If I had a nickel for every time I’ve seen a liberal say, “a trump supporter was confronted doing what THEY say is wrong and they don’t care!”…
Why is that?
Here’s my theory about a big part of it. It’s psychological.
In other words, it’s not a rational set of political views at play. It’s a lizard-brain hate and feat and ‘other’ and other emotions at play and words and arguments are just play-doh for them.
If they say what their ‘values’ are it’s because that fits the situation at the moment to win the argument.
But the bottom line is, their brains are ‘triggered’ into hating ‘something’ whatever that something is, and trump is ‘on their side’ whatever that means.
It’s not rational. But neither is Scientology and it has lots of members.
But this is why you aren’t going to ‘beat’ trump with rational arguments by telling his core supporters, ‘but you say you support x, and trump violated x, now repent!’
It doesn’t work when they say they support the military and you show them trump disrespecting the military.
It doesn’t work when they say they support decency toward women — just ask them to talk about poor Monica victimized by Bill Clinton — and you show them trump disrespects women.
And on and on and on.
There’s more to understand here and it’s past rational issues.
Some trump supporters are partly rational and can be reached. But many not so much.
But it’s good to understand that the ‘political’ views of his core supporters largely seem to be psychological in nature more than rational politics.
And you won’t have much more luck pointing out trump’s con man status than you will telling a committed Scientologist L. Ron Hubbard admitted he made Scientology to make a buck.
So what do we do?
I’m not trying to go beyond a boundary here and speak without a basis for any psychological specifics or offer guesses at solutions.
But finding common ground with people can help. One of the low-hanging fruits available to liberals is not to convince trump supporters they’re wrong, but that liberals are nice people.
They are SHOCKED when talked to nicely. Again and again they say ‘you just can’t talk to the left, they’re close-minded and hateful’ and if they do, how amazed and appreciative they are at a nice conversation — because part of the right-wing propaganda is to demonize the left, and that’s not that hard to debunk. It’s a start. And I think it does pave they way for them to listen more which they’re not used to when they realize the left might not be out to kill them and destroy America.
One part of that nice conversation is, find things to agree about — they exist. Almost everyone has SOME right-wing issue they’re on the liberal side of if they aren’t bought and paid for.
The key is to communicate the left is on their side. That’s the thing they just can’t agree with and maintain their right-wing indoctrination. It breaks the ice when debunked.
Normally, their politics is made up of little more than hate this hate that, hate those black rioters, hate those Muslim terrorists, hate those illegal immigrants getting benefits, hate this hate that.
They’re not used to a conversation where they are talking to a liberal about something they agree about, like how to get more people better healthcare or how to raise wages for all workers.