Groundswell wrote:
This vitriol started in the 1980's on AM radio and has only escalated since. It started on the Right. I'm not going to excuse the Left because they have gotten pretty brutal, which started during the W. Bush years as a reaction to Fox News and the AM radio dial that had been attacking "libtards" for years. The hatred on AM radio is 30 plus years old. But, yes, now the Left is fighting back just as brutally. It's been toxic for both sides. The Left are "Feminazi Libtards" and the Right is "stupid, uneducated, racists". We all don't do a good enough job working to convince people who retreat to these "types" that it's just not true for most people lumped into either group.
But I will say this, and this isn't directed at you personally, lukeyrid13, or Phalanx, anybody in particular, but whomever voted for Trump he is in fact speaking for you. That's where your vote went. You get to write in whomever you want. You have choices. Conservatives had 20 candidates to chose from. It's not a bi-nary trap. You literally get to write any name you want. You knew exactly what you were getting when you cast a Trump vote. There's been no surprises here. He is who he's always been. The only way Trump is not speaking for you is if you denounce him and turn your back on him like a lot of thoughtful Conservatives have done. Otherwise, he's who you've chosen to represent you. Obviously, I'm being hyperbolic, but that is the very ideal of representation. I'm sympathetic to the "sometimes you have to hold your nose" vote argument, but not for the orange dude. He's way out of bounds. Our vote comes with consequences.
I'm sure you believe you are being reasonable and objective, but you need to understand there is an opposite perspective on this. First of all, Rush Limbaugh in the 80's and Fox news were the reactions to years of liberal monopolies on the media. That's why they spread like wildfire, everyone was sick of the politics of the major networks and newspapers. AM radio was barely even a thing back then; they used to throw the AM station in whenever an FM station was sold. Limbaugh and the guys that followed him were filling a massive void in the market.
Secondly, lots of Republican voted for Not Trump. It wasn't conservative Republicans that got him elected, because he isn't a conservative Republican. It was TV watchers. It was people who had never voted Republican in their lives before coming out in droves. But I think the left had a major hand in getting Trump elected. It was the reaction to their nutty behavior in the media, all of the insane social justice warrior crap that caused a backlash. It was the stopping traffic, and punching Trump supporters, even women. A common refrain among Republicans was 'stop making me like Trump'. The media gave him free attention whenever he wanted it, and as usual, they chose the Republican nominee among a field of much better candidates.
There were and are real issues that got Trump elected over Hillary. One major one was promise of protectionist tariffs (a traditionally left-wing position) to benefit the rust belt while Obama had been telling so many workers in that region to retrain into other fields. The Democrats lost those states because they were tone deaf. Also, Trump eventually got conservatives on board by talking about the Supreme Court. After Obama's picks of far left justices threatened to tip the balance into nutty left-wing constitutional interpretation, voting for Trump was a defensive move more than anything.
One of the few things that Bush did that I liked was putting a ban on the barbaric practice of partial-birth abortion. Not murdering babies seems like a no-brainer to any reasonable human being, but it was one of the very first things that Obama undid when he took office. Obama also actively raised ISIS up from a small band of rebels into a killing machine all over Iraq and Syria, just so he could get a freaking pipeline built, and he deposed and assassinated Gadaffi to keep him from setting up a gold-for-oil trade, which led to the slave trade in Libya. In his economy, competing with the Petrodollar must not be tolerated, trading slaves is more acceptable than trading gold. So when someone like you tells me how awful Trump is because he made a quirky tweet, you'll have to forgive me if I seem to be looking past you a little bit. This country and the world have a lot bigger problems. Trump, for all of his immaturity and stupidity, has a long way to go before he has as much blood on his hands as the last guy.