I implore you to stop being credulous before it's too late. Trump supporters deeply believe, and are not shy about saying, that anyone who stops Trump from achieving his political goals should be imprisoned or murdered.
I have a family member like this who I interact with almost every day. When Renee Good was fatally shot in the face three times this family member said that she deserved it for "getting in the way" and that if she just ignored them she wouldn't have been murdered. With all of the video recordings that have come out and been extensively disseminated, pretty much everyone knows that she moved out of the way and stopped, and it was Jonathan Ross who initiated the encounter. There is no way to "get out of the way" and "ignore them" when armed figures enact force on whims. But people like my family member believe that these armed figures direct violence towards those who are dangerous rather than simply directing violence to anybody who is close enough to hurt. You cannot reason with people like that because they retroactively justify any harm in order to protect their belief in the systems of enforcement. To them order and structure are more important and valuable than agency and safety or in some cases even life itself.
Conservatives all over have 1 disease. They are incapable of abstract empathy. Until it personally happens to them, or someone very very close to them, they are incapable of noticing injustices or hurts.
That isn't true -- they just prioritize a different set of hurts. To be similarly reductive, leftists seem to only be able to sympathize with criminals and poor decision makers -- not crime victims, or hard workers. The leftist perspective just ignores individual agency.
And right now many have posted “lock him up” on Twitter in response to this news. Many of these users probably couldn’t describe the federal reserve or share anything at all about Powell. Their cult zealotry continues.
If citing the behavior of the most rabbid supporters is allowed (because that's who shows up to campaign rallies), then it's not hard to find an equivalent on the left. /r/all is full of people wanting various people in the epstein files, including trump, to be locked up on spurious associations.
Is there some well of non-rabid Trump supporters that I'm not aware of? I'm always open to the idea that I'm in a bubble, but my experience is that even the least rabid Trump supporters are completely unwilling to criticize him or oppose something he wants. Did any Trump supporters, for example, criticize the prosecution of James Comey?
>Is there some well of non-rabid Trump supporters that I'm not aware of? I'm always open to the idea that I'm in a bubble, but my experience is that even the least rabid Trump supporters are completely unwilling to criticize him or oppose something he wants.
In the context of the previous comment, the "non-rabbid" (and probably median) supporter would be someone voting Trump because they think they trust him more on the economy/immigration or whatever. They might be indifferent to his claims that he'll lock up his political opponents, or think that they're actually guilty of something, but that's not the same as being "rabbid" (ie. showing up to rallies and chanting "lock her up").
There's a difference between supporters and "the people who, in a single election, voted for him". The former tend to be pretty rabid and unmovable. Some portion of the voters are less firm in their support.
Right! With a non-fascist politician, what you're describing would be extremely abnormal; the median Biden supporter, Obama supporter, or Bush supporter would routinely take positions their guy didn't agree with even though they supported him overall. But the range of Trump supporter opinions stretches only from "politely support everything he wants to do" to "be performatively mean about everything he wants to do".
>But the range of Trump supporter opinions stretches only from "politely support everything he wants to do" to "be performatively mean about everything he wants to do".
You're basing this off... what? You're missing the options of "I'm indifferent about this", or "I don't agree with him on this but still think he's better as a whole than the alternative".
I'm missing "I don't agree with him on this" because I don't hear Trump supporters say that. Trump doesn't allow them to - he thinks it's wrong for anyone to disagree with him and illegal for anyone to try and stop him from doing something he wants to do. Again, the whole context here is that Trump is trying to jail one of his own appointees for failing to enact his preferred monetary policy.
Locking people up for crimes is different from locking them up because they are your political opponents. I don't think I've seen people on the left yelling about locking Mitch McConnell up, for instance, even if he bears much responsibility for all of this.
I think that's the point. None could name a crime, and that didn't matter.
Meanwhile, 34 actual felony convictions, court finding misuse of millions in charity funds, an attempted coup, being found liable for sexual assault, SCOTUS having to formally place the president above the law to avoid prosecution... none of it even moved the needle for those same folks.
>I think that's the point. None could name a crime, and that didn't matter.
From a 10s skim on wikipedia:
>Some experts, officials, and members of Congress contended that Clinton's use of a private email system and a private server violated federal law, specifically 18 U.S. Code § 1924, regarding the unauthorized removal and retention of classified documents or materials, as well as State Department protocols and procedures, and regulations governing recordkeeping.
I'm not saying those allegations are true, but to claim "none could name a crime" suggests you didn't even try.
>Meanwhile, 34 actual felony convictions, court finding misuse of millions in charity funds, an attempted coup, being found liable for sexual assault, SCOTUS having to formally place the president above the law to avoid prosecution... none of it even moved the needle for those same folks.
It's clearly a rationalisation. Nobody is rabidly averse to private email servers and calling for prison for every politician who used a private email server. It's Hillary specifically.
Whereas everyone thinks that all child rapists should be in prison!
> It's clearly a rationalisation. Nobody is rabidly averse to private email servers and calling for prison for every politician who used a private email server. It's Hillary specifically.
I think the world would be a better place if politicians with access to critical information were held to suitable security requirements under threats of punishment for laxity.
This would absolutely also include Hesgeth inviting a journalist to an airstrike planning meeting on Signal.
And likewise Trump putting boxes full of state secrets in a disused bathroom and on a stage.
The Trump administration are clearly hypocrites, clearly trying to throw the book at everyone else while bemoaning even the slightest consequences for themselves. I wouldn't call for Clinton's arrest, but I will say that anywhere that would arrest her should've given a much more severe punishment to Trump.
Then again, I'm not even American so I genuinely don't actually care if y'all leak state secrets like a basketball net leaks water.
I know many. They’re good people. But they’re willing to be indifferent to violence if the perpetrators are not on their team. Everyone does this to some degree, but their tendency to align on messaging is much higher than e.g. folks going at each other about their pet war.
They put a great deal of effort into talking about political violence and implying that Democrats are a source of rioting and terrorism. The indifference is only to their own violence.
I consider January 6 to have falsified all research along these grounds. I acknowledge, sure, that virtually nobody wants to see gun battles in the street. But if you can talk yourself into believing that a mob sent to overturn the election and install the loser doesn't count as partisan violence, you can talk yourself into believing all kinds of catastrophes don't count.
>But if you can talk yourself into believing that a mob sent to overturn the election and install the loser doesn't count as partisan violence, you can talk yourself into believing all kinds of catastrophes don't count.
How's this different than say...
>polls show 99% (or whatever) of people are against crime
>voters elect a soft-on-crime politician, crime goes up
>"I consider the fact that the soft-on-crime politicians got elected to have falsified all research that people are against crime"
It's not different. If my city elected a mayor whose buddies committed a robbery 4 years ago, and his first act in office was to parole the robbers, I would be incandescently furious and definitely say that anyone who supports him is pro-crime.
> It is. What's more, such support is roughly the same across both parties, but both parties vastly overestimate the other side's support.
The difference between the two parties is that one elected a leader that agrees with that minority. This 2012 scene from The Newsroom outlines the difference:
This response is funny to me, because there’s been a massive drop in rightwing violence in the US since Trump was elected… but that’s because state-sponsored violence isn’t counted towards the statistics.
Pretty funny how there aren’t any more Proud Boy marches, yeah? Couldn’t be that they’re all getting paid six figure salaries to round up brown people at Kavanaugh stops…
But yes. Most left wing thought leaders count state-sponsored violence as political violence, and that often includes the death penalty.
>This response is funny to me, because there’s been a massive drop in rightwing violence in the US since Trump was elected… but that’s because state-sponsored violence isn’t counted towards the statistics.
>Pretty funny how there aren’t any more Proud Boy marches, yeah? Couldn’t be that they’re all getting paid six figure salaries to round up brown people at Kavanaugh stops…
Yes, that's how protests typically work. If things are going your way, you stop protesting. Nobody is protesting for gay marriage in California because they already won.
I don’t want to assume your politics, but saying that the group of people calling for racial purity and ethnic cleansing don’t find it necessary to protest anymore because things are going their way is very much not a good sign.
Fucking wild. You can't get more mainstream opinion than this guy. Trump regularly has phone calls on air with this person, he's isn't a random someone on TV. He is one of the administrations goto mouthpieces for communicating this administration's policy on the largest news station. They are workshoping/normalizing MURDERING UNDESIRABLES on their MAINSTREAM MEDIA by hosts that the president ROUTINELY USE TO BROADCAST HIS MESSAGE. My point is THEY ARE OK WITH KILLING PEOPLE THEY DON'T WANT. A meak 'my bad' doesn't mean shit.
And you waive it away. 'Bro said my bad dude, what more do you want? You think he shouldn't be an administration mouthpiece just because he wants extra-judicial killing? Cancel culture'. You are literally Martin Niemöller:
"First they came for the Communists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Communist"
...
He was literally you. He justified their calls for 'only killing Communists and only because they are bad and want to do bad things....' just like you.
So for fun I looked up your comment history and you aren't this dumb.
You are smart enough to know that homelessness is a HUGE political issue in the USA, the calling for death of homeless people is EXTREMELY political.
You are smart enough to know that FOX News is mainstream for the Right, now a few randos.
You are smart enough to know that reporters that maintain direct lines of communication with the President and routinely have interviews with him on their shows are considered mouthpieces for an administration, even if not directly employed by the administration.
Why are you posting in such bad faith? Is your position just indefensible so you have to resort to propaganda style communication and pretending you are dumb?
I don't think this addresses the main point of my question, though. Do you know any prominent Democrats, e.g., representatives, senators, or presidents, who have called for a Republican to be killed?
> "SEDITIOUS BEHAVIOR FROM TRAITORS!!!" Trump went on. "LOCK THEM UP???" He also called for the lawmakers' arrest and trial, adding in a separate post that it was "SEDITIOUS BEHAVIOR, punishable by DEATH."
So more broadly, calling for any sort of capital punishment is also "political violence"? Even if you're against capital punishment, comparing it to something like Charlie Kirk getting shot is disingenuous. When people think of "political violence" they're thinking of the former, not capital punishment. Lumping the two together is like "do you support criminals? No? Why do you support Nelson Mandela, a convicted criminal?"
> calling for any sort of capital punishment is also "political violence"?
No, of course not, but I'm sure you knew that, hence constructing this straw man so you can knock it over and claim victory.
However, and more to the actual point, calling for capital punishment strictly because you disagree with the factual words someone chose to write might reasonably be considered "political violence". Especially when the words in question clearly call out your potential political intentions and remind people that said intentions can be battled in a particular way.
Fox News, a major American media company, had one of their main personalities say that homeless people should just be killed by lethal injection on air. The desire for killing for random reasons is so mainstream to them that their media is comfortable stating out loud people they don't want/are undesirable should just be killed. Their media organs are workshopping/normalizing killing undesirables.
I don’t know if you truly mean that or you’re just being glib. But if you’re serious, I’d strongly urge you to get help or just talk to someone you know and trust; even if you disagree on a lot of things.
All of the Trump supporters I knew in meatspace reassured me that he would never do his insane tariffs, and then when he did insisted that it was a good idea and they never thought otherwise. So I no longer trust that they're telling me the truth about what they want or what they would support.
Maybe eight years ago. But in my experience, Trump supporters today have no line he can cross which will cause them to stop supporting him. They might claim to, but time after time, they just find a way to justify and double down.
If you genuinely believe that, then I have some hope that the very toxic messages I see daily in political social media, saying exactly what's being alleged here, aren't deeply held beliefs but a tiny fringe.
