[tertiary]

The thing that will sit deep within me for at least the next few years is that, no matter how you slice it, a vote for Trump is complicit acceptance of his divisive and harmful behavior. Of course you don't need to be a racist to vote for Trump, but you do need to fear the other options so much that you agree that his behavior and the way that he represents our country to the rest of the world is tolerable compared to what might come after him.

I was on the phone with my mom earlier and one of her friends called her up. She's a republican, but they avoid politics. She asked her, genuinely afraid, if she thought that Harris would steal the presidency and convert the country to socialism. She's not an idiot. She's a physician, but was still so caught up in fear mongering that she genuinely believed that the government would steal her income and that there would be riots in the streets as we turn into a third world nation. I'm going to think about her differently after hearing that.

This is probably the first time in my life where I am going to look at people differently based on who they voted for and I hate that. However, I can't get it out of my head that they voted for a president that has so disgraced the highest office in our country and that they did it because of a fear of the future burning so far inside them that they felt another four years of Trump was preferable to even as bland of a change as a Biden presidency will be.

[pc2g4d]

If you feel that way it may be a sign that you are too far into your own "filter bubble". I'm not saying those views are reasonable, but they are easier to contemplate if you swim in a sea of right-wing viewpoints, some of which actually make some sense. Read Fox News, The Federalist, etc., hangout on r/Conservative, follow the YouTube right-wing rabbit-hole a ways, and you will be really pissed off but probably have a better sense for how people can get sucked into that kind of worldview. My experience is that it takes constant effort to avoid capture by the "default" left-leaning viewpoint that comes through most mainstream news sources. I live in a place where I am exposed to the Trump viewpoint only rarely, and I found myself aghast at some friends who said they were thinking about voting for Trump. But when they explained their reasons for it, it was clear we weighed the importance of things differently, but their reasoning made a lot of sense. But my initial reaction had been outright rejection, like an immune system fighting an invader.

[grey-area]

So, your answer to someone feeling distaste for fascists and racists is they just aren't immersed enough in the fascist worldview to feel sympathy for it?

[projektfu]

Try to be charitable. I read it as you don't have to change your taste, but you can develop some empathy.

If you don't try to understand someone you won't change their mind.

[grey-area]

You're playing by rules which fascists don't respect.

[djsumdog]

> So, your answer to someone feeling distaste for fascists and racists

There is a lot to unpack there. You already have a prejudiced and a bias going into your thought of them based on their choice of only two real options. Think about that.

You are looking at the world through a straw, almost with an ideological lens of religion. Politics are the new religion in ways, and yours is terrifying.

[grey-area]

Anti-fascism is terrifying?

I don't think this about republicans or any other political group, but if you're a Trump supporter after all that has happened (birtherism, 'grab her by the pussy', banning an entire religion from US entry, separating children at the border, 'Jews will not replace us', refusing to denounce and hiring white supremacists, 'fine people on both sides', 'when someday I leave [office], whether it's in 4 years, 8 years, 12 years, 16 years', praising Putin, Duterte, Kim Jong Un), you are beyond the pale of civilisation. You have supported racism, fascism and a naked grab for power and the destruction of democracy in the US and around the world.

If you break the rules of civilised society and violate the right of others to exist or vote, you can expect to be shunned.

[djsumdog]

Anti-fascism are literally committing acts of fascism.

Denouncing white suprmacy:

  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bd0cMmBvqWc

  https://twitter.com/RubinReport/status/1311469297613504512

  https://twitter.com/authorMCWebb/status/1311499351043313665

The "Fine people" myth (when you view the entire thing in context):

  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6R6hxPYWD50

The entry ban:

   Did you see what happened to that French school teacher? Have you read The Strange Death of Europe?

It doesn't matter though. In that fine people video, even when people were presenting with the reality from the carefully selected video clips they had heard about, they still wouldn't accept it.

The media has damaged our psyche. There are not peaceful protests in Portland right now. There have been riots for months! I use to live in Seattle, and the media did a very poor job of covering CHAZ. I made this:

https://battlepenguin.video/videos/watch/9f81cd38-3ee9-4f26-...

Antifa is not an idea, it is real. There are cell groups who have done terrible things and the media paints them as peaceful protestors. They're not. They're straight up descendants of The Students for Democratic Society and The Weather Underground ideologically. The protestors in Portland are Domestic Terrorist. The National Guard was finally called in this week to stop them from burning things down.

Suppressing speech: that's fascistic

Getting people fired because they support a politician you don't like: that's fascistic

Calling everyone you don't like a racist or white supremacists: that's fascistic

The hard left, big tech and big media are the fascists.

[grey-area]

Thank you for showing us who you are.

[tertiary]

It's crazy, I feel like I'm just constantly being gas-lit whenever it comes to talking about Trump. "Don't believe the media, it's all rigged against him" "<x bad thing> is all just a myth, you've been duped" "Don't believe your eyes".

It's like, come one, I live in Portland. There's no media conspiracy and the city isn't burning down from "antifa terrorists" or whatever. Take a step out of your filter bubble.

[cmorgan31]

Isn't Fox literally the largest cable provider of news in the usa and has been for decades? What is more main stream?

[presentation]

Nothing, but the US media is deeply divided and partisan like everything else - while it’s the biggest it’s watched almost exclusively by right wing republicans, democrats mostly see it as propaganda and lies and don’t watch it at all; and Republicans regard MSNBC in the same light.

[aazaa]

> The thing that will sit deep within me for at least the next few years is that, no matter how you slice it, a vote for Trump is complicit acceptance of his divisive and harmful behavior. ...

How many Biden voters would approve of his full-throated support for the Iran and Iraq wars? How many support his current stance against Medicare for All? How many would defend the Obama administration's escalation of the Drone Wars (assuming they're even aware it's going on)?

The bigger question here is how many Americans were voting for the the least terrible option?

[gpanders]

The general antipathy toward Trump though is not based on policy grounds, but rather his whole way of being. His casual disregard for truth and flagrant mendacity, his blinding narcissism, his disdain for international cooperation, etc.

Even if, as a progressive, you find Biden milquetoast and uninspiring, he at least isn’t an embarrassment to the office and to the country.

[ntsplnkv2]

I expect my leader to do what he thinks is best for the country. I don't expect them to be perfect. Obama wasn't. George wasn't. Clinton wasn't. McCain and Romney wouldn't have been.

But I never doubted for a second that they weren't trying to do their best. Trump, I did, and that's why I voted against him.

[djsumdog]

I was. I knew none of the other issues mattered. The only thing I cared about was war, and Trump was the first anti-war president. Even then, he didn't reduce drone strikes, but he greatly lowered America's war footprint. I wrote about it here:

https://battlepenguin.com/politics/who-will-lead-us-from-war...

[grey-area]

In fact he did not. This is yet another lie told to his supporters.

Trump expanded the global War on Terror and drone strikes in particular which are the biggest component of it. It doesn't make sense to exclude drone strikes, they are the largest part of the war.

https://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/trump-escal...

[djsumdog]

That's mentioned in the article I wrote/posted. There are two big issues with the drone strikes: it looks like they went down because he classified drone strike information .. and all the information (which I source) give different numbers and different time periods. They is no background to these sources? Are reporters watching drones take off and land? I have a hard time thinking reporters are doing any actual reporting right now.

But yes, it's likely drone strikes have gone up. They went up under Obama. They will go up under Biden. It matters not who is president, we will drone more each year than before. There is no doubt.

He has avoided actual on the ground wars, carpet bombing (Libya) and created historic peace treaties with three nations who now recognize Israel. Obama got a peace prize while he was in active conflicts for his entire presidency and actively bombed 7 nations.

[grey-area]

US foreign policy did not meaningfully change under Clinton, Bush, Obama or Trump and I agree will not under Biden. It's probably very hard to change given entrenched interests, and nobody has even tried.

Trump has done nothing to change policy - he kept occupying troops abroad, expanded strikes globally, undertook strikes on Iran and assassinated a top member of that regime illegally in Iraq - we haven't seen the fallout yet.

Also if you're willing to overlook Trump's racism and fascism in favour of a slight change in foreign policy (even if it was real), I'd suggest some introspection at this point.

[throwaway583]

From what I read Trump’s has many character flaws. That’s an understatement.

He is, however, one of the few presidents in the past century, to have avoided starting a new war.

Biden has a record of participating in a government that supported intervention in Syria and Ukraine, and his family benefiting from it, (whether legitimately or not is not my concern).

For this reason I have reluctantly preferred Trump to Biden.

What do I do now, how would I continue to participate in a society full of people who think and feel like you?

[ihunter2839]

A few quick thoughts...

Can you provide an instance where Trump's individual action prevented a military engagement or war that was actively lobbied for by leading Republican figures?

It seems unlikely for a President to start a military engagement without the support of their closest political allies and constituents. So it would seem that blame for previous wars should fall across both Congress and the President, and you can no doubt agree that many of the same Republicans (and Democrats) are in the same seats that they were then.

[netsharc]

Remember the little game of chicken and insults over Twitter with Kim Jong Un, that ended up with Donald Trump giving everything Kim Jong Un wanted, because he's an artist of "the deal"? (Trump did get a lovely letter in a giant envelope and swooned about it, remember?)

How do you only worry about what you read about Biden and his record on wars, where you even bloody admit that you're not really concerned about "his family benefiting from it", and IGNORE everything else that should worry you? Like a denial of the reality of the actual virus killing Americans (1 website says at the moment more than 243000 dead, that's like having a 9/11 number of deaths, followed by a 9/12, a 9/13, with two towers and 4 planes crashing every day all the way past Thanksgiving, with the latest being 2 more planes smashing into 2 more WTC-sized towers on a 12/1/2001...).

Let me try to answer why I think that is: you like Trump, for whatever reason (maybe you're racist, maybe you're brainwashed by Fox to think Biden is the devil), and you looked for a justification for liking him, and you found one when you read about him "profiteering from war". Good enough for you, everything else is irrelevant.

[Aeolun]

I care less about someones family benefitting from it if they have the decency to be ashamed of it and keep it hidden. Trump is explicitly the opposite, he flaunts it everywhere.

[rattray]

Wow. I'm used to the idea of republican physicians, but one who'd genuinely believe in a VP plot to steal the presidency to establish socialism is... surprising and scary.

Where do you think she got the ideas? Fox? Other media outlets? Or does the sewer link into social media have an unknown source?

[tcbawo]

Physicians are just people like everyone else. In fact, many of them are far more concentrated in terms of education, social circle, and free time. Smart people are very good at coming up with rationalizations and justifications for the things they believe or fear. We think we're better than generations past, but human nature is human nature.

[lizardking]

You’re going to think less of people because of the extremely uncharitable rationale you imagine they must have. Great.

Your own mother notwithstanding,it’s almost certainly the case that not everybody who voted for Trump did it because of “a fear of the future” at least not anymore than anybody else who votes against any other candidate.