Simon_Jester wrote:The problem is that this kind of mindset is informed, it is fed by racism. It is a lot easier to deport a racist caricature than to inflict knowing harm on real human beings.
It is easier to want to deport the brown people who are simultaneously a bunch of lazy criminals AND taking your job by working harder than you for less money. It is harder to want to deport a mother with children.
It is easier to want to deport the people who want to impose sharia law on you and secretly plot in the mosque to murder all Americans before imposing sharia on them, than it is to deport someone who got the hell out of Syria because there are rampaging Islamic fundies in Syria.
People who do NOT have these racist brainbugs in their head, who have got their head on straight... They are quite capable of engaging with issues like immigration and terrorism. The thing they do not do is pretend that hurting ten million people who didn't do anything to them is the answer to a problem that may or may not even exist. Hurting ten million people who didn't do anything to you is pretty much the sole province of racists. And going by what Trump, and many of his most vocal supporters, want... that is the province where Trump and his core support live.
Yes it can be fed by racism. I'm sure for some people it might even be unintentional racism, to give people the benefit of the doubt, fed by fears created by news media presenting these one sided caricatures of people while being unwilling to show hardworking Latino immigrants being proud Americans or Syrian refugees being thankful they were given the chance to come to a country with far fewer murderous religious thugs then where they came from. The media tends to only show the criminals and welfare cases coming from South of the border and extremists and assholes using immigrants as a cover to follow the ways of Trump and assault women or do terrorist attacks.
The thing is there are people doing those things, there are Mexican criminal gangs, illegals coming here to game the system, refugees going around "grabbing women by the pussy", and planning or committing act of terrible terror. Just because something is a caricature doesn't mean its not based atleast partially on reality. To put an example there is the caricature of people in WV being toothless meth smoking prescription pain pill popping high school drop-outs. Are most people here that way, am I sitting here smoking a meth cigarette or something? Negatory good buddy. But that doesn't mean those sort of people don't exist and aren't a problem. They do exist and are very much a problem.
That reality of those caricatures is why atleast some people want immigration reform. Not because they even want to hurt people but because they don't want themselves and their own hurt. They don't want to hurt those 10 million people but they damn sure don't want to be hurt by them.
Though the thought that those 10 million illegals or whatever they be called meow didn't personally hurt them as a reason to not worry about them seems ood. The fact is they committed a crime by coming here illegally or overstaying their visas or whatever. We have laws in this country, laws that require law breakers to be punished regardless of whether or not they harmed people. Some people who don't even think all the illegals need kicked out think something should be done about the fact they broke laws, some acknowledgement, something that shows laws apply equally to everyone (unless you are rich and famous).
And even if the never hurt anyone personally their presence can hurt people financially. To use that tired ass line, they DO take jobs from some people, they do effect the economy. They hurt themselves by being undocumented, allow themselves to be take advantage of by modern day slave drivers who will pay them a pittance if even that, allow themselves to be abused and hurt because they can't get a decent job and won't go to the cops.
Put this way. Trump voters looked at this man, this man who has probably raped his interns and will surely rape his country, and decided to trust him. They looked at this man who has been a millionaire all his life and lives in big fancy towers in New York, and decided he's the one who will look out for the interests of poor people in rural America.
Clinton voters looked at Trump and went "Nuh-uh. No way."
Whose set of fear, and willingness to declare allegiance, makes more sense? Which is more rational?
You forgot to add that he hasn't paid federal income taxes in awhile and has never served the country either as a politician or in the military. But I digress. Trump voters looked at this man, this man who was hit with lies and exaggerations from the lame stream media for locker room comments and will surely be hit with more exaggerations about what job he will do, and decided to trust him. They looked at this man who was rich all his life and lived in fancy towers he built himself (though paid maybe sometimes unpaid workers) in New York city but still looked showed he will look at for the interests of poor people in rural America.
Trump voters at Clinton, a women plagued by scandals and corruption, stained with the blood of innocents, wearing the NASCAR sponsor patches of corporate interests, and with the future of every hardworking American in her hands to be strangled and went "Nuh-uh. No way Jose. And why does that J sound like an H, that not America!!!"
Both what you and I wrote are true.....from a certain point of view.
Both sides were willing to overlook or write off the failings of their chosen candidate. Hillary supporters had the email scandals, Benghazi, the Clinton foundation, the Fast and Furious gun walking bullshit, her talking down to rural people, and everything else that had conservative voters wetting themselves and conservative politicians getting a stiffy you could hang a tire on and said it was all overblown, all the fault of the media, lies or untruths while believing every little scary thing said about Trump by the same media. They did the exact same thing Trump supporters did.
Neither one of their sets of fear or willingness to declare allegiance makes sense, both are highly irrational based on emotions. Both sides were willing to overlook or minimize clear flaws in their chosen idol while only seeing the flaws of the opposition. Both sides were led like cows to the slaughter house by fear mongering and media bias.
Yeah. I don't disagree. The problem is, and has long been, that the people most easily recruited to vote for right-wing candidates think voting is normal. A lot of the people who would be recruited to vote for left-wing candidates (or, hell, anyone who isn't a right-winger) do not think voting is normal, for a variety of reasons.
One could argue its just the problem of age, Republicans tend to skew towards older while Democrats skew younger. Older people tend to take their civic dooty more seriously while younger people tend to call civic duty civic dooty.
The failing of the Dem party could be the fact they don't try to appeal more towards older, more conservative voters but thats just not part of their platform. Trying to appeal too hard to older conservatives would diminish their younger liberal base.
), and for many Trump supporters, they're thinking of a time when they still had an economic and social order to their advantage. A few years ago, I spent Thanksgiving with my Uncle's mother-in-law, who is white and in her 90s. We watched some old classic film from the 50s and at the end, she remarked that she missed those good old days when you could trust people and didn't have to worry about crime. The thought that those "good old days" weren't so good to minorities didn't even register and I doubt she was aware that homicide rates are just as low today as they were then. 
