Understanding Trump Supporters

[StarfishSaver]

Why I'm not much interested in "reaching out" to Trump supporters:

[MontanaMama]

1. THIS.

So simple. But then, so are the MF's supporters.

[AnotherMother4Peace]

2. Very powerful quote from the movie "Mississippi Burning"

Powerful quote from the movie "Mississippi Burning":

Ward:
Where does it come from, all this hatred?

Anderson:
You know, when I was a little boy, there was an old Negro farmer lived down the road from us, name of Monroe. And he was, uh, - well, I guess he was just a little luckier than my Daddy was. He bought himself a mule. That was a big deal around that town. Now, my Daddy hated that mule, 'cause his friends were always kiddin' him about oh, they saw Monroe out plowin' with his new mule, and Monroe was gonna rent another field now they had a mule. And one morning that mule just showed up dead. They poisoned the water. And after that there was never any mention about that mule around my Daddy. It just never came up. So one time, we were drivin' down the road and we passed Monroe's place and we saw it was empty. He'd just packed up and left, I guess. Gone up North, or somethin'. I looked over at my Daddy's face - and I knew he'd done it. And he saw that I knew. He was ashamed. I guess he was ashamed. He looked at me and he said: 'If you ain't better than a nigger, son, who are you better than?'

Ward:
And you think that's an excuse?

Anderson:
No, it's not an excuse, it's just a story about my daddy.

Ward:
Where's that leave you?

Anderson:
With an old man who was just so full of hate that he didn't know that bein' poor was what was killin' him.

[StarfishSaver]

3. Wow

Thanks for sharing that.

[gratuitous]

4. "You think you're better than me?"

I've heard "You think you're better than me?" as a challenge for much of my life. Curiously, I've never heard it in real life. But I've heard it in movies and songs and other entertainments, so I guess it's used in some places.

Why is that? I don't know. Maybe it's a geographical thing. Maybe because I grew up with a sense of self worth that wasn't dependent on what other people thought or said about me. Maybe it was because my family was from the lower economic stratum (though I didn't know it at the time) where comparing yourself to others usually found you coming up short.

Anyway, it's always been a strange concept to me, that I should be offended because someone else thinks he is "better" than me. But maybe it's a lot more common than I think.

[lunatica]

5. I used to reach out to them before they became MAGATS

Decades ago I had one exchange with one that finally opened my eyes to reality. A woman in one of my classes who fits the MAGAT personality like a glove started criticizing something in our government which showed she was simply not informed, even though she assigned quilt and fault as if she did. You know, typical MAGAT stuff. I got into a friendly conversation about it and explained to her what was really happening. She warmed to me and looked alert as she listened and ended up agreeing with me and it helped us get friendlier.

A week later I overheard her repeating the exact same criticism about the government to someone else. I was standing right there and when she looked at me there was no flicker of recognition of a memory of our earlier conversation.

I learned a valuable lesson that day. Some people have a default thinking process that is much stronger than any new information they momentarily get. If their minds are tasked with assimilating new information they will not even try. They will just revert to their default setting.