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What I Heard from Trump Supporters

blog.samaltman.com

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Re: What I Heard from Trump Supporters

#541

Post by MrZongle2 »

crikli wrote: post #121
tn13 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Liberals in USA has reached the level of maniacal stupidity. I love politics and participate in events across the political spectrum. But despite my genuine efforts I find the typical left to be completely unfathomable.

It's important to not confuse liberals with leftists. My liberal friends have remained (for the most part) fairly objective and open to dialogue. My friends who identify as leftists...not so much.

I agree entirely. The Left co-opted the term "liberal" to the detriment of true liberal thinkers in America.

Liberals, even if you don't agree with them, are generally interesting people to talk to and (from my experience) often easy to get along with. They, by definition, are willing to entertain alternative ideas and debate them.

Leftists, while not all cut from the same cloth, are not a subset of liberals. The BLM and AntiFa movements are clearly illiberal.

Re: What I Heard from Trump Supporters

#542

Post by praneshp »

Frondo wrote: post #210
phkahler wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> Don't those widespread calls fall under the callers' freedom of speech? Why shouldn't they be able to call for Thiel's ouster? For one because he's got his own free speech rights. But more importantly the parent poster was holding him up as an example of why people tend not to stand up for their opinion when it is not popular. Even a popular silicon valley figure was ostracized for supporting the "wrong" candidate…

You know what? Backlash is one of the inevitable consequences of having any opinion in a free society. Especially if you're a wealthy, powerful individual with a big platform for pushing your ideas. Especially if they're unpopular ideas among your peer group. Thiel is also a powerful, wealthy individual, with a much bigger platform than most of us will ever have. He's also obviously weathered the storm of being calli…

> "He's also obviously weathered the storm of being calling for his ouster just fine."

Will you (or I) be able to weather a similar storm?

Re: What I Heard from Trump Supporters

#543

Post by frgtpsswrdlame »

davidw wrote: post #484
leesalminen wrote: post #423

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, in a way our President is actually standing up to the corporations and fighting for human rights?

Probably not. Here's one way it could easily play out: There's still demand for those people, and so they'll keep coming (and especially if by various means we contribute to wrecking the Mexican economy!), but they'll be pushed further towards the margins of society, and will be easier to exploit. Look at this, for instance: http://www.elpasotimes.com/story/news/2017/02/15/ice-detains... - woman takes domestic violen…

This. Also it's already illegal for a corporation to hire an illegal immigrant. If trump hired 10,000 FBI officers to start punishing the corporations who hire these workers instead of punishing the workers themselves then we could see some progress.

Re: What I Heard from Trump Supporters

#544

Post by sdegutis »

azrazalea wrote: post #517
sdegutis wrote: post #453

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can't say Merry Christmas. You can't say you understand homosexuality to be a disorder. You can't call a man "he" if he identifies as a "she". Do any of these in school, business, or government and you'll be punished.

> You can't say Merry Christmas. Specifically in schools, this is problematic because it makes children who do not celebrate christmas feel left out. Adults should be able to handle it, children not so much. > You can't say you understand homosexuality to be a disorder. This is not an opinion related to your job, so you should definitely keep it to yourself while on the job. While some people will definitely throw a…

Regardless of whether any of these are considered "rude" or "disrespectful" (which btw is an opinion that many Trump supporters openly disagree with), it's a very real form of censorship to mandate that people aren't allowed to say these things. And that's dangerous.

Re: What I Heard from Trump Supporters

#545

Post by nerfhammer »

the_gastropod wrote: post #472
camdenlock wrote: post #333

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 st…

I live/work in NYC—a fellow bastion of liberalism. Anecdotally, I've never had any problems talking about these things with friends or coworkers. This is a delicate conversation, as there is a LOT of bigoted rhetoric around Muslims (our President is guilty of this type of talk), and it should be condemned. But if done with a tiny bit of care, you should have no problem criticizing extremism. I've never met a liberal…

Having lived in both places, NYC is different: engaging in partly emotional, contentious, shouty discussion is normal. Californians avoid and fear direct confrontation of this sort and if it happens they resent it.

Re: What I Heard from Trump Supporters

#546

Post by mavelikara »

thehardsphere wrote: post #233
Exofunctor wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

It will play out poorly. The coalition on the right is full of cracks that could be exploited to split them up. Trump actually exploited one of those cracks to get himself the Republican nomination. When the left comes in to pour moral superiority all over people, it fills those cracks in like glue. People who would have otherwise split from Trump are sticking to him because the left is chopping at everything. The sm…

> The smart move here is to wedge. Pick fights that split the Republicans apart from each other

One of Sam's interviewees pointed it out too:

    What would convince you not to vote for him again?

    "If the Russia thing were true, I’d turn against him.  
    Why don’t y’all focus on that instead of his tweets?"
i.e. reframing the argument along themes that the opposition cares for (in this case, patriotism).

Re: What I Heard from Trump Supporters

#547

Post by Arizhel »

jimmywanger wrote: post #67
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…

> compromise and appeasement of evil is wrong, if trump and his supporters act like nazis then call them that That mindset is the sort of thing the article is talking about. First, you're talking about Trump, his supporters and evil in the same sentence. That's polarizing and does nothing except make you feel righteous. Also, acting like Nazis? That sort of emotional trigger word has been done to death. Also, Trump d…

>Trump also has a daughter that converted to Judaism and a Jewish son-in-law. Calling him a Nazi or Nazi-like in his actions is silly and counter productive.

I have to disagree here. I think it's fairly obvious that Trump is not an actual Nazi. The fact that he doesn't speak German is proof alone of this; you can't be a real Nazi if you don't speak German. I think it's also pretty hard to be a real Nazi if you weren't an adult during Hitler's reign, which pretty much excludes almost anyone still alive now (unless the Nazis came up with some secret anti-aging medical treatments, perhaps in use on their moon base...).

So obviously, no one is talking about real Nazis. They're talking about metophorical "Nazis". They're drawing parallels between Trump and the rise of Hitler, and the authoritarianism that existed back then, and how it was fueled by xenophobia. Back then, they blamed Jews. Obviously, Trump isn't blaming the Jews, but he is blaming other groups of outsiders, much as Hitler and co. did with the Jews (and some other groups too, just not nearly in such large numbers).

So no, I don't think it's "silly" or counterproductive to make historical parallels. There's a lot of disturbing similarities between Trump and Hitler and other authoritarians' rise to power. There's nothing counterproductive in pointing this out.

Re: What I Heard from Trump Supporters

#548

Post by praneshp »

bonzini wrote: post #267
istorical wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is a rationalization of regret, it's not the result of a new decision-making process. You're missing the point. These voters chose him despite those weaknesses because they prioritized other issues more highly. Their decision making processes involved looking at both pro's and con's and the other pro's outweighed those con's. Making the blanket assumption that a vote for a candidate is an endorsement of _all_…

But why would they "lose all respect" now, if they didn't during the election period?

They lost some, but not all. Or something like that.

Re: What I Heard from Trump Supporters

#549

Post by frgtpsswrdlame »

splawn wrote: post #414
frgtpsswrdlame wrote: post #358

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe, but that market demand exists because they are outside the law. Keeping illegal immigrants here allows a permanent underclass which can be abused by companies in ways that American citizens can't. It allows a race to the bottom where only companies which hire illegal immigrants can lower the cost of their product to a competitive level. The only way to end this cycle is to stop allowing illegal immigrants to w…

What industries does this occur in?

Construction, food processing, restaurants and more. If any real progress is made on illegal immigration, I bet you'll see wages in these areas go up.

Re: What I Heard from Trump Supporters

#550

Post by cr0sh »

balabaster wrote: post #53
ajross wrote: post #11

This one (from the "What don't you like about him?" section) I thought was the most striking: > “I, too, worry about the dishonesty. His relationship with Russia, his relationship with women. His relationship with questionable financial matters. These all worry me and were they to continue I would lose all respect.” All that stuff was covered extensively during the election. There's no reason for it to be a different…

Just like Brexit... a lot of people voted to send a message thinking that there was no possibility of an exit... and surprise... when you vote, shit happens! I feel a vague sympathy for those people. They honestly thought they were just sending a message thinking that as one person they didn't stand a hope of "changing the world." I don't think they ever thought that there would be enough "just one person" people to…

> At least they'll be spurred to vote again, and actually make an educated and informed vote instead of just "sticking it to the man."

You're way more optimistic than me, buddy.

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