[cthalupa]

Serious set of questions here from someone desperately trying to understand people who voted for Trump and how to have conversations with them that can be productive. None of them are meant to be insulting or insinuate anything.

To me, this sort of behavior just seems par for the course for how he has been acting since before his presidency. Did you follow his record in business and politics closely prior to voting for him? If so, what mitigating factors were there that let you still feel comfortable in voting for him?

Is this an isolated source of issue with him? Part of a broader trend? In either case, is it/these a big enough deal for him to lose your support moving forward? For the rest of the political party supporting him?

If there has been a shift in your ability to support him, what is it that broke the camel's back?

[econ]

It is remarkably simple. There are countless meals on the menu but people get to see only the two on the front page. Say, monkey brains and bull testicles. Few can really appreciate either. There is a little talk about the slugs on page 1. An abysmal small number will turn a few pages and look over the burgers and pizzas... but you can't really order a burger in a restaurant like this? Can you? So even they pretend they really like to eat testicles.

You could have literally opened a random page and order whatever is on there. It is perfectly safe to order the burger as you will most likely be served monkey brains anyway.

No one will rage at you for voting for Afroman. There are no dire consequences.

[cthalupa]

I just honestly feel like any attempt to equate the two is insane.

I can't really align myself to either party, and I am diametrically opposed to the Democrats on some issues, like gun control, and think that there are a lot of real issues that they push far to the extreme to the point that it is problematic, but... there's also only one party that attempted insurrection and overturning the election, campaigned on all sorts of insane shit, pushes a narrative of needing the military to deal with protestors, etc.

It's not two shit sandwiches, it's a pot of live pit vipers vs a pot of boiled unseasoned kale and spinach. I'm not going to enjoy the latter, but it's probably not going to harm anything more than my taste buds. The other might kill me.

[econ]

The magic is this: there are no other candidates who can win because you didn't vote for any of those in previous elections and there won't be in the next because you won't now.

It is like you ask someone to chose between death by fire, death by drowning OR finding the love of your life. Then they respond with: I don't want to drown! Or worse, they ask what other people chose.

Imagine yourself making your own choices. Picture it for a moment, doesn't it sound terrifying?

One should also look at it from the perspective of the other candidates. I mean those not part of the uniparty. Imagine making an effort to convince people to vote for a sanity riddled election program. The level of insult people sink to in order to NEVER even consider it.

[tastyfreeze]

Not OP but I reluctantly voted for Trump because of the direction he proclaimed he wanted the country to go. I could not tolerate the direction the democrats were wanting to go as it seemed an inevitable path to civil war.

But I knew Trump was shady and didn't like that he partied with Epstein in the 90s. A country takes a long time to change directions. I saw a chance for a smaller less restricting federal government. It was a gamble I was willing to take to at least get the ship turning around.

[pxc]

J/w: what direction does it seem to you that Democrats want? At least judging by its elected officials and internal leaders, it seems like a pretty directionless party to me.

[tastyfreeze]

Flooding the nation with immigrants and given them our tax money and berating anybody that questioned it. That is a 100% sure path to civil war.

[cthalupa]

When did your ancestors immigrate to the country? What was the process for immigration then?

For the majority of the history of the country it has never been anything like it is today. Until 1819 you basically literally just showed up. After that, ships had to include passenger manifest and pass that along to the state, and then state's handled immigration - but none there did more than try to charge 'head fees' to keep the truly destitute out, but not all states even did that. 1875/1876 there were laws that changed this - largely banning Asian immigrants and making immigration federal purview. The next couple of decades things got more formalized, but if you were a normal human being capable of supporting yourself you basically got held for a basic check and then were let in. <1-2% got turned away most years. It wasn't until 1921/4 that anything resembling our current immigration system was put into place, and while it saw significant revision in 1965 to how the caps and quotas were organized, we've not seen anything major change.

The Democrats want significant immigration reform, true. They want a path for people that have been living here as productive members of society to stay here. They want them to be treated like human beings.

This is not "flooding" the nation.

> and given them our tax money

This talking point seems to be repeated a lot, but it's just not true. Illegal immigrants pay more taxes in to the system than they receive in benefits - largely because they are ineligible for the vast majority of benefits. If you want to increase our tax revenue, more illegal immigrants is better than less. We effectively rip them off. It's like the claims that the shutdown is over giving illegal immigrants free healthcare - not a dime of the funding being discussed would go to them. You're being lied to.

I'm all for a system where we screen our immigrants for criminals, terrorists, etc. But the current system is broken, and we have built our way of life off of exploiting a large amount of hardworking people that contribute a hell of a lot to our ability to live the way we do. Legalizing them, streamlining the immigration process, etc., is not at risk of bankrupting our coffers.

[newfriend]

This country was a frontier in 1819. We needed labor to tame the wilderness. We don't need more unskilled laborers anymore.

We have immigration laws. The US is incredibly generous, and naturalizes more than 1 million immigrants each year.

The American people don't want a "path" for illegal aliens. We already tried that in 1986. All it did was incentivize more illegal immigration.

And what the last administration did was absolutely flooding the nation. They removed nearly every EO related to border security, and then complained that they needed more laws to "fix" the problem they created.

> I'm all for a system where we screen our immigrants for criminals, terrorists, etc. But the current system is broken,

The current system is broken insofar as we are not enforcing the law thoroughly enough. We already have a system, it just needs to be followed. All illegal aliens have to go back.

[HDThoreaun]

> I could not tolerate the direction the democrats were wanting to go as it seemed an inevitable path to civil war.

Trumps action with ICE will lead to waco situations. Undocumented immigrants can obtain guns in this country and will not continue to go quietly into the night. Seems to me that his actions are far more likely to lead to civil war

[actionfromafar]

I think a more likely scenario is that a citizen gets tired of being rounded up every other weekend or shaken down for ICE protection money and decides to put a stop to it, one way or another. And it would in many cases be legal too, because those iceholes don't identify themselves.

[tastyfreeze]

If somebody that is here illegally picks up a gun and fights citizens or government they are a foreign combatant on US soil. Fighting them is not civil war it is national defense and is the whole reason the federal government was established.

Now, if you are talking about citizens supporting an invasion against those that oppose it that is civil war. I agree that is a none zero possibility. However, telling citizens to get fucked while taking their money and giving it to non citizens, to me, was certain to lead to violent conflict between citizens.

[ThrowMeAway1618]

>However, telling citizens to get fucked while taking their money and giving it to non citizens, to me, was certain to lead to violent conflict between citizens.

Whose money? Being given to which non-citizens?

Seriously. Be specific here. the words you used are all in English and are even fairly grammatical. But they don't model reality.

Undocumented folks, by virtue of being undocumented, are ineligible for public assistance of any kind, pretty much everywhere in the US.

What's more, in order to work, they need to provide an SSN and they need to use someone else's because they can't get their own -- because they're undocumented. But they and their employer must each still pay Social Security and Medicare taxes which pay for those programs -- but since they're undocumented, they'll never collect any of the money they paid into those programs in taxes.

So I ask again, specifically, what taxpayer money is being paid to which non-citizens? Please be specific here.

[newfriend]

Illegal aliens are eligible for the following benefits:

Federal Benefits

* Emergency medical care

* School meals

* K-12 education

* WIC nutrition program

California State Benefits

* Full-scope Medi-Cal

* Cash assistance (CAPI)

* In-state college tuition

* Disability and Family Leave

[standardly]

How much money out of your pocket went to school meals?

Hint, not even 50 cents of your paycheck went to feeding poor kids. You are an idealogue and nothing more

[jakelazaroff]

FYI emergency medical care is not a federal benefit. You and your health insurance provider are on the hook for whatever it costs.