• wizardbeard@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    2 days ago

    Any possible reason why anyone could have voted for Trump besides being racist or an idiot. That blanket labelling half the country as Nazis wasn’t effective last time and isn’t effective now. That a large portion of the populace feels so desperate for change that they were willing to vote for the fucking cheeto supreme.

    I voted for Harris, and I completely believe Trump was the worst fucking choice the voting populace could have made, but unless you’re actually calling for the extermination of roughly half the country there has to be some attempt at understanding or bridging the gap wherever it can be bridged.

    • octopus_ink@lemmy.ml
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      1 day ago

      unless you’re actually calling for the extermination

      Only one group wants to exterminate people, and it’s not the folks avoiding their racist uncle at Thanksgiving.

      • wizardbeard@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        23 hours ago

        What’s the end game though? We have to find some way to communicate with and turn the Trump voters if we ever want any chance of moving past this shitshow.

        And just because you personally are not calling for their death doesn’t change just how fucking many people I’ve seen on Lemmy and elsewhere online openly call for it.

        I see barely anyone willing to aknowledge the fact that roughly half the country voted for Trump. That can’t be ignored and the general sentiment I see is that the Trump voters need to be eliminated or otherwise disallowed to vote, rather than any serious attempts to figure out what can be done.

        Self righteousness may be cathartic, but it doesn’t do anything for finding a fucking solution for this shit show.

        • octopus_ink@lemmy.ml
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          4 hours ago

          I see barely anyone willing to aknowledge the fact that roughly half the country voted for Trump.

          Half of voters who voted, not half the country. That’s a pretty big difference.

          We have to find some way to communicate with and turn the Trump voters if we ever want any chance of moving past this shitshow.

          I’ve been trying to do that for eight years. As have most of those of us not in the cult. When does it get to be “on them”, you know, the party of personal responsibility? Why is it always on us to mollycoddle them? I’m fucking done.

          Self righteousness may be cathartic, but it doesn’t do anything for finding a fucking solution for this shit show.

          My solution is that no Republican gets one ounce of interaction with me that I’m not legally or contractually obligated to give them. My maga relatives will get the degree of courtesy and interaction required by our relative positions within the family and geographic proximity.

          Maga service providers or vendors will get none of my money if they make me aware of their alliances, which most of them are very happy to do.

          The only remaining endgame is riding out the four years of shit they have handed us, hoping we actually get another election, and going to my grave without voting for a Republican or conservative for anything.

          I’m beyond done with these selfish(edit - and hateful) assholes.

        • octopus_ink@lemmy.ml
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          22 hours ago

          And by the way, I appreciate your kinder gentle approach.

          Although I’m just going full “these people will receive nothing from me”, and I have no intent to consider any other approach, yours is the healthier way no doubt. 🙂

      • ArcaneSlime@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        1 day ago

        Is it the tankies? I see them talk about killing people a lot, last time I mentioned it cowbee or whatever his name is (he’ll comment under this with enough time I swear he uploaded his consciousness to lemmy) basically just said “well yeah, they deserve it,” they aren’t even trying to hide it anymore. And by their standards, many of us on lemmy are “liberal” enough to be considered by the tankies to be nazis, who they say they want to kill, meaning they want to kill many of us (possibly you included, if you’re not a hardline Marxist-Leninist, i.e “left enough to live for now”).

        OH you meant racists. Well then, no there’s two groups. My mind went to tankies because we’re on lemmy so surely you haven’t missed those. OH .ml, I see…

        • octopus_ink@lemmy.ml
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          1 day ago

          My mind went to tankies because we’re on lemmy so surely you haven’t missed those. OH .ml, I see…

          Don’t forget the group that assumes they know everything about everyone based on their Lemmy instance. Those folks can eat a bag of dicks!

          I’d say we’re about 70 million short of there being enough tankies in the US to worry about. Magas on the other hand… So yeah, the racist magats and the rest of us cover all the cases being discussed here.

          • ArcaneSlime@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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            1 day ago

            My point wasn’t that tankies are more numerous than racists, my point was that “only one group” is not accurate, being that there are “at least two groups.”

            Furthermore, being a murderous dickhole is only a problem in sufficient numbers? Well by your logic I guess we don’t have to worry about the KKK then, there’s about 3k of them, which without checking I’m betting is less than grad+bear+ml users.

            Sorry, I can’t subscribe to that, murderous dickheads and their ideologies are bad be they one or one billion.

            • octopus_ink@lemmy.ml
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              1 day ago

              LOL you want so bad to have a fight about tankies because I’m on ml so you think that’s something I like to fight about.

              I have magas in my family I need to avoid for Thanksgiving. I don’t have any tankies. Neither, I can say with almost complete certainty, do you. Neither are they pictured in OP, because they don’t factor into the dynamic being satirized. In fact, I’m 95% certain no one reading this thread has a tankie in their family they need to try to avoid on Thanksgiving. Nor do they exist in sufficient numbers in the US to impact our nation or its politics in any substantive way. Inserting them in this discussion is a non sequitur at best and a troll at worst.

              Please go find a tankie or someone who feels like defending them for the argument you want so badly to have.

              Goodbye! 👋

              Don’t forget the group that assumes they know everything about everyone based on their Lemmy instance. Those folks can eat a bag of dicks!

              • ArcaneSlime@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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                23 hours ago

                Thankfully the family tankie does seem to have grown out of it by now, but they’re out there in other families, your experiences don’t define everyone else’s.

                But again all of this is besides the point, your claim that “there’s only one group” is factually incorrect.

                Bye indeed.

                • octopus_ink@lemmy.ml
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                  23 hours ago

                  your experiences don’t define everyone else’s.

                  If you closely read my words you’ll find I didn’t say they did.

                  Plonk.

      • wizardbeard@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        23 hours ago

        If you somehow think that those idiots are going to just magically disappear and we’ll suddenly be able to vote all the right people in without making any attempts to engage with and turn them, that makes you an idiot too.

        Self righteous elitism is cathartic but does nothing to move any of us towards a better future. Nine times out of ten when I bring this up, people ignore it or suggest we somehow get rid of the Trump voters.

        • ObliviousEnlightenment@lemmy.world
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          11 hours ago

          If there were an ethical way to get rid of or away from them, Id be down. As for reaching out, thats all well and good but I am not a politician and am under no obligation to be nice

      • wizardbeard@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        23 hours ago

        Are you kidding me? No one is really that stupid. We all know what the red hats in the second panel are supposed to be.

        • Ech@lemm.ee
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          18 hours ago

          For one, the snide “tolerant left” comment is never about any particular person or party - it’s a bad faith attempt to discredit valid critique of hateful or harmful actions, unreasonably demanding universal tolerance of everything, including intolerance.

          Second, the comic is explicitly about racists, basically all of which are going to be trump voters, but that says nothing about any other part of that group. Extrapolating that to be an attack on all of those voters is flipping the equation to fit your own outrage.

          That you’re putting so much effort into defending trolls and racist is certainly interesting.

          • wizardbeard@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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            1 minute ago

            That you’re putting so much effort into defending trolls and racist is certainly interesting.

            If you want to imagine that I’m part of that group, despite me clearly saying otherwise across many many comments, I can’t stop you.

            Claiming that I’m trying to defend “trolls and racists” when I’ve been direct and specific about my points across my many comments on this post is also flipping the equation to fit your outrage or point of view.

            As succinctly as possible: Denigrating, insulting, putting down, and condescencion towards people with differing political beliefs (especially when it’s a group as large as the Trump voting base) is not a recipe for successful movement forward towards a better future for the United States. Whether that’s fair or not doesn’t matter to this point. Whether they’re all the fucking worst or not doesn’t matter to this point. You cannot ignore or other a group this size and then be surprised when they react negatively back towards you. Who started it also does not matter to this point.

            It sucks that this is the case. It’s a great big pot of unfair bullshit stew. Why should anyone have to even give those assholes the time of day, etc.

            But unless you expect these people to magically stop existing, some way to work with or around them will need to be worked towards. I’d prefer to think that we’re better than advocating for a purge or removing peoples’ rights en masse, so that means that some amount of meeting people where they are and engaging with them as other people will need to happen.

            The only one who can decide if they’re up for that effort is each individual person, but if no one even tries this shitshow won’t change.

      • wizardbeard@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        22 hours ago

        I’m familiar. I don’t know how anyone on Lemmy would not be familiar with it by this point as it’s one of the main go to justifications people use for treating others like shit.

        An astoundlingly important quote from that very Wikipedia article you linked:

        In this formulation, I do not imply, for instance, that we should always suppress the utterance of intolerant philosophies; as long as we can counter them by rational argument and keep them in check by public opinion, suppression would certainly be most unwise.

        (Emphasis mine)

        I’ll also point you at Daryl Davis, a black musician who managed to turn multiple KKK members by simply engaging with them as human beings.


        My whole point being that when roughly half of the country voted for Trump, it is an absolutely insane idea to just decide it’s ok to treat all of them intolerantly and also expect things to just magically change for the better. Feels like I’m taking crazy pills when everyone tries to self righteously justify not making any fucking attempt to reach these people and turn them.

        • Senal@programming.dev
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          17 hours ago

          TL;DR;

          Hyperbole and “black and white” thinking aren’t a good foundation for claiming moral superiority.


          I’m familiar. I don’t know how anyone on Lemmy would not be familiar with it by this point as it’s one of the main go to justifications people use for treating others like shit.

          That’s…certainly…one of the takes of all time.

          I’m personally astounded you chose that particular quote, but i’ll highlight an important part for you as well.

          as long as we can counter them by rational argument and keep them in check by public opinion

          I personally wouldn’t attribute “open to rational argument” and “kept in check by public opinion” as hallmarks of a majority of trump voters, but that’s just me.

          Daryl Davis, a black musician who managed to turn multiple KKK members by simply engaging with them as human beings.

          A good example of a single person making a difference.

          I’m genuinely not sure how you think this can be applied at scale, are you expecting all the people who didn’t vote for trump to dedicate their lives to reforming the people actively trying to do horrible things to them.


          My whole point being that when roughly half of the country voted for Trump,

          Roughly half of the people who voted, but ok.

          it is an absolutely insane idea to just decide it’s ok to treat all of them intolerantly and also expect things to just magically change for the better.

          A few things:

          “Just decide” implies it was a sudden decision with no lead up, that is incorrect.

          Where are you getting the idea that people are expecting trump voters to magically change for the better?

          It sounds like you would like them to, which is nice, but that’s a broad generalisation for no citation.

          My whole point being that when roughly half of the country voted for Trump, it is an absolutely insane idea to just decide it’s ok to treat all of them intolerantly and also expect things to just magically change for the better.

          That’s an extreme amount of projection.

          Broadly claiming that everyone is the maximum amount of intolerant to anyone even slightly of the grouping you’ve specified is disingenuous at best, further claiming they are all doing this to magically change the minds of said group is equally ridiculous.

          and further down :

          self righteously justify not making any fucking attempt to reach these people and turn them.

          If you genuinely think no attempts have been made up to now, I’m not sure how you came to that conclusion, but I’m sure it’s an interesting story.

          Self-righteous, like “nobody but me is doing the thing i think is right, in the way that i think is correct” ?

          Feels like I’m taking crazy pills.

          It feels that way because you’ve set up a catch-all scenario which encompasses your specific perspective and doesn’t allow for perspectives that don’t align.

          If you remove the ability to handle nuance from your perspective then any nuance that arises will seem crazy.

          Example of nuance.

          “A non-trivial portion of this group of people have voted a specific way, with the understanding that doing so will materially endanger people i love, I have a limited amount of energy and I’m choosing not to spend it sorting through who are the ‘saveable’ bigots and instead direct that energy toward protecting my loved ones (and myself) from the consequences of their actions.”