03-02-2021, 01:13 PM
(03-02-2021, 12:57 PM)hollodero Wrote: Well, I'm an European. We more or less did stop it, and we used to be just as religious as those first settlers. The difference rather was the confession, not the devotion.
Eh, there are myriad reasons for why that degree of religious devotion waned in Europe and not the US. Way beyond the scope fo this conversation.
Quote:I consider him a symptom for many things, for a media world creating rifts, a social media world designed to reaffirm beliefs and radicalize them, a strict duality in political thinking that I deem unhealthy, and then some. Trump is - in hindsight - quite a logical development in many respects. But the religion-like devotion is something I still see as special, and also something that is not quite that prevalent on the left. The left usually does not love their own that unconditionally. I say that to spark controversy, of course :)
Obama is pretty much a god to the left, although he certainly has his detractors. Again, I think you're reading too much into the religion aspect and not accounting enough for the nationalism facet. Although there is certainly a sizeable percentage of Trump followers who do so for religious reasons I think a far larger percentage do so for reasons of nationalism.
Quote:I totally understand that, and I tried to put a "not all conservatives" exception into my words. I get that many probably voted Trump for that very reason, or like you (I suppose) did not vote for the alternative for that very reason. I am not at all talking of people with a persepective similar to yours. Eg. you always kept it real when it comes to Trump, and did not quite advocate a "take him seriously, not literally" view, or claimed that sometimes God sends bad people to do good things and all that more religious approach. Not even all Trump supporters will have that approach. Just, imho, many many do.
No, it's certainly not all, and I think the reasons that people support Trump are much more varied than you realize. As I've stated here many times, I work in East LA, the vast majority of people ate my work location are Hispanic. The vast majority of them are major Trump supporters.
Quote:I read that often, and it is something I do not fully understand. Who tells them that everything they are proud of is evil and wrong? Imho, that's not quite as dominant as you make it out to be.
Most on the left considered feverishly supporting Trump as wrong, me amongst them. But rarely do I see someone calling conservatives flat-out evil. That there's vast disagreement on many things is not the same thing as telling people they are evil, or supporting evil by leaning right. There are times where I consider the conservative take on that as slightly hyperbolic. As I, admittedly, often do in many respects.
I am aware that Joy Reed (I don't even want to check the spelling) or some other figures could probably reasonably be seen as demonizing, but I doubt that figures like that are a fitting rolemodel for the left as a whole.
I think here is where you not residing here hinders your ability to see this. I certainly live in a very far left area of the country, consequently what I see is a more extreme version of what others get. But one need only watch television for your daily dose of white people suck or the US is inherently racist.
Quote:Yeah well, as an European again I have a hard time to see democrats as not quite that nationalistic. To me, almost everyone in the US is pretty nationalistic to begin with.
As for the grand scheme of the things you said, I reiterate that I do not feel conservatives are prosecuted in quite that extreme manner. I also feel that many many conservatives take mere contradiction as being demonized. I might be tainted by my own experience, where time and again I was asked with much anger if I want to call soomeone a deplorable now? No, I just dared to expressed a different view, and I usually have no idea where this extreme reaction is coming from. Imho, there's often some fretfulness going on.
It's demonization more than persecution. Of course the concern is that the demonization will eventually lead to persecution.
Quote:I don't really see that either. I don't see the left as being fundamentally opposed to all aspects of american culture, in fact not at all. To some aspects, sure. And some loudmouths probably take it too far, in colleges or some really spaced-out circles. But the average democrat voter? That one is still proud of the US, of its cultural achievements, of being a shining city on a hill and the greatest nation on earth. In short, I much more see Bels as a typical left-leaning American then I see Antifa folks as such.
It may very well be a case of the loud minority getting the attention. In fact it's probably true. What concerns me is that the loud minority is not told to STFU by the rest.
