Racist Outbursts
So I was bouncing around twitter when I ran in to @shaunking's timeline.
This was one of the pictures he tweeted...
There is a lot more. There are lots of sad pictures and stories. Some heart-breaking. I was legitimately getting emotional and very sad while reading them. I urge you to click the link and read a good number of them before continuing on to read this article. Super urge you. Otherwise you won't understand why I'm about to write this.
Ok, have you gone there and read some of those accounts? OK then, we're ready now.
While I recognize that the people enacting these horror shows are a small minority of trump voters - it was precisely this giving a voice to racism and fringe movements in the USA that I saw as being super troubling (and I said so in my blog article of Why I Was Voting for Hillary). This kind of thing exists because Trump consistently flirted with these movements and didn't reject them. Even Reagan rejected the Klan's support. Trump? Not so much...
"When Reagan was offered the Klan's support in 1980 and 1984, he rejected it in 1980 saying, "I have no tolerance whatsoever for what the Klan represents. Indeed, I resent them using my name." And in 1984 he again rejected it saying, "Those of us in public life can only resent the use of our names by those who seek political recognition for the repugnant doctrines of hate they espouse," Reagan said. "The politics of racial hatred and religious bigotry practiced by the Klan and others have no place in this country, and are destructive of the values for which America has always stood." Reagan was moral enough to denounce the Klan and reject the support. Trump is not, and is legitimizing fringe elements (like the Klan) of our society, elements that are racist and evil." (I wrote this in that blog article, Nov 7th.)
I agree that political correctness can suck - but it's easy to feel that way when 1) you're white and shit like what's on that timeline doesn't happen to you or your family (how about some empathy?) & 2) you live around people that aren't racist and you just aren't exposed to this. I know many Trump supporters who weren't racist hate Political Correctness. But it appears "PC" has a place to keep people who unfortunately feel empowered to be shitheads in place.
Here's a hypothetical: say you go to report on an AA meeting as a non-alcoholic yourself, and brought whiskey for yourself to drink. Sure maybe you don't have a problem with drinking, but the addicts there sure do and when you drink the whiskey in front of them - some will crack. While you might have brought the whiskey for yourself, and didn't intend it for them or make them drink - bringing it had consequences.
All trump voters who aren't racist - and that's the majority of you - know that Trump winning caused these atrocities to happen. Breath in, breath out. I'm not calling YOU racist. I'm saying something else. I'm saying the consequences of your actions have caused racism to express itself. Racism that existed, but was more safely bottled up and controlled. Voting for Trump contributed to that. Why, you ask? The racist idiots in our society feel empowered not just by trump winning, but because he did multiple racist/misogynist things and it didn't matter. He won anyways. Therefore, these views must be OK. Before, with the "stifling" political correctness - they were in constant fear of letting their terrible racist thoughts out. That they would be condemned for their racist bigotry. Well, Trump might not actually build a wall - but he definitely tore that wall down.
Of course it wasn't intentional, and I believe you non-racist Trump voters don't condone this behavior... but Trump supporters gave voice to a race-baiter who didn't deny racist sentiment and now racists feel the right to be themselves when it was better when PC social norms stopped that from happening. Political correctness - as annoying as it may be sometimes - has a place it turns out. Because there are a lot of racist fucks who need that oppressive voice silencing them.
And say you voted for Trump, what should you do? Well the appropriate response would be to at least agree that hate crimes are bad. Agree that you didn't vote for that. Condemn these attacks. I'm not saying that you need to "switch sides" or give up on Trump. That's not my point. I am saying that voting for Trump had these consequences, which shouldn't even be that hard to understand given things Trump said during his campaign. And furthermore, you definitely shouldn't defend racist hate crimes that are morally wrong.
Hopefully this blows over and goes away... and doesn't set race relations in this country back 20 years.
Now I'm going to pre-empt a counter-argument here... "But Hillary was corrupt! And trump is going to clean up politics!" Now if Trump really was going to clean up political corruption and get the money out of politics, and this was the cost. I think there could be a debate... morally, ethically, cost/benefit analysis... Because you'd have to decide if that was worth this. I would ask: would you trade less political corruption for some of these terrible things you read on Shaun's twitter feed happening to you or your wife or your child? What if you came back to your car and it looked like this:
But that whole moral/ethical question doesn't even matter because Trump isn't going to do that. He's not going to clean up politics or corruption. That was a con.
Don't believe me? Watch this video by The Young Turks.
