It’s always easier for me to consider these things by analogy. I imagine there is some set of views that, for you, are so obviously wrong morally that you no longer feel the need to encourage adherents to better explain them to you. So, pick one of those, and ask yourself ‘if someone showed up saying that, how would I want the community to respond?’
Edit: My answer, btw, is not ‘I would want that person to be banned’. It is also not ‘I would want everyone to ignore that person in the hopes he/she goes away.’
I’m struggling to figure out how it’s a problem that we don’t have a dedicated Trump advocate when Trump is the President already? He has a whole building full of people and an entire press corps getting his views out there every day. One of the benefits of owning the bully pulpit is that you get to be the bully.
If we really desperately need a ground-level view of what Trump supporters think (to the extent that they do, anyway), there are plenty of places to go where they congregate…Stormfront and The_Donald are a good start.
I would agree with you on the Nazi party, but I don’t think that blanket remotely covers the Trump supporters. Its actually factually false. I’m talking otherwise fine people I know, support the current chaos, and some actually think its a intentional ploy.
I see maybe 35%+/- of the country is in his camp one way or another. Ideological sympathies maybe closer to 50%. In no way does that qualify as “universally despised”. you may universally despise it :)
Well, I guess it depends on what your goal is. One some level, discussing those things can potentially convince the Trump supporter that it’s wrong, and expose them to information that requires some deeper consumption if they are actually part of the discussion. Beyond that, it can at least expose you to the counter arguments. If you assume that there are none for any issue, then I guess it becomes less fruitful.
First, I think that there is a gradient of ideas. You can’t immediately compare every idea held by millions of Trump supporters to fucking Nazism. I mean, we all get this, right? So maybe stop saying “is it ok to be a NAZI?!” in like every thread when talking about this stuff.
But even in that ultra extreme case, to me, having a Nazi try to explain why it’s ok to murder minorities will merely serve to highlight how terrible their views are. It’s not a tenable position. They’ll lose that debate. And honestly, talking about the specifics of WHY such views are abhorrent, rather than a dogmatic acceptance that it is. When you dig way down into the low levels of ethics and why some things are right and some things are wrong, it’s interesting. At least, to me, as someone who studied philosophy and ethics when I was in college.
Is it good for the country, if we self segregate into the partisan camps and demonize the other side? I think that is what is causing the growing unrest and increasingly violent rhetoric.
@David2 and @Timex - you both make good points but I guess my main problem comes down to this: I have a very difficult time taking any Trump supporter seriously. If you can look at President Trump and honestly think that he’s a good President, an incredibly smart and patriotic man, and that he’s making America great again then I can’t help but discount your opinions on just about everything else. Maybe that’s just a flaw in me but it prevents me from having any sort of reasonable discourse with one of his fans.
What if you think Trump is a stupid and abhorrent man who nevertheless has delivered on longstanding GOP policy priorities (taxes, judicial appointments), is keeping his promises to the working people of America (tariffs, coal subsidies), is giving American foreign policy a long-overdue makeover where we no longer are the ones footing the bill for supposed multi-lateralism, and is taking border enforcement seriously by trying to build the wall and ending catch-and-release?
I would just start by saying that the tax bill, which everyone would admit is a major bill, got what, a couple of hours of debate after a bunch of closed-door crafting sessions, and was passed before the congressional budget office could take a good look at it?
If that’s “delivering on a promise” then I don’t even know what to say. It was so clearly a stupid cash grab based on the whims of donors, and so far from helping the “working people of America”, that I can’t even comprehend defending it.
The left already took the approach of playing nice and trying to negotiate when Obama was in office and got obstructed at every turn by the right. They were then rewarded with control of all three branches and are telling the “snowflake libcucks” where they can stick it. Why does one side need to keep trying to make nice when the other side pisses in their face for it – and gets rewarded? I think what we’re seeing is a large block of the left getting fed up with being the only ones playing by the rules, and now the right is trying to call them out for a “lack of civility” that the right’s been guilty of for the last few decades.
Well Dave said it better than I could. If one has the ability to recognize Trump as the stupid and abhorrent man that he is, then surely one could also recognize that he clearly has no idea what he’s doing.
That’s the narrative, and some of its even true, but since when do two wrongs make a right? Calling them out, yes, dropping to that level of perceived behavior never the productivel strategy…
LOL. What did being obstructive, duplicitous scumbags ever get the right, other than all three branches of government and at least two Supreme Court seats? But I mean, other than that…
I’m sure there are still a lot of go-along-get-along Democrats in the leadership, but I don’t think It’s misreading the room to say that the rank-and-file is done with that bullshit.
LOL I can relate, at times I also want to give up on trying to convince both the left and right partisans I’m acquainted with, the merit of my philosophy. Though my irony meter would explode if I actually gave into that thinking. :)
