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There are a lot of bad tweets making the rounds on this, the day of Donald Trump’s more-or-less-official defeat. But the most infuriating one I’ve run across so far comes from political scientist Ian Bremmer:
Can’t we all just get along, he asks. No, we can’t.
It’s not just that Trump supporters have steadfastly refused to treat their opponents — us — with empathy or respect; indeed, many of them spent the past four years gloating about Trump’s victory in 2016 with a sadistic glee. I can’t count the number of times a MAGA-head has responded to my criticisms of Trump with some variant of “cry more.”
But the problem goes well beyond the fact that the typical Trump supporter can be a bit of a jerk sometimes. The problem is that they’ve devoted themselves to supporting a incompetent, inhumane, and deeply racist tinpot autocrat with a distinctly fascist sheen. They supported him when he tried to ban all Muslim’s from traveling to this country; they supported him when ICE began kidnapping babies en masse; they supported his attempts to destroy the affordable care act and rip insurance coverage from millions of the most vulnerable. They made excuses when Trump expressed sympathy for alt-right Nazis. They’ve defended his assault on democracy itself.
Make no mistake, had Trump won the election it would probably have been the last even somewhat democratic election in the United States for years if not decades to come.
Oh, and I almost forgot to mention that his fans cheered his absolute non-response to COVID, which has led to countless unnecessary deaths, perhaps as many as several hundred thousand before the pandemic runs its course. He’s encouraged his supporters to not wear masks, making it impossible to control the pandemic and putting each and every one of us at heightened risk of catching and possibly dying of the disease.
And did I mention that a significant portion of Trump’s supporters have their heads full of QAnon and other nonsense conspiracy theories and literally want to see everyone from Hillary Clinton to Chrissy Teigen executed for their imaginary crimes against humanity?
I could go on, and on, and on. But let me just move directly to my final point: We can’t offer our sympathies to Trump voters yet because, to put it bluntly, they’re still out there, and still our enemies. They will be doing everything they can to tear down the Biden administration; some will almost certainly do so with violence — and become MAGA heroes like the multiple murderer Kyle Rittenhouse. This is the reality we face right now. There’s nothing warm and fuzzy about it.
Trump supporters don’t deserve our sympathy, and they’re not going to get it, at least not from me .
Bremmer wasn’t the only one posting nonsense today:
Really? Really? One of my very first political memories is of Gerald Ford pardoning Richard Nixon. I was just a kid, but even then I knew there was something deeply wrong about Ford pardoning the guy who had just elevated him to president. And now some people want Biden to pardon the worst grifter to ever inhabit the White House? Please. If Trump wants a pardon, make him do it himself by working out some deal with Mike Pence. If Trump gets pardoned by Pence, it will leave a stain on the office of the presidency. But at least it won’t leave a stain on Biden as well.
What makes the talk of sympathy especially dangerous is that Biden has been talking the same way. We elected him to end Trump and Trumpism, and already he’s talking as if the deep political animosities we face today can be handwaved away. There are good reasons why we see these opponents as enemies. Winning the election feels good, but let’s not let that deceive us as to the nature of our foes or the enormity of the struggle ahead.
I said it in the open thread and I’ll say it again: centrism in many ways is just fascism that hides itself behind “respectability”. I’m sure that if Trump wasn’t as openly crude and his his racism/sexism/everything else behind dog whistles like the “good” politicians, they’d have been the first to vote for him.
Trump supporters need to be shamed, mocked and made uncomfortable, maybe, MAYBE, in six months we can ask, “y’all ready to act right?”
All of this. I’m getting so frustrated with these takes on Twitter. Even if the fans hadn’t built a brand around cruelty and assholishness, this is asking us to be fascist sympathizers. If you sympathize with a fascist, they’ve got their foot in the door.
I doubt Pence would pardon Trump because that would require Trump to resign and for a narcissist like him that would be like suicide. I just hope Biden doesn’t fall for this. I understand why Joe is talking the way he is, I just really wish he wouldn’t because it isn’t helping and is likely making things worse.
@Anonymous
Centrism is 99% of the time a disguise for fascism. They use the insipid both sides narrative and Golden mean fallacy to justify it all, and then pretend to be neutral when bad stuff happens. There is no neutral in a system of oppression, the pretense of neutrality is usually a sign of being complicit.
@clever4agirl
You’re far more optimistic than I am. QAnon will probably be with us for years now that it’s caught on and there are Q-believing legislators. We just need to shame and repudiate at every turn for the foreseeable future.
Reach out to them? We’ve tried that, and were mocked, jeered, beaten, and otherwise abused for our pains.
Let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.
@Naglfar
Fall for it? He was one of the people that started it.
@Anonymous
I don’t mean the rhetoric, I know that ship has sailed. What I meant (and poorly articulated) was that I hope he doesn’t pardon Trump. That would be a disaster.
As we sometimes say down here in Texas, “Hell to the no.”
And I’ll add a “Fuck that noise.”
Not exactly feeling charitable tonight as I still don’t trust some of these pendejos (giving you the death stare, Rethug governors) not to try to do an end run around our vote and send in *their* hand-picked Nazi electors.
While I’m glad Biden/Harris reached the 270+ mark, I’m not ready to exhale just yet.
@Naglfar
Centrism can be a cover for Ur-fascism, but it’s more good old fashioned privileged cowardice from the fear any investment in social justice will lead to accusations of “Socialism”. Not to excuse it, but one needs to be accurate to effectively refute it. The response should be, “Look at who voted you in office! They WANT you to be left, not ‘middle of the road’!”
As for the feelings of Trumplicans,hmmm….
I don’t really care, do U?
I’ve thought about this a lot over the past four years. I live in rural Idaho and I’m surrounded by Trump supporters. Loads of them. Going by the 2016 voting record 2 out of 3 adults I see every day voted for him.
Many of them aren’t horrible people and are in fact quite nice on the surface and some of them I have to deal with day-to-day. But of course they support Trump, who is a shitstain of a human being. They are willing to at least ignore or make excuses for his evil, if not outright endorse it.
I’m at a loss on how I should deal with this. So far I’ve been avoiding the subject of politics because I get really worked up and don’t want to burn bridges, but is that the right approach? Yeah, there’s super nasty aggressive Trump supporters out there but what about the ones who aren’t?
Notice how these calls for empathy and reaching across the aisle only ever go in one direction?
Fuck them
After the last 4 years they should consider themselves lucky only their feelings are being hurt.
@Kobun37
Idk your situation, so take this with a a grain of salt, but I’d say to make decisions with your own safety as top priority. They’re going to be mad, and potentially dangerous. It might be best if possible to avoid unnecessary dealings with them, especially given the anti-mask nature of many conservatives right now. Not sure how possible that is if you’re surrounded though.
@Moggie
I think it’s a function of their interpretation of their rights. They think that their right to freedom of speech means a right to people agreeing with them, and that’s the only outcome that will satisfy them. They’ve thought this since before the Civil War (e.g. the fugitive slave act) and still think it today. That extends to our emotions: they think they’re entitled to other people functioning as emotional affirmations.
Showing empathy to these guys doesn’t seem to work. They take it as endorsement.
The left‘s revenge will be to provide Trumpists access to healthcare, a better education for their children, fresher air, cleaner water, an economy thats better for almost everyone in it, and oh yeah, the slight possibility of a planet viable for human civilisation. I think it’s quite rich to ask us to hug them on top of all that.
There aren’t any. Not a single one. The reason is that conservatives hate the idea of a functional society and oppose anything that might help create or maintain one, which is kind of the polar opposite of my position.
Hard pass.
@Lainy
Unfuck them. They should remain on the “unfuckable” list for the remainder of their miserable lives. We don’t want them raising and indoctrinating children.
I am personally cutting ties and shaming the fuck out of any friends and family who rooted for that miserable Nazi. I thought I’d done that in 2016, but it seems I missed a few of them who were too shy to admit it.
@Naglfar
The whole Q-anon thing is just a cover for blatant Nazism. I’ve said this before but it bears repeating: the purpose of conspiracy theories is not to “feel part of something special” but to externalize blame for the failed policies of hegemonic groups of power. And that blame is externalize onto vulnerable groups as a means to drive the narrative that they are, somehow, sabotaging the system and need to be exterminated.
And I know I’m preaching to the choir, but yeah, Nazism will survive for decades to come thanks to this shit show. Trump made it mainstream and I am doubtful the democrats will prosecute Trump and his admin for crimes against humanity.
The Trumpies (a.k.a. fascists, don’t @ me) have been insisting for years that they feel no reason to empathize with or recognize the humanity of anyone remotely like me. I hope people will excuse my inclination to return the sentiment, regardless of what arch-neolib Joe Biden might say.
This Thanksgiving, a newly appointed lame duck will pardon a chicken, who the goes to live in Turkey.
These snowflakes need to fuck off.
No need to post them on here, but over the last couple of days I’ve seen a stream of responses from Trumpists who are literally baying for blood and threatening to kill people, over the election. But pwease be nice to the poor babies…
But as folks here have pointed out, even without that, there’s more than enough reason not to extend any sympathy to them whatsoever.
Nah. Fuck Trumpers
https://twitter.com/terinewyork/status/1324738648970010627?s=20
@anonymous, @naglfar : your talk of centrism as a disguise for fascism is only valid in America. And it’s more about both sideism really. But I do agree that thoses bothsideists fuckers are lightly disguised nazis.
(in France, the same kind of people are self-defined as right wing, “for the economy” guy ; I suspect the total disintegration of the Republican old ideal and its integration into the Democratic Party is the problem)
The same kind of fuckers are thoses who loudly insist that Trump represent neglected popular classes. Even outside of the fact it would not justify anything Trump did, it’s a lot more about him doing less badly than he should among them than anything.
It has become a tradition for Democrats to act in the spirit of collegiality and bipartisanship when in power and for the Republicans to laugh and behave like total shitbags when it’s their turn. When will this ever end?