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Personally, I doubt that anybody can claim they reached out to the other side because they published a single three minute video in the Huffington Post the day after the election telling Trump supporters that they lost and need to get over it https://twitter.com/WajahatAli/status/1329367711248420865
Especially when the only thing they know about you is that you and Don Lemon laughed until you cried on CNN telling Trump supporters in a mocking southern accent that they were too stupid to read or write
I was raised by a white, ultra-conservative family in a white, ultra-conservative town. At best, folks back home are mildly amused by me, and say they're proud I "care so much". At worst, I'm a socialist puppet.
Here's what I've learned from ACTUALLY reaching out to them.
Here's what I've learned from ACTUALLY reaching out to them.
1. Most of them don't support Trump because they think he's a good man. I know it's entertaining to watch the videos of the flailing women at his rallies, but that's just simply not the majority of his base.
2. YOU HAVE. TO STOP. TALKING TO THEM. LIKE. THEY. ARE. STUPID. You want to fucking know why Trump is able to sway even voters from the other side? Because he doesn't spend every second of his communication with them letting them know how much he absolutely loathes them.
2a. Also, if you want to play the "they just aren't educated" game, you need to check your own dang privilege - education in the south, particularly in the rural south, is insanely shitty and any option other or level higher than public grade and secondary school is EXPENSIVE.
2b. They don't call you coastal elites because you can read, Wahajat. They call you coastal elites because you act like the ability to point out Ukraine on a map and going to Berkley makes you more human than they are.
3. This might come as a shocker, but you have to actually ask them about their daily lives. You can't "reach out" in a three minute video posted on a website. It takes real, actual work.
3a. Now, I've seen several people argue that making minorities do that work is traumatic, which, fair! But then....DON'T POST AN ARTICLE ABOUT REACHING OUT AND HOW USELESS IT IS.
4. The people I know who voted for Trump are exhausted. The Bush administration poached their sons for war with the promise of education and social mobility, and then Obama came through and did all the same things Bush did and is lauded as a cultural hero for it.
4a. When your only son came home a shell-shocked amputee with PTSD just so he could get a four year degree, of course you're going to be pissed at the idea of free college, because it renders your son's pain meaningless.
IM NOT SAYING THAT MAKES SENSE, IM SAYING ITS HOW THEY THINK.
okay screw the numbers and continuing with this long thread which is long because it turns out healing divisions can't happen in a clever 280 characters
The key to gaining a Trump voter's support isn't to list all the reasons why they're wrong, or paternalistically explain to them what "caring about other people" is. You have to actually know who they are, as people.
And also, to recognize that their distrust of liberal talking points is because liberals have spent the past 12 years being the most HYPOCRITICAL PEOPLE ON THE FACE OF THE PLANET.
What's happening with COVID is an absolutely perfect example of this. Liberals in the beginning of the year howled in rage the second they saw anybody with a mask because it was "for medical professionals", and now if you dont wear a mask you're seen as akin to a genocidal maniac
You're told to cancel Thanksgiving, not hold funerals for your loved ones, put off weddings, and completely isolate yourself, or else you're a grandma-killing monster who hates the poor. And then, on tv, you see hundreds of thousands of people protesting in the streets
Is protesting worth the risk of COVID? I actually think so, yes! But you can't argue that your reasons for not isolating are valid and then call the police on a woman for having her family eat dinner with her after six months of no contact.
They aren't stupid. Kamala Harris attacks Joe Biden for working with segregationists and opposing bussing, states on national tv that she believes his accusers, and the second its convenient for her, becomes his Vice President, all apparently forgiven and forgotten.
And this goes back further than trump, obama, or even bush. There was huge talk about how the Latinos of Miami-Dade betrayed their country by voting republican, but did anybody ask why they voted republican? Other than saying that it was bc they were racist slavery-supporters?
Latinos, specifically the Cuban majority Latinos in Miami Dade, will be republicans until the day they die, because in 1982 Reagan gave all immigrants in the US at that time amnesty. 14 years later, democratic Clinton pushed and managed to sway Congress into passing IIRIRA.
IIRIRA continues to be one of the most harmful, poisonous anti-immigrant laws that I genuinely believe is the foundation of our current system. And guess what? They fucking remember who brought that into their lives.
And guess how I know all this. BECAUSE I TALKED WITH THEM AND FOUND OUT.
Okay, one more thing. I've talked ad nauseam about Morristown, and the raid there which changed lives. In 2016, something like 70% of Hamblen County voted for Trump. When the raid happened, they were the first to flood the local church with donations and support.
They aren't evil. They aren't stupid. They aren't a lost cause. They are human beings, and like every other human being on the planet, they are capable of changing for the better, if you actually give them a chance.
