I’m getting flack for saying “if someone voted for Trump, they are a write-off. I have nothing to say to them, and they have nothing to say I need to hear.”
In my world, if someone votes for a racist, sexist, sexual predator who makes fun of disabled people and is connected to white supremacists, then they have willingly forfeit their right to be heard. I don’t care about their deep abiding concern for the economy. I don’t give a fuck how put upon they feel by the loss of manufacturing jobs or the high cost of anything.
I have put this as plainly as I can but people still don’t believe me so I repeat: if someone voted for Trump, they are a write-off.
I am not going to listen, I’m not going to engage.
More importantly, I don’t need to.
Focusing the energy of the liberal/progressive activists into reaching out to Trump supporters is unnecessary. We don’t need them. They are very literally outnumbered, and most of them are so brainwashed by alt-right propaganda that they don’t care about we have to say.
Honestly, I get the sentiment of “let’s all get along” because I work with more than one Trump supporter, and I know a few of the students I meet with are Trump supporters. I can’t fire anyone over this or kick people out of my office. I have friends who are going home for the holidays to face down whole passels of Trump supporters who also happen to be beloved relatives. Yes, sometimes we have to get along to go along. That’s life.
But that is not the same as listening to their concerns or giving their bigotry more airtime or making this all about their unhappiness. Nope.
A young liberal man I was talking to earlier pointed out that at least Trump supporters were engaged. They went out and voted. He offered this as a reason to listen to their concerns.
I understand, I do. Engaged citizens are more valuable than unengaged citizens to a democracy.
…unless, of course, they vote in a fascist, but, you know, I mean aside from that.
*dies laughing*
No, I don’t give a fuck about them. They lost the right to be respected by voting for a tire fire of a human being.
I’m not saying that the problems of the Rust Belt or the deep South are not important. Liberals and progressives really need to do some soul searching about how and why we left those vitally important areas behind in our grand plans for the future. There are many people in those areas who are simply asking for respect and a place at the Liberal table.
But reaching out to the working whites in those areas who voted for Trump…no. That’s not important. And yes, I get that some of them might feel victimized all over again — oh boo hoo, the college educated white queer fat feminist doesn’t want to hear about why voting a racist, sexist slime bucket into the White House was totally justified because a middle class white woman is worried about her husband’s job being stolen by brown people.
Too bad, because, yes, correct, I really don’t want to hear it. IDGAF.
What I DO give a fuck about is why rural whites and Latinx/Hispanics did not vote at all. I want to know why urban black Democrats did not vote, or voted third party. I want to know why white liberals (of all fucking people) did not vote. Why did millennials not turn out in greater numbers?
Those are the people we need to focus on.
It’s true that a deep and profound unhappiness in the poor white and working (lower middle class) white demographic led them to support Trump, and that the Left/Progressives fucked up by ignoring that unhappiness to the point of even making fun of it. That’s all true.
But the other side of that coin is that those people took their unhappiness and channeled into it hate, racism, and misogyny — they could have blamed the Republican and corporate interests that got them into those straights to begin with, but it was just easier for them to drink the kool aid and blame “libtards” and “feminazis” instead. THAT was their choice. They abdicated responsibility; they don’t deserve to be trusted with it.
So screw ’em. Let’s focus on the people whom we’ve overlooked, but not the ones who channeled their unhappiness into racism and xenophobia. We don’t need those people. They don’t want anything to do with our mission, anyway. Convincing them that voting for a puerile, hamster-fingered racist and sexual predator was a bad idea is a complete waste of that time and energy.
Liberal, progressive people are the actual, real majority in America, but we’ve done a bad job of unifying and including the very people who should be the support base: people of color, poor people, disabled people, Latinx/Hispanics, liberal/moderate Christians, labor unions, millennials and, because they will be hitting voting age here in a couple of years, generation Z kids.
It’s time to stop compromising the progressive agenda in hopes that everyone can learn to get along. We can’t, and that’s not on us, it’s on them. Leave the archaic xenophobic, misogynistic racists in the past where they belong.