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Comment by str33t_punk | Hacker News Reader

What a useless and unhelpful comment? This whole article was about figuring out why people voted for Trump so it doesn't happen again. Moral of the story was that comments like your's have drove a lot towards Trump. Some one makes a comment about why they support Trump, contributing to the article, and you immediately jump to an -ism that will probably push them farther towards that side. Do you not realize that you are part of the problem?

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How is it useless and unhelpful? I am pointing out that people voted for Trump because they lack basic empathy and understanding towards other people's real problems. I like recreational shooting and was an NRA member for two years, enough to develop a serious dislike of 2nd amendment obsessives. Prioritizing your hobby over women's rights is disgusting.

If some values (e.g. abortion rights) are more important than others (e.g. constitutional rights), then the supporters of the important values should be willing to compromise their positions on the less important ones in order to build common ground.

You can't force other people to find your values important. You can't twist human psychology so that 'empathy' constantly will overrule self-gain.

What you can do is compromise. If the democratic party were pro-guns, pro-rural development, and also pro-abortion then you'd be surprised to find how many people would stand with them.

> What you can do is compromise. If the democratic party were...

Unfortunately this is the core of the issue. That first sentence should really read "What the democratic party can do is compromise" for the second sentence to follow. As a voter in the United States you are personally forced to compromise. In order to choose the lesser of two evils you need a developed sense of empathy and morality, and based on the comments in the original article many people seem to be missing this.

Reform of the democratic/republican parties (someone as compromised and mentally unstable as Trump being elected is a serious republican issue) is an entirely different organizational problem that can only be done by party insiders.

And Conservatives would say the same thing! 'Liberals are prioritizing where people use the bathrooms over the real problem of islamic terrorism . Prioritizing pet issues over national security is disgusting!' Insulting people over whatever issues they decide to find important does nothing but drive them away from the issue you think they should support instead. Empathy and understanding need to be developed -- its like Respect, it is earned. While we hope people have these traits, unfortunately they don't. Insulting will reduce empathy. 'Why should I care about X? They are all assholes anyways. Fuck em'. And this is what happened with the election.

> And Conservatives would say the same thing! 'Liberals are prioritizing where people use the bathrooms over the real problem of islamic terrorism . Prioritizing pet issues over national security is disgusting!'

The difference is they would be wrong because violence against LGBT people is much more widespread than Islamic terrorism in the US. Racists and gay-bashers will literally use any issue in place of "Islamic terrorism" to denigrate gay and black rights and it is disgusting and they should absolutely be insulted and marginalized for it.

they'd also be wrong because liberals were the ones who finally got Osama bin Laden. Bill Clinton was also accused by Republicans of trying to distract from Monika Lewinski when he ordered an attack on bin Laden _before_ 9-11.

Competent people can do more than one thing at the same time.

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