Wasn’t sure if we were allowed to use that word in post titles so I censored it just in case.
Sun Tzu, The Art of War:
“If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.” (That last describes the Democratic party to a tee.)
So yes, it behooves us to understand them if we want to win. If you want to rage and stick your fingers in your ears, good luck with the toddler approach.
And since 100 toddlers will take that statement to mean “appeasement” or “how to get on their level”, fuck you, you’re a child. Leave these discussions to grownups. In the mean time, go read a grownup book. (Hint: The Art of War is 100% applicable here.)
Here’s one with far too much nuance for liberals:
“When you surround an army, leave an outlet free. Do not press a desperate foe too hard.”
Not even going to explain that one in modern political terms. In any case, we lost, and goddammit we’re not going to learn anything from it!
Some people would rather be right than try to solve the problem.
Genuine question. How do you solve decades of religious indoctrination, poor education, and racism en masse?
I could maybe educate my two parents, maybe. But then what?
Genuine answer: one mind and one heart at a time. With any luck, some of them become influential and the message spreads more rapidly.
Religious indoctrination is hard, because so many of them teach that indoctrinating others is a way to save them. Ultimately, however, the whole belief system is a house of cards. It takes surprisingly little to bring it down. Ask them how they know that what they believe merits their belief. It starts there.
Nominate an opposing candidate that speaks directly to the underlying issues that made scapegoating minorities attractive. (See AOC / Trump split ticket voters.)
Encourage them to educate their friends. Tell people you successfully educated your parents. You can’t change this alone, but that alone does heavy lifting in that sentence
There’s more people who don’t bother voting than there are conservatives. And not only are there more of them they’re also easier to get on our side. IMHO it’s better from a game theory perspective to focus on them than to try to understand conservatives.
EDIT: I think I’m just done here. The work will always need to be done by those most vulnerable and I’m just tired. I’m tired of being blamed and threatened when I’ve done everything I’m “supposed to do”. Donated to who I was “supposed to donate to”. Voted for who I was “supposed to vote for”. Understand whatever you want, no one on their side is really trying to understand me.
I just can’t pretend that my allies are allies. I’ll be yelled at for venting. I’ll be told to calm down when I’m scared. I’ll be told to be enraged while trying to find some peace.
I’d send you a hug in a box if I could. Here is my doggo instead
Your pup is very cute. Thank you for sharing, friend.
I wish I could say something helpful, but I’m tired too, and I know there’s nothing that can really be said to help. So I won’t try to help, and I’ll just stop for a moment and we can be tired and scared together.
You armed? Because you fuck well should be, as well as practiced and educated.
Oh shit. Just realized you missed the entire fucking point. You are losing Miss. Trans. It would be in your best fucking interest to figure out why you are losing and to do that you have to figure out what the enemy is thinking.
Or, you could keep whining about how these people have no empathy for you. Yeah. We already knew that.
“Or, you could keep whining about how these people have no empathy for you.”
When OP speaks of allies not being allies, it’s comments like yours that I think of. You use “we” like we’re on the same side here, but (ironically given you say this of OP) you have missed their entire point.
We’re not going to survive (let alone make progress) if we tear each other down like this. This isn’t me saying “they go low, we go high” nonsense, because you’re quite right that relying Trump voters to show empathy doesn’t look like a good strategy. I don’t see that OP was actually saying anything of the sort though. This is about how we (people opposing Trump and co.) treat each other. It would be easier for us to become practiced and educated if we could rely on the people who are meant to be allies.
I want to believe that you’re a decent person who wrote an assholish comment. It happens to the best of us. I hope that you’ll reread OP’s comment and your own and see how unproductive this approach is for everyone. But maybe I’m wasting my time here, in much the same way that expecting empathy from Trump voters is probably unwise. That’s up to you, I guess
Fuck yourself.
We do know them. They are mostly stupid. They are mean. They are all trash.
Some of them may not have been these things but if I have a garbage can and someone throws a perfectly good apple into, that apple is now trash.
One can remove the apple and culture the bacteria to prove it.
There is no reason to get to know the trash, it won’t stop being trash because I have further refined all of the smells and rot involved.
If getting to know trash was possible we wouldn’t be were we are. The left has been attempting to understand for decades and it has only lead to the bacteria and rot infecting the democratic party to the point where calls for a new leftist party are increasing with each cycle.
Way to miss the entire fucking point. Keep losing!
Says the one that missed mine. We know what they are, trash. Doesn’t matter you or they accept it.
Hate movements do not have the nuance you imagine them to have.
I’m about to be a broken record.
- People who vote for fascism are called fascists.
- A large majority of the electorate either voted for fascism, or couldn’t be bothered to vote against it.
- Popularization of reality denial in favor of believing what makes you feel a certain way has been going on for decades.
- “Understanding” Trump voters is like “understanding” flat earthers, plus bigotry. The root cause is that they’re fucking idiots.
All of this sanewashing and wanting to “understand” boils down to one thing: refusal to accept that America, and Americans as a whole, aren’t “good.” The assumption behind it all is that, well, if this is what the electorate said, there must be a good reason for it, right? America doesn’t really want the fascism that they were openly promised and then voted for, do they?
Yeah, they do. America wants fascism. That’s where we are. Hanging your hopes on that enough of the people who couldn’t be bothered to vote against it are going to suddenly grow spines and put up a successful opposition to it is useless, unless you are personally willing to be part of that opposition, and in a more active way than just protesting or calling elected officials or signing petitions.
Resistance isn’t futile, but it’s going to be expensive. You will be better off getting prepared now, because shit’s about to get real.
Before the election I talked to an old friend. He’s into WW2 history. He loves history about how Americans trashed the Japanese and Nazis.
He was playing the “centrist” game when politics came up. He even suggested that America having a dictator is maybe what we need.
I thinks that’s average America. Americans cheering for because we beat Nazis while simultaneously wanting to be a Nazi.
There’s also a lot of them who aren’t idiots but are just bad people. They knew exactly what Trump was selling and they liked it. They want theirs and want him to hurt others since they see the world as zero sum.
Calling them idiots is too big of a complement and takes away their agency.
Oh, absolutely. I tried to make sure that was included with “plus bigotry,” but you’re right. I hate taking away people’s agency, and I apologize for having appeared to do so.
yeah. vaccine deniers, flat earthers, maga. These things are just so insane there is no way I can understand them with my faculties intact. to think the earths circumfrence was figured out over two thousand years ago and how disease was the main cause of death before the 20th century and its just nuts.
Russia, for example.
Mainly because understanding them is simple: they’re a trail mix of NAZI’s, barely functional illiterates, and main character syndrome.
And that goes for all the sniveling little pissants hiding behind their hurt feelings as the reason they’re still voting for Republicans: Fuck off. Every last one of you is a fucking liar.
You’re trash. You’ve always been trash. When liberals were polite, you were trash. When liberals got a little rude, you were still trash. Now that we’re tired of your shit and treating you like the trash you are, you’re mortally offended and blaming us for being trash? Get the fuck out of here.
I love this point about trash people being trash no matter how you treat them. When people say that being rude to Nazis only makes them Nazi even harder, I say fuck it. They’re gonna be Nazis no matter what.
You should absolutely try to understand the rise of Trump voters, the mechanisms behind it. If you don’t understand why Trump voters exist, then you can’t hope to properly understand how to tackle that problem.
If you don’t understand why Trump voters exist, then you can’t hope to properly understand how to tackle that problem.
Oh I don’t know…
But I suppose that’s less tackle and more punch.
Quiz: what do you call someone who votes for a fascist but “doesn’t fully agree with their policies”
Answer
A Fascist
Second question: when somebody shows up to a rally and there’s a Nazi flag (specifically when the person is allowed to stay and is accepted) what is that rally, by extension what does that make the person
Answer
A Nazi rally, and that person actively being at a Nazi rally makes them a Nazi
Third question: what do you call someone who “understands” fascists and sees nothing wrong with them
Answer
A Fascist sympathizer
Fourth question: what do you call someone who is unwilling to do whatever it takes to fight fascism, both with the ballet box and the cartridge box
Answer
A coward
Fith question: what do you call someone who is actively “reaching across the isle” and working alongside fascists to achieve their fascist agenda
Spoiler
A collaborator and a class traitor
Final question: what do you do when you see a fascist, a Nazi, a sympathizer, a collaborator, a class traitor, or a coward
Answer
You make them feel as unsafe and unwelcome as you can, you kick them out of every space you’re in and drive them away from every event you attend.
I really like how you used spoilers here for rhetorical effect. It gives your comment a rhythm to it you don’t often see in writing.
I also added the spoilers to purposefully slow down the pace that its read, I want people to think before I say the answer
Off topic, but it always felt weird to me that “collaborator” is a negative term, but “collaboration” is generally positive.
The second question only works if the one carrying the Nazi flag isn’t beaten up by other members of the rally.
I clarified, I was referencing a certain tangerine mans rallies
So you agree with Harris’ support of the genocide? If not, then you understand how a Trump supporter could hold their nose to vote for a fascist.
I don’t support her at all, the difference is I held out my nose on the possibility that after she won she would promote ranked choice voting (as she promised) and in the next election I could vote for a good candidate. Sadly we may never know if she would do that.
Then stop pretending you cannot fathom someone voting for an incompetent psychopath, when you just did the same.
We do need to understand why people vote the way they do if we want to undo it. Might be too late for that though, seeing as we may have just elected the U.S. first dictator.
Trump voters are uneducated and/or fascist.
There you go, I understand them.
and/or successfully manipulated by years of right-wing media propaganda. But they don’t get a pass for voting for Trump in 2024; they should all know who he is by now.
I will never forgive a 2024 Trump voter.
Isn’t wapo bezos’ baby?
They make sure that is mentioned.
High quality rant
Very.
The article expresses my feelings pretty well. I had subscribed to the WaPo for quite a few years, don’t even remember how many. It’s quality has been going downhill for some time. the clickbait headlines kept getting worse. I’d pretty much decided to not renew when the sub expired, especially after they installed Lewis as the new CEO. Then the pulling of the Harris endorsement was the last straw and felt like the best time to officially cancel along with a quarter million others. Democracy dies in darkness and WaPo has already been dead for awhile.
censored it just in case
Ah! He said it!
Now I said it! I just said it again! Gah!
Shrubberies
