Question for Trump supporters

aleCcowaN said:
I'm most certain Mr Ambassador will only read between the lines. That's the way politics was, is and will be everywhere.
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There are some problems with this approach. One, Trump isn't a politician. He has never held office, and never proposed any policies. We don't know what he would do.

Two, Trump holds all positions, sometimes at the same time. He is painted out as somewhat of a Rorschach test by people trying to understand him, but I find it more likely that he doesn't know exactly what he wants himself, and simply says things that come to mind.

aleCcowaN said:
Certain critics of Trump -like some of many writing editorials in The New York Times- have taken care of spelling out his positions, like his isolationism.
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Based on what he says, yes.
 
Beelzebuddy said:
Then you're asking the wrong question. Cognitive dissonance has already been and gone. Trumps policies are terrible. Absolutely no one who knows what they're doing think Trump knows what he's doing. So it's not the policies themselves which garner support.

When asking why any particular person who should know better is supporting Trump, you're basically looking at a combination of the following three factors:
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This is exactly what I'm talking about. Trump supporters are asked what they think. Promptly a Trump opponent jumps in and declares what Trump supporters think.

Dare I ask you for evidence, Beelz? Dare I invite you to kindly STFU and let people answer the question for themselves?

Trump, at least, is content to simply tell me what he thinks. He doesn't presume to tell me what I should think. And he certainly doesn't do me the incivility of telling me what I do think. Posts like yours are literally cancer.
 
uke2se said:
There are some problems with this approach. One, Trump isn't a politician. He has never held office, and never proposed any policies. We don't know what he would do.

Two, Trump holds all positions, sometimes at the same time. He is painted out as somewhat of a Rorschach test by people trying to understand him, but I find it more likely that he doesn't know exactly what he wants himself, and simply says things that come to mind.



Based on what he says, yes.
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You are just proposing a more elaborated version of what Beelzebuddy is saying. I'll take it as your personal opinion and I'll wait for Trump supporters to provide their views here.
 
Jrrarglblarg said:
Too expensive? Fine, lets revisit the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. That's my counter-proposal. In neither case do I advocate ignorant isolationism that ignores the real world looming crisis in America of the aging out of the baby boom generation and the economic benefits of an immigration wave of people who want to work hard and make their lives better.
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You may be surprised to hear it, but I do not entirely disagree with this. I have said for years that the biggest problem with illegal immigration from Mexico is that there is not enough legal immigration. But that certainly does not mean poorly controlled immigration, which is what we are facing now.
 
Brainster said:
Are you aware that in many locations there is a substantial fence separating the US from Mexico?
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Approximately a quarter (580 miles) of the boarder (1,989 miles) has some sort of barrier. (source)

What Trump is proposing is much more substantial and would require navigating around several ...er, barriers, both financial, logistical, and legal, not the least of which includes seizing private land from US citizens. Even if all of that were feasible, the wall would still require substantial ongoing funding to maintain, who will come from ... I don't know, Mexico somehow?
 
theprestige said:
This is exactly what I'm talking about. Trump supporters are asked what they think. Promptly a Trump opponent jumps in and declares what Trump supporters think.

Dare I ask you for evidence, Beelz? Dare I invite you to kindly STFU and let people answer the question for themselves?

Trump, at least, is content to simply tell me what he thinks. He doesn't presume to tell me what I should think. And he certainly doesn't do me the incivility of telling me what I do think. Posts like yours are literally cancer.
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I thought you already answered the question: you were going to go sit in the corner and pout because you were certain people were going to be meanies. Were you waiting for someone to coax your opinion out of you anyway, maybe with a saucer of cream and puppy eyes?

I don't presume to tell you what you think, but I do presume to tell you what you don't think. You don't rationally support Trump's policies because those policies, such as they even exist, are themselves not rational. His policy to build a wall and make Mexico pay for it is, in its entirety, "build a wall and make Mexico pay for it." Here's his policy statement, just an elaborate fanfiction in which he'll threaten embargoes with a dollop of racism on top. Everything else are imaginary details which you fill in yourself.

Explore the half-dozen other items there. Please. Here's an action item from his "Economic Vision:"

Remove bureaucrats who only know how to kill jobs; replace them with experts who know how to create jobs.
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You wouldn't expect to find that in the White House. It belongs on a hand-lettered sign outside the White House.

So although I can't tell you why you support the man or his policies, I am comfortable saying it's not because of what's in them.
 
sunmaster14 said:
Mostly it's about immigration for me.

I like his promise to build a wall on the Mexican border. I think it is eminently doable, and I think it will be very effective at reducing illegal border crossings to a trickle. Once that is done, it frees us to legalize the illegal immigrants living among us. It also frees us, if we so choose, to increase the rate of legal immigration, or increase the number of guest worker permits. Illegal immigration is harmful for so many reasons, and yet it is allowed to continue because a significant fraction of both political parties see more downside than upside in curbing it.

I like his still-evolving ideas to curb immigration of people who likely don't share our values. Our immigration policies, by accident and by design, favor people who are low-skilled, uneducated, and culturally backward. I'd like to favor people who are highly skilled, educated, and culturally compatible with our pluralistic society. I think Trump represents the best chance for fundamentally changing our immigration system.

In general, though, I think Trump is crazy enough to do things that no other President has the balls to do. That could turn out badly, or it could turn out really well. I have confidence though that our institutions can protect us from the downside, even as they can't restrain the upside.

Just to give an example, I think that Trump has the highest probability of any Presidential candidate to say "Screw it; we're getting rid of most of the drug laws." That would be a good thing in my opinion. He probably also has the highest probability of any Presidential candidate to say "Screw it; I'm nuking Mexico." That would be a bad thing in my opinion, but I don't think he'll be able to do that.
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Good post although I agree with this.

aleCcowaN said:
Thank you for that. It's an honest post that complies with the OP. I rather discuss in a different thread why I think some of those policies won't get the results you expect.

Let's keep posts like this coming. There's nothing wrong in voting Trump (or Clinton, Johnson, Stein or Castle)
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Now I think I need a drink
 
Brainster said:
You may be surprised to hear it, but I do not entirely disagree with this. I have said for years that the biggest problem with illegal immigration from Mexico is that there is not enough legal immigration. But that certainly does not mean poorly controlled immigration, which is what we are facing now.
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We've been dealing with that for a long, long time. It's definitely not a now thing.
 
BobTheCoward said:
Do you think Trump supporters who meet someone of a different race but identical cultural values and standards that they would treat them differently?
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I have no answer to your question because I have not run into many Trump supporters in real life.
I will say that some people in the US would befriend that person of a different race and treat him fairly and and as an equal; but behind that person's back say "he's one of the good ones." I have no idea what the percentage of people do that, other than saying it is not zero.
 
Brainster said:
You may be surprised to hear it, but I do not entirely disagree with this. I have said for years that the biggest problem with illegal immigration from Mexico is that there is not enough legal immigration. But that certainly does not mean poorly controlled immigration, which is what we are facing now.
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Fun fact: illegal immigration from Mexico has been a net negative since 2008. More are leaving than are coming. The biggest problem with illegal immigration is that there is no problem with illegal immigration, it's just been a baseless talking point for politicians to argue about for years.
 
sunmaster14 said:
Mostly it's about immigration for me.
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Thank you for posting on topic and openly despite the bickering. I too am genuinely interested in what people see in Trump and his policies, mostly because they seem to be so far out in the wilderness for me, that I don't know why people would accept them.

A couple of questions if you would consider them.

I like his promise to build a wall on the Mexican border. I think it is eminently doable, and I think it will be very effective at reducing illegal border crossings to a trickle.
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It seems to me that when this solution has been tried by countries in the past, including Israel most recently, such measures have failed as those that are willing to get passed such a wall can tunnel under them quite effectively. We have seen that the Mexican people and drug smugglers are very good at this, having constructed tunnels kilometers long to smuggle their wares and people. How do you see a wall combating this method of getting around it effectively?

I like his still-evolving ideas to curb immigration of people who likely don't share our values. Our immigration policies, by accident and by design, favor people who are low-skilled, uneducated, and culturally backward. I'd like to favor people who are highly skilled, educated, and culturally compatible with our pluralistic society. I think Trump represents the best chance for fundamentally changing our immigration system.
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I'm also curious how you would reconcile the above with this passage below, especially the highlighted part....

"Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me.
I lift my lamp beside the golden door."

Or do you believe that this passage should no longer apply for the US?
 
Ladewig said:
I have no answer to your question because I have not run into many Trump supporters in real life.
I will say that some people in the US would befriend that person of a different race and treat him fairly and and as an equal; but behind that person's back say "he's one of the good ones." I have no idea what the percentage of people do that, other than saying it is not zero.
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Is "one of the good ones" racism?
 
The ambiguously-legal construction workers? Yeah, fled my area in droves when the bubble burst. Meanwhile small and medium sized towns across America have been recipients of immigration from Mexico of some form or another in a slow constant trickle for a couple of decades. The apartments are all full and trailer/prefab park where my mom lives has shifted from old white retired people to young brown people over the tenish years she's been there. And all those young brown people are part of families and have most of their wealth in decent reliable trucks and SUVs.

They're a positive contribution to the economy. They're starting to build again, so more trucks are rolling off the used car lot. One used lot has nothing but trucks. It's just north of the Mexican boots and jeans store that weathered the recession just fine, muchos gracias.
 
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PhantomWolf said:
Yes, it implies that most of the rest of them are not "Good Ones" merely because of their race.
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For reference: "That's a bad part of town." Criteria: who happens to live there.

For anyone looking for examples: in referring to crime mainly in a few neighborhoods in Chicago, the entire south side is spoken of as "a bad part of town", regardless of whether conditions in a particular neighborhood are the same as another. Common criteria: race of the residents.
 
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