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Originally Posted by bigred
After days of researching, reading articles from the other side, articles on why the DNC lost, etc, I am still struggling with a few things.
1) It's often been cited that Obama has ruined the economy and Trump is here to fix it but it seems like unemployment rates are low. We have the 6th highest GDP in the world and we're the second largest manufacturer. So when I read generalized statements that Trump is going to fix the economy, I'm scratching my head. Can someone clarify what he's going to fix? Can someone show me statistics to support this "declining economy" trump is going to fix?
2) I've tried. I really have tried...to understand the backlash against Hillary. I think she's a crook but so is Donald Trump. You don't get to these places of power by being honest. On top of being a crook, he's also a racist, xenophobe, and misogynist. Despite exploring avenues and going back and forth for days, I still come to the conclusion that a vote for Donald trump is a vote for racism, xenophobia, and misogyny. Whether you're directly one of those attributes (the Republican minority) or simply enabling it by ignoring it (the Republican majority, imo), you voted for it. Say what you want about voting out corruption, you're enabling racism, xenophobia, and misogyny (in my opinion). Can someone counter this argument? To me, voting for lower tax rates and more money in your pocket over the welfare of your fellow Americans (i.e. women, Muslims, and other minorities) is not American, short sighted, and unethical. Help me understand why Trump supporters are not racists. I've spent the last week researching it with the hypothesis that they're not, but I'm back to where I am. Whether it's direct racism or racism by enablement or indifference, it's still racism.
I'll acknowledge the DNC lost because it failed to appeal to the economic concerns of a major part of America. However, I feel that acknowledgement is somewhat in conflict with my #1. It also depresses me that economy seems to be a higher value than human rights. Maybe it's my liberal elitism because I've had so many amazing opportunities and I've never known what it's like to be be fiscally challenged.
I am truly trying to make sense of things. I don't want to hate on people who voted for Trump. Hate's a waste of my time. But I can't understand it. I really can't.
First I'd like to say that this election did in fact mostly have to do with race, more than economics. They'll play it off as an election over economics, because it's the least morally indefensible path to take on this matter.
I didn't vote for Trump, but I can answer the racial/misogynist/ethnicist aspect of it, as a White Male. When I grew up in school, while we had black classmates, and we were nice to them and all, I can say I did at least, engage in "soft-racism". Most White people can't even agree on what racism is exactly, unless it's extremely overt, and even then you'll get defenders of the racist. But they'll flat out deny anything is racist if it's not extremely overt.
One reason Whites teach their kids not to say "nigger" around Black people, isn't that we're trying to reduce racism in our society. It's because it plays our hand face up when it's that overt. "Soft racism is much harder to detect..
Most Whites, they'll be friendly to minorities to their faces, wave hi to their Muslim neighbors, and be nice to the parents of color who have children at the White parents school. But in the back of our heads I'm sure there is some sense of "I'm superior to you".
I use to be racist/misogynist/ethnicist and hated gays, but it was much more "soft" than outright visiting KKK websites and so on and so forth. I often engaged in soft-racism, and when no one was around, occasionally in overt-racism.
I remember when I was 14 my friend and I were eating at a Chinese restaurant, and he saw a Black man and White woman with each other, and he passively disagreed with their relationship. Bear in mind, this guy is not a KKK member, but he's also 18 at the time. And then he told me some words that have stuck with me my entire life, he said "Thank God, I'm White". There was a lot of wisdom in that statement based on how there is somewhat of a caste system in our society even if it's more difficult to see. The Whites being at the top of the caste system, we'll flatly deny that our society is racist at all, look at Michael Jordan, look at Lebron James, look at Oprah, they're all very successful Black people, ergo, we're not a racist society.
I eventually reformed, to the best of my ability, my former racist/misogynist/ethnicist/hatred of gays, ways of life. I'm much more Egalitarian than I use to be. I still haven't rooted it out entirely, I think deep down were all racist in some way or another. I at least guard against it, but some people embrace it. I like engaging in self-reflection and character development. Trump is a President, who seems to have never engaged in self-reflection or character development his entire life.
Also I have the advantage in that my Dad, was an Equal Employment Opportunity Arbitrator for the Corp of Engineers in Human Resources, He valued "fairness" far more than anything else at his job, so prejudices against people over their race, sex, religion, or sexual orientation, or even disability's, he could not have tainting his decisions, if he wanted to perform his job correctly and as fairly as possible.
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