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this post was submitted on 11 Aug 2024
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Politics
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Obviously I understand this. The problem is, "racism is not important to me" is still a position with its own moral implications. Understanding a position does not mean you are alright with it. Not every sincerely-held position is equal. And yes, there are many black-and-white, "red line" positions. Genocide, murder, rape, etc, are not positions that people need to just "allow for differing opinions on".
It's funny you brought this up in particular, because I've talked before about a friend of mine who is in this position (he is Palestinian, and has lost a lot of family to Israeli- and likely US- weapons). He is anti-US-government, not anti-DNC/GOP (obviously his reaction is not universal to immigrants, but neither would any other given immigrant's reaction be).
Understanding a viewpoint does not mean you have to be equally accepting of all possible conclusions stemming from that viewpoint.
That's strawmanning my argument. I'm saying that just because someone prioritizes another issue over racism doesn't make them bigoted. And if they believe their priority issues are best addressed by the Republican party or won't be addressed by the Democrats, it would make sense for them to vote for trump.
The "all trump supporters are racists" argument comes from echo chambers and is dismissive of people's legitimate criticisms of the Democrats. It's not accurate or useful in creating meaningful discourse.
Apologies. Please amend my comment to
Perhaps more technically accurate, but no different in effect.
I feel like you think this is a counterpoint, or in disagreement with what I said, but it's not. It's literally what I said. If your personal economic issues or religious preferences are above the well-being of others in your personal priorities, that is a moral stance that is perfectly valid to criticize. Whether you are ignoring the harms, or simply de-prioritizing them in favor of your preferred benefits, it's the same outcome.
I would refer you to the first line of my first comment in this post, which said
The problem is that some conservatives clearly want to be able to associate with the GOP based on piecemeal parts of their platform without actively opposing those parts they disagree with, and then have the right not to be held accountable in part for the damage that those parts they may or may not agree with do. That's not how it works. I voted for Biden, and I have to live with the damage he's done in Gaza and the West Bank. It is 1000% fair to judge me for that complicity. And that wasn't even part of his platform, but I still enabled that.
Trump is openly, unapologetically racist and sexist. If you choose to associate with him, you do have to own that.
Check my comment history if you think I have any shortage of criticism of the Democratic Party, please. I have no issues with criticism of it.
I am highly interested in what criticisms from the Right are legitimate, though. The DNC is still a Center-Right party of neoliberal corporatism, even if we're slowly making progress on it.
Frankly, I think we're past the point where we can have that conversation at the national level. All of the routes for that have been under attack for years. No one trusts the other side's media networks. No one trusts the other side's politicians. Forums like Beehaw or even Facebook (given the way it's structured) do not have anything even beginning to approach a national scale in their reach.
I've had good results with having these conversations with family members and a friend, but that's not sufficient to fix what is now truly a social problem.
I appreciate this discourse and your thoughtful responses. These kind disagreements are what we need more of. I still disagree that supporting trump necessarily means condoning racism as depending on what issues you prioritize, it may be a case of choosing the lesser of two evils.