Politics (a link)

[johnpalmer]

So, I came across this on a left-leaning blog: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/inspired-life/wp/2016/11/02/what-is-this-election-missing-empathy-for-trump-voters/?tid=sm_tw.

This is actually a relatively good article, because it points to some things that should generate empathy.

Here's a good quote:
You could see brows knit up. One woman said I was her first Democratic friend. I met another woman who said, 'I love Rush Limbaugh,' and I said, 'I would love to talk to you about that.' It came out that when she was listening to him she liked that he was defending her against criticisms from liberals.

Your first instinct may well be to feel she's an idiot for not seeing through a nasty blowhard like Limbaugh. And I won't deny that I feel upset about that too - even if you do feel you need to have someone stand up to these mythical angry liberals, I think you should want an honorable person doing it.

Ah, but since I don't think Rush Limbaugh is honorable, well, that helps prove I *am* one of those mythical angry liberals, right? Yet if I'm angry at *her* for liking him, she'll never learn that I haven't got a thing against her. And until she realizes that, she can't realize what a nasty blowhard the man is, telling lies about decent folks, folks like her, who have some different ideas... but not all of those different ideas are *bad*.

But here's a better quote; this is, for me, the money quote:

In some of them you sensed loss and a sense of being invisible and unappreciated and insulted. That liberals just think they’re rednecks.

I know a lot of liberals who do feel precisely like that. They do think that Trump supporters are awful people and these liberals let their prejudices fly. But that's not fair to the entirety of Trump supporters.

Oh, there are awful people who support Trump (and if you can't admit that - if you can't even admit that David frickin' Duke is a horrible person - that's a serious problem). But there are good people who've gotten a whole lot of bullcrap thrown at them, until they just don't know the truth any more.

Hah. Bullcrap - I saw a Fox News segment where the host said "but didn't we all learn in kindergarten that 'the solution to pollution is dilution'?" which made me spit-take and then say "no, my kindergarten was not run by corporate lobbyists."

(Some of you, remembering my old siglines, are now laughing. You don't learn about the friendliness (or lack thereof) of Mr. Hand Grenade or the dangers of Acme/Jet-or-Rocket Powered from corporate lobbyists!)

That's such a stupid line. In a great many cases, the solution to pollution is concentration, and safe storage. We don't want to dilute nuclear waste and send it into the environment; nor do we want to dilute mercury, let it get into the water table, and let our seafood build up toxic levels of it. In many more cases, the solution is simply not to make it - the polluting method is just cheaper, but poisons other people in return for extra profits, which isn't a fair trade off.

The point is, there are a lot of really good people out there who've been played for so long they don't have a good basis for the truth. And it's important not to dismiss them along with the people who make money by playing them for fools.

Don't get me wrong: I'm not saying that Hillary Clinton should be Republican-friendly. She should come in, ready to play hardball, because you know they will. And I'm not saying that you should like Republican politicians, or the people who spread the lies that have poisoned our discourse.

But remember there are good, ordinary people, who deserved truth, and courage, and leadership, and have been fed bullcrap, poll tested "certainty," and cunning divisiveness instead. Remember that the goal of those who sow divisiveness is to get "us" to hate "them", so we do think of them as a bunch of rednecks or somesuch - because then, the liars get to continue to lie, pretending that they're standing up against us. To win this game, we need to find something better than hate, and better than divisiveness, and to save our anger for the people who lie, not for those who, upon hearing the lies from five different sources, figure there must be some truth to it.

Comments

[caltastic]

Here is my problem with the whole "but we must have empathy for Trump voters" schtick: not all opinions are valid. Not every opinion needs or deserves equal weight. And the Trump campaign is entirely predicated on the opinion that anyone who is not a straight white Christian man is lesser. EXPLICITLY. This is not reading between the lines. This is not supposition. This is PRECISELY AND EXPLICITLY WHAT HE HAS CAMPAIGNED ON. And therefore someone who is voting for Trump is EXPLICITLY supporting this. I do not and will not have empathy for that, and being told that doing so is morally superior, as all these newspaper thinkpieces so far have done, does nothing but give further legitimization to this terrible neoconfederate racism and misogyny. I am actively frightened for my children. Where's my fucking empathy, WaPo?

[johnpalmer]

Well, I'm not asking you to have empathy for people explicitly supporting the notion of "straight white Christian men your superiors, others!"

I am asserting that a huge number of Trump-voters-to-be don't know that nastiness - hell, those multiple large gobs of nastiness - exists within the Trump campaign.

And you might think that's starry eyed bullshit :-). But that is my statement: don't forget there's a lot of people who don't know or care about politics anywhere near as much as you, and just don't know; they don't have the information they need to decide that they're okay with Trump's explicit racism/sexism/religious bigotry/etc..

I'm not encouraging any empathy toward those who *do* know and approve of that pile of bigotries.

[caltastic]

Nope. I've been in Tennessee for the last seventeen years, and they ABSOLUTELY know they're racist. What they don't know (and find desperately unfair) is that racism is bad. I still have no empathy for that bullshit.

[johnpalmer]

Well, I've been in software support for far too long to *ever* say "you don't see what you just said you saw", even if I had reason to doubt, and when dealing with the South, I know there's no reason to doubt.

I will still maintain (and give you full freedom to laugh at my naivete!) that there will be some who can be reached, who can wake up and look around.

Also, keep in mind, I'm not saying that you should love these folks and appreciate everything about them. In some cases, it's more like, see a guy get skinned in a shell game or at three card monte, and you might say it's his own damn fault, and it is - but you can still realize that it hurts to be made a sucker, and if you have a chance to help him be less of a sucker, you might be able to take it.

Especially if doing so helps make your world a bit better.

We're living in really, really crazy times, where the FBI is involving itself in the political process, and it's not even seen as a big deal. Oh, it's being reported as "unprecedented" but, hell, everything is unprecedented these days, and there will always be some "balance" craving reporter to give meaningful time to a person eager to defend the indefensible.

We have to change that - and I don't think we'll change it by going force-to-force.

I mean, in some areas... I know that when the polls closed, if I were President Obama, I'd declare that since the Senate won't do their job, I will veto every piece of legislation until they've scheduled hearings and a vote on my SCOTUS nominee. That's force-to-force, and it's also fair, using his powers just as the Senate is using its powers. (Technically, using his powers as the majority in the Senate is using its.) If not that, I'd suggest he do what other people have suggested: declare that since the Senate has refused to provide its advice and consent, it has given up its chance to do so, and state that Garland is now on the Supreme Court. Force the Congress to sue and at least give the judiciary a chance to weigh in, and hope for a 5-3 decision.

[jhetley.livejournal.com]

Considering your opponent to be human is a good start.

[johnpalmer.livejournal.com]

Aw, shucks just when I as discussing how they should be treated as anthropomorphic manifestations of evil and hate!

[jhetley.livejournal.com]

Then there's the whole "Neanderthal" bit.

[elainegrey.livejournal.com]

I'm not up face to face with folks, but reading the county BBS i come digitally in contact with folks for whom the libruls are doing the work of Satan [that's not exaggeration]. Listening to their concerns is easy; listening to the divisive rhetoric is really quite hard. Since i'll be hiring one of these folks, i expect i'll move forward to the listening face to face step.

[johnpalmer.livejournal.com]

Yeah. This is the hardest of things. If politics was a game... well, if a football player flagrantly fouls one of your team, you can say "make sure you show him we stand up for our own. Hit him clean, but hard, at the next opportunity" and you can do that.

But politics isn't a game. Tit-for-tat isn't always reasonable or possible. If one side is given a steady diet of hate, hating back just makes more hate.

One side has to try to work past the hate and lies. And I know *I* am not saintly enough that it comes easy to me.