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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsHave You Ever Tried to Think Like a Deplorable?
I'm not talking about "walk a mile in their shoes" as if they actually have cogent reason. I'm talking about trying to bypass all of your innate morals/ethics to find out just how much it takes to be that hateful. Before you tell me that you aren't going to waste your time, you need to realize that sentiment is exactly the one the deplorables hold for us.
It's an experiment, but I also believe it may hold some insight into how to approach these people. Maybe we come up with a Rogerian argument that can take them down a peg, get them to not be so hostile. It could prove to be impossible, though.
DemocratSinceBirth
(99,705 posts)You mean walking around hating glbtq people, Muslims, Jews, Hispanics, women, people from other countries, et cetera ?
No.
unblock
(51,974 posts)ProudLib72
(17,984 posts)tried to ingest fake news as someone so vacuous? What does it sound like when you turn off the inner analyst that screams "FAKE"? Is the news enjoyable, soothing, or does it piss you off even more?
What does it feel like to be a sheep without a thought in its head as it is being led to the slaughter?
manicraven
(901 posts)I really tried to tell myself it was okay they were teaching kids that Evolution was false and so forth in their school--that this is what they believe and this was a job, so I just had to lump it, but I only made it about 4 weeks and then I handed in my resignation. They were also against the separation of church and state and were out protesting gay marriage with picket signs (this was back before it was legal). My inner self was screaming in horror, and I couldn't be an enabler and a fraud.
unblock
(51,974 posts)"Thinking" almost isn't the right word. Volition is still there, but critical analysis is off. It's like being in an orchestra, you learn the music and you enjoy playing your part even though you're just reading the sheet music.
I did this once on a bit of a lark, when my wife introduced me to a right-wing former boss. She joked beforehand that it would impress him more if she had married a right-winger, I joked that I could fake it for one night, it turned into a dare.
Frankly it was hilarious! It was scary how incredibly easy it was to pull off.
manicraven
(901 posts)I definitely never felt even slightly swayed by their views. I felt like I needed a shower and Draino for my brain when I was done. hehe
manicraven
(901 posts)really hateful e-mails that 2 minutes on Snopes proved 99% of them were false, but they never checked and just forwarded them on... They assumed I was on the same page. I did reply to all on several of the worst e-mails with the actual facts, but that didn't seem to deter them. I even challenged them to research before sending out this stuff, but they just didn't want to hear actual facts regarding President Obama and refused to stop doing this.
susanna
(5,231 posts)Unfortunately I am Spockian by nature and it did not go well. I flamed out early. I simply cannot turn off critical thinking.
I noticed that most of their stories and/or broadcasts were loaded with emotional "triggers" (which is hilarious and sad, considering they like to accuse us of our sensitivity). Their stories focused almost exclusively on things that would get your emotions engaged or were inflammatory - which, as a Spockian, even made me sad.
In a nutshell, my experiment was doomed before it started. I am hard-wired to question and it has been ever so.
So I turned it off, resumed a normal life, and realize we are just wired so differently that finding one another amongst the ruins will likely be easier than finding each other right now.
I'd try it again, but they do not try it with us, so why bother?
Warpy
(110,903 posts)is when I'm at the edge of exhaustion with very low blood sugar from not eating for a long time.
However, it appears as sotto voce grumbling. Nothing has ever provoked me to violence against anyone I'm grumbling about and eating something and taking a short nap cures me.
They seem to be addicted to it.
Alice11111
(5,730 posts)I know that low blood sugar feeling. I just deleted some mean RW messages, trying to avert my eyes, so I didn't read them.
Lies is the MO, which is why trump can't remember them from sentence to sentence.
manicraven
(901 posts)I care too much about other people, and they seem to despise minorities and the less fortunate. I'm absolutely concerned about the environment and believe most of the world's scientists regarding climate change, and they think it's a joke or a scam, and they're eager to drill, build pipelines, and move towards coal. I think women should have access to abortion (with limits), while many on the right don't even agree with common sense use of birth control. I'm extremely worried about the 20,000+ deaths due to guns each year and want better gun control measures, and they absolutely do not and ignore the large number of fatalities. I think there should be a path to citizenship, and they just want to put up a wall and tear families apart. I want single-payer or affordable health insurance for everyone, but they want to funnel money to the wealthy and let millions suffer and/or die. I want to keep pseudoscience out of the classroom, and they want to eliminate teaching evolution or "teach the controversy," as if there is a valid controversy. I think all citizens should be able to vote, and they think only certain people should.
So, no, I can't get even close to their viewpoints!
Missn-Hitch
(1,383 posts)Alice11111
(5,730 posts)I hate their mean, lying crap, always have. It is way more out in the open than it's been in years. Cool to be a bigot in their world.
It's not just what they do.
It's who they are.
It's what they teach their kids to be.
Missn-Hitch
(1,383 posts)I rebelled, prepared and moved. It took years but I get to enjoy the rest of my life on my terms! Hope the same goes for you. Cheers!
Alice11111
(5,730 posts)I have boundaries to mitigate the craziness. I averted my eyes and deleted Texts as fast as they could spew their vile last night. Deleted the VM, which I watched come in, but refused to pick up. My daughter warned me that my bro was on his self rightrous dictator path, and said she hadn't answered it. She called me to see what it was. So, I let it go to VM, so I wouldn't have to get engaged in his shit. Lunatic, RW, money groping, mean, ignorant "Christian."
TG I live 400 miles away in a beautiful place with relatively kind, sane people.
Missn-Hitch
(1,383 posts)I dropped the F bomb to my fundamentalist brother pastor. He tried to act all shocked which is just bizarre when his president says it on tv. I don't even try to be respectful anymore. He is still my brother though.
IOW, you are certainly not alone. Have a great evening.
Alice11111
(5,730 posts)I need to get better at conveying my disrespect more promptly. I get caught with my guard down and they take advantage of me. Very disrespectful. I really hate like mean conflict, in your face, shit, especially from people whose values I loathe. Only mean Repub types do that anyway. I try to avoid it, and then when it happens anyway, in spite of my attemps to be polite, I am blindsided. I suppose I still have a bit of Pollyanna left to exorcise, and it isn't't serving me well with these people. They come prepared, gunning for it. I just don't like to approach the world like that. It is Dems and Repubs. However, I'm tired of being jabbed with their shit, both in my family relationships, other relationships and in politics. Occasionally, I will just drop.the f bomb, but with families, groups, there are usually constraints...kids, parents, whose house are you in....
mchill
(1,015 posts)I then listen to CNN or MSNBC and letting go of all inhibitions, pretend to interpret what I hear as they would hear and interpret it. It requires me to just hate the person delivering the news and think they just have an agenda. I go into zen cognitive dissonance. It lasts for about 5 seconds.
Sometimes I pretend I'm very rich and greedy. That works too.
Alice11111
(5,730 posts)and mowing down everyone you can't use to make you richer
furtheradu
(1,865 posts)But no, personally,
I spend a lot of time wondering how I can be sharing this Earth with 'people' who are so mean & hate-FULL, I just can't wrap my Mind around it!
I truly try, I just can't imagine how people come from such a selfish, ugly perspective. Makes me sad,& tired....
I see my "ministry" as being the best 'ME' I can be..
the best dang democrat-Christian-Pagan I can be.
....
When the ugliness seems unbearable, I remember we ALL are on our Path, with Lessons to learn...& Karma is a bit**!
Those mean & hate-FULL ones will likely experience fear, pain, grief, they have inflicted on others.
So let's treat others as we'd love to be treated. That doesn't mean I allow mySelf to be mistreated, abused, manipulated..& I won't accept it happening to other fellow Babies.
Thank you for your provocative question!💖
rusty quoin
(6,133 posts)but I know how they think. They think that I think like they do, since I look like them. They used the N word when referring to Obama, and the same when talking about black people in general.
I usually walked away, and at times told friends, who talked that way, you cannot talk like that today.
It doesn't make a difference. They are fixed in their racist world.
The one thing you can do is argue about other things like Christian values and helping the poor.
NanceGreggs
(27,813 posts)I dont care if the Deplorables hate me or not. If they do, its because I am not a racist or a bigot. Its because I believe in a womans right to choose, and a citizens right to vote without interference.
Its because I believe that tax dollars are better spent feeding the hungry, sheltering the homeless, and caring for the sick, rather than being wasted on building walls and rounding-up people for deportation.
Its because I respect other peoples religious beliefs, culture, sexual orientation, and above all other peoples rights, instead of supporting a political party whose only goal seems to be denying the rights of others.
If the Deplorables hate me, its because I dont hate everyone they do. That seems to be the glue that holds them together hatred. So if they direct that hatred at people like me, its not surprising. They seem to have plenty to go around.
politicat
(9,808 posts)Let's call my cousin Jake. He's a few years older than me, in the transition cohort between Baby Boomer and GenX. He's the youngest of several; two brothers went to Vietnam and used their GI Bill; one brother didn't return. His two sisters were pretty much denied factory work on gender lines; one went to nursing school and moved to the closest big city; the other worked her way through a teaching degree and also moved. Jake was born into a factory and farm community in the Rust Belt, one that was very Democratic until Reagan. Jake was too young for Vietnam, and hit 18 when post Vietnam recruitment was really tight, so he did some trade school after high school but college was never in the cards because he was also the last one left at home, and by then, his father needed his help. His father passed him some of the farmland when his Dad started to slow down, but Jake always knew that he'd be working at the local auto factory between times. Jake's high school class was smaller than the classes of his siblings -- he was one of the early cohort of the post-Pill era.
What Jake grew up seeing on the farm was a community that had a lot of interaction; it wasn't very solitary. Same with the factory world of the 70s. Break times and lunch times were social times; farmers were in and out of the supply barn, the elevator and each other's workshops and land all the time. It was more labor intensive, too; it wasn't uncommon for three or four people to then be doing the work that one person does today. There was one radio station, locally owned, and one newspaper, and the area got four television signals. But that changed over the course of the 70s and 80s, in part because there were fewer people to do the labor. In the first decade after the Pill was introduced, the birth rate fell. The changes in farm policy under the Nixon administration also forced a lot of labor changes, because it became impossible to support a family *and* pay farm hands with the end of soil banking and the ever-full granary system and crop supports.
The intransigence of the Big 3 during the oil crisis, and the refusal of the UAW to adapt to quality oriented production (the NUMMI model), resulting in strikes and layoffs, in the early 80s didn't help, either. Any one of those would have been survivable, but for the Rusty Farm Belt to have dealt with all three within a few years put them into a semi-permanent state of recession. And those were all well before NAFTA.
So... Jake came of age in a work environment where he's alone most of the time. He doesn't have the social interaction with his peers that his father had. His town has gotten smaller, and Jake was pretty typical -- he was never encouraged to expand his horizons and all of the expectations for him were to stay home and follow the rural agricultural model. He's profoundly lonely, in part because he's part of a smaller cohort and a lot of his cohort was encouraged to leave. Humans need interaction, and what fills that void is radio. Hate radio, because that's what's available when running a community radio station got too expensive and syndicated shows took over. Hate radio thrives because it's much cheaper for a community station to subscribe to a feed than to pay three people. Same with the local newspaper.
Jake lives in a contracted bubble. When he has factory shifts, he takes his breaks alone, because that's the most productive model. When he's working the land, he's doing it alone. The Masons and the Rotary and church and community activities that filled his father's social hours have contracted or failed; the church and the high school have consolidated because the contracted tithe/tax bases can't support the local model.
Then there are people like me, a few years younger, and one of the children of one of the ones who got out. My parents got the college educations, moved to an urban growth area, and I could afford college (scholarships in my case, but scholarships were available for me and college was an expectation). We want to help Jake, and we come armed with education, skills, data and methods that we know will work to make his life better if he can just change some methodology, but what Jake needs are people and community, and we don't stay. He doesn't need the tools we can offer. That breeds resentment. He's not interested, and he doesn't have the emotional skills to admit that he's lonely, because he's never known anything different and was never taught to connect with his emotional space.
He's watched his friends' kids get chewed up by the war machine and spat out, with nothing but pain and PTSD. He's watched that despair turn into drug abuse, because pain clinics are everywhere, and they're one of the last businesses making money.
It's jealousy, and resentment, and exasperation, born from profound isolation and depression. He sees his community falling into despair -- meth and opiates are self-medication for existential despair. Jake knows he can't leave for greener pastures -- maybe his farmland is worth millions, but even if he sells it and moves to a condo in a city, what's he going to do all day? All of his life he's been told to work, and his skills won't translate. He's scared to admit he can't make a transition, he doesn't have the experience with learning to retrain for something else, and who would hire a deeply-middle aged former farmer with a brand new degree, anyway? And he's in the best shape. He knows people for whom that's not even remotely possible. And so the resentment builds, while hate is pouring into his ears every day. And now add in satellite TV, so he sees what he is missing every day. His kids aren't going to stay because they know there's a bigger world. So his loneliness is only going to get worse.
His outrage and resentment have become the fuel that gets him through the day-to-day despair. He has someone to blame, even if it's misplaced. His community was a sundown town, so the biggest cultural divide he's ever seen is between the Baptists and the Methodists. The most foreign food he's ever eaten is a Taco Bell taco or a midwestern pizza.
And I have no idea how we, as Democrats, talk across that resentment and isolation. Because Jake doesn't want us there.
Buckeye_Democrat
(14,846 posts)Poor Jake. Loneliness is something that I understand very well! I also stayed here to help care for my elderly parents (who were in their 40's when I was born) before they passed away, so I lost some personal opportunities that way. I have a bachelor's degree, but I didn't get to apply it. I'm typecast as a "factory laborer" now. I'm losing my eyesight in the meantime, so career concerns don't matter to me very much anyway.
Single people are more likely to vote for Democrats, though. Polls indicate that married people are more likely to vote for Republicans, and even more if they have other types of security.
Noam Chomsky thinks many of them believe that they've been doing everything they "should" do as Americans, so they're more likely to seek out the simplistic ideas of right-wingers to explain why their lives didn't turn out the way they expected.
There's been many optimistic myths accepted by white people over the years. If your expectations are high, you're more likely to become angry when it doesn't turn out well. One of the "myths" that my parents taught me was that hard work would be recognized by my employers, resulting in further training and pay raises. That seemed to be true for my father (who didn't even have a high school diploma), but not so much for me. My experience was that hard work meant having even more work tossed at me while managers received most of the benefits. I've been on the receiving end of "from each according to their ability" for years, doing the work that was formerly assigned to 8 people at my last job (and not the result of technology). I'm not sure how capitalism is supposedly superior to communism in my case.
I'm very liberal, so I took a different path than Jake.
politicat
(9,808 posts)Jake got married (and young, and under some pressure) because it's what people should do; I think he would have been happier single, and that probably would have been better for everyone, including Janet (Jake's wife, who also stayed to take care of her elderly parents. I've got a whole separate analysis on the women who had to stay.) Same with the jobs and the farm.
I do get it -- all of the expectations of a fair deal, if they just kept their part of the bargain, and then the deal changed. It wasn't their fault -- they had no control over OPEC or the Big Three or Earl Butz (the most aptly named man in Nixon politics...) The ones who are scratching out a living are the ones most vulnerable, I think -- school choice isn't even a thing possible. Health care is barely possible, and if they're lucky, they've got a doc and hospital who are not incompetent. Which still costs the earth. Dentistry? Please. City water problems? At least they have piped water, not wells that fail. And rural poverty can make the worst urban poverty look comfortable.
I think I agree with Jo Miller (co-creator with Samantha Bee) on Fresh Air a couple of days ago -- racism and anti Semitism are far less organically bottom up than engineered top down. Hatred of the other serves a lot of monied interests, and it takes significant encouragement for it to get nasty. It's usually an undercurrent, but when the other resentments aren't as bad, it's hard to gin up the energy to hate The Others. They can be ignored.
The sad thing? Jake was liberal. Which is why we stayed friends as well as cousins for years. But the grind eventually got him.
ProudLib72
(17,984 posts)What I've learned so far is that these people grew up in a culture that has now all but disappeared. Not completely understanding the forces behind the change, they are living in a perpetual state of confusion and fear. Their foundation values are no longer relevant (some are considered downright wrong), and any movement that might help alleviate their status is out of the question because it would mean abandoning those values. All that is left is striking out against what they perceive to be existential threats. Radio takes the place of meaningful personal relationships, but most of that radio is hate mongering.
renate
(13,776 posts)Thanks so much!
I wonder how America would be different if left-wing radio had become popular instead of right-wing radio. There are so many people almost alone during the workday, with no one to talk to... no wonder they became addicted to Rush Limbaugh et al.
littlemissmartypants
(22,418 posts)meadowlander
(4,358 posts)They don't think. They either:
- latch onto whatever arguments benefit them financially; or
- parrot talking points that make them feel smarter than the snobby, more affluent family members and acquaintances that they feel inferior to; or
- do what the preacher tells them to.
Stephen Colbert's old schtick had it down to a T. He "spoke from the gut" and "embraced truthiness" because "if it feels true, it is true". But none of those things are actually "thinking" in the strict sense of the word.
Iggo
(47,487 posts)I don't hate women.
I don't hate minorities.
I don't hate immigrants.
I don't hate poor people. (AKA: I don't hate myself.)
I don't hate young people.
I don't hate old people.
I don't hate gay people.
I don't hate sick people.
I don't hate clean air.
I don't hate clean water.
I don't hate taxes.
And I don't hate America.
How the fuck could I ever think like one of those morons.
Mc Mike
(9,106 posts)ingest cough syrup with codeine, add a pinch of angel dust, bang head repeatedly against the wall (solid, load-bearing). Make sure bircher Jones' infowars is playing in the background simultaneously.
Et voila. Your thought patterns achieve a 99% match with those exhibited by little donnie drumpfenfuhrer's fan base.
Alice11111
(5,730 posts)BlueCaliDem
(15,438 posts)Progressive dog
(6,861 posts)and I won't.
Vinca
(50,170 posts)I've come to the conclusion the deplorables are basically whiners. They will sit in their kitchen blaming everyone else for the loss of their job or their healthcare or their kid's lousy education. They want everything handed to them. If they can't find a job they should move to where the jobs are. If they can't find a doctor to take their medical coverage, they should travel to an area where doctors do take their insurance coverage. If their kid is dumb as a stump they should sacrifice some Budweiser and buy him a book every so often. Whine, whine, whine. That's all they do. Take some personal responsibility for crying out loud.
Docreed2003
(16,817 posts)Once you focus entirely...and I mean entirely on your own little world, things like empathy and understanding can be dropped by the way side. At that point you no longer care about others religious beliefs or their cultural perspectives...if they're not like you, they must be wrong. Once you lose empathy,you slip to focusing on what you perceive others to have that you don't have, things you might even feel you deserve. If you add a healthy dose of "prosperity gospel", something rampant in the evangelical community, that focuses on self and Gods blessings to you, add a dose of Fox News, because they speak your selfish language, and it's quite easy to see how a whole segment of our society has been bastardized by this thinking.
GliderGuider
(21,088 posts)40 years of constant messaging from RW hate radio does that. It re-wires your logic circuits, thanks to neuroplasticity. it doesn't just affect their empathy, it changes the logic they use to evaluate the world. That's why their reality seems so different from ours.
I don't believe that those who are in the full grip of the programming can be reached.
Alice11111
(5,730 posts)on from generation to generation.
Wounded Bear
(58,440 posts)Alice11111
(5,730 posts)Repugnant. I run, just like I would from a schizophrenic whose hearing voices with a gun. I think there is something to be said for knowing how they think, as we need to get a few of their votes.
It is pretty simple, and it's been well outlined here. Don't talk to them about what's right or humane. They either don't care or they like that they are hurting people. You have to talk bottom line, taxes, money. For example, if you don't educate people, they are more likely to be in jail. Instead of paying their fair share of taxes, so you won't have to pay as much, you will have to pay a LOT to support them in jail.
Aristus
(66,092 posts)They are, as Stephen King put it in a different context, people "for whom life is nothing more than a moment-by-moment flow of sensory input."
HughBeaumont
(24,461 posts)Either that or, because of constant snorting of Horatio Alger cocaine, they refuse to take "their betters" to task even if their heads are getting stomped by them.
From "Mississippi Burning" -
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?'...He was an old man just so full of hate that he didn't know that bein' poor was what was killin' him.
lpbk2713
(42,696 posts)It would make me physically ill to emulate some of what I have seen.
dalton99a
(81,065 posts)the same or a dime more than them. It's all about racism and bigotry.
Mendocino
(7,430 posts)You'll grow horns and a forked tail. Green vapor will come out of your ears. You won't be able to see yourself in a mirror. If you walk near children, they run away in terror. Dogs will growl at you, cats will hiss.
BWWWAAAAHHAA!
mythology
(9,527 posts)If you really want to understand someone else's point of view, you can't do that. It presumes the inherent superiority of your view without having to question your own assumptions.
MountCleaners
(1,148 posts)I have never been a Republican or conservative, but I have felt defensive about other things that I used to think. When I was a kid, I was very religious. I haven't been since my teens. So I think I know where a lot of them come from. They feel criticized and embattled - for their religion, for their "patriotism". But this is something that you should grow out of when you become an adult. You shouldn't vote against something because your feelings are hurt, and I suspect a lot of them do vote because of this.
lunatica
(53,410 posts)Then the next time I see them they've forgotten it all and blather out their original deplorababble. they don't even remember that I don't agree with them.
I gave up after that. You can't reason with people whose brain cells have calcified around one thought. There is no elasticity or give in those cells. That's why they are described as hard-headed.
Amaryllis
(9,523 posts)reading propaganda; they think we are. Lakoff is good to understand them:
http://www.truth-out.org/progressive-picks/item/27576-george-lakoff-progressives-cannot-succeed-without-expressing-respect-values
https://georgelakoff.com/2016/07/23/understanding-trump-2/
https://georgelakoff.com/2016/12/15/how-to-help-trump/