Can you explain how you think a vote for Trump was in your best interest? I’m genuinely curious and interested in this perspective.
1. Don't want war with Russia. Trump's presidency was relatively low-war. He's also expressed a great desire to end the Ukraine conflict. If the Donbas and Crimea is the price of avoiding Nuclear war, I'm on board. The moment that switched me to deciding on Trump was when Dick Cheney endorsed Kamala.
2. Protecting kids. I don't think kids can consent to medical gender transition. It amounts to state sanctioned child abuse. I have kids. Once you're 18 go ahead do what you want.
3. Illegal immigration. I lived in South America for 4 years. My wife is Colombian, we just moved back to the States. Legally. It was a long and arduous process to come in legally. That should be made easier (something Musk at least has espoused) and coming in illegally should be made harder. I know quite a few illegal immigrants and they are being abused by the urban elite to build their summer homes. They're not living a better life and they're stuck here.
4. Federal bureaucracy. The federal bureaucracy has become a parasite on our progress. Just look at what's happening with SpaceX. This ties in with the immigration thing. The problems we have with immigration are actually that the lazy and corrupt bureaucracy takes years to process something that should take 2 hours. (and does! even in "third world" countries like Colombia)
5. Trust. Everyone who hates Trump likes to talk about how much he makes stuff up. But he's authentic. Meaning he rarely reads from a script. He talks off the cuff. He's not controlled. I'm tired of having politicians that basically hate half the country and think we're dumb because we don't like to listen to their corpo-bureaucrat speeches
I understand that. I wouldn't want that either. Simultaneously, I'm terrified for what the implications are for Ukrainian people. I also worry what this will mean in 10 years if Russia is emboldened once again to push West. Taking Crimea was too easy, and while Ukraine might be a huge and expensive undertaking, the rewards are enormous. I worry it will leave leadership with the notion that they can in fact invade and take countries, or part of them, without catastrophic consequences. Trump doesn't care about this... But what if he should?
2. Protecting kids.
This one is delicate, but I appreciate the sentiment. I tend to feel as though the most dangerous threats to our children are ever-present and most often closer to our homes than to political offices, but as a parent, I can't argue with the need to take children's health and well-being seriously and approach their care with rigorous, evidence-based care. Though I'm very much in favour of allowing people to choose how they'd like to identify (even if that means altering their hormones and physiology), I'm not convinced that this should occur before or during puberty.
For what it's worth, the data I've seen suggests that these treatment protocols and procedures are actually quite rare.
3. Illegal immigration.
This part confuses me because a democrat was responsible for the most deportations in history (https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/obamas-deportation-policy-nu...). The party is capable of it. The rhetoric was that they're soft on it, but the data suggests otherwise. I agree it needs to stop, though. Immigrants are necessary and their labour enriches the country. Same with Canada. The key is having it be safe, legal, and well-documented.
I worry a lot about the proposed deportations. That would be awful for the deported people most of all, but even for Americans. I don't see how it can be accomplished logistically, both in terms of executing on the deportations and filling enormous labour gaps.
4. Federal bureaucracy.
This is a problem here, too. The trick is eliminating it where it isn't helpful, because sometimes it really does help. Lately I wish we had governments which competed internally by trying to solve the same problems multiple ways, then selecting the solutions which work best. You'd get the right levels of bureaucracy I think, or at least better levels. What we need is to ensure we serve people efficiently without causing undue harm or external problems. I think this requires constant review and critique, which isn't possible without some degree of internal competition.
I worry that Trump is a "throw the baby out with the bath water" type of politician in this regard. I hope I'm wrong. Rules tend to exist for good reason, even if they may have been implemented poorly. Take safety at work for example. Each rule is there because someone (one or many) was injured or died that way, and that rule or guideline didn't exist at the time. It may seem inconvenient at the time but it's a hell of a lot better than your work buddy getting crushed because no one did a safety check on the forklift that morning.
5. Trust. Everyone who hates Trump likes to talk about how much he makes stuff up. But he's authentic. ... He's not controlled
I've got my tin foil hat on, but I have serious suspicions about Trump's trustworthiness and whether or not he's controlled.
I know people harp on the whole "convicted felon" thing. Frankly I don't care if someone is a felon. They should be able to vote, run for office, whatever. I've known and seen enough convicted felons throughout my life who weren't bad people to know that this title doesn't mean a specific thing about people other than that they were charged with committing a certain type of crime.
Yet Trump was convicted for his dishonesty. Not just dishonesty, but layers upon layers of it. And he lied without hesitation, shame, or remorse. It was premeditated, intentional, and purposefully hidden for a long time. He doesn't strike me as someone I can trust in the slightest. He may say what he wants to say, but he doesn't do so from a place of authenticity and trust in my opinion. So, I point to him being a convicted felon only because contextually it seems quite important.
Overall I get where you're coming from. The bottom line is that the democrats were offering a totally lacklustre platform. You cannot campaign based on "orange man is bad". You need real substance. No one is moved by more of the same, not being the bogey man, etc. They did an astoundingly bad job at capturing anyone's imagination or hopes or desires.
Remember how Obama's campaign managed to unify a bit? That's arguably what they needed to win this time around. I don't think Kamala Harris would have been a bad pick, but I get why she didn't inspire many people. I really do.
Thanks for the answers. This stuff is very helpful. I hope it doesn't seem like I was trying to tear your answers apart at all. They're all totally valid, and proof that the notion that Trump voters don't think about things is nonsense. I think people tell themselves this because they 1. live in bubbles 2. lack imagination and 3. lack a lot of compassion for their country mates. I think this goes both ways on the political spectrum, but it somewhat ironic on the blue side. The democrats need a radical shift in how they understand and care about the people who supported Trump.
It's so strange because in my lifetime, they offered a platform that I think would have captured those same voters. And I think the party was objectively better back then. They've fallen pretty far, clearly. Canada has similar parties, insanely disconnected from the people they once resonated with. Things are going to shake up here too, I think.
Just will note we obviously disagree about some fundamental points, but we would also be buddies IRL.
And that's awesome. I read an article yesterday on the front page of the NY Times that basically amounted to "Trump supporters are nazis". There's a lot of the same vibes here on HN
But not in your comment :)
Point 1: you're irrational. Good to know.
> 2. Protecting kids. I don't think kids can consent to medical gender transition. It amounts to state sanctioned child abuse. I have kids. Once you're 18 go ahead do what you want.
Sounds like an excuse you make because you don't like the concept. Are you against all kind of medical interventions on kids, or only the ones you don't feel comfortable with? Do you tell kids with cancer to wait until they are 18 before they take their own decision?
> I'm tired of having politicians that basically hate half the country and think we're dumb because we don't like to listen to their corpo-bureaucrat speeches
And instead you vote for a politician who ignores all the country and cares only about himself.
Gender dysphoria is not the same as cancer. We don't let kids get tattoos, buy a beer, have sex, get married until a certain age, but somehow we let them medically transition at 6 years old? Have you ever met a 6 year old? And yes it's happening at that age at alarming rates [1]
[1] https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/usa-tran...
Even if we just accept the hypothesis that Dick Cheney was responsible for every single death in the Iraq War -- and we simply accept the highest of all available estimates (because hey, why not?) for the total excess deaths (1,033,000 -- that of the ORB survey, as you already know from your research) -- would you care to explain how this figure became literally "millions", meaning "2 million or higher" (the usual meaning of "millions") in your universe, per what you just said above?
And more to the point -- the simple fact is, at the time Trump went along with Cheney's slaughterfest just like everybody else:
I understand since Cheney hates Trump he gets a pass. Not in my book.
I just find it strange that you hold up Cheney as an icon of evil (which I suppose he is), to such an extent that it was his endorsement of Kamala that persuade you to switch to Trump, as if Trump was some kind of anti-Cheney -- when in fact, at the time, Trump supported the exact same awful, evil stuff that Cheney did.
I understand since Cheney hates Trump he gets a pass.
You misunderstand. Very obviously no one is suggesting that.
You're literally saying Trump is just as bad as Cheney because he said "I guess" we should invade Iraq in 2003.
Cheney actually invaded Iraq. And the Trump presidency was the most peaceful this century.
There's a difference between actions and words. Pretty much every argument against Trump is just a list of random stuff he's said.
Meanwhile Cheney actually murders x number of people and that's equivalent to Trump opening his mouth.
Indicating his clear, unequivocal support.
Again, he just says words and you equate that to actually killing x number of people.
TDS is a real thing.
No, it's equivalent to being just another windbag politician who, depending on which way the wind blows, and what he thinks his audience wants to hear, will happily support all the big, bad evil things that you pretend he is opposed to. And not only that, he'll double down and say: "I wish we had finished the job the first time."
TDS is a real thing
Thermal desorption spectroscopy?
I've given a line by line reasoning of why I voted Trump this year and all you can come up with is "orange man bad, half America stupid".
I am pretty sure that many bad people voted for Trump. It wouldn't be rational to vote for Harris just because one particular person endorsed Trump. I don't actually think you're irrational, just wanted to note that you apparently felt like you needed an excuse to justify your voting for Trump.
> We don't let kids get tattoos, buy a beer, have sex, get married until a certain age, but somehow we let them medically transition at 6 years old?
You specifically said "18 years old". And now that it is convenient for you, you bring that limit down to 6 years old?
In many countries in the world it's perfectly normal to get tattoos, buy beers and have sex before 18 years old.
My solace is I know yours is a fringe position. Though increasingly less so.
I don't actually have an opinion on the subject in general (it's not a question where I vote). I just disagreed with what you wrote. Let me quote it again and explain:
> 2. Protecting kids. I don't think kids can consent to medical gender transition. It amounts to state sanctioned child abuse. I have kids. Once you're 18 go ahead do what you want.
You say here that medical gender transition should be forbidden before 18, don't you? It includes 6, but it also includes 17. When I said I disagreed with you, you said "how can you imagine doing that to a 6 years old kid?". You came up with that number all on your own. I was answering to your comment that implied "anything below 18".
I did misread the part about sex, tattoos and beer. Doesn't change the fact that you said (and I quote, third time):
> 2. Protecting kids. I don't think kids can consent to medical gender transition. It amounts to state sanctioned child abuse. I have kids. Once you're 18 go ahead do what you want.
Which implies "they can do it once they are 18, not before". When I disagreed with that, you gave an example of 6 year olds, which is very different from 18, isn't it?
> There needs to be a line somewhere.
Now maybe you are misreading me. I don't say that there is no regulation needed. I am just saying that I disagree with the "they abuse kids younger than 18 and Trump will save them" rhetoric.
I really don't know what we're arguing about here.
Do you understand that?
No. Your point was that Trump will protect kids and non-Trump-until-now does not, which is implied by the fact that you wrote it in a list of reasons that made you vote for Trump. Because apparently, in your head, if there is not an age written in a law, it means that everybody tries to abuse kids and nobody tries to do what's best for them in good faith.
At this point I am not sure if you can understand the concept I am going to introduce, but let me try: do you realise that people can't be abused even after they turn 18 (or 16, or 15, or 21, or many other numbers)? The root problem is to understand when doing this medical intervention is helping vs when it is "abusive" (or maybe we could say "not helping" and not pretend that people who agree with their kid doing this and their doctors and whoever is involved are necessarily criminals). Age is not everything. It's actually a pretty shitty metric, but I guess you have to go with what you can comprehend.
> I don't think kids can consent to medical gender transition. It amounts to state sanctioned child abuse. I have kids. Once you're 18 go ahead do what you want.
I really don't care about the 6. My point about the 6 was that when I disagreed with 18, they went down to 6 (presumably because that's easier to defend). But that is just diverting my point. My point was about the 18, and I kept coming back to the 18. They kept coming back to 6, that's right, but as a way to redirect the discussion (I started it, it's my right to say where I was going, not theirs).
It seems like you view medical sex transitions as similar importance to cancer treatment? I think that is the disagreement the other person has.
Also, it's basically abusive- telling parents that if they don't transition their kids, they will be responsible for their deaths.
Transitioning a kid doesn't solve the suicide problem. Many of them go on to commit suicide at even higher rates than other groups of people.
Who says there is no line? All I said was that I disagreed with your line being 18 of age. I do understand your concern, really. I am just saying that maybe, just maybe, it is more complicated than what you think from your position where you are apparently not confronted to it. You call it "protecting kids", but what you want is to enforce whatever makes you feel good from your detached position (which in this case is "wait until 18"). What if a 16 years old told you that you are abusive by preventing them from doing it? Would you say "shut up, you're not 18 you don't know if I'm abusing you or not"? I'm sure you believe that "it's better than nothing, if we don't know let's put the line at 18". But that's all it is: a belief. And what I believe is that it is actually hard to know what's best.
> Transitioning a kid doesn't solve the suicide problem. Many of them go on to commit suicide at even higher rates than other groups of people.
Again, what you say here has a logic problem. Do you have actual numbers that say "it's overall better for those kids when we don't transition them than when we do"? What you say here is "well it does not prevent all problems, so it sucks", but you ignore that your solution (waiting until 18) would not solve all problems either.
That's my whole point: you don't know (I don't know either), and it is a hard problem. You are just projecting your uninformed ideas to justify why you voted for Trump. I don't care what Trump or the democrats claim: what I would want for those kids is actual studies to try to understand what's best for them (and it probably exists). And really, everybody wants to protect kids. Because you disagree with what others do does not mean at all that they try to hurt kids.
It's actually quite simple. This stuff shouldn't be allowed below a certain age.
If you think it should be 16 rather than 18, then just say that, rather than all these mental gymnastics.
And I think that you putting it as "I want to protect the kids, Trump wants to protect the kids, the democrats don't want to protect the kids" is dishonest.
But it feels like it's all too complicated for you to apprehend. Let me end this with: "you're right, 6 < 18, you're smart".
So you think kids at any age should be allowed to transition?
Why do you not simply state your position on it? Is it because it's reprehensible?
I keep doing it, but you don't understand it.
My position is that it is complex. It depends entirely on the situation. I don't care about putting a number in a law, I care about helping those kids. Sometimes it means allowing them to transition, sometimes not. Not based on the age, but based on the individual and their context. There is no easy way to decide, and mistakes will happen no matter what.
Saying "it should be forbidden before 18, but I could negotiate 16" is absolutely naive, not to say completely stupid. To me, on the one hand it shows that you are sensitive to this problem (which is a good thing). But on the other hand it shows that you completely fail to reason constructively about it.
There are actual 6 year olds being transitioned in California right now and that's OK as long as the "context" is right?
It's not complicated at all. It's state sanctioned child abuse. It should be stopped.
We will look back at this time as a dark period of human history.
At this point I genuinely wonder if you do it on purpose or if you genuinely don't understand.
It may be (or it may not be, I don't know) that transitioning at 6 is always a bad idea: the age is part of the context. "Part of" meaning that the context is made of other things.
> It's state sanctioned child abuse. It should be stopped.
I understand that you believe it, you keep repeating it. The fact is that if you can't understand the nuance between "It should not be forbidden before 18" and "It should be allowed for everyone below 18", then surely you don't have a clue about the context that would make it okay to transition someone.
People who genuinely believe they are the smartest because they can formulate their strong and uninformed opinions is admittedly a big problem these days.
The answer is yes, it is always a bad idea. Your fake nuance is just a veil for complete lack of respect for children. There is absolutely no reason you should transition a 6 year old kid. There is no context that exists for that kind of irreversible damage at such a young age.
They can't even consent to it, just like they can't consent to a whole host of other things.
> There is no context that exists for that kind of irreversible damage at such a young age.
At 6, it's not irreversible. Even according that the article you linked yourself, surgery almost never happens before 18, the exceptions being sometimes 17 or 16 (not 6).
Some things are done a 6 (or earlier), called "social transitioning" first, and this is not irreversible at all.
Good for them, we don't care. The US puts adulthood at 18 years old.
Isn't it actually 21 for alcohol in the US?
If only KH voters had been able to formulate their own top 5 reasons (excluding "because the other guy is Trump") for voting her in a similar, eloquent yet succinct manner.