Grief, on 11 November 2016 - 11:34 AM, said:
This isn't to say that every single Trump voter is racist, misogynist, xenophobic or whatever else. But I would agree with the above argument that they've nonetheless endorsed rhetoric and ideas that are. And in the fashion of 'telling it like it is' and looking for the common sense explanation -- if it walks like a racist, talks like a racist, and votes like a racist then perhaps it is a racist. Saying 'not all Trump supporters' is all well and good but 'not all' is an incredibly low bar. Is it 'not many'? When millions of people vote for a campaign which is loudly and proudly xenophobic, isn't it a bit ridiculous for the left to start shuffling around emphasizing every other factor and shouting about how you can't call Trump supporters racists? At least it's understandable coming from the people who voted for him. Is it that uncomfortable to admit the possibility that millions of people might vote for racist rhetoric because they agree with it?
The problem I have with the arguments that they are "endorsing" the racism and misogyny, and that this is
sooooo inexcusable is that this implies the voter in question had other options.
This ain't an Australian, German, Swedish, or even Phillipino election, where if you mostly agree with one candidate but dislike their character you may instead find enough common ground with one of the many other candidates to switch to them. If your political views align heavily with the GOP, but you don't like Trump's comments on women your only alternate choices is to vote for someone who is completely opposite to your political beliefs or throw your vote away.
I think that's totally understandable. Not an ideal situation, to be sure, but understandable. And the overwhelming majority of interviews I've heard with Trump voters have been of this nature.
For example, The Current had a Mexican-American woman on yesterday who works as a civil servant in D.C., and she voted Trump despite misgivings over his rhetoric and misogyny because she felt that her healthcare insurance bills were climbing too much and that her hometown was suffering a lot of negative effects of illegal immigration, and she felt Trump and the GOP were going to fix/ameliorate those issues while Hillary and the Democrats would not. Nothing about hating Clinton (she barely even mentioned Clinton) or email scandals or even breaking the status quo. Just this was the viable candidate that best fit her political views (out of 2).
Now maybe the media I follow has been super skewed and they've just happened to get all their interviews with a very, very small subset of Trump voters who are reasonable people making compromises, and 99% of them really are simply uneducated racist women-haters. But I don't believe that that's the case.
QuickTidal, on 11 November 2016 - 01:52 PM, said:
Which corrupt candidate is this you nebulously speak of? Let's not beat around the bush.
Clinton, obviously. Some people seem to genuinely feel that the actions (or lack thereof, in the failure-to-disclose cases) of her, the donations with the Clinton Foundation, the DNC email leaks, etc, are actual corrupt practices (advertently or otherwise).
Someone on the right could easily make the same argument being made here in reverse: that simply by voting for Clinton you are "endorsing" every bad characteristic she has or represents, and it is
totally inexcusable to endorse such behaviour. If every Trump voter has to be called on for "endorsing" the negative parts of Trump's campaign, then doesn't every Clinton voter has to be called on for "endorsing" the negative parts of Clinton's campaign?
I'm sure the vast majority of Clinton voters didn't like everything about her, either, and would rather not have voted for a candidate who won the primaries through DNC cronyism, be under threat of indictment for incompetent behaviour during her tenure as Secretary of State, etc etc etc... but just like the right they didn't exactly have any other viable options to vote for, did they?
The two-candidate system is inherently reliant on pretty much every single voter making compromises when choosing, because with only 2 candidates and over a year of campaigning there's practically zero chance you'll 100% agree with any given candidate. How can you be an American, living your whole life in this system, and not be open to the idea of understanding that other Americans are going to have different values and make their compromises differently than you do? And then because they made a different compromise than you feel you would have made if some of your values were changed to match theirs, you simply villify the whole bunch, shut down all conversation with them, and stick to a bunch of easy excuses (the same excuses of the last few elections, of course) for why "those people" are that way and there's no point trying to understand them? No wonder you never seem to make any progress.