> One is almost forced to wonder if "hating" half of your country is part of the issue.
I agree. It's the first time I've ever had these thoughts and feelings, and it's not obvious how justified my hatred is.
I agree. It's the first time I've ever had these thoughts and feelings, and it's not obvious how justified my hatred is.
I think people need to start asking in at least some good faith why so many people voted for this. If your answer really is that they're just racist and stupid... then I would encourage you to consider whether your opinion is more informed from social media and news than meeting actual people.
I mean... Yes? But there's a dynamic that's really hard to get past which is --
1. I do not actually think that half the country is racist and stupid, but most of my political interactions are unfortunately not with real people, they are with the media, a necessity if you want to stay informed, and if I want to hear the actual thoughts of the leaders of our country, it's not going to give me good impressions.
2. Many of the actual people in my life who are conservative have become MAGA-pilled, and do talk the same way folks do online. I'm a humanist, I empathize deep down with the nature of humans, and the death of small town / manufacturing America, etc. but I will say that I think that over time the lines between online and offline are blurring. Recently spent time with people I've known along time in meat space who talked about how smart and informed they were for knowing the "truth" about vaccines, how stupid the other side was for being in a ideological bubble. How terrible it was that 2 year olds were going to school and coming back Trans. And just in general the kind of anti-lib discourse that you would find on Twitter.
Sadly I think this idea that the extreme polarization of our country is limited to online discourse is becoming less and less true over time.
I wonder where all of these Trump voters get their opinion informed from. Are Trump voters known for meeting actual people and learning from them?
as far as meeting "actual people"-- yes, there are definitely people who are anti-gay anti-trans anti-women pro-war pro-hate pro-"america" and they are pretty gross, authoritarian, and fascist-leaning, and to me that's not what america is about.
saying that everyone's fear is made up is just coming from a place where white well-off christian people just don't see problems and that's pretty sad
I don't believe I said anything like that, and none of those descriptors apply to me, but thanks for making assumptions about me!
That isn't to say that Democrat voters are perfect, either. There's certainly a significant undercurrent of left-wing media that is built on fear and hatred - one only need to see how well conditioned women are nowadays to believe that every man they see wants to harm/rape them or how men spending time around children are presumed pedophiles - but it's not quite as prevalent and certainly not as targeted at political affiliation.
It's completely fair to point out that Democrats often fail to address issues facing average people, or when they do, it's done poorly. That's sad, and it needs to change. However, where I get confused is how Republican policy almost universally harms the average person, and yet they get a free pass, even to the degree that I've seen a large cohort of people blame the Democrats for failing to save them from a bad Republican policy/action without passing any of the blame to the Republicans that passed it (e.g., tariffs, DOGE cuts, etc.).
It pains me to see the anemic Democrat response to some of the batshit insane stuff the Republicans do (especially now), but I fear it's largely because the Democratic party is just as much owned and operated by moneyed interests. While the Republicans are stabbing us to death, the best we can hope from the Democrats is to put down the knife without providing any bandages.
If you are driven to hate this administration, that is a good thing. They are evil, the rebirth of the exact evil identified in the Nazis: a total lack of empathy. Indeed, they claim empathy -- the most essential human emotion -- is a sin.
When you find burning hatred clouding your judgment, sit in it and know that your anger will protect you from injustice (that is the purpose of the emotion). Remind yourself that hate and anger cannot yield creation, and creation is the light of god that suffuses all things. Destruction is a terrible yet inevitable end that should only be induced to protect the weak and ameliorate suffering, so be just and resolute when you seek it.
It is ok to hate Neonazis, to say the least.
An angry, hateful America is what led to this. How is that preventing injustice exactly?
It's an emotion whose healthy expression is essential to functioning as a human being. I've had a lot of trauma therapy/done a lot of personal work in that domain and healthy angering is one of the hardest things I've had to learn.
Bad things will happen, but when we are connected with ourselves and have empathy for the people around us, anger is a vital indicator that enables effective proactive behavior.
I think an issue with this reasoning is that "protect the weak" and "be just" are things that many people (admittedly not all) from "both sides" _do_ want to do, and that reality is often not so straightforward, involving tradeoffs that cannot be objectively evaluated as "just".
Personally I believe that a lot of disagreements in this realm come down to misunderstanding, in which case it's very sad to have to resort to destruction, when better communication and efforts to work together could create agreement or at least compromise. Admittedly resolving these misunderstandings is really hard, and I think a lot of us don't have the skills or tools to do so in a reasonable amount of time.
Your reticence and observations are astute.
For context, I was raised in a mormon home and have spent most of my life as a scientifically-minded atheist, which makes my recent connection with well-documented spiritual qualia remarkable to me.