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What I Heard from Trump Supporters

blog.samaltman.com

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Re: What I Heard from Trump Supporters

#331

Post by Eridrus »

dboreham wrote: post #21

Honestly not sure this sheds much light. Doesn't it boil down to: I always vote Republican regardless, sorry. I vote according to my pet wedge issue (usually guns or abortion), sorry. I'm bigoted and racist but I'm not going to admit to that. The alternative candidate wasn't very appealing so I figured why not? I liked the idea of a bomb-thrower, sorry.

> I vote according to my pet wedge issue (usually guns or abortion), sorry.

As much as I agree with the left on both these issues... I would rather give up on these as politically untenable rather than lose every other issue to Republicans.

I don't know if this would just lead to other wedge issues ad infinitum, and I don't know how you would get that idea through a democratic primary (though there are christian democrats), and then motivate the democratic base to vote for you...

But if there are wedge issues that could swing large chunks of the electorate, it might be worth just giving in on a few specific issues until public opinion changes.

Re: What I Heard from Trump Supporters

#332

Post by dragonwriter »

intended wrote: post #316
benbenolson wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is exactly what the current top comment (by shklnrj) is talking about, and is one of the major reasons that Trump got elected. darkmouth here is doubling down on the exact same strategy that lead many away from liberalism this election cycle.

This is patently untrue. All this navel gazing in this thread is bizarre and forgets the past 30 years of political history in America. You'll (Americans) have long ceased to have a conversation with each other. People seem to have forgotten the many decades of Fox News (when there was no internet), the steady movement of debate from policy to stuff like "birthers", tea parties, gun boats, creationism, and so on. The…

> People seem to have forgotten the many decades of Fox News (when there was no internet),

Fox News was founded in 1996; the internet started being publicly popular in 1994-1995 (and had been around for decades earlier); there were not any decades of Fox News when there was no internet.

Re: What I Heard from Trump Supporters

#333

Post by camdenlock »

the_gastropod wrote: post #247
camdenlock wrote: post #76

None of this is particularly surprising, but it is sobering to hear it from the horse's mouth. Insane racist sexists didn't win this election for Trump; dogma did. One can no longer openly discuss certain extremely important topics (is there something inherently wrong with Islam as a belief system? Is Black Lives Matter doing good or bad things? Are women really paid less than men for performing the same work?) witho…

> One can no longer openly discuss certain extremely important topics (is there something inherently wrong with Islam as a belief system? Is Black Lives Matter doing good or bad things? Are women really paid less than men for performing the same work?) Some very prominent and (mostly) beloved liberals talk about these things _constantly_. Bill Maher, Sam Harris, Maajid Nawaz, and Salman Rushdie for example, are very…

It's great that those prominent figures are discussing difficult questions openly. That can only result in good things for our society. However, not all of us have such luxury. For most of us, merely asking the initial questions to start a difficult/challenging conversation can have very bad consequences in the current climate.

If you've got a job as a coder at a SV company, you'd better be extremely careful about starting a conversation with coworkers at lunch about how concerned you are by how acceptable honor killings seem to be in Muslim-majority societies. Starting such a conversation could get you ostracized, fired, or worse, which is unfortunate because that's precisely the kind of bad idea (honor killings) which need to be challenged, and which are of very real and very immediate importance at this time.

Re: What I Heard from Trump Supporters

#334

Post by creaghpatr »

AdeptusAquinas wrote: post #95

I can give him a data point from outside the US, from one of the other progressive, English speaking countries in the world, New Zealand: I don't know if it has fully sunk in yet to the US populace how completely they have humiliated themselves, on the world stage. We don't get exposed to Fox, or Breitbart, or even CNN. I get most of my international news from the BBC, for example. From our perspective, the election…

BBC is state-controlled media with a vested interest in shaping your perception, for better or for worse.

Re: What I Heard from Trump Supporters

#335

Post by dguaraglia »

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 think that it goes both ways: take Fox and Friends instead of Maher, and you get exactly the same kind of reaction. I'm not sure why you are singling out "liberal ideology" here, when my favorite new joke is a rehash of an old one: "how can you tell if a person is a Trump supporter? Don't worry, they'll tell you!".

Re: What I Heard from Trump Supporters

#336

Post by DashRattlesnake »

davidw wrote: post #188
darkmouth wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am a staunch liberal and I don't understand the hostility towards deportation of illegal immigrants either. Calling illegal immigrants undocumented immigrants doesn't make the illegal part go away.

They are illegal because the system is so broken. There's a market demand for those people, and they're moving here to work, by and large. Just because something is set in law does not make it morally right.

> They are illegal because the system is so broken. There's a market demand for those people, and they're moving here to work, by and large.

> Just because something is set in law does not make it morally right.

...and neither does "the market."

Re: What I Heard from Trump Supporters

#337

Post by shakil »

> You all can defeat Trump next time, but not if you keep mocking us, refusing to listen to us, and cutting us out

For all those Trump supporters who love the fact he's not politically correct, this shows how thin skinned they themselves are. There's no other way to sugarcoat it, a lot of these people voted for Trump because it validated their own prejudices: they loved him for being anti-muslim, anti-black, anti-immigrant... And yes, white privilege has been eroding recently and Trump was meant to be the savior and restore it - which is what Making America Great Again is all about.

So each of these groups is going to be disappointed in the way he governs. Sure he's anti-immigrant but deporting millions of people isn't really what anyone wants or can bear. Sure he's anti-muslim, but enforcing a muslim ban will actually make us less safe. And his party is more interested in snuffing out Obamacare which benefits whites more than blacks, and cutting benefits which again hurts whites more than blacks. So in their idiotic attempt to roll back a couple decades of liberal progress they have voted for a man who might deliver a temporary setback to liberal values but in the process will doom them to continued poverty and despair, if that is what they really wanted to escape. Oh the irony.

Re: What I Heard from Trump Supporters

#338

Post by freehunter »

Cookingboy wrote: post #277
darkmouth wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is not black an white about global warming or evolution? What is not black and white about abortion? What is not black and white about refugees fleeing war? What is not black and white about LGBT rights?

I"m sorry, if you think it's black and white about abortion then you are as close minded as the worst Trump supporters. Do you think abortion for no reason at all 3 days before birth is the same as abortion within 30 days of pregnancy for the health reason of the mother? Is it black and white or different shades of gray?

There is a black and white defining line that is very commonly used and everyone can accept exists: birth. There is before the moment of birth and there is after the moment of birth. Termination before that date is called abortion, termination after that date is called murder. Very clear defining line.

To put it another, slightly less controversial way: do you agree that a 17 year and 11 month old teenager is the same as a 13 year old teenager? In the eyes of the law, they both have the same legal status: minors. It doesn't matter than in 30 days one of them will be an adult. They haven't hit that black and white dividing line set in the law.

I would also like to point out that no one has ever had an abortion "for no reason at all" and shame on you for trying to squeeze that one in there.

Re: What I Heard from Trump Supporters

#339

Post by naravara »

chubot wrote: post #157
aorloff wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> if you lack compassion for people who come from less fortunate countries What I'm hearing people saying is that they want a candidate who will talk about compassion for the economic futures of Americans. If you are barely making ends meet, you don't want a candidate talking about compassion for people from less fortunate countries, when out in the countryside of America you see a lot of people who could hardly be l…

Yes, this was in the feedback: “I’d love to see one-tenth of the outrage about the state of our lives out here that you have for Muslims from another country. You have no idea what our lives are like.”

>Yes, this was in the feedback: >“I’d love to see one-tenth of the outrage about the state of our lives out here that you have for Muslims from another country. You have no idea what our lives are like.”

The Democrats had a debate in Flint about the water crisis where they discussed what to do about it and how the country's infrastructure got there.

Meanwhile Donald's fans were screaming "TEN FEET HIGHER!"

If GOPers put one-tenth of the outrage about being proactive about the state of their own local economies as they do finding "liberal" scapegoats to blame for their lives being shitty their lives wouldn't have gotten so shitty.

I know what their lives are like, but it's hard to keep giving a shit when they keep voting to tell me I'm not a "real" American because I care about gay and minority friends as much as I do about them.

AS MUCH. Because they're not special just for being White. Democrats and the left have been bemoaning the decline of the rust belt my entire adult life. The only thing that made their proposals non-starters was the paranoid delusion that there was a secret welfare state for the Blacks holding them down.

Re: What I Heard from Trump Supporters

#340

Post by christophilus »

sxcurry wrote: post #78
Yhippa wrote: post #40

This one gave me the most pause: > “Silicon Valley is incredibly unwelcoming to alternative points of view. Your curiosity, if it is sincere, is the very rare exception to the rule.” Substitute "Silicon Valley" for any major liberal enclaves, like universities and cities, and I think you see the same thing. I am skeptical by nature and try to take a scientific view of new ideas. However I feel like I get shouted down…

Except that the contrarian views frequently turn out to be lies, and I can't spend all my time debating lies. Please suggest a contrarian view that's worth discussing.

I know some women who are regularly derided for pointing out that the founder of Planned Parenthood was a eugenicist who wanted to reduce the number of African Americans in the US.
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