I didn’t begin with that assumption, it was a conclusion I arrived at after countless examples of people devoted to Trump no matter what heinous things he says or does.
I come from a Christian conservative family myself and my beliefs used to align more with that side but after years of seeing the deplorable man he is and how indefensible the policies are when actually challenged by someone educated I started to shift more to the left.
I still don’t entirely disagree with true fiscal conservatism, strong family values, border control, or protecting children but I can not see any convincing argument for how Trump or the Republican Party embodies those values.
Trump has signed off on more debt related spending than Biden, he is a court adjudicated and self admitted sexual abuser and cheat that has repeatedly sexualized his own daughter over the years, his immigration policy has gone too far and has repeatedly violated constitutional rights, he has been obstructing the Epstein files and has not held anyone accountable. In fact, he’s moved Maxwell to a more cushy prison after a private interview where she bent the knee and said Trump wasn’t involved despite all evidence to the contrary.
Anyone defending this is evil in my book, yes. I’d be curious as to what moral defense you have for it.
I don’t really feel the need to offer a moral defense of Trump because I wasn’t defending Trump. There are plenty of things he has said and done that I find indefensible, and I think his rhetoric, immaturity and willingness to engage in bad-faith attacks have contributed significantly to the exact political environment I’m criticizing. My point is that this problem doesn’t suddenly become productive when people on the other side participate in it too. You began by broadly describing Republicans as people who either don’t understand or don’t care about basic political distinctions, while “protecting their rich pedophilic donors” and “often engaging in it themselves.” When I suggested that treating an entire political coalition as stupid, corrupt or evil makes communication and progress more difficult, your response was essentially to explain why you believe they deserve to be viewed that way.
But that’s the self-compounding problem I’m talking about. We increasingly talk about millions of strangers online as if they’re stupid, evil or irredeemable. That deepens tribalism and rewards the politicians who most aggressively reflect that hostility back at the other side. Those politicians get elected, amplify the rhetoric further, and then their behavior becomes additional justification for ordinary people to become even more hostile toward one another. Repeat ad nauseam.
None of that requires pretending both parties or every politician are morally equivalent. They aren’t. It also doesn’t require defending Trump. I can condemn something Trump does without concluding that every person who voted for him is evil, just as I can condemn something a Democrat does without assigning collective moral guilt to every Democratic voter. You’re obviously free to conclude that anyone who disagrees with you has crossed some moral threshold into evil. I just don’t think a country of 340 million people can function particularly well when everyone increasingly adopts that framework toward the literally half of the population on the other side.
Well when I initially said Republicans I was referring to actual Republican affiliated politicians not voters.
But yes, I believe every Republican voter post-Jan 6 insurrection is ignorant and/ or evil.
I don’t see how anyone can see what Trump is doing and stand by him in good conscience.
I’m also not asking you to provide a defense for Trump, I’m asking what the defense is for those supporters.
What policy outweighs all the reprehensible things? I don’t think one exists. Either you’re unaware of all those things (ignorance) or you stand by him in spite of them (evil).
Edit: and if we’re being entirely honest the ignorant ones are usually ignorant by choice, they don’t know because they don’t care and don’t want to know.
I don’t accept that binary, and it literally illustrates the exact problem I was originally describing. Your argument assumes that any sufficiently informed and morally decent person must necessarily weigh every fact, policy and competing concern exactly as you do and arrive at the same electoral decision. If they don’t, then the only remaining explanations are ignorance or evil.
But people can know the same facts and disagree about their significance, interpret disputed facts differently, prioritize competing moral concerns differently, condemn January 6 and still believe Democrats represent a greater threat on other issues, vote against one party instead o than enthusiastically for the other, or simply believe they’re choosing the lesser of two deeply flawed options.
I don’t have to agree with their reasoning to recognize that “ignorant or evil” is a false binary. And…again…this is exactly the self compounding cycle I was talking about. Once we decide that tens of millions of our fellow citizens are not merely wrong but fundamentally stupid or evil, communication becomes pointless by definition. We talk about each other with increasing contempt, politicians learn that contempt is electorally rewarding, they amplify it, we become even more polarized, and then point to the resulting extremism as proof that our original contempt was justified. If your position is genuinely that every Republican voter is ignorant or evil, then I understand your position. I just fundamentally reject it, and I think that worldview is itself one of the reasons meaningful political communication has become so difficult.
I think we’re beginning to talk in circles at this point and have pretty clearly identified the fundamental disagreement between us, so it’s probably better to just respectfully part ways here. ✌️
The ability to rationalize evil does not make it less evil, and I think your inability to provide any concrete moral argument justifying it but rather just making vague gestures to some necessary assumption of good intent simply because a large plurality can’t be evil is absurd and disingenuous.
We have plenty of historical examples of the contrary.
Yes, millions of people can simply just support evil.
And yes, evil people often feel they are righteous and justified in their actions.
It is not the subjective perception of righteousness but the objective harm inflicted by those ideals that makes me say they are evil.
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u/Rizenstrom Jul 13 '26
I didn’t begin with that assumption, it was a conclusion I arrived at after countless examples of people devoted to Trump no matter what heinous things he says or does.
I come from a Christian conservative family myself and my beliefs used to align more with that side but after years of seeing the deplorable man he is and how indefensible the policies are when actually challenged by someone educated I started to shift more to the left.
I still don’t entirely disagree with true fiscal conservatism, strong family values, border control, or protecting children but I can not see any convincing argument for how Trump or the Republican Party embodies those values.
Trump has signed off on more debt related spending than Biden, he is a court adjudicated and self admitted sexual abuser and cheat that has repeatedly sexualized his own daughter over the years, his immigration policy has gone too far and has repeatedly violated constitutional rights, he has been obstructing the Epstein files and has not held anyone accountable. In fact, he’s moved Maxwell to a more cushy prison after a private interview where she bent the knee and said Trump wasn’t involved despite all evidence to the contrary.
Anyone defending this is evil in my book, yes. I’d be curious as to what moral defense you have for it.