I agree completely with publicly shaming people who do racist things, or bad things, or similar. I’m not into public shaming for people that simply exercise their right to vote. “He voted for Trump!” “She voted for Hillary.”
So public shaming of someone that supported Trump by voting? No. When/if they come out as racist or do something that requires being shamed? Surely.
Voting for openly racist candidates and openly racist policies is a racist act. If they advertise that that’s how they voted, it is an overtly racist act. I admit that it’s possible they had some other motivation, but I can’t read their minds, so I can’t tell the difference between someone who does a racist thing because racism and someone who does a racist thing because other reasons. They’re enabling racism, so they’re racists. Treat them like that until they stop doing overtly racist things.
I know Trump voters that were entirely “never Hillary” voters. They truly thought she would sell out America for her own personal gain and as awful as Trump is, they just couldn’t in good conscience allow someone like her in the White House.
I know, the irony.
Anyway, if they vote for Trump again in 2020? I’ll be happy to judge those people as shitbags.
I know some, too, but I don’t believe them. People are always looking for a way to rationalize their prejudices, and ‘Hillary is too dangerous’ was tailor-made as an excuse to vote for the old white man who wanted to hurt brown people.
I read it as well, and found it to be very well written. Since the Miracle on the Hudson, I’ve seen Sullenberger interviewed several times about things not directly related to the event that made him famous, and I’ve read a couple of articles he’s had published. I’m always impressed by the way he communicates.
I think he wrote that article the way he did precisely because he doesn’t want to alienate anyone…he wants everyone, regardless of political affiliation, to read through to the end and absorb the message. If he said something about “Donald Trump represents the worst in American politics” he would have lost a third of his audience as soon as they hit those words. By keeping it more all-encompassing, and including the hooks to military service, heroism, defending the Constitution and how current events are about as far from normal as you can get, and THEN finishing with the statement about having been Republican for the first 85% of his life, but now getting involved and voting for the greater good instead of a party line, he gets the reader to fully consider his message.
If the reader is a Trump supporter, the message will be wasted anyway. If the reader is not a Trump supporter, the message could be a lot more clear. I read the article as an attempt to have it both ways, in which he wants credit for saying the right thing without accepting any abuse for what he has to say. It won’t convince anyone who isn’t already appalled by Trump.
I disagree, sorry. Did they know Trump was overtly racist when they voted? Maybe, maybe not. That does not in turn necessarily make them racist. There were a lot of reasons people voted.
62,984,828 people in this country are racists that should be shamed? Really?
Yep. Many people dismiss what he says as “showmanship,” and they have convinced themselves that his actual policies are more reasonable than his bluster.
I am not claiming they are right. Just tracking one of the many ways his voters rationalize their decision.
Yes, it could be that they thought he might make the trains run on time while being a racist, but we know how that sort of thing works out, so we can’t really excuse our votes that way.
One-fifth of my fellow Americans are racist? That doesn’t seem like an unreasonable estimate at all. Just judging by the people I know as a sample, it probably understates the problem.
… Do I think 20% of the US population is racist? Sure. Absolutely. In fact the percentage is almost surely higher.
Why do you find this so hard to believe? This country has a long, long history of racism. Segregation was the law of the land in many places within living memory. Do you think all those racists magically melted away in 1954 (or 1968, or 2008), like the Wicked Witch of the West? Do you think all those people passed along none of their racism to their children?
(Unless for some reason you’re not counting the people who preface things with, “I’m not a racist, but …” In which case there are no racists at all.)
Welcome to reality. Yes, there are a lot of racist people in this country, and they love to tell you how not racist they are.
If they didn’t then they should be shamed for not caring enough to know basic facts about the election, like Trump calling for a wall because Mexico was “sending us their worst”, or basic facts about the man they voted for, like his birtherism or attempts to have the Central Park Five executed or history of racist slumlordness. If they knew those things but didn’t realize those were racist things… well then they are racists who don’t understand racism. Perhaps that’s true for some of them.
Sounds like something they should be ashamed of, given the complete lack of evidence.
Why does it have to wait until then? Do they currently disavow him and hope he loses? Are they doing anything to reign him in like voting out his enablers in Congress? If not, I think we can go ahead and judge.
Because I know a lot of them. I would not think of them as racist, and based on the situations for a few, I don’t even understand how the term would apply.
This! This, I would buy in a heartbeat. Several of my coworkers and friends are, “push the button because it has an R next to it,” types, for SURE.
Back you your question, HumanTon, I don’t know why, but I’m unable to throw every single person that voted republican on the Presidential ballot into the racist pile. Next election if it’s Trump on the ballot? Probably.
Again, people vote for a lot of reasons. I can’t for the life of me think just short of 63 million people thought to themselves, “who’s more racist here, because that’s how I want to vote!”
Also not surprisingly, a lot of those same people who told me they voted for Trump have gotten extremely silent about political talk the last year or so. Maybe that means they regret it, or maybe that means they are nervous everyone thinks they are racist now. Who knows.
I live in Red State, USA. It’s a very conservative state, which meant the population at large gravitated towards a more conservative news source like Fox News. We all know the echo chamber effect of Fox News viewers, but now expand that out to all your neighbors, your co-workers, your family, and your friends.
For over two decades, conservative media (or perhaps we should call it a vast right-wing conspiracy) have banged the drum over and over and over on how corrupt she is. It’s extremely effective. I have a friend who isn’t a Republican at all, but he couldn’t stand the thought of Hillary being president (he didn’t vote for Trump either, but his vote in this state is meaningless regardless). There might not be “evidence” as you put it, but there is absolutely spin. And they have been spinning everything about her for decades.
What I’m saying is, they don’t think there’s a lack of evidence of Hillary’s corruption. It’s a known fact, you’d be laughed out of the room around here if you tried to argue otherwise. I know I’m stepping on a giant landmine here, but given that I’m in Utah most of these people are Mormons. And, as someone who grew up in a LDS household, let me say that having faith in what you are told and not questioning authority is drilled into you every day by the time you’re out of diapers, if not before. I don’t find it at all surprisingly that right-wing propaganda has been so effective around here.
Anyway, the people I’m thinking of very much held their noses when they voted for Trump. Some I know couldn’t get themselves to do it, so either didn’t vote or voted for Mormon Dreamboat McMullin. These aren’t nutjob Trump supporters, they expressed serious reservations about him. To them, it was more of a choice between someone known to sell out the country for personal gain, or rolling the dice on someone new – and it sure helped he had an R in front of his name. These are conservatives, after all, and that party at least used to represent that position (or at least gave lip service to it).
That’s not to say I’m holding these 2016 Trump voters blameless. As citizens, we have a responsibility to inform ourselves. To me, though, it was more being suckered in by the right-wing media than it was them being shitbags. They don’t get a pass from me by any means, but if after everything that’s happened they still vote for Trump in 2020? Then yeah, they go from ignorant or ill-informed to full on shitbag, in my mind.
Anyway, sorry for the ramble.
So you will (probably) believe that every single person who votes for Trump next time is a racist, but you can’t believe that every single person who voted for him last time is a racist. I don’t get that at all. He is the exact same person now that he was then. Like Hitler, he told us up front what kind of person he was and what kind of things he meant to do.
To be clear here, there are people who may have been duped or woefully ill-informed, but they made a mistake. If they are willing to own that mistake or at least to try to correct and not steer into it, then I don’t there’s much point in publicly calling them out. But if you currently support Trump, that’s far different than “I accidentally voted for the Nazi and now I regret it”. I will say, though, that if you just keep punching R regardless of what’s happening in the world, you need to be shamed into getting more informed.
Scott are you familiar with the term party-line voters? What about single-issue voters?
We’re looking back in hindsight here, though there was information prior to the election, Trump has most assuredly come straight out about it since then.
This is exactly how I view it, currently. Otherwise I have a whole lot of friends and family that I have to apply the mindset to that they are racist, and voted for Trump because of it. I’m unwilling to do that.
If I’m wrong, so be it, they certainly fooled me.
Why does anyone think 20% of Americans being racist is too high?
Forget the voting party line stuff, why does that number make people so uncomfortable that they reject it outright? Most minorities spend a lifetime of dealing with racism, and it’s not from the same five people. You start experiencing it, as an understanding what’s going on at the age of five. Why is it such a knee jerk reaction to think 1 in 5 have this belief and opinion when minorities are constantly and consistently speaking about these experiences?
Yes, of course.
What has he said or done since the election that he didn’t say or do before the election? I can’t think of a single thing.
I don’t know what willingness has to do with it. My father voted for Trump. He’s a racist. Whether I want to admit that has nothing to do with it.
Cuz we’re white and don’t have to deal with it.