Comment by voxl 16 days ago
In my friend group it's clear as day: either you voted to kill and deport other people in the friend group or you didn't. Pretty obvious the group would like to know if you're secretly interested in their demise.
> Voting for Donald Trump is unarguably an evil action in my book.
I'm not sure why I'm bothering, but I'll bite.
I didn't vote for the guy, don't like the guy, never have.
Trying to understand _why_ people _did_ vote for him is much more important than declaring half the country (really like 30-35% of the country, more people didn't vote than did vote for a specific candidate) evil.
If we need to assign blame, Biden should have dropped out long before he did so the democrats could have found their next Obama, or something.
Or maybe, just maybe, people were desperate for a change and they were manipulated into a false sense of illogical hope.
The question is, why did they need hope? What was so wrong, in their mind, that we all ended up here?
Or, just declare them evil and hold a useless sense of moral superiority. This solves nothing, but I suppose it makes you feel better.
I’m not I the states and only see America through the media and social media like this.
You ask why did they need hope, do you have an answer why did they need hope? What’s so bad in America that people could be manipulated as you put it.
It feels a like a repeat of Brexit, where people vote against there own material gains to punish others because that’s the quickest high they can get https://youtu.be/GPgatTnVvVY
Most Trump supporters are pretty explicit that making people like me feel bad is their primary goal. There's a lot who just want Mass Deportations Now, and a handful of hard single-issue voters on something or another, but the cruelty is the most common thread. The Republican party is right now selling official merchandise (https://shop.gop.com/products/liberal-tears-mug) celebrating the fact that they've successfully upset me.
Why should I believe that they're disguising some secret, more sympathetic motivation? I spent a long time hoping that was the case, because I don't want to believe that so many people favor inflicting harm for its own sake, but there's a point where trying to understand someone in terms I find reasonable becomes falsely putting my own ideas in their mouth.
Or... Trump isn't evil, he loves America and is doing the things he said the President should do since the 1980s. People who blanket think Trump is evil are victims of propaganda. People who voted for him are the ones paying attention.
Trump on Oprah in 1988 https://youtu.be/SEPs17_AkTI?si=odkWs3urOu0xq2nX
I'm not voxl, but I do want to point out that he didn't declare anyone evil. He declared an action evil (the action of voting for Donald Trump).
That's an important distinction to me because I believe people can change and start choosing better actions.
But, a whole lot of people haven't changed, still support Trump, and until that changes, those people are dangerous.
And sure, we can empathize with the reasons that got them to do that, but it doesn't follow that we should just pretend what they did was okay, especially is they continue to do harmful things.
I said it was an evil action, I didn't call them evil. This is the standard essentialism fallacy of morality. Doing an evil thing does not make your inherently evil. Holding slaves in 1800s is evil, but I don't think the people are inherently evil.
I have a pretty good understanding of why people didn't vote, the block I care about a lot more. The people that did vote for Trump specifically either are ride or die conservative, fell victim to misinformation, or are otherwise uneducated.
Trying to say that Biden and the DNC is "too blame" for someone picking a president that is happy sending citizens to an El Salvador prison is something. I expect a bit more from the electorate myself, and think they should take some accountability for their own mistakes.
But I guess for prioritizing the happiness of the friend group, some amount of ignorance is needed if someone in the group is ultimately going to model the world on "they kill and deport or they don't" given enough information to make that declaration, and eventually a person on the other side is encountered?
I understand that some things can be more important than just having fun though, down to personal values.
"To be ignorant" sounds like a moral failing on its face, but I feel it is increasingly becoming required in some circumstances with the explosive amount of information available to subscribe to nowadays.
Keeping selfish assholes as friends is not a priority of mine.
I'm talking more about not bringing up politics to avoid giving too much information to people who will make up their own conclusions based on those facts and aren't amenable to change. And choosing not to bring up politics for the purpose of figuring out who out of the friend group is the selfish asshole.
Not really. Some people love the candidates but I suspect a lot of us vote against the other side more than for a candidate.
If you’re sure you already know what other people think, I guess there’s not much point in asking them their opinions? You’re not going to listen to their answers anyway.
All you really want to know is what category to put them in.