralizing their terrible opinions
I’m sorry to break it to you, but if your mother is a trump supporter, she’s not a good person.
At this point you have to be mentally handicapped to not know the man is an absolute monster, and anyone who supports him is complicit in the monstrosities he commits.
A kind, empathetic person would never vote R.
If she’s getting all her news from Fox or worse, it’s very plausible that all she’s ever heard about the bad shit he’s done is “fake news”, and that she genuinely sees him as a smart, kind man.
Everyone is picking the lesser of two evils in our electoral system. If you view abortion as the killing of nearly a million babies a year, what is that evil held up to the evil trump commits? If it was actually babies, I think even most democrats would pick Trump over the party that wants to be allowed to kill a million 1 month olds. Most people just don’t view those as the same thing.
I’m not claiming ‘morally good’ status for her and I personally avoid communicating with her any more than I absolutely have to. I just wanted to add perspective that may be useful for the discussion
If that let’s you disengage from the issue, then OK. But, alas, reality is more nuanced than that.
Yep, no one is allowed to draw conclusions or to accept the truth about the people around them. They have to blindly do and believe what you tell them to, otherwise they’re unempathetic or otherwise bad people.
Miss us with that shit
WTF are you talking about? I’m sorry, I can’t parse what you’ve said as a response to what I said. I do, however, hear that you are very angry. I’m sorry for your frustration and hope you are able to figure out some positive way to channel that energy. I agree, there’s a lot going on in the world that is super-upsetting. I just don’t think we’ll solve anything by dehumanizing broad swathes of the population. Sure, some people are assholes and they’re certainly over-represented among Trump supporters. But, for example, the other dude who responded about his mother. Someone like her is not such a black-and-white case. And, generally, more is accomplished by trying to understand the motivations of others than by dismissing them as bad people.
Edit: But, yes, some people are bad (Trump, for example). And, it is not a good use of time to try to understand their motivations. I guess it comes down to how and where to draw that boundary of empathy, so-to-speak.
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What are you talking about? You assault us with a wall of text that means nothing because you obviously didn’t think about what I am saying.
Trump, who has 100% paid for multiple abortions to be performed.