if reaching out means being a fucknugget, well, I guess that's me, then...

[tielan]

You know, I understand the anger. People have suffered a lot, and it's not just the Trumpists who are angry.

A Tea Party friend of mine (yes, I have friends who are conservative USians) once sneered at the idea that America should take the higher ground on War in Iraq because of the opportunity/strength it had.

And, out of the ashes of Iraq and Afghanistan rises DAESH.

A lesbian friend of mine once said that while she advocated for gay marriage, all it would do for her was give her relationship legitimacy. Her joy was her own, her satisfaction in her life was her own, and the people who'd rejected her would continue to reject her and hurt her, while the people who accepted her and her partner, legal or not, would continue to love her.

In short, the law closes the legal loophole, but it doesn't heal the wound.

I guess that's what I'm seeing on the liberal side here. The woundedness, the righteous anger, justifies burning the ground and sowing it with salt. There is no halfway. There is no mediation. There's only destroying the other side with anything and everything they have in them. Laws would close the loophole, but nothing heals the wound.

And to imagine the other side has more reasons than just 'I'm a racist, sexist redneck from a rural area' is unacceptable.

I guess I posted the article because I figured, sure, Trump supporters are all that, too, but that kind of mentality - that blindness and stubbornness and cruelty and stupidity - it doesn't happen in a vacuum. Which is what I felt the author of the article I originally posted was trying to say.

It's hard to think through the sting, though. I admit, I had a few moments where I saw red after being told I'm an idiot for not even having a different opinion, but for just adding depth to the matter. But what can I do? Nothing more than anyone can do: live your life, own your own opinions, deal with the fallout.

I have few friends who'd rise up to defend me, I think; they have their own concerns to attend.

Comments

[beatrice_otter]

Exactly.

We've reached the point where large segments of America are at "sow the ground with salt/scorched earth" levels of vitriol. I want Clinton to win, but I also have my eye on the future: where do we go from here? Scorched earth leaves very few options for going forward in any kind of productive way.

[tielan]

where do we go from here?

I guess it's like the Republican Congress, then: if we can't make progress our way, we won't make progress.

[monanotlisa]

Unfortunately, US-American politics and people don't lend themselves to nuance; there's a hundred reasons. For one, the days of (at least more) platform-based campaigns are long gone; it's all persons and personality now...and that always means a heightening of emotion versus reason. And emotions, as you say, run far too high.

The "ignorant folks in flyover country" rhetoric is grating, though thankfully it's not common among my friends, online or offline. Still, even among them I wish more of them cracked a book on class, culture, or history sometimes and tried to gain a better understanding of what's happening.

Speaking of, I know you have your own country to think about, and certainly no one outside this one needs to be well-versed in the details of James Edward Oglethorpe's life, but I'm finding this non-fiction book on class in the US enormously illuminating:

http://www.nancyisenberg.com/white-trash/

[tielan]

The "ignorant folks in flyover country" rhetoric is grating

It's interesting; in the hashtags, a bunch of people came from there and indicated the point the article was making. While at least one person said they came from there, and her family rejected her in a brutal and vicious fashion, and now she's supposed to think that their circumstances makes it okay?

To which my answer is "of course it's not okay; but enlightenment isn't a case of being born with the right attitude, like nationality - luck of the draw: you're going to be a forward-thinking person - it's a function of the world we're shown, the experiences we have, and the narratives we tell in the life we live."

I just met up with a friend of mine for coffee - American, from a white rural area, now married to an Australian and living in Sydney - and discussed this with her, and she said "Look, these people think they're the worst off in society. They look at their lives and think it's crappy and they deserve more. They don't see the privilege they have - they can't; because their parents didn't have to climb over the bodies of the non-whites and the women and the liberal bleeding hearts to get what they wanted, so why should they? And no, that's not right and I utterly reject that, but it's what they're taught, and if they're not willing to learn or grow or get out and see more of the world, then there's little that will change them. They'll keep think that the world owes them more than the immigrant and the homosexual, and being angry that they don't have it."

I looked at the link, and while it certainly looks interesting, I'm not sure I'm willing to order it in. :) But thanks for the rec.

Australia's social problems are both similar and different to the USian ones. For instance, we're much younger, our nationalism sings a different tune, and while we have the same issue of racism cropping up - Indigenous Australian treatment by the system still completely and utterly sucks - our society is also more urban, less rural, and our population is a fraction of America's.

And we don't have guns. It takes everything down a step.