After Attending a Trump Rally, I Realized Democrats Are Not Ready for 2020

[FSUTribe76]

I read this yesterday and was struck by the thought that while the author makes some decent points, she’s all over the place and isn’t even sure what her own guiding principles are.

The funniest part is that she left the “Left” because of the alleged anger, hostility and divisiveness. Has she read a single tweet by the Drumpf? Lol.

 

[torbee]

https://gen.medium.com/ive-been-a-d...t-trump-s-rally-in-new-hampshire-c69ddaaf6d07

I’ve been a Democrat for 20 years. But this experience made me realize how out-of-touch my party is with the country at large.

I think those of us on the left need to take a long look in the mirror and have an honest conversation about what's going on.

If you had told me three years ago that I would ever attend a Donald Trump rally, I would have laughed and assured you that was never going to happen. Heck, if you had told me I would do it three months ago, I probably would have done the same thing. So, how did I find myself among 11,000-plus Trump supporters in Manchester, New Hampshire? Believe it or not, it all started with knitting.

You might not think of the knitting world as a particularly political community, but you’d be wrong. Many knitters are active in social justice communities and love to discuss the revolutionary role knitters have played in our culture. I started noticing this about a year ago, particularly on Instagram. I knit as a way to relax and escape the drama of real life, not to further engage with it. But it was impossible to ignore after roving gangs of online social justice warriors started going after anyone in the knitting community who was not lockstep in their ideology. Knitting stars on Instagram were bullied and mobbed by hundreds of people for seemingly innocuous offenses. One man got mobbed so badly that he had a nervous breakdown and was admitted to the hospital on suicide watch. Many things were not right about the hatred, and witnessing the vitriol coming from those I had aligned myself with politically was a massive wake-up call.

Democrats have an ass-kicking coming to them in November, and I think most of them will be utterly shocked when it happens.

You see, I was one of those Democrats who considered anyone who voted for Trump a racist. I thought they were horrible (yes, even deplorable) and worked very hard to eliminate their voices from my spaces by unfriending or blocking people who spoke about their support of him, however minor their comments. I watched a lot of MSNBC, was convinced that everything he had done was horrible, that he hated anyone who wasn’t a straight white man, and that he had no redeeming qualities.

But when I witnessed the amount of hate coming from the left in this small, niche knitting community, I started to question everything. I started making a proactive effort to break my echo chamber by listening to voices I thought I would disagree with. I wanted to understand their perspective, believing it would confirm that they were filled with hate for anyone who wasn’t like them.

That turned out not to be the case. The more voices outside the left that I listened to, the more I realized that these were not bad people. They were not racists, nazis, or white supremacists. We had differences of opinions on social and economic issues, but a difference of opinion does not make your opponent inherently evil. And they could justify their opinions using arguments, rather than the shouting and ranting I saw coming from my side of the aisle.
I started to discover (or perhaps rediscover) the #WalkAway movement. I had heard about #WalkAway when MSNBC told me it was fake and a bunch of Russian bots. But then I started to meet real people who had been Democrats and made the decision to leave because they could not stand the way the left was behaving. I watched town halls they held with different minority communities (all available in their entirety on YouTube), and I saw sane, rational discussion from people of all different races, backgrounds, orientations, and experiences. I joined the Facebook group for the community and saw stories popping up daily of people sharing why they are leaving the Democratic Party. This wasn’t fake. These people are not Russian bots. Moreover, it felt like a breath of fresh air. There was not universal agreement in this group — some were Trump supporters, some weren’t — but they talked and shared their perspective without shouting or rage or trying to cancel each other.

I started to question everything. How many stories had I been sold that weren’t true? What if my perception of the other side is wrong? How is it possible that half the country is overtly racist? Is it possible that Trump derangement syndrome is a real thing, and had I been suffering from it for the past three years?

And the biggest question of all was this: Did I hate Trump so much that I wanted to see my country fail just to spite him and everyone who voted for him?

Fast-forward to the New Hampshire primary, and we have all the politicians running around the state making their case. I’ve seen almost every Democratic candidate in person and noticed that their messages were almost universally one of doom and gloom, not only focusing on the obvious disagreements with Donald Trump, but also making sure to emphasize that the country is a horribly racist place.

Now, I do believe there are very real issues when it comes to race that we as a society have yet to reckon with. I believe that everyone from every background of every gender should have equal access to opportunities, and that no one is inherently more or less valuable or worthy than anyone else. And while the 2017 protests in Charlottesville, Virginia, led to a tragedy precipitated by real racists and real nazis and real white supremacists, I started to see that those labels simply don’t apply to most people who support Trump.

But with all of this, I was still reticent to even consider attending a Trump event. I do not believe that Trump’s attitude is worthy of the highest office in the land. I abhor his Twitter. I am vehemently opposed to so many of his policies. But still, I wanted to see for myself.

I’m not going to lie, I was nervous, so I thought I would start my day in familiar territory: at an MSNBC live show that was taking place a few blocks away from the rally. I decided to wear my red hat that looks like a Trump hat but with one small difference — it says “Make Speech Free Again”—as my small protest against cancel culture. I even got a photo with MSNBC host Ari Melber while I was wearing it, just for kicks.

Well shit.

Without the coveted "knitting bloc" of voters, Democrats are surely screwed.

Guess I'll just stay home next November.

 

[unIowa]

\

The word "racist" is so overused IMO that it has lost meaning. (Kind of like the word "socialism").

The word I would use to describe this country is "myopic". People in this country believe what they believe and no one is going to convince them otherwise. Oh, and the people that don't agree with them are stupid. No one seems to understand or care what the other side is saying .... other than that they are completely wrong.

Both sides are 100% in the wrong.

 

[lucas80]

Hillary may have been the most hated Presidential candidate ever. She beat Trump by over 3 million votes. If the retarded Democrats nominate someone moderate, Trump is done.

Gotta keep the Russians at bay, or at least highlight there participation in our elections. The Russians will turn whoever the candidate winds up being into Karl Marx.

 

[ThorneStockton]

I have no problem accepting that something surprising or even SHOCKING may happen again this year, and I only read the first post, but does she reconcile her prediction with what was observed in the 2018 midterms?

 

[torbee]

I have no problem accepting that something surprising or even SHOCKING may happen again this year, and I only read the first post, but does she reconcile her prediction with what was observed in the 2018 midterms?

Hint: the OP's story is not true.

It was not written by a knitting Democrat who loved watching MSNBC and then one day found out that meanie leftists had infiltrated Big Knitting social media and mobbed innocent knitters until they committed suicide so that made her decide maybe going to a Trump rally would be cool and BY GOD they were just regular Americans and most of them don't really like Trump because he mean tweets but hey at least he doesn't think people are stupid and man was it jubilant and not mean at all but yeah Trump does always lie but it's like totally not a cult and the Democrats are doomed despite the fact they lead in literally every national poll.

Every word in that story is ludicrous.

 

[Lone Clone]

To be fair, the dems and the reps are all fooled/corralled/herded by a letter by the name. The simple promises dont matter all that much.

Also, Bush compromised on the no new taxes and the dems turned it on him in the election. It was probably the beginning of the gridlock that we have now with Government accomplishing nothing. There is no good consequence of compromise. Our system sucks.

The best example is what happened to the GOP congressional members after Reagan postponed the demise of Social Security.

 

[seminole97]

Free college. An idea that's so crazy, noted Communist totalitarian states like Norway, Finland, Sweden, Germany, and France already have the same plans in action.

Are any of those places that basically accept anyone into their institutions under their ‘free’ programs?
My understanding was they managed demand with entrance exam requirements. Might be too anti-egalitarian for the free stuff crowd to swallow.

Not saying our model is more successful, but we basically ensure loans (and give money to low income) to go to school anywhere they can get in.

Maybe that’s part of why Germany has 28% of 25-34 year olds with bachelor’s or higher and we have 43%?

‘Course we might have 15% of the population with useless degrees...

 

[Nat Algren]

Bloomberg is to the right of Trump on Iraq and unapologetically so.

 

[Old_wrestling_fan]

Are any of those places that basically accept anyone into their institutions under their ‘free’ programs?
My understanding was they managed demand with entrance exam requirements. Might be too anti-egalitarian for the free stuff crowd to swallow.

Not saying our model is more successful, but we basically ensure loans (and give money to low income) to go to school anywhere they can get in.

Maybe that’s part of why Germany has 28% of 25-34 year olds with bachelor’s or higher and we have 43%?

‘Course we might have 15% of the population with useless degrees...

FWIW, also not highlighted in any of "college is free elsewhere" posts that I have seen is the government in Germany gets involved with students in about the 6th grade and based on their aptitude/progress to date...directs their future path as it relates to college OR NO college.

Only about 1/3 of Germs go to college, so while it is free, roughly half as many citizens are "allowed" to go that route in Germany v. the US. Many are routed to vocational schools and the lesser potential kids are routed to something less than that yet.

Bottom line...freedom has a price and nothing is truly free.

 

[hawkedoff]

Are any of those places that basically accept anyone into their institutions under their ‘free’ programs?
My understanding was they managed demand with entrance exam requirements. Might be too anti-egalitarian for the free stuff crowd to swallow.

Not saying our model is more successful, but we basically ensure loans (and give money to low income) to go to school anywhere they can get in.

Maybe that’s part of why Germany has 28% of 25-34 year olds with bachelor’s or higher and we have 43%?

‘Course we might have 15% of the population with useless degrees...

Want to speculate on the financial background of the people in Germany with a degree?

 

[seminole97]

Want to speculate on the financial background of the people in Germany with a degree?

I’m going to go out on a limb and assume it won’t please egalitarians.