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[Rolan7]

For fuck's sake, the US puts undocumented immigrants in concentration camps

And this is the reason I welcomed any contrary opinion.

[Trekkin]

For fuck's sake, the US puts undocumented immigrants in concentration camps

And this is the reason I welcomed any contrary opinion.

That's not an opinion, though. That's something that literally happened. Those camps met the technical definition of concentration camps, if not the genocidal connotation.

[Reelya]

Are you sure about that? They've started shooting up synagogues.

Isn't that the sort of generalizing I was just calling out?

"Conservative" is how 40% of the entire population describe themselves. It's no more reasonable or fair to generalize them all as "shooting up synagogues" than it would be to characterize the average black person as an armed-robber. However, a higher proportion of black people are armed-robbers vs the proportion of conservatives who shoot up synagogues. If you wouldn't make that kinds of blanket statement about a race, how can you do it about other large generalized groups of people?

Remember, I just said "conservative" with no more detailed qualifiers than that, and you just jump to slandering almost half the entire population of the USA as being Jew-murdering fascists. Think about that for a second ...

[hector13]

Race has nothing to do with black people being armed robbers though. Trump has been de-humanizing critics and various other groups since at least his candidacy announcement, and that has enabled (if not encouraged) more troubled members of the conservative movement to act on that.

Not all conservatives are going to take him at his word,  but the fact that the rest of the Republican Party are not calling him out on his frankly dangerous rhetoric makes them complicit in what he says and by extension what it causes to happen.

Fakeedit: and by Republican Party I mean national politicians; senators, representatives, etc.

[Reelya]

Well, labeling everyone who's not a liberal as the most extreme possible thing (shooting up synagogues = nazi, and 40% of the nation has now been tarred with that brush) isn't the way to win people over. I feel that hardcore liberals have almost as much revulsion for Moderates as they have for Conservatives, too: a very "with us or against us" sort of thing. Openly despising > 50% of the population isn't generally a good way to consistently win elections: you're just relying on the other side to implode then, which is very hit and miss.

[Trekkin]

Race has nothing to do with black people being armed robbers though. Trump has been de-humanizing critics and various other groups since at least his candidacy announcement, and that has enabled (if not encouraged) more troubled members of the conservative movement to act on that.

Not all conservatives are going to take him at his word,  but the fact that the rest of the Republican Party are not calling him out on his frankly dangerous rhetoric makes them complicit in what he says and by extension what it causes to happen.

Fakeedit: and by Republican Party I mean national politicians; senators, representatives, etc.

Yep. This. If someone's actively choosing to be part of an ideology currently controlled by a man who's called his political opponents traitors and foreign immigrants criminal rapist drug dealers (etc.), advocated violence against the media ("I'll pay fees", remember?) and equivocated neo-Nazis with the people protesting them among many other things -- and is still overwhelmingly popular among members of his party even now that the bodies are starting to pile up at the hands of people who are also identifying as conservatives and is still pitching demonstrably dangerous rhetoric to huge, cheering crowds of conservatives, if they're still saying "yep, I'm with them" after all that, then what else are we to make of their continued membership in that group other than, at the very least, being on some level accepting of what's happening?

[smjjames]

Well, labeling everyone who's not a liberal as the most extreme possible thing (shooting up synagogues = nazi, and 40% of the nation has now been tarred with that brush) isn't the way to win people over. I feel that hardcore liberals have almost as much revulsion for Moderates as they have for Conservatives, too: a very "with us or against us" sort of thing. Openly despising > 50% of the population isn't generally a good way to consistently win elections.

*points at 2016* and Trump in general. Welcome to (political) tribalism. While you do have a point, it's something that works enormously well for Trump.

[smjjames]

Race has nothing to do with black people being armed robbers though. Trump has been de-humanizing critics and various other groups since at least his candidacy announcement, and that has enabled (if not encouraged) more troubled members of the conservative movement to act on that.

Not all conservatives are going to take him at his word,  but the fact that the rest of the Republican Party are not calling him out on his frankly dangerous rhetoric makes them complicit in what he says and by extension what it causes to happen.

Fakeedit: and by Republican Party I mean national politicians; senators, representatives, etc.

Yep. This. If someone's actively choosing to be part of an ideology currently controlled by a man who's called his political opponents traitors and foreign immigrants criminal rapist drug dealers (etc.), advocated violence against the media ("I'll pay fees", remember?) and equivocated neo-Nazis with the people protesting them among many other things -- and is still overwhelmingly popular among members of his party even now that the bodies are starting to pile up at the hands of people who are also identifying as conservatives and is still pitching demonstrably dangerous rhetoric to huge, cheering crowds of conservatives, if they're still saying "yep, I'm with them" after all that, then what else are we to make of their continued membership in that group other than, at the very least, being on some level accepting of what's happening?

40% of the population isn't neccesarily wholly and fully with Trump, but conservative leaders are complict in the state of how things got to where they are today.

[Reelya]

Point in contention: Trump didn't openly despise > 50% of the population. Trump courted the white vote, because whites are the majority.

The whole "get rid of cis/straight/white/male" thing is self-defeating. Because the vast majority of people are cis, most people are straight, a majority is white, and about half the people are male. You really want to kick these sort of new pundits who want to do the whole reverse-prejudice thing out of the whole liberal-minded party, because defaming > 50% of the public as trash isn't the winning strategy.

[smjjames]

Point in contention: Trump didn't openly despise > 50% of the population. Trump courted the white vote, because whites are the majority.

The whole "get rid of straight/white/male" thing is self-defeating. Because most people are straight, the majority is white, and half the people will almost always be male. You really want to kick these sort of new pundits who want to do the whole reverse-prejudice thing out of the whole liberal-minded party, because defaming > 50% of the public as trash isn't the winning strategy.

He despised the OTHER ~half of the population, that's what. It wouldn't work in all but the bluest/reddest House districts, certainly wouldn't work for Gubernational and Senate races since you still have to court some independent and opposing party votes, but somehow Trump just barely made it work for Presidential election. Granted, he was facing a candidate who was just about as polarizing as he was and who campaigned terribly despite supreme qualifications.

And theres Bolsonaro, but then, Brazil isn't the US.

[Trekkin]

40% of the population isn't neccesarily wholly and fully with Trump, but conservative leaders are complict in the state of how things got to where they are today.

That's true, but 89% of them still broadly approve of the job he's doing, rhetoric and all.

I know it seems hyperbolic of me to wonder whether we can really call the conservative movement as a whole "not genocidal" with things as they stand, but that's kind of how genocide works. You don't need every member of the movement to enthusiastically embrace it or even most of them, and you only need a tiny minority willing to carry it out. You just need enough people to be broadly okay with everything that's happening that it can become status quo, because the death camps are always somewhere else unless you're running them or imprisoned in them, and it's always someone else being rounded up until it's too late to object, and we can always worry about it later until it's too late to change anything.

So yeah, I'm going to keep asking how sure we are that conservatives as a whole aren't headed to where the Nazis used to be, not because I think they're that bad individually but because it's scarily easy to passively get there and never realize it, one cheer at a time.

Now's our best chance to stop the worst impulses of humanity before they start. Forgive me for suggesting we take it.

[hector13]

I don’t think anyone sensible is saying to get rid of cis white males, they’re saying choose candidates that actually represent more than cis white males. Gay and trans and minorities -religious and ethnic - and women because they all have different experiences and thus can offer different, perhaps unique view points to the problems society faces.

PPE: just saw Trump’s anti-immigrant ad. Holy fuck, that exemplifies everything I just said about his dangerous rhetoric. 7k people invading the country and are all criminals like this one guy who killed people and looks like them only the Republicans can make it stop.

He’s basically asking the Democrats to label them racists.

[Reelya]

The difference is that "liberals" make up 22% of the population vs 40% for Conservatives. Vilifying Liberals is not vilifying "half the population" in the same sense that vilifying Conservatives is. Since the numbers are different, it's a bad strategy to just echo back the same hostility with a broad-brush.

Middle-America is in fact more critical for the Democrats than it is for the Republicans. Trump out-maneuvered you guys there are just trying to pretend he didn't and that there's no need to win back anyone who voted for him is bullshit because they're all rednecks isn't a great strategy.

[WealthyRadish]

You mean ~25% of the population if the criteria are white and male, right? I'm not making a point, just clarifying.

It's one thing to say that individuals continuing to support Cheez Supreme are willing or oblivious bedfellows with fascists, but this is independent of whatever is going on with the Democrats. I also think MSH would object a bit to being considered a "hardcore liberal" (I would).

[hector13]

What are they supposed to do though? Trump is encouraging actual violence against his opponents, which is basically everyone who doesn’t absolutely agree with him. There’s only so much you can do when what he says and does gets people killed.