[AnimalMuppet]

> I don't disagree with most of your post--but in the land of the real, it is very difficult to say that vetting for refugees in the United States is not already an intensely strict process.

Agreed.

> The people asserting it's not are self-described nationalists who wish to stop immigration...or are sourcing what they're saying from them.

Here I disagree. A big chunk of it is people who think that nothing bad should ever happen, and if any refugee ever does anything bad, that proves that refugees are not adequately vetted, and we have to do something. They may then listen to the self-described nationalists, but that's not where they start.

And it seems to me that writing off all the people who disagree with you is not a winning strategy. (A whining strategy, perhaps, but that's not the same thing...)

You're going to have to persuade them, or you're going to have to live with them (and their votes). And you don't like the consequences of their votes.

> Because we are in a real bad place and the literal fascists are actually at the gates. And in the White House.

Yup. At least as advisors. (I'm not willing to place Trump himself in that literal category, at least not yet.)

[eropple]

> A big chunk of it is people who think that nothing bad should ever happen

Those people may exist. I don't think, if that's their base axiom, they are practically (in a world where we have scarcity of time and effort) reachable. Convincing somebody to change their axioms is...well...not a particularly good investment of time.

> And it seems to me that writing off all the people who disagree with you is not a winning strategy.

This is pretty much what Republicans have been doing for a very long time, and doing pretty well at the levels that matter (i.e., state legislatures and Congress). They have not tacked to the middle, they have not tried to drum up moderate voters. They've kept their people and they have whipped them into a frenzy to vote to the point where gun-to-head obstinacy (the debt ceiling comes to mind) is a positive that rewards them even when moderates are aghast.

Turnout fights aren't won from the middle. You can have the occasional figure who appeals to the middle--Obama, I think, is one such figure--but I don't think that is replicable at scale. And the problem is at scale. There really are more of us than there are of them; ours just don't get out and vote. (And there are efforts by the party in power to make that continue.)

> At least as advisors.

To be clear, I agree. (I don't think Trump has a political position. I know Bannon and Miller do.)

[AnimalMuppet]

> I don't think, if that's their base axiom, they are practically (in a world where we have scarcity of time and effort) reachable.

On reflection, I may have to agree with you here. It's an emotional axiom, not a rational one, and so you can't fix it by rational argument. (You might be able to fix it by emotional argument, but I'm not sure even that would work, nor do I know how to go about trying.)

> This is pretty much what Republicans have been doing for a very long time, and doing pretty well...

But it seems to me that the Democrats (or at least the left wing of the party) has been doing the same. The message has been, if you don't agree with us, you're a racist, sexist bigot, and you should just shut up and crawl in a hole (or die). And it turned out that (pick one): The Republican base was bigger, or the Democrats alienated more people, or the Republicans alienated them less.

> There really are more of us than there are of them; ours just don't get out and vote.

If by "ours" you mean Democrats (as opposed to centrists), then I'd say that Hillary was a very uninspiring candidate. Also, when the DNC chose to hinder Bernie, it turned off a lot of Democratic voters.

> I don't think Trump has a political position.

I don't, either. I hope that's good news - if Bannon and Miller prove to be political albatrosses, Trump is somewhat likely to jettison them. (The bad news is that Trump, not having positions of his own, is more susceptible to the positions of those around him.)