Trump Supporters are Imbeciles

[laklak]

Yeah I'm not buying it. Trumpanzees wouldn't spell it correctly.

[Sean Hayden]

--exactly. And she's wearing a mask.

[laklak]

[Hermit]

Wouldn't surprise me if a member of Bernie's self-appointed Schutzstaffel went above and beyond by doing a stint as an agent provocateur.

[Brian Peacock]

Stockholm Syndrome.

[JimC]

Do you catch that if you visit an IKEA store?

[Sean Hayden]

[Brian Peacock]

So. I wrote a rather long essay in response to this, but in the end decided to boil it down to just a few discussion points...

... Sure, what I'm saying is challenging. That's deliberate. I've challenged the idea that people who voted for or support Trump are automatically rendered malign bigots and/or cognitively impaired by their action. I want to challenge the basis of our moral intuitions and our inclinations to casually cast them onto others as facts backed by whatever post hoc justification we can lay our hands on. I want to challenge judgements about the type and kind of people who are apparently responsible for the world's ills, who are a part of or the root cause of 'the problem', whether those kinds of allegations are levelled against Muslims or Trumpists or whatever group of regular, ordinary human beings. In other words, I think you're shooting at the wrong duck.

So then: fancy a chat about any of that? Feel free to rewind to a previous post and pick up from there.

The Nazi party existed for two decades before it liquidated its first Jew. Today, we tend to see the Nazis as machine gun toting, swastika wearing movie stereotypes, but the fact is, they were just moms and dads, and brothers and sisters, students, co-workers, joggers, bird-watchers, stamp collectors, and violinists, just like everyone else. They were otherwise normal people who got swept up in an ugly political movement that scapegoated minorities and immigrants, a political movement that would eventually end up killing 70 million. I guess my attitude toward them is: "fuck 'em". (I'm not talking about the people who were forced to work in bullet factories, obviously)

Maybe I feel more threatened by these Trumpzis than you do because you're a white guy living in Britain and I'm a yellow guy living in Trumpmerica. Maybe I'm just meaner than you. Maybe I'm a hateful person. I guess I will just say in my defense that at least when I hate someone it's for what's on the inside, and not what's on the outside. I hate bigots and ethnic cleansers. I can't help it. I'm probably too old to change.

I understand your fears about the future, and your frustrations, not to mention your rage about the current situation. But even though we live in troubled and troubling times I'm not here to validate any of that for you I'm afraid, and I wont be joining in with lumping all Trump voters and supporters into the single, morally reprehensible group you called Trumpzis.

I don't disagree that ideological exceptionalism needs to be socially and politically opposed and, where necessary, resisted, and that's something I come at from what I'd call a broadly secular (small-S) perspective: which is to say that in my view someone's opinions, religion, class, genetic antecedence or geography etc do not bestow any special or particular rights, privileges or protections on them that are not also equally extended to everybody else. Ideological exceptionalists are those who believe they have a special status and as a result demand exactly those kinds of special rights for themselves and/or those kinds of privileges over others.

Nonetheless, what I'm seeing from you is not merely political opposition to a damaging ideology but an eager denigration and belittlement of a broad swathe of people, something which is clearly intended to identify 'these people' as 'the problem' and, to all intents and purposes, looks no different the kind of scapegoating you're expressing such grave concerns about. This doesn't surprise me as a personal reaction because as I've pointed out at the outset, it seems that the Right's identity politics agenda is a distraction we can all buy into.

Let's imagine you have a different president and administration - one that's aligned with your personal political values. Now what's that administration to do about the people you're labelling as proto- or neo-fascists, as ignorant, malign, hateful bigots - the people who are 'the problem'? Can these Trumpzis simply be ignored, or do we continue to denigrate them and upbraid them for their moral failings and fascistic inclinations, and the state now backs you in that because you won the election and were therefore proved 'right'; should they be punished for their errors or subject to some form of official moral correction? Well, I doubt you'd agree to any of that because it would basically bring us back to ideological exceptionalism again, only this time from the other side of aisle.

Regardless of who's in charge of the nation nothing really changes for these people as far as their opinions go, their fears, hopes, their attitudes or values. Those things have been building up for a lifetime. Neither will a different administration fundamentally change their social, economic, political or cultural conditions. They still wake up in the same bed, in the same society, with the same structures and systems, the same institutions, the same neighbours, the same bosses, the same bills, the same stresses and stressor, the same social and fiscal pressures.

To a very large extent those whom you revile and berate are a response to particular sets of social, political, economic, and historical contingencies. Just as you are. They've just reacted in a different way, for different reasons.

Don't get me wrong. I get it. I really do. Been there: done that: got the tattoo. Calling them imbeciles and fascists is a way of venting our frustrations and anger not just at them but at the whole mad-cap situation we find ourselves in. It's a release - both emotionally and intellectually. Sticking it to the Right makes us feel better, for a time at least. It's also way to identify them as being on the side of the bad guys and us as being on the side of the good the guys. But if we're the good guys what good are we actually doing by maintaining a constant level of vituperative opprobrium against them? Are we not just validating their own anger and frustrations at people like us as we validate our own against people like them? Again: if we're the good guys what good are we actually doing by trying to cancel them; by dehumanising them; by trying to make them go away; by disputing their right to exist?

It's a tricky one isn't it?

[pErvinalia]

Regardless of who's in charge of the nation nothing really changes for these people as far as their opinions go, their fears, hopes, their attitudes or values.

That's simply not true, as we can see repeatedly in the success of the politics of fear.

More broadly, it kind of doesn't matter that these people (and all of us) are a product of their history and socio-political influences. The outcome of all that conditioning is still a frightfully stupid and dangerous collection of people. Sure, we can accept that they have been moulded by specific groups and their interests, but in the end they are still just as dangerous and need dealing with.

[Seabass]

So. I wrote a rather long essay in response to this, but in the end decided to boil it down to just a few discussion points...

... Sure, what I'm saying is challenging. That's deliberate. I've challenged the idea that people who voted for or support Trump are automatically rendered malign bigots and/or cognitively impaired by their action. I want to challenge the basis of our moral intuitions and our inclinations to casually cast them onto others as facts backed by whatever post hoc justification we can lay our hands on. I want to challenge judgements about the type and kind of people who are apparently responsible for the world's ills, who are a part of or the root cause of 'the problem', whether those kinds of allegations are levelled against Muslims or Trumpists or whatever group of regular, ordinary human beings. In other words, I think you're shooting at the wrong duck.

So then: fancy a chat about any of that? Feel free to rewind to a previous post and pick up from there.

The Nazi party existed for two decades before it liquidated its first Jew. Today, we tend to see the Nazis as machine gun toting, swastika wearing movie stereotypes, but the fact is, they were just moms and dads, and brothers and sisters, students, co-workers, joggers, bird-watchers, stamp collectors, and violinists, just like everyone else. They were otherwise normal people who got swept up in an ugly political movement that scapegoated minorities and immigrants, a political movement that would eventually end up killing 70 million. I guess my attitude toward them is: "fuck 'em". (I'm not talking about the people who were forced to work in bullet factories, obviously)

Maybe I feel more threatened by these Trumpzis than you do because you're a white guy living in Britain and I'm a yellow guy living in Trumpmerica. Maybe I'm just meaner than you. Maybe I'm a hateful person. I guess I will just say in my defense that at least when I hate someone it's for what's on the inside, and not what's on the outside. I hate bigots and ethnic cleansers. I can't help it. I'm probably too old to change.

I understand your fears about the future, and your frustrations, not to mention your rage about the current situation. But even though we live in troubled and troubling times I'm not here to validate any of that for you I'm afraid, and I wont be joining in with lumping all Trump voters and supporters into the single, morally reprehensible group you called Trumpzis.

I don't disagree that ideological exceptionalism needs to be socially and politically opposed and, where necessary, resisted, and that's something I come at from what I'd call a broadly secular (small-S) perspective: which is to say that in my view someone's opinions, religion, class, genetic antecedence or geography etc do not bestow any special or particular rights, privileges or protections on them that are not also equally extended to everybody else. Ideological exceptionalists are those who believe they have a special status and as a result demand exactly those kinds of special rights for themselves and/or those kinds of privileges over others.

Nonetheless, what I'm seeing from you is not merely political opposition to a damaging ideology but an eager denigration and belittlement of a broad swathe of people, something which is clearly intended to identify 'these people' as 'the problem' and, to all intents and purposes, looks no different the kind of scapegoating you're expressing such grave concerns about. This doesn't surprise me as a personal reaction because as I've pointed out at the outset, it seems that the Right's identity politics agenda is a distraction we can all buy into.

Let's imagine you have a different president and administration - one that's aligned with your personal political values. Now what's that administration to do about the people you're labelling as proto- or neo-fascists, as ignorant, malign, hateful bigots - the people who are 'the problem'? Can these Trumpzis simply be ignored, or do we continue to denigrate them and upbraid them for their moral failings and fascistic inclinations, and the state now backs you in that because you won the election and were therefore proved 'right'; should they be punished for their errors or subject to some form of official moral correction? Well, I doubt you'd agree to any of that because it would basically bring us back to ideological exceptionalism again, only this time from the other side of aisle.

Regardless of who's in charge of the nation nothing really changes for these people as far as their opinions go, their fears, hopes, their attitudes or values. Those things have been building up for a lifetime. Neither will a different administration fundamentally change their social, economic, political or cultural conditions. They still wake up in the same bed, in the same society, with the same structures and systems, the same institutions, the same neighbours, the same bosses, the same bills, the same stresses and stressor, the same social and fiscal pressures.

To a very large extent those whom you revile and berate are a response to particular sets of social, political, economic, and historical contingencies. Just as you are. They've just reacted in a different way, for different reasons.

Don't get me wrong. I get it. I really do. Been there: done that: got the tattoo. Calling them imbeciles and fascists is a way of venting our frustrations and anger not just at them but at the whole mad-cap situation we find ourselves in. It's a release - both emotionally and intellectually. Sticking it to the Right makes us feel better, for a time at least. It's also way to identify them as being on the side of the bad guys and us as being on the side of the good the guys. But if we're the good guys what good are we actually doing by maintaining a constant level of vituperative opprobrium against them? Are we not just validating their own anger and frustrations at people like us as we validate our own against people like them? Again: if we're the good guys what good are we actually doing by trying to cancel them; by dehumanising them; by trying to make them go away; by disputing their right to exist?

It's a tricky one isn't it?

Is someone who hates Nazis as bad as Nazis? I don't think so. You'll never find me at a hate rally chanting "send them back!" You'll never find me sucker punching someone for having a different skin color. I find no joy in seeing others suffer.

Something that I could no longer ignore or deny after 2016 is that central to the Republican ideology is the belief that in order for them to flourish, someone else has to suffer. We saw this in sharp relief with the child separation policy. These people tortured and terrorized brown children and parents, ruined their lives and scarred them for life in order to send the message to other brown people that if they come here, they'll be ruined as well.

This wasn't a bad policy that was made with good intentions. This wasn't a policy that was made in good faith with the intent to help people that ended up hurting people through unintended consequences. It was made with malicious intent. The policy was created at the outset explicitly with the intent to hurt people. Make the undesirables suffer in order to deter more undesirables from coming. Solve every problem with unconscionable cruelty. Right? We're not talking about a fine or something. We're talking about taking a child and mother... and destroying them forever.

And his supporters are fine with this. It's just how they think. It's grotesque. Trump lost NO support after that. Remember that article that had an interview with a Trump supporter who was upset with him and said something like "he's hurting the wrong people"? That's a tacit admission that she wants him to hurt people. It's fucked up, man.

And yes, I know that not all Trumpoids are like this. Some of them filled in the bubble next to the Republican candidate and then went back to not thinking about politics for four years. But the ones who know what's happening and approve of it... ugh...

[rainbow]

Do you catch that if you visit an IKEA store?

Did you know that the meatballs are made out of lost children?

[Brian Peacock]

So. I wrote a rather long essay in response to this, but in the end decided to boil it down to just a few discussion points...

... Sure, what I'm saying is challenging. That's deliberate. I've challenged the idea that people who voted for or support Trump are automatically rendered malign bigots and/or cognitively impaired by their action. I want to challenge the basis of our moral intuitions and our inclinations to casually cast them onto others as facts backed by whatever post hoc justification we can lay our hands on. I want to challenge judgements about the type and kind of people who are apparently responsible for the world's ills, who are a part of or the root cause of 'the problem', whether those kinds of allegations are levelled against Muslims or Trumpists or whatever group of regular, ordinary human beings. In other words, I think you're shooting at the wrong duck.

So then: fancy a chat about any of that? Feel free to rewind to a previous post and pick up from there.

The Nazi party existed for two decades before it liquidated its first Jew. Today, we tend to see the Nazis as machine gun toting, swastika wearing movie stereotypes, but the fact is, they were just moms and dads, and brothers and sisters, students, co-workers, joggers, bird-watchers, stamp collectors, and violinists, just like everyone else. They were otherwise normal people who got swept up in an ugly political movement that scapegoated minorities and immigrants, a political movement that would eventually end up killing 70 million. I guess my attitude toward them is: "fuck 'em". (I'm not talking about the people who were forced to work in bullet factories, obviously)

Maybe I feel more threatened by these Trumpzis than you do because you're a white guy living in Britain and I'm a yellow guy living in Trumpmerica. Maybe I'm just meaner than you. Maybe I'm a hateful person. I guess I will just say in my defense that at least when I hate someone it's for what's on the inside, and not what's on the outside. I hate bigots and ethnic cleansers. I can't help it. I'm probably too old to change.

I understand your fears about the future, and your frustrations, not to mention your rage about the current situation. But even though we live in troubled and troubling times I'm not here to validate any of that for you I'm afraid, and I wont be joining in with lumping all Trump voters and supporters into the single, morally reprehensible group you called Trumpzis.

I don't disagree that ideological exceptionalism needs to be socially and politically opposed and, where necessary, resisted, and that's something I come at from what I'd call a broadly secular (small-S) perspective: which is to say that in my view someone's opinions, religion, class, genetic antecedence or geography etc do not bestow any special or particular rights, privileges or protections on them that are not also equally extended to everybody else. Ideological exceptionalists are those who believe they have a special status and as a result demand exactly those kinds of special rights for themselves and/or those kinds of privileges over others.

Nonetheless, what I'm seeing from you is not merely political opposition to a damaging ideology but an eager denigration and belittlement of a broad swathe of people, something which is clearly intended to identify 'these people' as 'the problem' and, to all intents and purposes, looks no different the kind of scapegoating you're expressing such grave concerns about. This doesn't surprise me as a personal reaction because as I've pointed out at the outset, it seems that the Right's identity politics agenda is a distraction we can all buy into.

Let's imagine you have a different president and administration - one that's aligned with your personal political values. Now what's that administration to do about the people you're labelling as proto- or neo-fascists, as ignorant, malign, hateful bigots - the people who are 'the problem'? Can these Trumpzis simply be ignored, or do we continue to denigrate them and upbraid them for their moral failings and fascistic inclinations, and the state now backs you in that because you won the election and were therefore proved 'right'; should they be punished for their errors or subject to some form of official moral correction? Well, I doubt you'd agree to any of that because it would basically bring us back to ideological exceptionalism again, only this time from the other side of aisle.

Regardless of who's in charge of the nation nothing really changes for these people as far as their opinions go, their fears, hopes, their attitudes or values. Those things have been building up for a lifetime. Neither will a different administration fundamentally change their social, economic, political or cultural conditions. They still wake up in the same bed, in the same society, with the same structures and systems, the same institutions, the same neighbours, the same bosses, the same bills, the same stresses and stressor, the same social and fiscal pressures.

To a very large extent those whom you revile and berate are a response to particular sets of social, political, economic, and historical contingencies. Just as you are. They've just reacted in a different way, for different reasons.

Don't get me wrong. I get it. I really do. Been there: done that: got the tattoo. Calling them imbeciles and fascists is a way of venting our frustrations and anger not just at them but at the whole mad-cap situation we find ourselves in. It's a release - both emotionally and intellectually. Sticking it to the Right makes us feel better, for a time at least. It's also way to identify them as being on the side of the bad guys and us as being on the side of the good the guys. But if we're the good guys what good are we actually doing by maintaining a constant level of vituperative opprobrium against them? Are we not just validating their own anger and frustrations at people like us as we validate our own against people like them? Again: if we're the good guys what good are we actually doing by trying to cancel them; by dehumanising them; by trying to make them go away; by disputing their right to exist?

It's a tricky one isn't it?

Is someone who hates Nazis as bad as Nazis? I don't think so. You'll never find me at a hate rally chanting "send them back!" You'll never find me sucker punching someone for having a different skin color. I find no joy in seeing others suffer.

I commend you for not being a hate-mongering bully-boy bigot, but you still seem keen to imply that by not validating your feelings on this matter I'm somehow going soft on or appeasing fascism and/or fascists. I think I was clear enough on that earlier to not have to respond further, beyond simply pointing it out.

My issue is not with your politics, or even with your view of the current political landscape, but with your inclination to lump all Trump voters/supporters together and cast them as 'the problem'. I think this is misguided because 'the problem' lies elsewhere - with those contingencies I mentioned. When we define a degenerate group and then lump a swathe of people into it, and then justify our own contumelious vituperation towards them on the basis of their supposed membership of that group, then we've just stooped to identity politics, and in so doing invalidated any positive message we might have wanted to put forward.

Something that I could no longer ignore or deny after 2016 is that central to the Republican ideology is the belief that in order for them to flourish, someone else has to suffer. We saw this in sharp relief with the child separation policy. These people tortured and terrorized brown children and parents, ruined their lives and scarred them for life in order to send the message to other brown people that if they come here, they'll be ruined as well.

This wasn't a bad policy that was made with good intentions. This wasn't a policy that was made in good faith with the intent to help people that ended up hurting people through unintended consequences. It was made with malicious intent. The policy was created at the outset explicitly with the intent to hurt people. Make the undesirables suffer in order to deter more undesirables from coming. Solve every problem with unconscionable cruelty. Right? We're not talking about a fine or something. We're talking about taking a child and mother... and destroying them forever.

And his supporters are fine with this. It's just how they think. It's grotesque. Trump lost NO support after that. Remember that article that had an interview with a Trump supporter who was upset with him and said something like "he's hurting the wrong people"? That's a tacit admission that she wants him to hurt people. It's fucked up, man.

And yes, I know that not all Trumpoids are like this. Some of them filled in the bubble next to the Republican candidate and then went back to not thinking about politics for four years. But the ones who know what's happening and approve of it... ugh...

So I feel we're making progress here. You seem to be avoiding generalising from the particular now and more happy to qualify who you're talking about. Even so, the question remains: if we're the good guys what good are we actually doing by invoking the identity politics card and then berating other people for having the 'wrong' identity or identifying with the 'wrong' values?

[Seabass]

So. I wrote a rather long essay in response to this, but in the end decided to boil it down to just a few discussion points...

... Sure, what I'm saying is challenging. That's deliberate. I've challenged the idea that people who voted for or support Trump are automatically rendered malign bigots and/or cognitively impaired by their action. I want to challenge the basis of our moral intuitions and our inclinations to casually cast them onto others as facts backed by whatever post hoc justification we can lay our hands on. I want to challenge judgements about the type and kind of people who are apparently responsible for the world's ills, who are a part of or the root cause of 'the problem', whether those kinds of allegations are levelled against Muslims or Trumpists or whatever group of regular, ordinary human beings. In other words, I think you're shooting at the wrong duck.

So then: fancy a chat about any of that? Feel free to rewind to a previous post and pick up from there.

The Nazi party existed for two decades before it liquidated its first Jew. Today, we tend to see the Nazis as machine gun toting, swastika wearing movie stereotypes, but the fact is, they were just moms and dads, and brothers and sisters, students, co-workers, joggers, bird-watchers, stamp collectors, and violinists, just like everyone else. They were otherwise normal people who got swept up in an ugly political movement that scapegoated minorities and immigrants, a political movement that would eventually end up killing 70 million. I guess my attitude toward them is: "fuck 'em". (I'm not talking about the people who were forced to work in bullet factories, obviously)

Maybe I feel more threatened by these Trumpzis than you do because you're a white guy living in Britain and I'm a yellow guy living in Trumpmerica. Maybe I'm just meaner than you. Maybe I'm a hateful person. I guess I will just say in my defense that at least when I hate someone it's for what's on the inside, and not what's on the outside. I hate bigots and ethnic cleansers. I can't help it. I'm probably too old to change.

I understand your fears about the future, and your frustrations, not to mention your rage about the current situation. But even though we live in troubled and troubling times I'm not here to validate any of that for you I'm afraid, and I wont be joining in with lumping all Trump voters and supporters into the single, morally reprehensible group you called Trumpzis.

I don't disagree that ideological exceptionalism needs to be socially and politically opposed and, where necessary, resisted, and that's something I come at from what I'd call a broadly secular (small-S) perspective: which is to say that in my view someone's opinions, religion, class, genetic antecedence or geography etc do not bestow any special or particular rights, privileges or protections on them that are not also equally extended to everybody else. Ideological exceptionalists are those who believe they have a special status and as a result demand exactly those kinds of special rights for themselves and/or those kinds of privileges over others.

Nonetheless, what I'm seeing from you is not merely political opposition to a damaging ideology but an eager denigration and belittlement of a broad swathe of people, something which is clearly intended to identify 'these people' as 'the problem' and, to all intents and purposes, looks no different the kind of scapegoating you're expressing such grave concerns about. This doesn't surprise me as a personal reaction because as I've pointed out at the outset, it seems that the Right's identity politics agenda is a distraction we can all buy into.

Let's imagine you have a different president and administration - one that's aligned with your personal political values. Now what's that administration to do about the people you're labelling as proto- or neo-fascists, as ignorant, malign, hateful bigots - the people who are 'the problem'? Can these Trumpzis simply be ignored, or do we continue to denigrate them and upbraid them for their moral failings and fascistic inclinations, and the state now backs you in that because you won the election and were therefore proved 'right'; should they be punished for their errors or subject to some form of official moral correction? Well, I doubt you'd agree to any of that because it would basically bring us back to ideological exceptionalism again, only this time from the other side of aisle.

Regardless of who's in charge of the nation nothing really changes for these people as far as their opinions go, their fears, hopes, their attitudes or values. Those things have been building up for a lifetime. Neither will a different administration fundamentally change their social, economic, political or cultural conditions. They still wake up in the same bed, in the same society, with the same structures and systems, the same institutions, the same neighbours, the same bosses, the same bills, the same stresses and stressor, the same social and fiscal pressures.

To a very large extent those whom you revile and berate are a response to particular sets of social, political, economic, and historical contingencies. Just as you are. They've just reacted in a different way, for different reasons.

Don't get me wrong. I get it. I really do. Been there: done that: got the tattoo. Calling them imbeciles and fascists is a way of venting our frustrations and anger not just at them but at the whole mad-cap situation we find ourselves in. It's a release - both emotionally and intellectually. Sticking it to the Right makes us feel better, for a time at least. It's also way to identify them as being on the side of the bad guys and us as being on the side of the good the guys. But if we're the good guys what good are we actually doing by maintaining a constant level of vituperative opprobrium against them? Are we not just validating their own anger and frustrations at people like us as we validate our own against people like them? Again: if we're the good guys what good are we actually doing by trying to cancel them; by dehumanising them; by trying to make them go away; by disputing their right to exist?

It's a tricky one isn't it?

Is someone who hates Nazis as bad as Nazis? I don't think so. You'll never find me at a hate rally chanting "send them back!" You'll never find me sucker punching someone for having a different skin color. I find no joy in seeing others suffer.

I commend you for not being a hate-mongering bully-boy bigot, but you still seem keen to imply that by not validating your feelings on this matter I'm somehow going soft on or appeasing fascism and/or fascists. I think I was clear enough on that earlier to not have to respond further, beyond simply pointing it out.

My issue is not with your politics, or even with your view of the current political landscape, but with your inclination to lump all Trump voters/supporters together and cast them as 'the problem'. I think this is misguided because 'the problem' lies elsewhere - with those contingencies I mentioned. When we define a degenerate group and then lump a swathe of people into it, and then justify our own contumelious vituperation towards them on the basis of their supposed membership of that group, then we've just stooped to identity politics, and in so doing invalidated any positive message we might have wanted to put forward.

Something that I could no longer ignore or deny after 2016 is that central to the Republican ideology is the belief that in order for them to flourish, someone else has to suffer. We saw this in sharp relief with the child separation policy. These people tortured and terrorized brown children and parents, ruined their lives and scarred them for life in order to send the message to other brown people that if they come here, they'll be ruined as well.

This wasn't a bad policy that was made with good intentions. This wasn't a policy that was made in good faith with the intent to help people that ended up hurting people through unintended consequences. It was made with malicious intent. The policy was created at the outset explicitly with the intent to hurt people. Make the undesirables suffer in order to deter more undesirables from coming. Solve every problem with unconscionable cruelty. Right? We're not talking about a fine or something. We're talking about taking a child and mother... and destroying them forever.

And his supporters are fine with this. It's just how they think. It's grotesque. Trump lost NO support after that. Remember that article that had an interview with a Trump supporter who was upset with him and said something like "he's hurting the wrong people"? That's a tacit admission that she wants him to hurt people. It's fucked up, man.

And yes, I know that not all Trumpoids are like this. Some of them filled in the bubble next to the Republican candidate and then went back to not thinking about politics for four years. But the ones who know what's happening and approve of it... ugh...

So I feel we're making progress here. You seem to be avoiding generalising from the particular now and more happy to qualify who you're talking about. Even so, the question remains: if we're the good guys what good are we actually doing by invoking the identity politics card and then berating other people for having the 'wrong' identity or identifying with the 'wrong' values?

What? Is hating Nazis identity politics? My problem with Republicans isn't their skin color or sexual orientation.

[Brian Peacock]

It's a tricky question like I said - one to which there's no off-the-shelf pat answer. Even so, you're not even making an attempt at a stab at it atm. Instead, by playing the Godwin card, you've slipped back into equating Trump supporters with fascists and justifying your vilification of them on that basis. This is circular as you've done this after already acknowledging that many of them are probably reacting instinctively and without much thought - just voting for what they feel OK with every four years and then going about their business and living their lives.

I'm challenging you about falling back on this Nazi narrative, because it's too simplistic. It implies that each one of them have made a considered, immoral choice to be malign, hate-filled bigot and that, by implication, you naturally have an elevated moral position because you're able to point this out.

In apparently not noticing that I acknowledged and share your concerns about the perils of ideological exceptionalism you effectively misconstrue my point - again - and from where I'm sitting that's starting to look kinda deliberate; defensive; as if it lets you off hook, saves you having to do some difficult intellectual leg work, lets you off forwarding a propositional rather than a merely reactionary argument.

I'm just not letting you off the hook that easily I'm afraid - which is why I'm asking your where the good is in your vilification of others, asking you to articulate what good you're actually doing.

Now, if in response to that challenge your inclination is to again point out that not being a Nazi is a gooder thing to be otherwise then I'm just going to point out how, without some broader account, you can easily be seen as categorising others as Nazis simply in order to signify your own goodliness. And that's where the politics of identity is located in this discussion - them bad, us good.

If you'd like to know a bit more about identity politics you could do worse than read up on its progenitor Carl Schmitt and the ideas he espoused - but if you do that it won't be quite so easy to avoid my point I'm afraid, or to limit the matter of identity to one of skin colour or sexual orientation. To say that identity is only (or even mostly) a matter of skin colour or sexual orientation is to invoke a red herring because not even you are talking about these things in those terms - what you're talking about are things like values and ideals.

[Seabass]

It's a tricky question like I said - one to which there's no off-the-shelf pat answer. Even so, you're not even making an attempt at a stab at it atm. Instead, by playing the Godwin card, you've slipped back into equating Trump supporters with fascists and justifying your vilification of them on that basis. This is circular as you've done this after already acknowledging that many of them are probably reacting instinctively and without much thought - just voting for what they feel OK with every four years and then going about their business and living their lives.

I'm challenging you about falling back on this Nazi narrative, because it's too simplistic. It implies that each one of them have made a considered, immoral choice to be malign, hate-filled bigot and that, by implication, you naturally have an elevated moral position because you're able to point this out.

In apparently not noticing that I acknowledged and share your concerns about the perils of ideological exceptionalism you effectively misconstrue my point - again - and from where I'm sitting that's starting to look kinda deliberate; defensive; as if it lets you off hook, saves you having to do some difficult intellectual leg work, lets you off forwarding a propositional rather than a merely reactionary argument.

I'm just not letting you off the hook that easily I'm afraid - which is why I'm asking your where the good is in your vilification of others, asking you to articulate what good you're actually doing.

Now, if in response to that challenge your inclination is to again point out that not being a Nazi is a gooder thing to be otherwise then I'm just going to point out how, without some broader account, you can easily be seen as categorising others as Nazis simply in order to signify your own goodliness. And that's where the politics of identity is located in this discussion - them bad, us good.

If you'd like to know a bit more about identity politics you could do worse than read up on its progenitor Carl Schmitt and the ideas he espoused - but if you do that it won't be quite so easy to avoid my point I'm afraid, or to limit the matter of identity to one of skin colour or sexual orientation. To say that identity is only (or even mostly) a matter of skin colour or sexual orientation is to invoke a red herring because not even you are talking about these things in those terms - what you're talking about are things like values and ideals.

No, Brian, you're the one who's misunderstanding me.

Consider your statement:

I'm challenging you about falling back on this Nazi narrative, because it's too simplistic. It implies that each one of them have made a considered, immoral choice to be malign, hate-filled bigot and that, by implication, you naturally have an elevated moral position because you're able to point this out.

This suggests that either you think Nazis made a considered, immoral choice to be malign, hate-filled bigots, or you think that I think Nazis made a considered, immoral choice to be malign, hate-filled bigots.

I don't have a cartoonish two-dimensional view of Nazis. Members of the Nazi party weren't monsters. They were just people. People who bought into ugly propaganda that told them that their problems were the result of these strange people in their midst who were intrinsically bad.

My point in bringing up parallels between Trumpmerica and Nazi Germany is to point out that we Americans aren't better than them. We aren't unique. There isn't something special about us that makes us immune to fascism. We aren't above it. We aren't too civilized. It CAN happen here. And indeed it appears to be happening here, at least to a degree. Will we see the Republicans gassing Muslims and Mexicans ten, twenty years from now? Probably not. Well, I hope not, anyway. But it is disturbing to see the not only indifference, but the support of the cruelty of this administration. And every time I think things can't get uglier, things get uglier. So I really don't know how bad things can get.

They say that those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it. I'm bring up history because I do not want to repeat it.