Trump Supporters Can't Be Trusted

[canpakes]

I'm going to ask a question purely because I hope you will give it serious thought: How confident are you that you are not closing your eyes to the real harm caused by the deliberate, targeted dehumanization strategy employed by Donald Trump and those who express their support for him at his rallies when you react by asserting “both sides do it?”

How confident am I that I am not closing my eyes? 70%

I say 70% (which is obviously much less than 100%) because I admit that I am very much against a Harris Presidency, and because of that alone, I think it has the real potential to impact/influence how I see/evaluate specific individual events that have to do with Trump (as well as Harris).

But, as I said, I will give it some more thought.

You’ll need to give it more thought, and adjust that number down a bit.

[Res Ipsa]

I’m going to ask a question purely because I hope you will give it serious thought: How confident are you that you are not closing your eyes to the real harm caused by the deliberate, targeted dehumanization strategy employed by Donald Trump and those who express their support for him at his rallies when you react by asserting “both sides do it?”

No one taking umbrage at Biden’s unusual comment - after doing their best to make it the equivalent of Trump’s everyday language - is actually concerned enough about Biden’s comment to have affect their choice of candidate, especially after equivocating how ‘both sides do it’.

This is just posturing.

I know that your own appraisal will be kinder, but I have to call it like I see it.

Hey, cp, Would you mind cleaning up the beginning of the quote? I can do incoherent without any outside help.

I don’t think I’m motivated by kindness. I think I’m trying my best to understand how a person thinks when they engage in false equivalence. And I try to start with myself. I experience false equivalence as almost a reflex that I have to consciously question and consider. That being the case, I have to assume that I don’t always recognize the impulse and engage in false equivalency myself sometimes. So, when I do, does it mean I’m engaging in false posturing or that I am sincerely making a bad argument? And if I can sincerely
make a bad argument without recognizing it as such, why should I not understand Ceeboo as doing the same? I’m just not convinced that Ceeboo’s thought process can be accurately dismissed as “just posturing.”

I was raised in a Christian tradition that was based on a concept of moral right and moral wrong that existed “in the air,” so to speak. Telling a lie was morally wrong, regardless of its real world context or its consequences. In that contextless universe, all lies were essentially equivalent. All were sins, and that was what mattered.

Having been raised in that background, I can empathize with the argument Ceeboo presents. A lie is a lie. Whether it’s one lie or two lies, all are lies and each serves equal condemnation.

If both sides lie, both are culpable and each deserves the same condemnation. And it is very easy to stop there, especially when the number of lies does not affect redemption from the sin.

Critically, the concept of right and wrong is completely divorced from any harm caused by the sin. A white lie and perjury that causes conviction of an innocent are both the same thing, and the process of redemption is the same for both.

That didn’t change for me when I quit the COJCOLDS. I still thought about moral questions in a vacuum. Indeed, much of our discourse about rights and justice similarly takes place in a vacuum. As long as a rule appears fair in a vacuum, it’s commonly thought of as fair and just.

It wasn’t until law school that this thinking began to change for me. And that change was 100% caused by my exposure to critical theory of the legal flavor. That change happened over time and really took hold after I started to identify as an atheist.

For me as an atheist, the only equivalent of “sin” is causing harm to my fellow sentient bits of carbon, whether through omission or commission. And that’s not an assessment one can make in a vacuum. Rather, it is necessarily grounded in real people that live in the real world.

I think that’s a pretty big shift in how one makes sense of the world. The world is a very different looking place when you stop seeing it through the lens of right and wrong in a vacuum and seeing it through the lens of avoiding, reducing and taking personal responsibility for harm to other sentient bits of carbon.

Where I think that gets me is that Ceeboo and I approach the issue of dehumanization from very different perspectives. From his worldview, dehumanization is dehumanization, and if both sides do it, regardless of degree, both are sinners.

That cuts no ice with me, because it would be absurd to claim that one remark from Biden is as harmful as the relentless firehose of dehumanizing rhetoric from Trump. If your worldview is centered on harm to your fellow Botts of sentient carbon, you just can’t say that Trump and Biden have committed the same sin. In fact, the notion that they have is laughable.

But I have an advantage here that Ceeboo does not have: intentional and unnecessary infliction of harm by the powerful on the less powerful is the antithesis of the message of Jesus Christ. That lets me make a moral appeal inside of his worldview that drags him into my worldview that is centered on real world harm. But I don’t think the reciprocal is true.

I can confront him with the harm that both Trump and Vance caused to the citizens of Springfield, Ohio when they both engaged in intentional, malicious, and 100% false dehumanization of black Haitians who were doing nothing other than working hard and, in doing so, helping to revitalize a dying rust belt community. What real world harm can Ceeboo, or anyone, connect to that clip of Biden. He can’t.

If Ceeboo chooses to appeal to evidence, I’ll happily do that. But that really isn’t my point. When Ceeboo hears “he’s just posturing,” he can easily dismiss that. But when he hears about the citizens of Springfield being terrorized by bomb and death threats, his brain won’t get off that easy because, like me, he is a sentient bit of carbon, just like me, trying, just like me, to be the best bit of sentient carbon that he can.

[canpakes]

If Ceeboo chooses to appeal to evidence, I’ll happily do that.

Never let it be said that you are not an optimist.

But that really isn’t my point. When Ceeboo hears “he’s just posturing,” he can easily dismiss that.

Of course. I would expect that to be the case. In fact, Ceeboo likely has no choice but to dismiss it.

But when he hears about the citizens of Springfield being terrorized by bomb and death threats, his brain won’t get off that easy …

Yes, it will. That whole ‘eating the pets’ incident and the fallout from it can be ignored by most Trump voters, or rationalized as true, or rationalized as a necessary lie. We watched Vance do just that. We watched Trump do it live, on TV. Therefore we must accept that Ceeboo can do the same, and to date, he appears to have done the same.

Because …

… because, like me, he is a sentient bit of carbon, just like me, trying, just like me, to be the best bit of sentient carbon that he can.

Ceeboo and Trump - and you and I - are all the same basic construction. We are all just like you and just like me. And many of us can all be rationalizing that we are trying to be the best that we can be. But can anyone, including Ceeboo, truthfully buy into that when diametrically opposed ideologies have been cemented into our brains over years of practice to the extent of looking at Trump as a candidate and coming away with such divergent conclusions?

Probably not, because if that was the case, all of our voting selections would be much more tightly aligned.

[Gadianton]

Joe definitely fell into the typical bully trap and made a strategic mistake, and that's about all, but it's a lot just before an election. A bully says, "you people over there are garbage." The well-meaning retort by the guy trying to be nice and protect the people over there goes, "the only people who are garbage are the ones who just called those people over there minding their own business, garbage."

And the bully and the bullies associates feign shock: "Hey, that guy just said we're garbage! we're so offended! You people have gone too far!"

Grow up, Ceeboo. Nobody can take you seriously.

[Jersey Girl]

The levels of utter intolerance, seething hatred, and open bigotry that you display on this board is shocking. How no board members ever seem to challenge you on these types of unhinged and awful posts is almost as shocking as what you post.

No board members ever seem to challenge him on a post of this nature?

Meet Jersey Girl. She's challenged him.

Advice you never asked for: Get to know Schmo.

[Bret Ripley]

I have differences with ceeboo, but I love ceeboo.

I do, too. We rarely agree about anything, but our friendship is based on a mutual regard we have for one another: I think he is probably crazy, and he knows for damn sure that I am.

[Moksha]

Biden would catch hell if he said this. Republicans would call it the second coming of Adolf.

[Res Ipsa]

Ceeboo, your conclusion that Biden would accept Schmo’s rhetoric is beyond ridiculous. It is based solely on your personal bias.

Perhaps - I am willing to consider that my bias is at play here - at least to some degree.

That’s what I figured. Same here.

At most, the single example you supplied for Biden is ambiguous because he doesn’t expressly state what he is labeling as garbage. It isn’t even clear whether he is calling people garbage or the dehumanizing language that people use is garbage.

I'm not trying to be a prick (promise) but I think people can hear a quote and be fairly confident about what the person is saying (maybe your bias has entered the room?) - Here is the exact quote again: "The only garbage I see floating out there is his supporters."
To me, it seems clear - He is referring to Trump's supporters as garbage. Attempting to provide any other conclusion strikes me as the hard work of a professional seasoned lawyer.

It has nothing at all to do with lawyering and everything to with acting with complete good faith when placing an interpretation on someone else’s words as opposed to selectively disregarding the complete context to interpret the words to mean what we want them to mean.

The words “his supporters” are ambiguous because, in isolation, they could reasonably mean “all of his supporters,” “most of his supporters,” “some of his supporters,” “typical supporters” or “the supporters I have been talking about.” Nothing in the words themselves helps us decide which of these things Biden meant when he used those words. The words themselves don’t even tell us whether simply voting for Trump is what Biden means by supporters.

You are choosing the meaning of Biden’s words based only on your preconceptions of who Joe Biden is. Nothing in the words tells you how to make those choices. That ain’t lawyering. That’s the reality of language and communication.

You are closing your eyes and ears to everything other than the sentence you typed. The general topic of Biden’s comments, as I think you accurately described, is dehumanization. But dehumanization of specific people (American citizens) by specific people (Trump supporters) in a specific context (speaking as part of the official, approved program at a Trump rally). Biden was not talking about Trump supporters or most Trump supporters, or people who simply voted for Trump.

The sentence you cite, to the exclusion of everything else Biden said, immediately follows his reaction to the Trump supporter who called Puerto Rico a floating island of garbage. Given the fact that Puerto Rico is literally not composed of garbage, what is this “garbage” that this Trump supporter who was an official speaker at a Trump campaign event was talking about? It’s clear that Biden thought that the speaking were describing human beings as garbage. And, frankly, I can’t find any sort of plausible interpretation otherwise. And Biden was about as worked up about the idea of calling American citizens “garbage” as Biden ever gets (at least publicly). He finds that idea so repugnant that he struggles to put together a sentence that communicates the strength of his condemnation of the dehumanization in that Trump supporters statement.

And now, I suppose I am going to be kind of a prick. Given all of that context, given the complete absence of Ceeboo from the conversation, what you choose to hear is “Ceeboo is garbage.” And that choice lets you off the hook for choosing to vote for a candidate that engages in non-stop dehumanization of ordinary folks like you and me.

I can also make the case that Donald Trump is the most extreme candidate in terms of using dehumanization as a political strategy during my lifetime, and it isn’t even close.

Hitler? Nazi? Dictator? Satan?

Let’s see, Hitler wasn’t “during my lifetime”. But it is uncanny how often Trump borrows Hitler’s own words when demonizing others. Why is Trump calling Democrats “vermin” somehow not as dehumanizing as Hitler calling Jews “vermin?” Why is Trump accusing immigrants if poisoning the blood of Americans somehow less dehumanizing than Hitler claiming that Jews poisoning the blood of Germany? Ditto for labeling Americans as “enemies of the people?”

Trump isn’t Hitler, but he rhymes.

Nazi isn’t a political candidate. Either is Dictator. Satan is an imaginary being who has yet to declare himself a candidate for office.

I was thinking about American candidates, but I’m willing to consider others. Give me an example of someone whose political strategy of demonization is more extreme than “vermin,” “poisoning our blood” and “enemy of the people.” Maybe throw in describing millions of people as rapists, animals, thugs, and murderers. Give me some actual examples and I’ll give it a whirl.

Do these politically motivated attempts to dehumanize land on your scale? If so, where do they land? (My personal opinion is that Trump is not any of those things - for the sake of this one point, just pretend that you were me and that you don't believe Trump is Hitler/Nazi/Dictator/Satan either so we can get to your weights/scale)

Which politically motivated attempts to dehumanize are you talking about? You only identified one political candidate — Hitler. And in terms of dehumanization, Trump has copied his dehumanizing language straight out of the Hitler playbook.

I don’t think I’ve ever claimed that Trump is Hitler. He isn’t. He hasn’t confiscated property owned by or businesses run by illegal aliens. He hasn’t rounded them up and put them in concentration camps, although he has promised to. And he hasn’t responded to the practical difficulties with deporting millions of people by adopting extermination as the final solution to the immigrant problem.

But, what Trump has done in terms of dehumanization is straight out of Hitler’s playbook. They are Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum in that respect. Seriously, make a straight faced argument that the guy who uses the same dehumanizing words and phrases as Hitler is somehow less guilty of dehumanization than Hitler.

I don’t claim that Trump is a “Nazi” because he doesn’t fit within Nazi ideology. He’s nationalist, but not an Aryan Supremacist.

I don’t claim that he’s a dictator, because he doesn’t Have sole control over the entire federal government. Authoritarian is the term I would use. He admires dictator and I think it would be fair to say he aspires to be a dictator.

Simply as a matter of definition, Trump cannot be Satan. He is a fellow sentient bit of carbon and not a supernatural entity whose existence is confined to the imagination of my fellow sentient bits of carbon.

But, back to my actual statement, you have yet to call my attention to a candidate in my lifetime whose use of dehumanizing language is more extreme than Trump’s. There may be. Maybe Idi Amin. Maybe white candidates in Apartheid South Africa. Maybe one side or the other or both in the Israel-Palestine conflict. Maybe Pol Pot.

If we restrict ourselves to American candidates, I don’t think we’re going to find anything among the Relief Society or Ds. I suspect we have to look at extreme ethic nationalist folks. In terms of dehumanizing language, I’m not sure even George Wallace or David Duke would be more extreme than Trump.

Even so, having to go to those folks to find someone more than Trump doesn’t say anything good about Trump.

As for my question, giving it some thought was all I’d hoped for.

[Marcus]

But when he hears about the citizens of Springfield being terrorized by bomb and death threats, his brain won’t get off that easy …

Yes, it will. That whole ‘eating the pets’ incident and the fallout from it can be ignored by most Trump voters, or rationalized as true, or rationalized as a necessary lie. We watched Vance do just that. We watched Trump do it live, on TV. Therefore we must accept that Ceeboo can do the same, and to date, he appears to have done the same...

It is incidents like this that still, somehow, manage to shock. The most recent excuse I've heard was "well of course he didn't mean what he said..."

How is it possible that Trump supporters have become so twisted in their thinking that they KNOW that what Trump says is so wrong, but rather than acknowledge it, they simply say something like "he didn't mean that," or "he won't really do what he said he would do..."???

They know Trump's approach is literally insupportable in a reasonable world, so they support him by saying he won't really do what he says he will. That is irrational.

[Some Schmo]

The levels of utter intolerance, seething hatred, and open bigotry that you display on this board is shocking. How no board members ever seem to challenge you on these types of unhinged and awful posts is almost as shocking as what you post.

Funny how you have such a huge issue when I do it, but you're willing to give a man the most power in the world who is the epitome of utter intolerance, seething hatred, and open bigotry.

Obviously, your words are empty. Others perceive you as honest. I don't. You might be the phoniest person I've met on the internet.

So rant on, little man.