Trump is out of control. He's destroying norms and institutions that have held this country together for centuries. He attacks people viciously while the conservatives and libertarians cheer him on. They laugh about it. They think it's awesome to make liberals cry. The night of the election, they were literally making fun of anyone who cried. Liberal tears, yadda yadda. He has infected these people with his venom, and now they viciously go after people they disagree with. They have attacked me in ways I've never attacked them. And then they're snowflakes if you dare to even approach their level of viciousness with mere words.
Because that is who they are. That is what they do. They are vicious people who cheer on war or care so much more about tax cuts and forcing women to give birth that even if they don't like war they just shrug it off and make the false equivalence that Dems are just as bad. They put forward policy prescriptions that aren't abstract thoughts; they're horrible actions that affect people's lives in horrible ways. When people say shit like that--tell us that they want our country to do horrible stuff--then being nice to them only enables them. It normalizes them. When they lie, and we say that's unconfirmed or that's questionable, we only enable them to lie more.
We need to call lies lies. We need to say that something horrible is horrible. When they say that "stealing" their money is horrible, they're full of shit. It's not theft, it's the price you pay to live in the greatest country on earth. And when you say you don't care about anything but getting a tax cut, you are literally saying FUCK YOU to all the people who will suffer because you cut the things that make us civilized, the things that keep old people from starving or freezing, that keep young people from being so hungry they can't learn. I have shown them how universal health care would save us money, they don't care. I have shown them that investing in infrastructure will save us money and bring jobs home, they don't care. I've shown them how having an educated populace makes us stronger and richer, they don't care. I've shown them that immigrants make us stronger, commit crime at lower rates, provide a workforce that Americans don't want to be in, they don't care. I've shown them that minorities do drugs at the same rate as whites but are about 8 times as likely to get busted for it... They. Don't. Care.
Even if you show them how supposed conservative goals, like debt reduction, can be better achieved through investing in people and infrastructure, they don't care. If a liberal thought of it, it must be wrong. I see liberals trying to bend over backward, like Obama did with O-care, with almost giving up chained CPI, and what did he get for it? Donald Trump spreading racist rumors about him not even being an American. He got more hatred from the right than any other Democratic President since FDR, despite the fact that he was the most moderate Democrat in modern history.
I've tried to show these things to them by being nice. When I was younger, I thought I could be persuasive with speech. What I learned is that if you win an argument with them, they get quite angry and go directly for the personal attacks and threats of physical harm. I've actually found that former conservatives with whom I used to argue vigorously were impressed that a liberal would stand up to them like that. Some of them, due to the Iraq war, now vote for Democrats. One of them is now a sober Buddhist who has thanked me for changing his life. We used to get in each other's faces over this shit. He said my willingness to stand up to his old self and the barrage he could throw (this is a very tough Biker/ mercenary stagehand friend--you know who you are) impressed him enough to consider what I said more carefully.
Now if you guys all want to play footsie with these accomplices to mass murderers and fraudsters and racists and child starvers, you go right ahead. But you're not going to get anywhere, just like I haven't. The only thing they care about is making liberals cry. Or making liberals mad. As long as they get their tax cuts, they don't give a fuck about anyone else. We're all lazy or stupid to them; there's no such thing as bad luck in their world. There's no racism to ruin the lives of minorities, just stupid minorities. There are no accidents that are beyond people's control, just lazy people who don't want to work. There's no bad luck, or lead in the water, or pesticides the EPA lets be used even though they're proven to make people stupid. There's literally nothing that ever happens in this world that you didn't bring on yourself.
They cheer for our
family business to fail, even though we are literally doing the thing they say liberals don't do. We make our community a better place. We work hard. We support our local farmers, serve healthy food that makes our people healthier. And what do we get for all this? We get ridiculed. I hear jokes about how much our place must suck, how we're doomed to fail... It's so sickeningly hypocritical and counterproductive.
They have no empathy. Their arguments are just a big pile of puke covered fallacies and vicious threats when they can no longer argue. But please, go right ahead and play nice. I can't wait to see the frustration that will result from trying to reason with anyone who would vote for Donny T or Roy Moore or any of the other piles of fat and hubris that pass themselves off as anything other than the hatemongers they are.
If any of you really think you can convince people to not support Trump by being nice to them, then go for it. I feel the same way about you being nice to them as you feel about me being mean.
I've lived through Nixon, Reagan, Bush, Bush II, and now this. I've seen a lot of bad shit happen, like Reagan joking about gay people dying of AIDS while he did nothing about it. Like W killing a million people and blowing trillions of dollars on a war of lies. Like Republicans cutting funds to even study gun violence, or not doing anything to protect children in school. Nobody ever stopped anything like that by being nice. There comes a time when you have to stand up and call this shit what it is: unacceptable. There comes a time when vicious thugs who promote deadly bullshit have to be called out and fought in the streets if necessary. Too many people hide from these things, hate the confrontation, don't want to get involved. If we're nice, then all the horrible shit gets swept under a rug instead of splayed out in the public square for everyone to see.
Read MLK's letters from the Birmingham jail. Realize what he realized: that the moderate afraid of confrontation because they prefer "peace" and "order" (for themselves, of course, but not for those suffering) over justice is the bigger problem. It's time to stand up to these people. Do it nicely, fine, whatever, but stop taking shit. Stand up for what you believe in. Do what you think will make the world better. You might think that what I'm doing doesn't help, fine, I think the same of you. But it's going to take all of us doing what we think is right to change anything, and it's going to take all of us attacking the worst of them head-on.
Now I'm exhausted. I'm old, in constant pain, and still doing my best to leave the world better than I found it. If you made it through this whole tirade, I thank you. Now get out there and get in someone's face that deserves it. Don't be scared. Stick your chin out. Let them take a swing. You'll love yourself in the morning for it.
