-Blacks gaining the right to eat in any restaurant they want
Oh, you mean those laws that were limited to the Southern states and were first introduced by the Democrat Party, and even when Republicans later began to support those laws, it was still isolated to the South.
It irks me when people conflate the Democratic party of the late 20th - 21st century and the pre-realignment Democratic party that originally represented rural America and the South. In short, the Democratic party was socially conservative until Roosevelt, and even then it took until the civil rights movement for conservative southern Democrats to abandon the party for the Republican ticket.
Not to mention conflating the old Republican party with the present-day Republican party. The Republican party ended slavery? Yay! That Republican party no longer exists.
Now all Republicans are racists! It’s so simple to put them all in a box instead of using my head a bit! Yay!
The vast majority of Republicans supported a racist for the head of their party. If you do that, you’re either a racist or someone who’s fine with racism. At some point, there’s no difference.
Either/or fallacy. Nice.
Well many Republicans did support Trump, and I think he is a scumbag.
I think he’s a scumbag too, and for that reason, I left the party. But is it really down to exactly those two items? No, the reality of the situation is that many Republicans do not like him, but they felt he at least was better aligned with their views than Hillary on issues that were important to them, abortion being a fine example.
And many people are ignorant and do not believe that Trump really says or does the things he says and does. They believe that the media is actually portraying the president in a negative light simply to make him look bad. We were given a terrible choice in our last presidential election cycle, and some people falsely saw him as the lesser of two evils. When you have an electoral system that only gives two parties a reasonable chance of winning, it makes it difficult to choose someone who really stands for the same things you do.
But no, it must be “either you’re racist or you’re fine with a racist.”
It doesn’t take much tweaking to turn that statement true, however. Either you support him because he’s a racist or you support him because you believe the issues he’ll advance are important enough that his racism is an acceptable risk. Winston Churchill was a raving anti-Semite, Susan B Anthony was racist as shit, Thomas Jefferson owned and raped his wife’s half-sister. But people supported their causes and history still treats these people kindly because we still do.
I think the problem people on the Left have with Trump is that we thought society moved on a little bit further on racial issues than we really had, so we thought these historical examples didn’t apply to the present. Turns out, not so much.
There are slight differences, though. Trump made racism the centerpiece of his political campaign, and had no other coherent policy positions other than racism, so supporting him to advance a policy position that wasn’t inherently racist was an act of faith, rather than weighing the relative values of concrete ideals.
But you have to also understand how things are perceived. Gosh, I am not even trying to defend Trump; I can’t stand the man and I think he has permanently damaged conservative causes, as the prevailing opinion of this thread demonstrates. But this popular view that the majority of his supporter are racists as well is unfair, or at least mischaracterizing. The example of my father in an earlier post shows that many people didn’t support Trump out of racism. Yes, he has some minor racist tendencies, but he certainly wouldn’t support those extreme groups who feel empowered by Trump. To illustrate, I literally saw my father cry only once in all my childhood (he’s a bit more emotional now, but back then, he was a tough guy). The one time he cried was when he was watching To Kill a Mockingbird after Tom Robinson was killed. Is my father a deplorable?
From my own perspective, I oppose illegal immigration. However, I don’t support a wall that costs inordinate amounts of money, damages the ecology, and sends a nasty message to Mexico. I support immigration reform that allows for easier legal immigration, while enforcing laws that preserve our national security. Am I a racist? If you think I am, don’t tell my Latina wife.
Many conservatives enjoy the bombastic, oversimplification of the Trumps and Limbaughs and Hannitys of the world. They don’t see the building of a wall as inherently racist. They see it as a means of preserving law and order and security.
My point to this is that, while Trump is clearly a racist, I believe the majority of his supporters have deluded themselves into believing he is not. This is not because they too are racists (or at least not tremendously so). This is more because of their confirmation bias that has led them to believe that Trump is being misinterpreted by the media and he just is a little too outspoken.