Do NOT give these Trump Chumps a pass...do NOT give them a reach around.

[LaydeeBug]

RESIST!!!!

Whatever the reason Americans voted for Trump, we know that every one of them chose to support a candidate who made repeated bigoted, xenophobic, and misogynistic statements. They supported a candidate who mocked a disabled reporter, demonized an entire religion, made veiled anti-Semitic comments, scapegoated undocumented immigrants, and bragged about sexually assaulting women. Even if one puts all that aside (though I’m not sure how that’s done), they voted for a candidate who lied on a daily basis and who regularly showed he was demonstratively unqualified to be president.

http://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/2017/02/27/don-give-trump-voters-pass/dEq1kFpDAtxxSzedwKOpCJ/story.html?event=event25

[NastyRiffraff]

1. Let me be the first to K&R

I am sick of people right here on DU who beg us to be nice to the idiots who voted for this monster. EVERY DAY throughout his campaign brought a new and horrible insult to women, minorities, LGBT people--anyone who was not a white male. They are ignorant, and unreachable.

To paraphrase the Rude Pundit: there is little daylight between a racist and those who vote for one.

[dalton99a]

5. It's a waste of time to reason with pigs.

[LaydeeBug]

6. amen

[niyad]

11. you are insulting our porcine brethren and sistren.

[Tarheel_Dem]

58. "there is little daylight between a racist and those who vote for one"

[LaydeeBug]

60. It's gas lighting in a different form. nt

[ChoppinBroccoli]

2. They Are A Different Breed

One of my good friends enthusiastically supported Trump BECAUSE of all those things. They're actually PROUD of it. So when I see those things said, while most rational human beings are horrified, the vast majority of Trump voters read it and shout, "HELL YEAH!!!" It goes hand in hand with all the people who puff out their chests proudly declare, "I'm NOT PC!!!"

[JCanete]

18. They are not a different breed. They are human beings. Were the Germans a different breed?

Were the americans that wanted the Japanese rounded up into internment camps a different breed? Were we a different breed when we didn't want gays to be able to serve in the military or when we thought interracial marriage was a crime?

That was culture. The culture has to be taken down. The people selling that culture for their material and power gains need to be taken down. People though, can change and do.

[JCanete]

3. reality is shaped, and it is still someone's reality. Just condeming them for it is ridiculously

ineffective when we aren't an overwhelming majority, and is entirely dismissive of two things...


first, that if propaganda weren't effective at making people...hell whole societies believe what isn't true, it wouldn't be used and we wouldn't have had the Crusades or the Holocaust...etc.

Second,that minds change. I'm not sure why we keep needing this sort of negative pep talk about who we should deny our decency and generosity to. I know what they do. That isn't exactly an explanation for why we need to do the same.

[niyad]

4. sorry, I will not be nice, give a pass to, or pretend that the people who joyfully, willlingly, and

whole-heartedly, voted for my destruction.

[JCanete]

9. I get that. It doesn't mean your approach is going to bear fruit, and it doesn't mean the way you

look at others is helping you to see better the truth of the matter. That said, I recognize that they are causing serious harm, and that you, and I suspect, your loved ones, are bearing too much of that suffering, and I don't begrudge you the way you feel even if I think that it is scientifically and strategically off-base.

[Dave Starsky]

39. Okay, O Bearer of Light, tell us how we can connect with these people.

I appeal to your sagacity. You obviously have it figured out. Let's hear how we can connect with them.

So many times do I see the posts of the white knights defending the Trump voters. So little do I see evidence that people who actually voted for the turd did so for anything other than selfish or racist reasons.

[JCanete]

44. I have it just as figured out as anybody who says it can't be done. Why are you so okay with that

assuredness? Why are you interested in adding your voice to the purpose of ending thinking and challenging ourselves on these issues, in favor of embracing the age old good guy/ bad guy narrative that has always played out just lovely in the history of humankind?

[LaydeeBug]

7. Their minds can change...and then they can reach out...because they celebrated treason

and enabled it too

[JCanete]

10. err.....not as they saw it. Not as they see it. And there's a reason for that. expecting people

to change on their own--bootstraps stye(now that sounds familiar)--when they don't have the tools to do so, nor enough of an understanding why they desperately need to do so, is folly.

[LaydeeBug]

12. Oh Ok. It's folly....which is EXACTLY why we shouldn't even bother...

They are RACIST. They just don't want to be CALLED racist. They bring all kinds of assholery. They just hate it when you point out that they're being assholes, and I hate to inform you, because I live smack dab in the rust belt in a red section of a blue state...

Beating them with their own stick is what they *like*

They don't want reason...or truth...or facts even...they want to be TOLD.

They LOVE that shit.

[JCanete]

19. Its folly to do things in a way you know is going to be ineffective. What on Earth do you actually

expect to gain from this approach? Again, it isn't true that people who do shitty things are bad people. They are doing bad things. They think they are doing good things. That's the point. It's about puncturing their narrative. It's puncturable because it is based on falsehoods. People don't like to find out they are on faulty footing so they often retreat from that exchange, but cognitive dissonance is a thing. You just can't get there if you go at people as themselves being vile and despicable. You have to see them as humans who yes, think of others as not human. So help them to see humanity in others where they don't currently.

[LaydeeBug]

25. It *IS* folly to do things in an ineffective way, which is why reason and reaching don't work

I don't think you know very many of these people. I *live* amongst them. People who have proudly been referring to themselves as "ditto-head" do NOT, repeat, do NOT, I'll type it again because it's important, do NOT want to think for themselves.

They don't want a "Kum ba Yah" moment...they want to be told to "sit down and do as I say" They *love* that shit.

It is not based on falsehoods either. You are being too cerebral for them...and that doesn't resonate with them.

[JCanete]

32. people I talk to have evolved, slowly. I live in the bay area but a lot of time in the conservative

circles of the bay area, and I myself can definitively say that I evolved drastically, and continue to do so. You are putting up road-blocks about people's capacity here...

No of course it isn't just based on what is true or false. That's kind of to my point. We have to make it unthreatening for them to evolve. Hold a firm line about what behavior you will tolerate or find acceptable, but as I've put it elsewhere, we can't raise the drawbridge so high that only those capable of leaping already are welcome to make the journey.

[LaydeeBug]

37. My people don't *evolve*. They berate. But your demographics certainly lend to your rationale

and I am not roadblocking a thing. I am stating was works with them...it's the zinger. It's the "get".

They listen to right wing radio and walk lockstep. Your "making it unthreatening so they can evolve" would be seen as "being a sissy" around here.

[JCanete]

42. But how is what you're doing not just making them dig in their heels? It makes it a rivalry.

You are right, they thrive on that. That fits their world-view already and you are reinforcing it.

Don't misunderstand me though, there's a difference when in a conversation you are giving as good as you get. I can certainly be up for a verbal brawl that gets personal. How I respect that person's humanity is still important. Whether you insist upon a whole community's or culture's intractability is significant.

And what I mean by unthreatening is NOT that I don't go for the jugular with their logic. I just don't go for the jugular when it comes to their souls or their intelligence. I appeal to both. I ...assume both. That is what I mean by not threatening. I'm not there to judge them as people, I"m there challenging their assumptions and their beliefs based upon their own sense of right and wrong, good and bad. When you acknowledge that they have that, that's when the facts matter more. Anyway, we've clearly had different experiences, but at the end of the day, history shows that people do in-fact change, and can do so in short order.

[LaydeeBug]

46. Because they want to be TOLD...they *LIKE* AUTHORITY figures. They are DITTOES

Look, I don't *want* it to be this way...I can assure you...it's how it *is*.

You are bringing a knife to a gun fight.

[JCanete]

51. All I can say is let us know what you get out of it! nt

[LaydeeBug]

52. I've flipped about a dozen or so.

[radical noodle]

48. There has been research showing

that the more we give them facts and proof, the more they dig in and believe what they want to believe.

http://archive.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2010/07/11/how_facts_backfire/

Maybe not. Recently, a few political scientists have begun to discover a human tendency deeply discouraging to anyone with faith in the power of information. It’s this: Facts don’t necessarily have the power to change our minds. In fact, quite the opposite. In a series of studies in 2005 and 2006, researchers at the University of Michigan found that when misinformed people, particularly political partisans, were exposed to corrected facts in news stories, they rarely changed their minds. In fact, they often became even more strongly set in their beliefs. Facts, they found, were not curing misinformation. Like an underpowered antibiotic, facts could actually make misinformation even stronger.

[JCanete]

49. It is how you present them. It is what they are in service of. Find their values or what they think

their values are and get them to explore them and get them to run up against the realities of their contradictory beliefs and the rhetoric and actions of the leaders they follow.

I think we can all agree, there's a lot of applied evidence that divide and conquer works. I think we should starve that Corpo-GOP approach of oxygen.

[radical noodle]

56. There is another problem

Most of them don't want to know. I continue to try with those who I know well, but it does no good. For every minute I spend with them, there are hours of Fox "news" shows working against us.

[LaydeeBug]

53. This right here...you can NOT sissy foot around with these guys

You need to beat them with their own stick. Spite the spiter. It's the only thing that resonates with them

[radical noodle]

45. I agree totally

I lived amongst them for 65 years and still do except a different batch of them. The more one tries to reason or discuss, the more intransigent they become. Even casual mention of something that might be beneficial to them is a non-starter. Perhaps those near the bay area are different. They are not open to anything in the rust belt or in the south... even those who are educated.

[LaydeeBug]

59. Absolutely, this. That's why you have to clobber them with it

when you don't back down...they start to learn.

But they ONLY learn the hard way.

[Eliot Rosewater]

28. Most of them cant or wont change, because at the root of their existence is

blind rage hatred toward non white christian men.

All others including women are to be tolerated at best, and destroyed if necessary.

What we can do is appeal to their greed and self preservation instinct by showing them Donald Trump and team are going to take everything from them, everything.

[LaydeeBug]

38. or just beat them over the head with their own fucking stick nt

[NastyRiffraff]

8. No. No. NO

I am not going to be decent or generous to the idiots who gave us the monster in the White House (I refuse to call him president). They are responsible for the growing fascism in our country and I will NEVER forgive them for the destruction of our democracy. You'll probably say that's hyperbole, but it is the truth. I hope I wouldn't have been decent or generous to the Nazis either.

[JCanete]

13. be what you want. Hopefully, somehow we can still as a people make progress while remaining

that divided and feeding that beast.

Personally, I'm discouraged by that approach, because I don't see it working. If what matters is that you hold onto that righteous rage, then, I guess do it?

[LaydeeBug]

15. Shew...hypberole? I think you made an understatements. Fuck these motherfuckers. nt

[niyad]

14. cannot deny something they do not have--decency and generosity. but you keep your

way of dealing with them, and we will do ours.

[FiveGoodMen]

21. "if propaganda weren't effective...it wouldn't be used"

That presents a problem insofar as every time you try to stop propaganda, you run up against the free speech argument.

What is there to do?

[JCanete]

24. Limit how money is used as speech in some way. It is not speech itself. It should not go unchecked.

I wouldn't say our media was great back in the day, but it did have the fairness doctrine, and there was less money in politics than now.

[Squinch]

22. We ARE the overwhelming majority. They are 25% of eligible voters.

And you don't change minds by allowing and tolerating the mindset that needs changing.

Their ideas and their votes should be treated as the intolerable things they are. Those spouting those ideas should not be treated with kid gloves, but rather with horror and obvious disgust.

Did civil rights come about because people said, "Well OK, but I think you might be wrong" or did they come about because people said, "No. I'm not engaging with this and I'm not tolerating this. This is not acceptable within a civilized society?"

[JCanete]

23. They came about because of both to some degree. I am not questioning whether we make a stand against

vile thoughts and actions. I'm questioning whether we make it about the people themselves being vile. Public figures? Fuck yeah. That's fair game, even though intellectually I have to accept that these leaders are themselves products in some way. People....if we start thinking them literally as a "different breed" we stop thinking of them as our fellow humans, and if we can't find empathy with them, even if it is fucking hard...then we are hopeless, because we know they can't find it with us without help.

We just aren't there yet on the numbers. I'm in disagreement that strong-arming is ever the way, because it ends up being a way of shutting down ideas, and sadly that power may start with those voices that very few thoughtful people would find value in, but ultimately extend to perceived infractions or new ranges of control, because the weapon here is self- righteousness, not an appeal to the intellect. I'm not saying that approach is never warranted, but it is fraught. I think it would be much more effective and permanent to do it right, by continuing to make it a place where talking can and has to happen, and where bad ideas go to die. There's a reason they don't die here, and reactionism is certainly not the stake to their hearts.

[Squinch]

33. No. I won't trouble myself find empathy with them. They will need to find some humanity first.

The suffering they have brought on themselves might accomplish that. But it is not for me to help them "find us." I imagine that in their desperation after they receive the fruits of their actions, many will find us on their own.

I take issue with the fallacy that we are not there in the numbers. 75% of the electorate did NOT vote for Trump. That is where we will find our gains. Not the 25% that did vote for him. Appealing to the people who didn't vote requires an entirely different approach than appealing to the Trump voters. It is against our best interests to gear ourselves toward "empathy" for the Trump voter. It will not change the Trump voter and it will alienate the voters that we CAN get.

What I am talking about has nothing to do with strong arming or reactionism. It is about being honest about how disgusting their votes, thus their actions, are. Yes, it is a way of shutting down ideas. Those ideas, namely racism and sexism, need to be shut down.

You see dangers in my approach. But I see the greater danger of normalization in yours. Normalization of the ideas of Trump and those who support him would be the end of the Democracy.

[JCanete]

36. we don't have an authoritarian state, and we have a money machine interested in keeping

discord alive and giving disproportionate voice to divisive messaging. We don't have the numbers to do what you think we can or should do. Those numbers-- or numbers like them-- cutting across different demographics of suspicion and hatred are going to just persist.

It is never ever against your best interest to understand. Empathy is understanding. It isn't agreeing. It isn't cow-towing or patronizing. You think you can cut the Trump voter out of the power dynamic somehow...that we will just bypass stupid. That in my opinion is madness. Or you think that we need to stomp on stupid. That is equally madness when that is just what the people feeding it want. They want us to fight each other and we do. it is embarrassing that we don't see through it.

If you see me as normalizing bad thinking, then you are missing what I'm saying. Understanding that people are people, and that they can be reached, at least some of them....oh fuck it. I need more sleep. While I disagree with you wholeheartedly, I respect that you want the people with less capacity for empathy to do the work first, even though they are the ones who are blind to the work. In my opinion, when they start flailing is when you catch them. Not simply out of charity, but because we need to communicate with them and get them to see that there is a different world they don't know. because we do need them on our side.

You are right, this might be a paradigm shift for them. Listening to the Sanders meeting in the coal town, personal hardship is certainly giving them buyers remorse...but on the other hand they already had it. What this town hall did was to show them that Obamacare helped them...that liberals care about them...that fuckers like McConnell and Ryan clearly do not.

[Squinch]

47. There was nothing we could have done before the town hall you refer to that would

have convinced the Trump voters among them that anything Obama did benefitted them. There was nothing we could have done to convince them that it wasn't "the other" they were hurting but rather themselves. And make no mistake, the idea of hurting "the other" was a large part of the appeal of their candidate's message.

You talk about the benefit of understanding. That may be where the crux of our disagreement lies. I think we understand them just fine. And because we understand them, it is incumbent upon us to go no further toward them. I understand them well enough to understand that their motivations are in opposition to our values. If we approach them, if we try to appeal to them as they were on election day, we lose our souls. My hope is that the hardship they brought to the country will help them find their own souls. That would have to be the first step in any rapprochement. In the absence of that, yes, I think we need to consider them a lost cause and walk on by.

We do our best to consistently show that liberals care about them, but in fact, our attempts to convince them only solidify their positions against us. That is because they think we are lesser beings than they are. They think that they lose status by listening to us, or by listening to science, or by listening to reason.

The only thing that will change their minds, as you point out, is their own suffering. So be it.

[LaydeeBug]

57. That we don't have an authoritarian state doesn't mean they don't want one.

They *want* to be TOLD. They *like* not having to think about it.

Ditto.

Ditto.

[Blue_true]

55. Anger and a desire for vengeance are difficult emotions to resist.

Trump supporters threw shit into our faces the whole way, even when we reached out to them. It is only human to want to see many of them suffer at the hands of the person they exalted.

[RedWedge]

16. You...you do realize what that term means, right?

[JCanete]

20. yeah yeah. Nobody experiences reality outside of their senses or how their brain connects it all

together. What they see and miss, which is a function of what they are looking for, kind of affects their reality.

[Initech]

17. They probably enjoy reach arounds!

Given that they secretly love kinky sex acts!

[LaydeeBug]

26. this right here...all day long.

There are so many GOPs in the closet too. Sad!

[Chakaconcarne]

27. We have to refer to them as Traitors!

[LaydeeBug]

30. Yes, we do. Welcome to du Chakaconcarne. nt

[GoneOffShore]

31. I prefer the term 'Quisling'.

[mcar]

29. Very good column

Thanks.

[William Seger]

34. They have disgraced America by falling prey to a fascist demagogue (nt)

[AllaN01Bear]

35. i will pray for them but not be nice . they gave obama 8 years of g grief

and still not letting up . saw a tabloid headline ,, " how i am cleaning up the mess that i inhereted from obama. i turned the tabloid so that it will face back cover first.

[calimary]

40. Absitively Posolutely!

Dems! Hold FIRM! Do NOT help them!

They got into this. They got THEMSELVES into this. Do not get any on you!

This is all them, and all theirs.

THEY made this bed. Let THEM sleep in it.

It's not as though they weren't warned. And it's not as though they did not have other choices.

[Vinca]

41. Please don't used the name "Trump" and phrase "reach around" together. Makes my skin crawl.

[Dan]

43. Thinking this

It is very simply this... you cannot help the Trump supporters until they do something. First and foremost, they must help themselve... only then, can you reach out and extend a helping hand. Until they have looked into their own souls and sought personal redemption - it is a useless battle.

My opinion.

[sarcasmo]

50. Reach around?

Oh, My.

[NewRedDawn]

54. I turn every Fucking Enquirer

I see around. Fucking Mercer Fake news propaganda rag for the stupid.

[raven mad]

61. +2000, LaydeeBug.

I cut them NO slack, with links, proof and even keep a suggested reading list on Word for when I get neo-nazi emails from relatives. My friends know better.

[LaydeeBug]

62. Good on you raven mad. Reaching out to them is normalizing this. Fuck that. nt