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What I Heard from Trump Supporters

blog.samaltman.com

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Re: What I Heard from Trump Supporters

#131

Post by dmode »

Yhippa wrote: post #86
gambiting wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's because "alternative point of view" immediately makes me think of someone saying that global warming is fake, and yeah,I'm not willing to debate that, it's just not worth my time. I'm curious what sort of ideas you have in mind though.

Let's take illegal immigration. Is it wrong for this administration to enforce our current laws? If so maybe the laws need to be crafted to something different. While I don't agree with this administration's methodology this is probably the first time in a while I have seen the reality of our existing laws being executed and now we're seeing the effects of that. I am generally pro-immigration but I like to challenge…

Immigration laws were already being enforced vigorously. Obama administration set the record in deportation and was often called the "Deporter in Chief". And all of this was done without raising xenophobia and labeling a group of people as hard criminals and rapists.

Re: What I Heard from Trump Supporters

#132

Post by jpfed »

savanaly wrote: post #7

This was a fascinating read. I myself go back and forth daily between the two positions: a) compromise and appeasement of evil is wrong, if trump and his supporters act like nazis then call them that, and b) it's totally unproductive and gets us nowhere to simply pile on joke after joke, insult after insult, millions upon millions of them on every social media and tv show available to us, on the red tribe aka the tru…

These positions aren't contradictory; there are a ton of people that voted for Trump not because they're Nazis, but because Trump's terrible ideas about race and sex are just not very relevant to them. They just didn't pay attention to that aspect.

Eventually, people realized that Bush II was a bad president, and that came from the slow, unavoidable accumulation of facts. People that showed up at the ballot box (but not to rallies) for Trump will eventually come around when they see how incompetent he is, how often he lies about easily debunked things, etc. The jokes and insults won't be a productive part of this process.

Re: What I Heard from Trump Supporters

#133

Post by MaxfordAndSons »

gedy wrote: post #28
savanaly wrote: post #7

This was a fascinating read. I myself go back and forth daily between the two positions: a) compromise and appeasement of evil is wrong, if trump and his supporters act like nazis then call them that, and b) it's totally unproductive and gets us nowhere to simply pile on joke after joke, insult after insult, millions upon millions of them on every social media and tv show available to us, on the red tribe aka the tru…

> Then I read a casually racist opinion from a red tribe member or hear another xenophobic policy proposed by Trump and swing right back to a. I understand and respect that - but my friends who do that seem to also turn a blind eye to riots and beatings from folks "the left". There just seems to be a lot of double standards with saying fringe wackos on one side represent the entire group, but not the the side.

I agree that conscientious leftists shouldn't turn a blind eye to wanton violence and property destruction at their events. But I don't think it's quite a double standard, when one of the groups of "fringe wackos" in question occupies the highest executive office in the country (slash world depending on your assessment of American power). And as far as representing the whole: nobody voted for the black bloc; 62.9 million people did vote for Trump.

Re: What I Heard from Trump Supporters

#134

Post by lanstin »

Exofunctor wrote: post #29
shklnrj wrote: post #5

I think that when people "KNOW" that they are "RIGHT", it sometimes brings moral superiority into people. That, in addition to norms of socially acceptable behaviour, pushes people into a corner. For example - If someone goes to Bill Maher's show, anyone clapping on a conservative view point is seen as a criminal, while people with liberal point of view clap "together" as a group, with the smug arrogance of knowing t…

I did not vote for Trump, but I couldn't help but feel a bit of schadenfreude at the reaction of my mostly very liberal friend group to his win. For months and months, they'd been unfairly denigrating Trump supporters while simultaneously insisting that he was a joke, there was no way he would beat Clinton, etc. and somehow convincing themselves that their political ideology was synonymous with science, truth, and re…

I think the association between "science truth and reason" and the Democrats/liberals is caused by the Republicans apparent flight from science, truth and reason.

Politics has never had much to do with reason - it's our equivalent of war; conflict by whatever means are at hand; our complex, technological and interdependent society however very much depends on science and reason. Truth has it's own way of striking back, of course.

The thing I found most interesting in the article was "we are worse off than black folks because we have no hope of things getting better."

Re: What I Heard from Trump Supporters

#135

Post by [deleted] »

scrollaway wrote: post #120
shklnrj wrote: post #5

I think that when people "KNOW" that they are "RIGHT", it sometimes brings moral superiority into people. That, in addition to norms of socially acceptable behaviour, pushes people into a corner. For example - If someone goes to Bill Maher's show, anyone clapping on a conservative view point is seen as a criminal, while people with liberal point of view clap "together" as a group, with the smug arrogance of knowing t…

> What do you guys think? I think this is nothing new. US mentality has been going very sharply that way for years; two sides of a coin becoming more and more extreme and caring more about hating the other side than about what's good for the country. People bending over and accepting absurd things from their presidents, or politicians in general, just because they're "on my team". Roll back a few years. How is it oka…

[deleted]

Re: What I Heard from Trump Supporters

#136

Post by pizzetta »

Exofunctor wrote: post #29
shklnrj wrote: post #5

I think that when people "KNOW" that they are "RIGHT", it sometimes brings moral superiority into people. That, in addition to norms of socially acceptable behaviour, pushes people into a corner. For example - If someone goes to Bill Maher's show, anyone clapping on a conservative view point is seen as a criminal, while people with liberal point of view clap "together" as a group, with the smug arrogance of knowing t…

I did not vote for Trump, but I couldn't help but feel a bit of schadenfreude at the reaction of my mostly very liberal friend group to his win. For months and months, they'd been unfairly denigrating Trump supporters while simultaneously insisting that he was a joke, there was no way he would beat Clinton, etc. and somehow convincing themselves that their political ideology was synonymous with science, truth, and re…

Bill Maher said something along the same lines. That if people in the opposing camp decide they are going to objectify their opposition as one monolithic group of uncouth people that Democrats would lose in the next election --not sure about that, as the current admin may irk a number of Republicans as well, but it's worth noting that devolving to name calling and other denigrating aspects are not the most likely way to win people over to your point of view.

Re: What I Heard from Trump Supporters

#137

Post by ideonexus »

toss1941 wrote: post #24
mjevans wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the same is true for all of the political parties in the US. Everyone likes to feel that they are correct and refuses to consider that not only their viewpoint, but the calibration of society as a whole, might be (and I believe is, in the case of the US) out of balance and that thus perceptions are even further off than a gut feeling would conclude.

There is a very strong perception that if you are a conservative and you speak out either against left-wing views, someone will try to destroy your career and rob you of your livelihood. Take a look at a recent example of a teacher who made comments on Facebook about the #DayWithoutImmigrants[0]. Those parents who supported amnesty ascribed racism to what was an otherwise completely non-racist comment, and enough of…

Here's a counterpoint, the website "Professor Watchlist" where Conservatives can report their professors for being liberal:

http://professorwatchlist.org/

What is the point of such a website except to try and ruin people's careers and invite harassment of them? What about all the 4chan and reddit threads dedicated to finding and harassing outspoken liberals?

Re: What I Heard from Trump Supporters

#138

Post by fuzzybeard »

tlogan wrote: post #65

My experience is pretty much the same. Trump supporters are basically against immigrants and immigration. Basically nationalists. They are not stupid, less educated, poor, etc. And we should be careful with appeasement of evil policies because we are "mocking them". I.e., being spineless democrats...

Anti-immigrant nationalism is counterproductive. That being said, I've asked some Trump supporters over the election about immigration. The general feeling was that legal immigration is fine, it's the line jumpers they see as violating our immigration system and the rule of law.

Re: What I Heard from Trump Supporters

#139

Post by jimmywanger »

ZeroGravitas wrote: post #25
savanaly wrote: post #7

This was a fascinating read. I myself go back and forth daily between the two positions: a) compromise and appeasement of evil is wrong, if trump and his supporters act like nazis then call them that, and b) it's totally unproductive and gets us nowhere to simply pile on joke after joke, insult after insult, millions upon millions of them on every social media and tv show available to us, on the red tribe aka the tru…

Is it unproductive though? Humans are social animals, and like to know they're doing the "right" thing, where "right" is often defined by what everyone else is doing. A common example of this kind of "social proof" is a counter productive littering campaign that told people that everyone was doing it. So people thought, well if it's good enough for them. It seems clear to me that people don't like being called racist…

> So much so that they'll try really hard to convince people to stop calling them racist

I don't think that's true. Basically if you call somebody racist and they don't think it's warranted, they'll just disregard any of your other opinions about anything at all. Your opinion doesn't really matter anymore. "He thinks I'm racist, he's obviously an idiot."

Re: What I Heard from Trump Supporters

#140

Post by camdenlock »

jdblair wrote: post #15

One thing that jumped out for me is the pervasiveness of white fragility. For example: Stop being politically correct. I'm white but I'm not privileged. Stop calling us racists. If you're not familiar with this term, White Fragility is a state in which even a minimum amount of racial stress be- comes intolerable, triggering a range of defensive moves. These moves include the outward display of emotions such as anger,…

You're being downvoted because it's despicable to create and bandy about a scientific-sounding term like "white fragility" in a conversation that people are sincerely trying to have.

You're effectively removing yourself from any such discussion on these topics and creating an image of a psychologist analyzing the others in the discussion. Be part of the conversation, don't just step back and slap passive-aggressive labels on the participants.

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