Donald Trump’s extreme rhetoric reminiscent of Nazi propaganda and his penchant for siding with America’s adversaries and autocrats pose a unique challenge to his Republican opponents and, ultimately, US voters.
The ex-president, who has a good chance of being the next commander in chief, warned over the weekend that immigrants are “poisoning the blood” of the United States. And he parroted Russian President Vladimir Putin’s attempts to discredit American democracy in his latest craven genuflection to the ex-KGB officer, who’s been accused of war crimes.
Trump’s comments on Saturday, at a rally in the first-in-the-nation GOP primary state of New Hampshire, are contrary to America’s founding values and political traditions. They are the latest sign that Trump, who sought to overturn the will of the voters after the 2020 election, would act in an even more extreme fashion in a second White House term. His rhetoric is also likely to play into the central premise of President Joe Biden’s reelection campaign – that he’s the only option to thwart a return to power by an ex-president who could destroy US democracy. It is not yet, however, helping the incumbent in polls that show him trailing Trump in vital swing states.
I’m getting to the point where I need to start ending relationships with people.
If you’re a trump voter after all of this, after january 6th, after all of his treasonous actions, and after this clear step towards hitler, we can’t even hold a decent conversation in public, and we certainly can not be friends.
I remember seeing a study that found that conservatives are more likely to have liberal friends, whereas liberals are unlikely to have conservative friends. All the conservatives were circlejerking about “the tolerant left lul”.
But they missed the point; It’s easy for conservatives to tolerate their liberal friends’ views, because they aren’t direct attacks on the conservative as a person. But liberals can’t tolerate conservatives, because they’ll eventually get too comfortable and drop an N-word with a hard R within earshot to see how you react, or casually tell you that you’re “one of the good ones” like it’s some sort of compliment. Liberals just want people to be themselves, but conservatives want to systematically destroy anyone who isn’t like themselves. And that means friendships between conservatives and liberals are not a two-way street, because one wants to fundamentally alter or destroy the others’ entire life.
Liberals just want people to be themselves
Maybe policy-wise but let’s not go overboard here. You get A LOT of NIMBYs in liberal affluent neighborhoods when you start talking about low income housing. Or they love brown and black ppl but suddenly start complaining about property values when they start moving into the neighborhood and call the cops because they don’t look like they live here.
I don’t think I have any actual friends that believe this nonsense, and I purged my Facebook in 2016. The challenge I’m having now is not blowing up my business relationships because, no matter who the president is, I still need to work.
Those aren’t relationships, those are necessities of living under a slave-driver.
Lie to them, use them to better yourself, and use that power to undo this evil that has been done.
They do not see you as a person, and will not treat you with any such respect. Nor will they think twice about lying to you or using you to better themselves.
They just read different propaganda than you do, and the real truth is somewhere between Trump’s propaganda and what you are reading.
Better than being a bootlicker for one of the parties. If people could acknowledge fault with their side, maybe we could have honest dialogue and discussion instead of drones shouting unintelligible noise back and forth at each other according to the script from their party.
The simple truth is that even if minorities didn’t exist, and everyone everywhere in the U.S. was the same race and religion and culture, conservatism by its nature has to create an other to differentiate itself and maintain its culture. So then the problem would be you’re not the right kind of Christian or you’re not the right kind of white. This already happened btw with Irish and Italians immigrants in early US history.
As if people in here aren’t “othering” conservatives, severing ties with friends and family and encouraging others to do the same. Creating an other is apolitical, a tool used by Leaders to motivate their base. Landlords, millionaires, cops, managers and so on are favorite “other” groups used by left wing politicians. ACAB, death to landlords, references to guillotines and so on are evidence of this.
Most of the time Paradox of intolerance is just an excuse to be a dick to people you disagree with, all while feeling good and justified about it.
do the majority not understand that they are also at risk, if less directly
Trump is making it worse, certainly, but we are already at risk in this shithole country.
For myself and friends who are also members of Team Rainbow, we feel that we are in much more danger than we were in 2015. It feels like if this goes on uninterrupted we will end up with a legal system back where it was illegal to be LGBT. I think that there will be more state level than national level legislation at first, but like with abortion, that’s going to be the ultimate goal.
For women, they’re already there. Republicans have indicated they’re going to be trying to pass national anti-abortion legislation. Again, they start with the states, and each state pushes through slightly different legislation to see what they can get away with. If one gets overturned they pass another with different wording but the same effect.
We live in a safe state, but we (and many of the people we know) have started making plans, like looking into countries with golden visa programs (basically a path to immigration by investment). We’re also looking what it will take to transfer to work for our companies in one of their European offices. If we had been living someplace like Texas (even Austin), we would have moved to the coasts by now.
Okay, and do you think you’ll feel safe if Trump loses? The fascists already control the Supreme Court.
Though honestly, I think they’ll do like they did with Bush in 2000 and just give Trump the presidency.
No, but the timing might change. Honestly, I’m not really sure that Trump gives a crap about the culture war issues. I think he’s LGBT-phobic, racist, misogynistic, and personally abusive - but I also think that his clinical level of narcissism means virtually everything he does is self-focused. His support for the far right agenda seems performative to me, where he’ll use it to whip up his base and make deals with the true believers.
If the Dems take 2024 in a sweep, I think we will breathe a little easier, but as you said without being able to unstack the courts or get rid of the filibuster, there’s no way we’re going to change direction. We’re also going to still be dealing with the red states and the culture war propaganda coming from them.
Right now I think it’s probably about a 50% chance we will be moving in the next 5 years, which will increase if the situation continues to evolve. I’m mostly looking at Portugal, but we might also move someplace else first if needed for work, then look to get permanent residency someplace.
History is repeating…
