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She didn't run on a platform of drone strikes, dude. She didn't even mention them as far as I know. They're a problem with every president we've had since drones were invented. They're something we have to campaign against no matter who's in office.

Trump is so fundamentally evil in pretty much every one of his policies, and openly campaigned for evil, that he is really unfit to be president. His appointing pretty much only bigots is only the start of all the awful almost irreversable things he could do that could hurt a lot of real people, and not hypothetical people like you're obsessed with.

Stop trying to do gotchas, you're really bad at them.

That's not what I asked.

OK, but you can't ask stuff like that without the full context in which the thing was asked - directly comparing stuff like this to score points against people is really petty and disingenuous. I'd say the question itself was wrong, and asked in bad faith.

If, for instance, there was a viable alternative candidate who did not support drone strikes or attacks at all, yes, you would have to take voters for her to task on that issue, as there would have been a choice involved in that issue. However, that is not the situation voters found themselves in. The context in which the choice was made would have to have  been completely different for what you're driving at to be a valid point.

So no, it is not fair to say that voters for her hate Syrians, as they were not given a choice to not have a leader who was against it.

However. If they do not at least attempt to contact their representative to try to stop the drone strikes, then they are pretty much just letting it happen. The vote itself here isn't just what matters but the actions they take afterward as well.

In the same vein if someone voted for Trump, that's super bad, but that's not the whole story. If they voted for him and immediately campaigned to stop his bigotry, that's them holding themselves accountable and doing the least harm. Though in this case doing the least harm to minorities is voting for Hillary since she isn't actively campaigning to label and deport them. But hey, we can all make terrible mistakes and work to fix them later.

You can't boil down shit like this into easy gotchas. I've said repeatedly that I would not resent a Trump voter if they actually stood up and fought for the people that his administration was attacking. I'd hold a hillary voter just as accountable - they gotta fight back against drone strikes and stuff.

Would it be fair to say though that someone who voted for hillary for any reason at all, fully supports drone murder? That their intention is to kill syrians? That we should hate them for this?

Well, Trump was in favor of nuking them, so, if we're looking at doing the least harm, Hillary still comes out on top as the choice most likely to hurt the least Syrians,  based on their campaigns.

And yeah, it's shitty that there wasn't a viable third option (voting third party in the US election system is, as previously discussed, pointless), but Trump is pretty much more violent, xenophobic, corrupt, and bigoted than Hillary. There's pretty much nothing you can say about her that isn't on display much worse in Trump.

Once again you completely missed the point and, instead, try to accuse me of something I didn't even remotely hint at. Please stop doing that.

Honestly I've spent most of my life with people saying "The world doesn't revolve around gay people" when I'm trying to ask for basic rights and protections. It's kind of a sore point if you use that kind of language. It's just the way the language was being used which was really reminiscient.

This may come as a shock to you Scavenger but the world doesn't revolve around you and "your people" (as you called them, just so you don't wrongly accuse me of discrimination again).

Okay, so if gay and trans people don't get to fear for their lives because it's legal in 49/50 states to murder them "in a panic" and we've just elected someone who chose a vice president who is in support of torturing them until they cry that they're straight to make it stop and has repeatedly tried to defund HIV prevention in order to fund that, what about:

• Black people, whom Trump has repeatedly wanted to "law and order" over, and reintroduce stop and frisk, and for whom beating them up is normal and good?
• Latinx people, whom Trump called rapists and drug pushers, and called for the mass deportation of?
• Muslims, whom Trump wants to have labelled and banned from entering America?
• The disabled, whom Trump openly mocked and wants to remove the healthcare for?
• Women, whom Trump thinks is totally normal and good to grope and assault?
• Jewish people, whom Trump's lead strategist has lead a propaganda campaign against in his newspaper non stop since his inception?

By saying, the world doesn't revolve around the people I care about, which is, by the way, all minorities, since we're all in this together, not just the intersections I myself belong to, who are you saying it does revolve around? White people?

And yeah, I'd like an actual thing Clinton has proposed that's on the level of all of these, please. The life of real people is not to be debated with devil's advocate hypotheticals.

The sentitment: support for Trump = you are a raping, racist bigot.

Ughhhhhh. Ughhhhhh. Come on, don't get all sanctimonious on me. I've explained about five times already exactly what I meant, and getting all holier than thou "But you're being bigoted against Trump voters" is... Kind of insulting.

Its not that I don't understand their reasoning behind voting. But what they have done is incredibly harmful, and harmful things must be stopped. I'm sorry you don't think the rights of minority groups are more important than the rights of people to vote in really terrible candidates. But you're reaaaaaaaaaaaally implying that Trump hasn't actively campaigned for hatred and that the voters for him aren't complicit in enabling that hatred,thus have done something wrong that needs to be fixed.

The ultimate effect of their vote is:
- A lot of politicians who hate minorities are in high positions of power.
- Active bigotry has been validated, leading to an increase in  hate crime.
- even if Trump does none of the things set out in his campaign, there will still be a scary left by empowered bigots, who will lash out at minorities.

I do not hate Trump voters for who they are. If they fixed their mistake, if they showed active compassion towards my people instead of at best, willing indifference, I would cease hating them. My hatred is not bigotry, but more, resentment for an action. If someone stole from me, if someone attacked me, I would hate them for their crime until they atoned.

This is not a hatred for an opinion. This is seeing an injustice done and wanting it fixed.

And you gotta understand that. I don't hate them for who they are. I hate their willing enabling of oppression. As soon as they show that they're not enabling oppression but fighting back, that ends my disagreement with them.

So... Scavenger and all the minorities that Trump actively attacked, should not be worried? Should not be fearful for an uncertain future? Seems like the Jews got the same message back then... "nothing to worry about, move along"

Almost word for word, actually.

It seems you are reacting out of raw emotion. I'm not saying I don't understand why. I get it. I really do. Fear is powerful. I don't think I called for empathy with Trump supporters? I just tried to point out that it's not always an easy black and white decision. I am not saying that your feelings are "wrong" (or right). All I'm saying is if you feel that Trump supporters are your enemy and you lash out at them (as you are in here) there's virtually ZERO chance of any outcome other than continued hatred and, most likely, violence. If you're okay with that so be it. I just see it as the same thing you're accusing them of doing, if from a different angle. Hatred and violence are wrong; regardless of the reasons or motivations behind it. You might feel justified, but so do "they". Again, though, I feel the need to reiterate that you're lumping all Trump supporters together simply because you personally cannot understand why anybody would vote for him. I find it hard to believe that all Trump supporters would bring about the realizations of your fears.

I'm saying that if they don't stop supporting him, if they stand by their decision to vote for him and don't try to oust him, they are complicit in his crimes. And of course I'm justified, nobody was systematically trying to strip them of their rights. But you know, because Trump wants to sign FADA (First Amendment Defence Act) into law (a law that would require the repeal of explicit LGBT protections signed into law by Obama), he wants to make it explicitly legal to discriminate against people like me. So, big difference.

Also, you know, voting for bigotry tends to make people who love doing hate crimes more empowered to do em, like when Brexit happened. So, it makes the world an actively more dangerous place for marginalised groups to live in.

Also also, don't equate Clinton and Trump, they are completely not on the same level. One is a pretty sleazy politician, the other is LITERALLY HIRING WHITE SUPREMACISTS.

I could be wrong... maybe I'm just naive and the good people I know (who voted Trump) are all closeted bigots that blindly hate as you seem to think. They've just been lying to me for 40 years.

I didn't say that, either, either they actively supported Trump's bigotry, or were complicit in allowing it because it just wasn't that important to them. Either way, it's still an act of violence, one that needs to be stopped. As soon as they stop being complicit in hatred being levelled against me for who I am, I will stop hating them for what they've done. After all, Queer folk can't stop being queer, but Trump voters can stop supporting homophobia and transphobia in the administration. Black people can't stop being black, but Trump voters can stop supporting white supremacists. Muslims and people who read as Muslims (Sikhs, for instance, get misread as being Muslim all the time) can't stop being who they are, but Trump voters can stop supporting violent islamophobia in the administration.

And yes, this involves backpedalling on their vote for Trump. It involves ousting him. It involves never allowing him to pass a law that would hurt people. It involves stopping him from appointing active bigots to positions of high governmental power. But as long as he's in power, he's going to do awful things, and the people that voted for him have to take responsibility for that and finally fight for love and not hate.

On the other hand, what's my crime? Existing as a hated minority? Why shouldn't I hate the people who voted for violence against me for what they've done?

I'm kind of sickened by the repeated calls for empathy for Trump voters, when I've pointed out, again and again, that his administration is stripping people of their rights, validating violent hatred, appointing white supremacists that also advocate violent hatred...

And somehow I'm supposed to be the bigger person? When minorities are the real losers? Clinton wouldn't have appointed literal Nazis. She was bad, but not "I fear for my life because jackbooted thugs want to destroy me" bad. The dominant intersection can complain of being hated all they want, but if you're not straight, white, cis, neurotypical, or male, you know what real, murderous, systematic hatred is. And anyone complicit in that hatred, anyone who validates it, earns no sympathy from me. They have to admit that what they did was wrong and work to oust this fascist Orange and stamp down the neo nazis, the white supremacists, until they don't have any power anymore.

And now I got people saying that hate crimes won't increase and that its the media's fault for reporting on this? Hate crimes do increase when you validate bigotry, just look at Brexit.  A 41% rise. And likely to rise higher now that La Naranja Hinchadaza is in power. Heck, electing him at all is a hate crime,even if it's done out if ignorance.

But, you know, I'm supposed to reach out empathetically to the people that put him in power, even though they have not once even acknowledged that the people currently in power are right this second stripping my people of their rights.

And when someone's opposing view is "Yeah, this guy who will strip minorities of their rights and elect neo nazis was the best option", no, I won't consider it as valid. Don't you even dare try to equate my fear with their hatred.

[for like a million years.]

How dare I point out that you support your beliefs with statements which are 100% false?

I'd like to see some proof that trump's appointees intend to murder you.

Or just swear some more and panic. I'm sure that will help.

Ugh, I didn't mean like, murder me, personally. But people like me. And it never starts with extermination, you gotta work your way up through delegitimation and ostracisation first. You know, by removing our rights. Making religious freedoms bills that legitimise hate crimes against us. Publish articles that belittle and minimize our pain and make it so that our experience means nothing and state that all our complaints are petty and meaningless, such as "Trannies Whine Over Hilarious Bruce Jenner Billboard". Stop us from functioning in society or being able to move around much. And that's just the LGBT stuff. Against Latinx and Muslim populations, the rhetoric is even more direct and murderous. Like Trump actually saying that he should force Muslims to wear identifying marks, that Mexicans are rapists, that he wants to deport 2 million undocumented immigrants in 4 years, that he wants to stop all Muslims from entering the country.... all direct plays from the Genocide Handbook.

But you know, if you had actually looked into what these people believed instead of trying to figuratively crow that Hillary was figuratively a serpent person from figurative Venus funded by globalist Foosball, if you had one iota of empathy for marginalised people and actually listened to us for once, you'd already know all of this.

Even the word 'literally' hasn't meant 'literally' for like a million years.

I love this little addition the best, it's just perfect.

Oh, come the hell on, Jack.

You completely ignore the fact that Donald Trump has appointed a Neo-Nazi as his propagandist just to poke me about semantics? Like no, not literally every fucking word they publish is false, that's not what's important. Is scoring points against me more important than what I was actually saying?

Excuse me for being emotional, the last time we had Nazis in government, LGBT people and mentally ill people were some of the groups that were put against the wall and shot. I don't want that for anyone, not me, not my friends, not anyone.

Scavenger should have said: "some of their stories approach the truth in the most roundabout way." Then he wouldn't have been guilty of inflammatory exaggeration of the sort that upsets Breitbart readers so much.

Yeah, I'll revise my fricken sentence then if it'll appease Jack.

"Brietbart's writing contains a very high quantity of falsehoods, and the non-false stories they put up on their website are most likely mere fig leaves so they can have plausible deniability that they just peddle 100% complete bigoted garbage."

[THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES KEEPS APPOINTING PEOPLE WHO WANT TO MURDER PEOPLE LIKE ME.]

I would also suggest you consider how much easier it would be for people to take your opinion seriously if you were making a rational argument rather than a clearly emotional reaction.

Oh, I'm sorry for being emotional when THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES KEEPS APPOINTING PEOPLE WHO WANT TO MURDER PEOPLE LIKE ME.

So Trump appointed Stephen Bannon to be his chief strategist.

Stephen Bannon, if you don't know, is the head of Brietbart News. Brietbart has consistently courted Neo-Nazis for years, and none of their stories even approach the truth in even the most roundabout way. They constantly witchhunt, it's virulently racist and sexist, homophobic and transphobic, not to mention, most importantly, the ANTI-SEMETISM. Like literal nazi shit. He might as well have people from The Daily Stormer as his propagandist. Look at the headlines Bannon's newspaper uses (Major content warning for lots of bigoted headlines):

Spoiler

[close]

How do Trump voters reconcile this? Every decision Trump has made in appointing his cabinet has been increasingly awful, and how the fuck are we supposed to feel?

Also, he's already complaining about living in the White House, and how many days a week he has to be president. What kind of president is he even trying to be? Hillary Clinton could have been the First Female President, Trump's trying to line up to be the Worst Male President.

I am deeply offended by liberal/progressive people with self-righteous condescending attitudes and their own unique form of bigotry and who are unable or unwilling to think for themselves. 

Okay, examples of this "unique bigotry" that made you vote for Trump please? What you said is not enough information to really understand where you are coming from.

I don't care that Jack 'labelled' Clinton female - she is female. I object to him calling her the "most openly corrupt female politician in history."

Yeah, the insertion of female in there changes the context of the sentence entirely, since we are now comparing "female politicians",and not politicians x3 Its not even about being politically correct, but just regularly correct, if Jack had meant to compare her to all politicians.

I'm sorry, Scavenger. I kind of wanted to specifically mention none of this was directed at you. I hope you're doing alright, wherever you are right now.

It's fine, I just wanted to make sure you were making yourself clear, especially with something as delicate as this. I'm not angry at you or anything!

Well here's a link that should explain some things.  He's got an English accent so what he says must be true .  Have fun and hysteria watching.
https://youtu.be/1d9lm-T87AQ

Could we get why you voted in your own words, and why you thought that throwing all of us under the bus was worth it? I don't want to sit through yet another snide white british antifeminist ranter's meanderings. And honestly, it's not making your case to link to a guy who has like "CRAZY FEMINIST BLOWN THE FUCK OUT" and "THIS IS WHAT A SOCIAL JUSTICE WARRIOR LOOKS LIKE" with a thumbnail of a fat lady as most of his videos. Like, joy, the use of stereotypes is alive and well in that guy.

Yeah, I'm also kind of surprised at all the political correctness radiating from this thread.

"Political Correctness"? You realise that that phrase has overwhelmingly been used by the extreme/alt right to refer to "treating people like human beings with respect", right? Saying it is using an incredibly loaded term - you'll have to explain what exactly you mean by it. What exactly do you consider "politically correct" in this thread?

'Social justice warrior' is a sarcastic expression. Arguing why anyone sees it as a bad thing is like arguing why 'smartass' isn't a compliment. I wanted to reply to this bit earlier, but I didn't want to be labeled as a "racist misogynist" who should strongly reconsider.

Again, "SJW" is used by the extreme/alt right to refer to "anyone left of me". It's also an incredibly loaded term - I've seen it refer to pretty much anyone who says "Hey, maybe we should be accepting of minorities". It's now connected with Social Justice in general, too. So people have been defanging it by just accepting and taking up the label in an ironic manner. Like I'm trying to protect marginalised folk from fascism, I'm clearly a PC SJW.

I've already explained why people would be so angry, to the point of protest, at Trump being elected, and how dangerous it would be to legitimise his presidency, so the original meaning of Social Justice Warrior - someone who uses social justice causes to pick fights, is not really what people mean when they use it anymore. And even then, you have to be careful - what you could consider as just "campaigning for no reason" might actually have a reason you haven't paid attention to.

So, considering the context in which these phrases are used in the current political climate, maybe it isn't too wise to bandy them about. They are INCREDIBLY politically charged, and wrapped up in so much... stuff... that it's difficult to discern what someone means when they use it. You just have to be clearer and not use the fancy catchphrases.

That's a very optimistic view.  I don't think they were overlooking his rhetoric.  I think these people agree with it all.  There is more bigotry and hatred in America than most people realize, and now it is being exposed.  Trump is the champion for the lowest common denominator, which is a very large group.  That's why it scares me.  It shows me how many Trumps there are in the country.  It shows how many think and feel and act as he does.  It exposes the monsters.

Yeah, I really should have said "look at reams and reams of murderous rhetoric". A vote for Trump is definitely a vote for that kind of bigotry coming back into style, and if not by legislation, the resident brownshirts will start with the violence and the hate crimes, like Radiant linked to.

I do hope that any Trump supporters here come to their senses, and see the pandora's box they've opened, because I have zero sympathy for them if they don't try to oust him and stop the bigotry. Because if they don't, this will empower other fascists in other nations, and a lot of vulnerable people will die, and then we'll probably run out of resources and ruin our environment because Trump appointed a climate change skeptic to look after it.

I mean, sure Hillary wasn't perfect, but ¯\_(ãÆ'„)_/¯

Also Jack, violent rebellion against an oppressive system out of desperation is not the same as state sanctioned white supremacist thuggery. The fault here lies entirely with the white establishment trying to kick down at everyone else. Trump was boasting about the systematic exile of non-white people and the registration and exile of muslim people (which he still plans to do and people voted for that). That's more violent than any individual account of a black person beating up a white person.

But there were like two or three other candidates?
Why choose the lesser of two evils when there are candidates that aren't evil?

Oh, don't worry, Johnson is pretty evil, being a libertarian against welfare, and his global warming manifesto was "the earth will be consumed by the sun".

Jill Stein constantly courts antivaxxers and wants to implement homeopathy and junk as the health care system.

So yeah, Clinton was the lesser of four evils, not two.

On the one hand everyone is being told that they should always vote, because no matter how insignificant a vote may seem, it can still help.
Yet on the other hand, everyone is also being told to never vote for a third party because that's just throwing your vote away.
WHICH ONE IS IT!!!

Its both. Because of the way the system works, a vote for not Clinton us a vote for Trump, since third parties rarely have enough local support across the board to win enough electoral college votes,  and we saw this time that Trump took Florida simply by virtue of Clinton not having those few extra votes that went to Johnson. But every vote does count... If you are voting for the two main parties.

The system is broken as hell and needs repairing, but that's the gist of it. Voting for anyone not in the main two parties usually favors the republicans.

That said, I don't wholly blame third party voters. That blame is squarely on Trump voters, who managed to look past reams and reams of murderous rhetoric and think "he's still the candidate for me!"

... And some, I assume, are good people.

Something I'm genuinely curious about, is whether or not voting for someone who would marginalise and dehumanise vast swaths of people, remove their lifelines, remove their protections, potentially leading to their murder by neglect or hate, can disqualify you from being a good person.

I mean, yeah, nobody is inherently a good or bad person, but surely doing something like this, very arguably a violent act against marginalised people, is not a good act? Donald Trump has spent the entire election bragging about destroying and subjugating people, about murdering families, chomping at the bit to use nukes on them, cheering on the deportation of people living in the United States, dividing people, choosing a vice president who is unquestionably evil as well and will enact legislation that would subjugate LGBT folk and destroy our delicate environment because of his unhinged beliefs....

... is it out of the question for me to say that every voter that decided on Trump has, unwittingly or not, performed a great and terrible evil upon this world? That, even if for the majority of the time, they were good people, at the moment they decided to put that X, to press that button, they were being awful people?

I'm used to having to take sides, and have to defend my and my loved ones' basic humanity against people, who, because of their "opinions" (which they will harp on forever as being sacred, as opposed to my right to life), want us dead or exiled. I don't want to have to do that here as well, Snarky. This isn't a case of me not being satisfied because the other team won, I'm legitimately terrified of what they, or bigots empowered by his presidency, might do to my American friends.