I don’t think it’s a question of sympathy. This article is intended to convince people that Trump Voters Are Winnable. We get this every two years as we approach campaign season. And then we get a bunch of Jim Webb types saying they’re the only candidates who can win because they are Democrats who appeal to Republicans.
Harris fell for it in 2024, spending her whole final three months touring alongside Liz Cheney. Jeff Flake spoke at the DNC hoping to win over ex-Trumpies. The Lincoln Project promised to flip a bunch of conservatives on behalf of Democrats, to no noticeable effect.
The Winnable Republican is a con that gets run on Democrat primary voters every two years
I’ve been hearing this on NPR as well…several pieces all with this outline, about how there are just not enough democrats alone so we need candidates that can appeal to disenfranchised Trump voters.
I’d say I’m surprised that they don’t know better than to just play into conservatives hands like this…but trump has taught me a LOT about how little most democrats have in common with the left. They really seam to see the actual left as more of a threat than literal fascists…
I think we should have sympathy. Better late than never, and nothing will ever change if people aren’t allowed to learn and grow.
MAGA is a community, and a lot of MAGAtards are only there for the community. If progressives aren’t willing to accept personal growth, there is no reason for them to grow.
Progressives need to take the high road and welcome the MAGAts who have finally seen the light.
An eye for an eye only creates blindness. Someone needs to stop the cycle.
Nope, sorry. The time for that was 2015 - 2017, or at the absolute very least after the attempted coup and stolen election lies. No sympathy at all now, It’s scorched earth. These people deserve reeducation camps where we try to deprogram them and they do hard labor for the glory of an egalitarian, enlightened U.S.
I know what you’re saying is probably the best course of action. But they are so disingenuous I just cannot trust them. Their entire basis of voting for him was out of selfishness and hate.
If I were Brad Pitt at the end of Seven, I would absolutely pull that trigger. I’m sorry.
Yeah, people need to remember that most of the maga base are from the working class. They’re not all southern gentry descendants of slave owners living comfortably on their family’s generational wealth while using their social privilege to actively make life worse for everyone else. Those are just the leaders of the movement, but they wouldn’t get very far without the support of roughly half of the working class.
The entire reason those working class people were able to be radicalized in the first place were a combination of the following: ignorance and shitty education; economic hardship and marginalization; distrust of the government and the elites; misplaced fear and rage that was actively stoked by those in power and directed towards political targets to create a sense of “us vs. them”; and overall just years of destitution and discontentment that the corrupt fascists took advantage of to radicalize these people.
Most of those things are deeply working-class issues that many of us face; it’s just the conclusions that they were resultantly radicalized towards that were misguided. Many of them are in the cult too deep and will never let go of it, never admit they were wrong. The rest have the potential, though, if they’re shown the way forward, and a few million less of them and a few million more of us might ultimately make all the difference.
This whole notion of “chase away anyone who remotely resembles a conservative without even asking what their beliefs and opinions really are, what they struggle with and what’s important to them, etc.” has always been a losing strategy. Yet people have attacked me as if I’m defending conservatives whenever I point out that many of these people might actually fall on our side of the fence if we stop pushing them onto the other.
It’s very likely that they don’t learn what they aren’t thaught. You don’t teach anything if there is no contact, and moments like this are opportunities for contact.
Yesyes, I get it, it’s not your job to teach them. The issue is though that nobody else will, except of course propagandists on the right who are happy to teach them.
I 100% agree. And no, it shouldn’t be our job. But unfortunately, it kinda is.
I mostly grew up in a right wing/conservative environment. The only reason why I’m not a right winger is because I always had a curiosity for different ideas and ways of thinking and wanted to actually understand people’s views.
Eventually, as frustrating as it was, I had to come to terms that many people don’t share that curiosity. Most people are focused on other things and only seem to kind of adopt concepts they are told, often without really thinking about it.
And more often than not, it’s right wingers telling them stuff and it’s right wing stuff that sticks, as right wing stuff is quite simple and easily digestable (simple concepts, clear enemy, simple problems and simple solutions). However, oftentimes, it does not stick very hard and the only reason why it sticks is because they are simply never challenged. In a lot of cases, it slowly falls apart if you challenge them, as long as you don’t give them an easy excuse to dismiss you.
But unfortunately, this is typically not a fast process. So yeah, it is very frustrating, especially because people have access to all the knowledge they need.
But the hard reality is that chances are they will sooner go down a crazy right wing conspiracy rabit whole. In order for them to move towards the left just by themselves, they would need to throw their entire understanding of virtually everything they know out the window, and by that point, the right is more comfortable because you can just build your world however you want.
If we want the world to be a better place than it absolutely is our job. Conservatives see it as a job to brainwash and create propaganda.
We should see it as a job to bring these people back from the edge, and to reintegrate them with society. Ignoring them, and blaming them, will continue to make the problem worse.
When an entire segment of the population that are maga nutso Christian nationalist want me to not even exist, no it’s not my job. It’s not my job at all to educate fully formed adult humans who have the breath of all information of the entire world at their fingertips but they refuse to expand their minds and use it.
The cycle will continue then, and nothing will ever get better. You can’t hope for things to get better without also putting the work forward to make those changes.
You want them to think you should exist? Then emotionally appeal to them and remind them that you’re a person. This only really works on the ones you know anyways, but if no one ever steps up to teach them, then you can’t expect them to ever change.
The sentiment of your post is commendable, but I’m skeptical that any magats are “finally seeing the light”. They’ve been fully supportive of bigotry and facsism for a decade now. I’m relieved that support for trump is beginning to dwindle, but it’s not because those supporters are now becoming more progressive. Its because their gas prices have gone up. They will blindly continue to vote red in the future.
How’d that work out with the Confederacy? Did turning the other cheek teach them the error of their ways? Or did it just create a society that makes excuses to justify its racist “heritage”?
You are explicitly describing a situation where the people didn’t actually change at all. If you remember the whole Reconstruction period it was basically white Southerners refusing to change and waiting the north out. As soon as the north gave up they quickly undid as much as possible.
Fucking miles different than someone actually chaning their mind or regretting their past actions. The south did neither
My point is, they won’t regret anything. A few might…for a minute. And then they’ll go right back to voting whichever way Fox News and Steve Bannon tell them to. All the same people who are currently pulling their strings right now, will just wait a little while and then start doing it all over again, once the heat is off.
Which makes it exactly the same as what happened after the last civil war…which you described quite well. Trust me…that’s exactly how it will play out again, unless some serious changes are made to US society.
Honestly the view of its impossible for people to change is just as stubborn as most conservativism. If we reject the possibility for people to change how do we fix any of this? Do we need to kill about 50% of the population?
This idea of pushing away those that come to their senses only helps the conservatives achieve their goals by forcing them back to their old views.
It’s odd to me that conservative media celebrates converts and uses that to feed their propaganda machine which then increases the “converts”. But then we’re going to go out of our way to help them retain people by pushing them away when they start to doubt the propaganda.
You say “people change”. But, they don’t. Not really anyway.
This is exactly why history will always end up repeating itself. Because people never fucking learn. We’re literally running through the same cycle, over and over again, just with slight variations on the same theme…and folks like yourself will always convince yourself that the best thing to do is exactly the same thing we did the last time, hoping for different results.
If we assume people can’t change, which is bullshit you believe people can change but you just falsely assume they can only change in one direction, what’s your solution?
If we believe your people cannot, there is no solution besides a whole lot of death or giving up entirely.
Also I have no interest of “doing the same thing as last time”. If we go back to the Confederacy every memeber of their government should have hanged. In modern times we should actually bring our public officals to trial for their crimes.
We need major changes to our society as a whole. That’s only going to happen if we get people to switch sides to achieve a majority. Or the less savory option of trying to murder the other half of the population while they try to do the same
It’s insane to believe we can change a system and not change its people
Btw human history isn’t the past 150 years of American politics. People have an immense capacity to change and learn.
It’s important to welcome people leaving cults, no matter how dumb it looks that they were in the cult in the first place. The main reason they were there is community, and if they don’t find a welcoming community outside, they’ll go right back in.
Rehabilitation of people willing to forgo MAGA and the conservatism that fuels it is one thing, but quotes like “He’s a con man, a liar, doesn’t keep his promises” illustrate that some voters haven’t had a change of heart about MAGA policies, just on Trump’s ability to actually deliver on them.
Depends on what they’re referencing. Some people only vote on single issues for some reason. Is he mad that Trump said “no new wars” and did the opposite? Or is he mad that Trump hasn’t finished the border wall?
This is a good point. Con men target people who have been conned in the past, because the person’s personality hasn’t changed — they’re still an easy mark with the same levers that worked last time.
It is kind of baffling to me that many don’t seem to have an analysis/understanding of maga beyond “stupidity and racism”.
Of course that’s a big part, but by itself, it’s only scratching the surface?
And you don’t have sympathy for Trump voters turning cloak? Seriously? I hope you can at least pretend because you aren’t getting out of this mess without working with people like that. Else you might as well give up now.
Trump didn’t brainwash people more than Hitler did. Both catered to a selfish, bigoted, entitled worldview and promised people they could act on their worst impulses towards others and that while doing so their lives would improve. They delivered on the first part but their regimes do nothing for improving the quality of life. “Trump’s a con man” is not the same as reflecting on one’s own worldview, taking accountability for what they’ve enabled, and putting in the effort to fix what you can while making sure you don’t go down the same path again when the next huckster runs for office. These people were motivated by blaming anyone else for their “problems”. They blamed immigrants, women, people of color, liberals, antifa, queer folk. Nothing has changed, they’re just blaming Trump and not themselves. Until that attitude changes, fuck ‘em.
What I don’t understand is how you expect that attitude to change. Bigottry isn’t some kind of inate human characteristic, it is a tool/weapon used to divide us and stop us from reaching our goals.
I get that it’s nice to imagine people just snapping out of it an realizing all their mistakes, but in the vast majority of cases, this won’t happen by sheer magic…
Bigotry is thaught by your environment. And environment won’t change without great effort. The right is putting in great effort to change people’s environment so they don’t get exposed to ideas which are dangerous to them. What is your suggestion, to just let them and give up? You think leftists and organizers of the past did that?
I don’t expect that attitude to change. My suggestion is not to give up and let them. My suggestion is that this is not a situation where voting in better candidates will make the bigotry end, it would just end the executive power enabling it to run rampant for a time but the lost cause attitude would be passed on until it found a way to power again. I don’t expect them to snap out of it nor do I think the solution is sheer magic. I think the solution is doing what we did against this kind of bigotry in 1861 and 1941, only this time we don’t “reconcile” with our neighbors after. We politely explain the cost of bigotry and, if we succeed (and that’s a big “if” because that’s going to come with a massive human expense) we use the advantage of their loss of legacy bigots to force the next generations to abandon the cause. Even then it’s not a guarantee. Denazification and education hasn’t prevented younger generations in Germany from taking up the cause, but it has helped contain those who pick up the banner of hate.
The cost of freedom of thought will always be that there will be people who choose to think the worst. Some of them are taught this, some of them find their own way there. I will never stand for indoctrination and overriding free will, even in the name of good. Everyone has their right to think however they want to think. But the catch is that allowing that comes with the cost of occasionally reminding them thinking something and acting upon it are not the same and when your worldview involves violating the rights of others to exist, your right to exist and do that becomes a struggle, not of ideology but of physical force between your people and the people who would stand in your way.
“Fuck ‘em” isn’t a dismissal of their beliefs, it’s a dismissal of their right to exist. They have chosen their path and walk one paved with the corpses of those they can victimize. The Confederacy and Germany weren’t defeated by leftist ideology alone, they were defeated by people of a wide variety of beliefs who joined forces to declare “your worldview is intolerable”. Both those eras brought about indiscriminate suffering, hardship, and death. It’d be wonderful if we could have learned from that and didn’t head down that path again, but apparently we didn’t.
Fascism and state enabled bigotry is a capstone, removing it does nothing but make it incomplete for a time. You have to destroy the foundation and support columns, then make the idea of rebuilding that foundation unworthy of the effort. That’s when leftist organization and values come in. Right now we’re just a disparate mass of humans facing another band of disparate humans who’ve agreed hate it their uniting ideology and empowered the biggest haters to do their dirty work for them. The consequences have to trickle down.
My suggestion is that this is not a situation where voting in better candidates
I’m not talking about voting, I’m talking about building organised mass movements who eventually can excercise leverage to achieve goals.
Maybe I’m too old school, but I still believe that the only way to achieve the radical change is by organised mass movements.
And you can forget about that if you are not even willing to get into contact with people who are losing faith in their right wing leader, but who might not have abandoned all their right wing believes. That’s the perfect time to engage and further challenge their views, otherwise nothing will change and they will fall for the next right winger.
I think the solution is doing what we did against this kind of bigotry in 1861 and 1941
It’s not 1941, it’s not even 1933 yet, although very close to it. And until then, you shouldn’t have a working class civil war, but organize…
“Fuck ‘em” isn’t a dismissal of their beliefs, it’s a dismissal of their right to exist.
I’m not sure what your point is or rather I think I’m misunderstanding. Are you suggesting leftists should start to assasinate all trump voters? If yes, that’s very silly and not something that will happen. And if it would happen, it would be devestating for the left and only benefit the right. Violence is their game, our game is numbers and leverage.
I’m not talking about voting, I’m talking about building organised mass movements who eventually can excercise leverage to achieve goals.
So am I. An individual can probably find ways to survive the worst, even a nuclear holocaust. But we’re social creatures and the better of us have empathy and don’t want to enjoy life at the expense of others. That’s the root of this fight. We’re not in a survive or die world currently, we could work on creating a world where exploitation of our fellow humans is not the norm, but we haven’t and now we’re one foot beyond the hierarchy of capitalist exploitation and into eradication.
I still believe that the only way to achieve the radical change is by organised mass movements.
Same, but I’m leaning towards the idea that us having numbers alone isn’t enough in this situation if we don’t show why numbers matter. It’s why I’m critical of leaders. Our masses are upset, angry, reactive. We need leaders who can channel and guide the strength of numbers and turn it into something useful. Sometimes that’s a peaceful million person march, sometimes that’s an organized strike, sometimes that’s a fight. Our leaders have failed because they had power before all this came to a head and didn’t take action to prevent the ability of the opposition to get to where it is because doing so would have limited their own power. They have allowed the system to be manipulated because they enjoy the loopholes when it works in their favor, only now they’ve gotten outplayed at their own game.
Governors have the power to call up the National Guard and put the threat of reciprocal force between the Feds and the people who live in the territories they are elected to protect. They fail to do so and claim “if we did it would give the abuser the excuse to escalate”. That’s the same logic a victim makes when they’re in an abusive relationship, don’t make them angry or they’ll be justified in hurting you. An abuser doesn’t require justification and setting boundaries is not provocation, they were going to abuse you whether they had a “reason” or not.
And you can forget about that if you are not even willing to get into contact with people who are losing faith in their right wing leader, but who might not have abandoned all their right wing believes. That’s the perfect time to engage and further challenge their views, otherwise nothing will change and they will fall for the next right winger.
Losing faith in their leader is not the same as losing faith in the ideology. Massie and MTG are perfect examples of this. Both have turned on Trump himself, both remain ideologically conservative. They refuse to abandon their cause even if they abandon the person who has become the embodiment of that cause taken to its extreme. And they abandon him not because he’s a monster, but because the promise of what comes of their ideology doesn’t benefit them personally as much as it does him and his elites.
We should be accepting of whatever help we can get, even if it’s some an-cap that only sides with us 10% of the time. We should be constantly be working to use their disillusion of what happens when their ideology reaches its climax. But we should also not delude ourselves into thinking that the enemy of our enemy is our friend and that they won’t go right back to their old ways once the threat is removed.
it’s not even 1933 yet, although very close to it. And until then, you shouldn’t have a working class civil war, but organize…
Alligator Alcatraz and El Salvador are not Dachau or Auschwitz. I agree that we’re not at the level of industrialized genocide like the Nazis were, but we’re deeper than should be allowed.
I’m not sure what your point is or rather I think I’m misunderstanding.
My point is that the people who want to put themselves in positions of leadership need to use that power to exercise their office to the full extent of their authority to stand up to an increasingly lawless and violent federal executive. I hope that some are quietly planning for the possibility that there might come a day where they might have to say “that’s it, the Union is broken, we’re withdrawing and will do what we must to protect the people within our borders; if other want to join, join. If you are someone of similar values, this is your safe haven. If you’re not, this is not the place for you.” As for the rest of us, this potential path is why we stockpile resources, why we network with people of various skills like food production, medical expertise, logistics, the ability, capacity, and willingness to stand between those who aren’t able to/don’t want to/shouldn’t have to push back against victimizers in the worst way humans can do. Solitary survival is easy compared to community survival, that’s the difference between us and them. They’re running on selfishness united by greed, willing to trample others for the biggest slice of pie. They’re infighting because the people they empowered are getting way bigger slices while their constituents get crumbs, but instead of recognizing this is the inevitable outcome of their ideology they still will take the crumbs they can get and blame everyone else for stealing crumbs they think they’re entitled to.
Our leaders need to recognize what many of us have within our own communities. Our institutions are failing and not protecting us or providing us with the quality of life they should. We are not in a position to direct vast resources of wealth, power, and other humans, if we’re organizing (and I hope we are) we’re doing so at a local level, maybe a few dozen at a time. While what’s left of our democracy lasts, those aligned with our values get access to incredible power over society, but they keep failing to use that to protect the most vulnerable. If they keep that up then our various networks of community support will start making their own decisions about how best to protect themselves, and that’s sure fire way to start getting responses that you don’t want.
If you don’t want America to Balkanize you should acknowledge it’s already there but hasn’t boiled over and lead accordingly.
When I say “you”, I mean you Americans and online lefties in general, not you personally… I’m not suggesting you pit yourself in danger, but the only chance of turning around and somehow saving us from global disaster is to build mass movements along class lines.
And I’m not saying bigotry isn’t an issue, quite the opposite. But a prerequisite to combat bigottry and organising in general is contact and engagement, and we are so far away from even that. So many people are desperately searching for solution, and the only people giving them some kind of explanation is the right…
There is so much work to do and so little time, and frankly, having likeminded people talking about working class solidarity and rising up against the ruling class while doing jack shit except for ranting online and somehow expect change to happen by sheer magic is very demoralizing…
So if you don’t feel you are up to it or feel like you are putting yourself in danger, it does not apply to you. But we as the global left cannot afford to dismiss everyone who might still have bigotted views. And moments of disillusion with their right wing idols are perfect opportunities to work on their bigotry.
It’s the only thing combatibg bigotry, it always takes effort and time.
Ha ha, no. The analogy is more like you supposedly realized you were brainwashed and it cult twice before and returned to the cult both times after that and now want us to sympathize and help a third time. You will just do it again, so fuck off. Fool me once, shame on…shame on you. Fool me…you can’t get fooled again.
Maybe if he said anything about the racism or sexism being bad instead of just the lying and corruption. Or maybe it’s time for the dumbest people on the planet to learn from the people who saw it coming instead of us always being told to listen to them.
If he wants to start making amends he can be the one that goes and explains it to the rest of the cult. I barely like talking to people who do agree with me, never mind some maga devotee.
I don’t have any sympathy for a voter dumb enough and conservative enough to vote for Trump three times in a row.
I don’t think it’s a question of sympathy. This article is intended to convince people that Trump Voters Are Winnable. We get this every two years as we approach campaign season. And then we get a bunch of Jim Webb types saying they’re the only candidates who can win because they are Democrats who appeal to Republicans.
Harris fell for it in 2024, spending her whole final three months touring alongside Liz Cheney. Jeff Flake spoke at the DNC hoping to win over ex-Trumpies. The Lincoln Project promised to flip a bunch of conservatives on behalf of Democrats, to no noticeable effect.
The Winnable Republican is a con that gets run on Democrat primary voters every two years
I’ve been hearing this on NPR as well…several pieces all with this outline, about how there are just not enough democrats alone so we need candidates that can appeal to disenfranchised Trump voters.
I’d say I’m surprised that they don’t know better than to just play into conservatives hands like this…but trump has taught me a LOT about how little most democrats have in common with the left. They really seam to see the actual left as more of a threat than literal fascists…
I don’t have sympathy necessarily, but I’m always glad to see the cracks start showing
I think we should have sympathy. Better late than never, and nothing will ever change if people aren’t allowed to learn and grow.
MAGA is a community, and a lot of MAGAtards are only there for the community. If progressives aren’t willing to accept personal growth, there is no reason for them to grow.
Progressives need to take the high road and welcome the MAGAts who have finally seen the light.
An eye for an eye only creates blindness. Someone needs to stop the cycle.
Nope, sorry. The time for that was 2015 - 2017, or at the absolute very least after the attempted coup and stolen election lies. No sympathy at all now, It’s scorched earth. These people deserve reeducation camps where we try to deprogram them and they do hard labor for the glory of an egalitarian, enlightened U.S.
I know what you’re saying is probably the best course of action. But they are so disingenuous I just cannot trust them. Their entire basis of voting for him was out of selfishness and hate.
If I were Brad Pitt at the end of Seven, I would absolutely pull that trigger. I’m sorry.
Yeah, people need to remember that most of the maga base are from the working class. They’re not all southern gentry descendants of slave owners living comfortably on their family’s generational wealth while using their social privilege to actively make life worse for everyone else. Those are just the leaders of the movement, but they wouldn’t get very far without the support of roughly half of the working class.
The entire reason those working class people were able to be radicalized in the first place were a combination of the following: ignorance and shitty education; economic hardship and marginalization; distrust of the government and the elites; misplaced fear and rage that was actively stoked by those in power and directed towards political targets to create a sense of “us vs. them”; and overall just years of destitution and discontentment that the corrupt fascists took advantage of to radicalize these people.
Most of those things are deeply working-class issues that many of us face; it’s just the conclusions that they were resultantly radicalized towards that were misguided. Many of them are in the cult too deep and will never let go of it, never admit they were wrong. The rest have the potential, though, if they’re shown the way forward, and a few million less of them and a few million more of us might ultimately make all the difference.
This whole notion of “chase away anyone who remotely resembles a conservative without even asking what their beliefs and opinions really are, what they struggle with and what’s important to them, etc.” has always been a losing strategy. Yet people have attacked me as if I’m defending conservatives whenever I point out that many of these people might actually fall on our side of the fence if we stop pushing them onto the other.
Did he actually learn anything or is he just going to vote for the next fascist with an R next to their name?
It’s very likely that they don’t learn what they aren’t thaught. You don’t teach anything if there is no contact, and moments like this are opportunities for contact.
Yesyes, I get it, it’s not your job to teach them. The issue is though that nobody else will, except of course propagandists on the right who are happy to teach them.
Here’s the thing though the entire internet is available for them to learn things themselves. It shouldn’t be our job to teach them anything.
I 100% agree. And no, it shouldn’t be our job. But unfortunately, it kinda is.
I mostly grew up in a right wing/conservative environment. The only reason why I’m not a right winger is because I always had a curiosity for different ideas and ways of thinking and wanted to actually understand people’s views.
Eventually, as frustrating as it was, I had to come to terms that many people don’t share that curiosity. Most people are focused on other things and only seem to kind of adopt concepts they are told, often without really thinking about it.
And more often than not, it’s right wingers telling them stuff and it’s right wing stuff that sticks, as right wing stuff is quite simple and easily digestable (simple concepts, clear enemy, simple problems and simple solutions). However, oftentimes, it does not stick very hard and the only reason why it sticks is because they are simply never challenged. In a lot of cases, it slowly falls apart if you challenge them, as long as you don’t give them an easy excuse to dismiss you.
But unfortunately, this is typically not a fast process. So yeah, it is very frustrating, especially because people have access to all the knowledge they need.
But the hard reality is that chances are they will sooner go down a crazy right wing conspiracy rabit whole. In order for them to move towards the left just by themselves, they would need to throw their entire understanding of virtually everything they know out the window, and by that point, the right is more comfortable because you can just build your world however you want.
If we want the world to be a better place than it absolutely is our job. Conservatives see it as a job to brainwash and create propaganda.
We should see it as a job to bring these people back from the edge, and to reintegrate them with society. Ignoring them, and blaming them, will continue to make the problem worse.
When an entire segment of the population that are maga nutso Christian nationalist want me to not even exist, no it’s not my job. It’s not my job at all to educate fully formed adult humans who have the breath of all information of the entire world at their fingertips but they refuse to expand their minds and use it.
The cycle will continue then, and nothing will ever get better. You can’t hope for things to get better without also putting the work forward to make those changes.
You want them to think you should exist? Then emotionally appeal to them and remind them that you’re a person. This only really works on the ones you know anyways, but if no one ever steps up to teach them, then you can’t expect them to ever change.
Well said. Also, if you get too picky about your allies, you might never win the war.
Sympathy for what though? He’s not a victim, so what is there to sympathiz about?
The sentiment of your post is commendable, but I’m skeptical that any magats are “finally seeing the light”. They’ve been fully supportive of bigotry and facsism for a decade now. I’m relieved that support for trump is beginning to dwindle, but it’s not because those supporters are now becoming more progressive. Its because their gas prices have gone up. They will blindly continue to vote red in the future.
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How’d that work out with the Confederacy? Did turning the other cheek teach them the error of their ways? Or did it just create a society that makes excuses to justify its racist “heritage”?
You are explicitly describing a situation where the people didn’t actually change at all. If you remember the whole Reconstruction period it was basically white Southerners refusing to change and waiting the north out. As soon as the north gave up they quickly undid as much as possible.
Fucking miles different than someone actually chaning their mind or regretting their past actions. The south did neither
My point is, they won’t regret anything. A few might…for a minute. And then they’ll go right back to voting whichever way Fox News and Steve Bannon tell them to. All the same people who are currently pulling their strings right now, will just wait a little while and then start doing it all over again, once the heat is off.
Which makes it exactly the same as what happened after the last civil war…which you described quite well. Trust me…that’s exactly how it will play out again, unless some serious changes are made to US society.
People do change, but you have to let it.
Honestly the view of its impossible for people to change is just as stubborn as most conservativism. If we reject the possibility for people to change how do we fix any of this? Do we need to kill about 50% of the population?
This idea of pushing away those that come to their senses only helps the conservatives achieve their goals by forcing them back to their old views.
It’s odd to me that conservative media celebrates converts and uses that to feed their propaganda machine which then increases the “converts”. But then we’re going to go out of our way to help them retain people by pushing them away when they start to doubt the propaganda.
You say “people change”. But, they don’t. Not really anyway.
This is exactly why history will always end up repeating itself. Because people never fucking learn. We’re literally running through the same cycle, over and over again, just with slight variations on the same theme…and folks like yourself will always convince yourself that the best thing to do is exactly the same thing we did the last time, hoping for different results.
It’s the definition of insanity.
If we assume people can’t change, which is bullshit you believe people can change but you just falsely assume they can only change in one direction, what’s your solution?
If we believe your people cannot, there is no solution besides a whole lot of death or giving up entirely.
Also I have no interest of “doing the same thing as last time”. If we go back to the Confederacy every memeber of their government should have hanged. In modern times we should actually bring our public officals to trial for their crimes.
We need major changes to our society as a whole. That’s only going to happen if we get people to switch sides to achieve a majority. Or the less savory option of trying to murder the other half of the population while they try to do the same
It’s insane to believe we can change a system and not change its people
Btw human history isn’t the past 150 years of American politics. People have an immense capacity to change and learn.
I don’t know that a Trump voter holds the same culpability as a Confederate soldier.
That’s only because the civil war hasn’t started yet.
More culpability then, I agree.
More.
It’s a community in the same way fans of a TV show are. Parasocial at most. Shared imbecility, more probably.
Cautiously optimistic, until they turncoat on us.
I agree, no sympathy for chudservatives
It’s important to welcome people leaving cults, no matter how dumb it looks that they were in the cult in the first place. The main reason they were there is community, and if they don’t find a welcoming community outside, they’ll go right back in.
Rehabilitation of people willing to forgo MAGA and the conservatism that fuels it is one thing, but quotes like “He’s a con man, a liar, doesn’t keep his promises” illustrate that some voters haven’t had a change of heart about MAGA policies, just on Trump’s ability to actually deliver on them.
Depends on what they’re referencing. Some people only vote on single issues for some reason. Is he mad that Trump said “no new wars” and did the opposite? Or is he mad that Trump hasn’t finished the border wall?
Context matters a lot
If they truly have learned maybe they can be saved, but god damn how out of touch would you have to be to only just now be figuring this out?
I’m glad they finally figured it out, but I’m definitely still going to give them shit about being fooled 3 times in a row.
And I’m also not going to trust them as far as I can throw them when it comes to not getting fooled a 4th time.
This is a good point. Con men target people who have been conned in the past, because the person’s personality hasn’t changed — they’re still an easy mark with the same levers that worked last time.
“DO YOU WANT THIS TO BE REAL OR NOT”
No but when’s my reset point?
It is kind of baffling to me that many don’t seem to have an analysis/understanding of maga beyond “stupidity and racism”.
Of course that’s a big part, but by itself, it’s only scratching the surface?
And you don’t have sympathy for Trump voters turning cloak? Seriously? I hope you can at least pretend because you aren’t getting out of this mess without working with people like that. Else you might as well give up now.
Trump didn’t brainwash people more than Hitler did. Both catered to a selfish, bigoted, entitled worldview and promised people they could act on their worst impulses towards others and that while doing so their lives would improve. They delivered on the first part but their regimes do nothing for improving the quality of life. “Trump’s a con man” is not the same as reflecting on one’s own worldview, taking accountability for what they’ve enabled, and putting in the effort to fix what you can while making sure you don’t go down the same path again when the next huckster runs for office. These people were motivated by blaming anyone else for their “problems”. They blamed immigrants, women, people of color, liberals, antifa, queer folk. Nothing has changed, they’re just blaming Trump and not themselves. Until that attitude changes, fuck ‘em.
What I don’t understand is how you expect that attitude to change. Bigottry isn’t some kind of inate human characteristic, it is a tool/weapon used to divide us and stop us from reaching our goals.
I get that it’s nice to imagine people just snapping out of it an realizing all their mistakes, but in the vast majority of cases, this won’t happen by sheer magic…
Bigotry is thaught by your environment. And environment won’t change without great effort. The right is putting in great effort to change people’s environment so they don’t get exposed to ideas which are dangerous to them. What is your suggestion, to just let them and give up? You think leftists and organizers of the past did that?
I don’t expect that attitude to change. My suggestion is not to give up and let them. My suggestion is that this is not a situation where voting in better candidates will make the bigotry end, it would just end the executive power enabling it to run rampant for a time but the lost cause attitude would be passed on until it found a way to power again. I don’t expect them to snap out of it nor do I think the solution is sheer magic. I think the solution is doing what we did against this kind of bigotry in 1861 and 1941, only this time we don’t “reconcile” with our neighbors after. We politely explain the cost of bigotry and, if we succeed (and that’s a big “if” because that’s going to come with a massive human expense) we use the advantage of their loss of legacy bigots to force the next generations to abandon the cause. Even then it’s not a guarantee. Denazification and education hasn’t prevented younger generations in Germany from taking up the cause, but it has helped contain those who pick up the banner of hate.
The cost of freedom of thought will always be that there will be people who choose to think the worst. Some of them are taught this, some of them find their own way there. I will never stand for indoctrination and overriding free will, even in the name of good. Everyone has their right to think however they want to think. But the catch is that allowing that comes with the cost of occasionally reminding them thinking something and acting upon it are not the same and when your worldview involves violating the rights of others to exist, your right to exist and do that becomes a struggle, not of ideology but of physical force between your people and the people who would stand in your way.
“Fuck ‘em” isn’t a dismissal of their beliefs, it’s a dismissal of their right to exist. They have chosen their path and walk one paved with the corpses of those they can victimize. The Confederacy and Germany weren’t defeated by leftist ideology alone, they were defeated by people of a wide variety of beliefs who joined forces to declare “your worldview is intolerable”. Both those eras brought about indiscriminate suffering, hardship, and death. It’d be wonderful if we could have learned from that and didn’t head down that path again, but apparently we didn’t.
Fascism and state enabled bigotry is a capstone, removing it does nothing but make it incomplete for a time. You have to destroy the foundation and support columns, then make the idea of rebuilding that foundation unworthy of the effort. That’s when leftist organization and values come in. Right now we’re just a disparate mass of humans facing another band of disparate humans who’ve agreed hate it their uniting ideology and empowered the biggest haters to do their dirty work for them. The consequences have to trickle down.
I’m not talking about voting, I’m talking about building organised mass movements who eventually can excercise leverage to achieve goals.
Maybe I’m too old school, but I still believe that the only way to achieve the radical change is by organised mass movements.
And you can forget about that if you are not even willing to get into contact with people who are losing faith in their right wing leader, but who might not have abandoned all their right wing believes. That’s the perfect time to engage and further challenge their views, otherwise nothing will change and they will fall for the next right winger.
It’s not 1941, it’s not even 1933 yet, although very close to it. And until then, you shouldn’t have a working class civil war, but organize…
I’m not sure what your point is or rather I think I’m misunderstanding. Are you suggesting leftists should start to assasinate all trump voters? If yes, that’s very silly and not something that will happen. And if it would happen, it would be devestating for the left and only benefit the right. Violence is their game, our game is numbers and leverage.
But yeah, I think we are talking past eachother.
So am I. An individual can probably find ways to survive the worst, even a nuclear holocaust. But we’re social creatures and the better of us have empathy and don’t want to enjoy life at the expense of others. That’s the root of this fight. We’re not in a survive or die world currently, we could work on creating a world where exploitation of our fellow humans is not the norm, but we haven’t and now we’re one foot beyond the hierarchy of capitalist exploitation and into eradication.
Same, but I’m leaning towards the idea that us having numbers alone isn’t enough in this situation if we don’t show why numbers matter. It’s why I’m critical of leaders. Our masses are upset, angry, reactive. We need leaders who can channel and guide the strength of numbers and turn it into something useful. Sometimes that’s a peaceful million person march, sometimes that’s an organized strike, sometimes that’s a fight. Our leaders have failed because they had power before all this came to a head and didn’t take action to prevent the ability of the opposition to get to where it is because doing so would have limited their own power. They have allowed the system to be manipulated because they enjoy the loopholes when it works in their favor, only now they’ve gotten outplayed at their own game.
Governors have the power to call up the National Guard and put the threat of reciprocal force between the Feds and the people who live in the territories they are elected to protect. They fail to do so and claim “if we did it would give the abuser the excuse to escalate”. That’s the same logic a victim makes when they’re in an abusive relationship, don’t make them angry or they’ll be justified in hurting you. An abuser doesn’t require justification and setting boundaries is not provocation, they were going to abuse you whether they had a “reason” or not.
Losing faith in their leader is not the same as losing faith in the ideology. Massie and MTG are perfect examples of this. Both have turned on Trump himself, both remain ideologically conservative. They refuse to abandon their cause even if they abandon the person who has become the embodiment of that cause taken to its extreme. And they abandon him not because he’s a monster, but because the promise of what comes of their ideology doesn’t benefit them personally as much as it does him and his elites.
We should be accepting of whatever help we can get, even if it’s some an-cap that only sides with us 10% of the time. We should be constantly be working to use their disillusion of what happens when their ideology reaches its climax. But we should also not delude ourselves into thinking that the enemy of our enemy is our friend and that they won’t go right back to their old ways once the threat is removed.
Alligator Alcatraz and El Salvador are not Dachau or Auschwitz. I agree that we’re not at the level of industrialized genocide like the Nazis were, but we’re deeper than should be allowed.
My point is that the people who want to put themselves in positions of leadership need to use that power to exercise their office to the full extent of their authority to stand up to an increasingly lawless and violent federal executive. I hope that some are quietly planning for the possibility that there might come a day where they might have to say “that’s it, the Union is broken, we’re withdrawing and will do what we must to protect the people within our borders; if other want to join, join. If you are someone of similar values, this is your safe haven. If you’re not, this is not the place for you.” As for the rest of us, this potential path is why we stockpile resources, why we network with people of various skills like food production, medical expertise, logistics, the ability, capacity, and willingness to stand between those who aren’t able to/don’t want to/shouldn’t have to push back against victimizers in the worst way humans can do. Solitary survival is easy compared to community survival, that’s the difference between us and them. They’re running on selfishness united by greed, willing to trample others for the biggest slice of pie. They’re infighting because the people they empowered are getting way bigger slices while their constituents get crumbs, but instead of recognizing this is the inevitable outcome of their ideology they still will take the crumbs they can get and blame everyone else for stealing crumbs they think they’re entitled to.
Our leaders need to recognize what many of us have within our own communities. Our institutions are failing and not protecting us or providing us with the quality of life they should. We are not in a position to direct vast resources of wealth, power, and other humans, if we’re organizing (and I hope we are) we’re doing so at a local level, maybe a few dozen at a time. While what’s left of our democracy lasts, those aligned with our values get access to incredible power over society, but they keep failing to use that to protect the most vulnerable. If they keep that up then our various networks of community support will start making their own decisions about how best to protect themselves, and that’s sure fire way to start getting responses that you don’t want.
If you don’t want America to Balkanize you should acknowledge it’s already there but hasn’t boiled over and lead accordingly.
They want me to not exist. I’m not fucking working with anybody that believes that. They can rot in hell
When I say “you”, I mean you Americans and online lefties in general, not you personally… I’m not suggesting you pit yourself in danger, but the only chance of turning around and somehow saving us from global disaster is to build mass movements along class lines.
And I’m not saying bigotry isn’t an issue, quite the opposite. But a prerequisite to combat bigottry and organising in general is contact and engagement, and we are so far away from even that. So many people are desperately searching for solution, and the only people giving them some kind of explanation is the right…
There is so much work to do and so little time, and frankly, having likeminded people talking about working class solidarity and rising up against the ruling class while doing jack shit except for ranting online and somehow expect change to happen by sheer magic is very demoralizing…
So if you don’t feel you are up to it or feel like you are putting yourself in danger, it does not apply to you. But we as the global left cannot afford to dismiss everyone who might still have bigotted views. And moments of disillusion with their right wing idols are perfect opportunities to work on their bigotry.
It’s the only thing combatibg bigotry, it always takes effort and time.
Ha ha, no. The analogy is more like you supposedly realized you were brainwashed and it cult twice before and returned to the cult both times after that and now want us to sympathize and help a third time. You will just do it again, so fuck off. Fool me once, shame on…shame on you. Fool me…you can’t get fooled again.
“We were trying to tell you for the last decade that it was a cult. How about you try listening for a few minutes?”
Good point. Fuck learning about why it took so long, fuck trying to deprogram them, get your moment of “told you so”.
Maybe if he said anything about the racism or sexism being bad instead of just the lying and corruption. Or maybe it’s time for the dumbest people on the planet to learn from the people who saw it coming instead of us always being told to listen to them.
If he wants to start making amends he can be the one that goes and explains it to the rest of the cult. I barely like talking to people who do agree with me, never mind some maga devotee.
Lock the gate on the way back in we don’t want any more of you fuckers getting out.