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Comment by ifyoubuildit | Hacker News Reader

You can find unflattering footage of anybody's supporters.

I was never a Trump supporter, but as someone who has friends and family who are/were supporters, I resent the situation where people think like you do.

In fact, I think that attitude is part of why these people end up voting for Trump. They know what the cool kids on the blue team say about them when they aren't in the room (hell, even when they are in the room). Not to give all Trump supporters a pass, but they're not all (or even most) the cartoon character you have in mind.

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I had friends who became Trump supporters, and I unfriended them. I believe in morals. I believe in God. There's no way I can be friends with people who, at best, only pay lip service to those concepts while using them to further patent evil.

To be clear, I'm not really on the "blue team" either. But that's a team that hasn't been taken over by the worst of its fans, nor is it motivated by things such as xenophobia, willful and prideful ignorance, and malice.

I think the view that you are advocating for basically bends morality to accommodate the fact that so many people have to do and believe x. I'm a religious person. I don't believe in changing the criteria just to avoid an unsavory conclusion about people.

(To be clear, I mention the God thing not so much as a "holier than thou" thing, but in allusion to the fact that these differences cannot be bridged--I find it incredibly idiotic when people say things like "we need to talk to each other more to stop the division". Such a thing would only fuel the division, in my opinion.)

> I had friends who became Trump supporters, and I unfriended them. I believe in morals.

Ironically, the behavior you describe is immoral in my view. I also am a religious person, and I also don't believe in bending morals or that talk will heal all disagreements. However, with political opinions, the primary reason otherwise well intentioned people support bad things is that they don't understand that they are bad. Shunning someone actively makes that situation worse. Sure you can't win people over by arguments, but you can influence them gradually, and if they are your friends, you should want to do that for their own good.

I understand your perspective, but I do not think that they do not understand that the things are bad. From what I can tell from conversations those people, they, for the most part, just don't give a shit about what's good and bad.

Have you heard of the fundamental attribution error?

https://online.hbs.edu/blog/post/the-fundamental-attribution...

I think it's relevant here.

Added to "don't understand" and "dont care" is a third option: "don't agree", based on different upbringings and cultural values, some of which you or I would find abhorrent, because of our own upbringing and cultural values. But I think you should recognize that there is a good chance you'd have the same beliefs if you had the same life experience.

> But I think you should recognize that there is a good chance you'd have the same beliefs if you had the same life experience.

What's the point of this line of thinking? Ok, maybe we'd also join the Taliban if we grew up in orphanages in Pakistan after Russia invaded Afghanistan. So?

The thrust of your arguments here (the article and the life experience thing) seems to be to not hold anyone morally accountable for anything.

The point is to recognize the humans on the receiving end of your judgement. They aren't inherently bad people. There was a series of events that led them to where they are, just like you. They are capable of all the same things you are.

Once you recognize that these people are human, you have a chance at maybe effecting some kind of change. Looking at them as animals means you will never effect any positive change, and you'll probably contribute to an even worse us-against-them kind of environment.

Are you saying unfriend as in real life? I've only heard that term referring to social media, which I don't see as the same thing as real friendship.

Do you pay taxes to your government? There's a good chance you're funding some evil shit (among good things as well obviously).

Are you part of a church? Some of the people involved with that church probably do or have historically done some pretty evil shit.

I think life is messier than the picture that you're painting.

Yes, unfriended in real life.

Your examples are so many degrees removed that I do not think they are apposite. For example, people who supported Trump did so with full knowledge of his attitude towards immigrants, asylum seekers, etc., his rhetoric about building the wall (which many of his supporters cited specifically as their reason for supporting him), his "birtherism" re Obama, etc. Thus, they can much more strongly be said to affirmatively support those things than, for example, an American taxpayer whose money goes to help the Israeli government bulldoze Palestinian homes, or do any of a number of other foreign policy things that qualify as "evil shit".

So indirection washes away the evil? Is complacent support that much better than affirmative support?

Compare actively supporting "birtherism" to passively supporting blowing up brown kids with drones.

I think you're better off looking for common ground with the people around you, rather than putting up barriers based on which politician panders better to them.

Edit: Case in point: we disagree here. I don't hate you for it, I'd hope you don't hate me, and I think this is a fine conversation to have. The alternative is we could each say fuck you and go our separate ways, and the world is a slightly worse place for it.

Agreed, I did the same. I decided a couple years into his presidency that I'm fundamentally morally incompatible with people who could support such an abhorrent asshole. Not to mention their incredible propensity for confirmation bias, which is frankly reason enough on its own to remove them from my life. I lost a few acquaintances and one friend during the latter Trump years. I value my friends highly, but I regret nothing, and would happily do it again.

It is good to see someone else doesn't believe that we should start moving moral goalposts just because society starts sliding into depravity.

What would all these people objecting to this do if they were in a time and place where some real shit was going down? Lynchings, genocides, etc? I guess they'd stand by and be ok with it and rationalize those things.

That was my point in another part of this thread though: we are in a time and place where real shit is and has been going on.

Just look at some of the numbers for casualties in the middle east as a result of US adventures over there. And most of us are standing by and funding it.

Trump is distasteful. But castigating people who feel like he has something to offer them where nobody else does isn't doing anything to improve things, it's just further galvanizing them.

But the ones who aren't cartoons don't really do enough to counter the ones who do. Just a bunch of whataboutism and "anything to own the libs" mentality.

And honestly being supporters of a person instead of a policy or a position is itself a psychological failing.

And how many on the blue side are actively policing their own?

> And honestly being supporters of a person instead of a policy or a position is itself a psychological failing.

You'll get no argument from me on that front, but I think that's a pretty bipartisan failing.

Edit: although thinking about it more, it's the person who is going to get your pet agenda items enacted, so practically it probably works better.

> You'll get no argument from me on that front, but I think that's a pretty bipartisan failing.

Not really? Has there been any cult of personality like Trump's not only among Dems but also among Republicans, aside from him, in American politics within living memory? (awk phrasing, but I think you get the idea).

Maybe Reagan? But even then, it wasn't this level of incredibly personal devotion.

Think about it: we never used the terms "Obama supporter" or "Romney supporter" in 2012, or "Obama supporter" and "McCain supporter" in 2008. And people supporting those candidates didn't wave flags with candidate names on them, etc.

I guess I was thinking more in the sense that people follow parties instead of picking individual issues.

But on supporting people, I think Obama definitely had devoted fans. Bernie did as well. I don't think Romney or McCain had the kind of draw to build up a big fan base. A lot of candidates that come along just aren't very exciting to anybody but their corporate handlers.

It's not all that surprising that an Obama or Trump character gets a strong following. Both of them reached out to people who felt like nobody in power cared about them.

> I guess I was thinking more in the sense that people follow parties instead of picking individual issues.

Yeah, we definitely have a problem in this country with limited options. I think a sizeable majority likely want at least one or two other parties in the mix.

cool kids? unreal.

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