I could almost thank the author of this op-ed

[minoanmiss]

I needed a chance for a good rant today.

First, the article, not because I think THIS one will disappear, but so you can see what I'm replying to.
Opinion by Jonathan Zimmerman, opinion contributor • 2h • 4 min read
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US Elections
US Elections


Opinion: Want to understand what just happened? Try talking to Trump voters for a change.
Opinion: Want to understand what just happened? Try talking to Trump voters for a change.
How did this happen? That’s the question every Democrat should be asking today, following former President Donald Trump’s resounding defeat of Vice President Kamala Harris.

And to answer it, I’ve got a modest suggestion.

Don’t study the exit polls. Don’t blame Harris, or President Biden, or the news media, or the Russian bots. And don’t read morning-after ruminations by demoralized liberals (except maybe mine).

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Instead, talk to people who voted for Trump.

We haven’t done nearly enough of that. Instead, we have too often assumed that Trump voters are racist, sexist, transphobic or just stupid. I mean, what else could bring someone to vote for him?

That’s what we need to find out. But if our opening gambit is that they’re morally or cognitively warped, we never will.

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When Trump won the first time, in 2016, I organized a conversation between students at the University of Pennsylvania — where I teach — and at Cairn University. Formerly known as Philadelphia Bible College, Cairn was mostly Republican; Penn was heavily Democratic.

We arranged the room like a wedding, with circular tables on the floor and a raised platform up front. We gave everyone table numbers, which we staggered so that each table had a mix of Penn and Cairn students.

Up on the platform, we seated several students from each school. We began the event by asking them to explain whom they had voted for, and why.

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That modeled the kind of question we wanted everyone to ask. If you begin with, “How could you possibly vote for that idiot?” you’re unlikely to get very far. But if you say, “I’m curious to know how you voted,” people will open up.

And they did. Once the students at the tables had seen the discussion on the platform, they were eager to stage their own. They talked easily and frankly, for two straight hours.

Several Penn students told me afterward that they had never held a conversation with a Trump voter before that evening. And they were surprised that people who voted for Donald Trump were so…normal.

“I didn’t agree with their politics, but they were super-nice,” one Penn student remarked. “We talked about the election, and then we talked about the Eagles.” (That’s the real religion around here: pro football.)

They also learned that many of the Cairn students loathed Trump’s crude speech and behavior, especially his notorious boast on “Access Hollywood” about assaulting women. That was before he was found liable for sexually abusing a woman in the dressing room of a New York department store. And it was before he was convicted of paying an adult film actress to keep her quiet about their sexual liaison.

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But the Cairn students were going to vote for him anyway, because of his stated opposition to abortion (most of the students were pro-life) and because he had promised to lower taxes.

These are exactly the kinds of discussions that we need, right now. Trump voters are our neighbors and our co-workers. They’re the barista at your local coffee shop, the mail carrier on your block and the guy sitting next to you on the bus.

Most of all, they are your fellow Americans. You need to understand them, even if — no, especially if — you are baffled or offended by their politics.

Like many Democrats, I struggle to comprehend how anyone could support a guy who has said so many awful things about women, immigrants and military veterans. But on Tuesday, millions of those same people voted for Trump. We’ll never know why unless we ask them.

That means getting out of our political bubbles, wherever they are. And mine is the university.

Since 2020, many colleges — including my own — have made good-faith efforts to promote “dialogue across difference.” But on my campus, almost everyone is on the Democratic side. You can’t have much of a dialogue across difference when so many of us think the same way.

I know that some of my fellow liberals will bridle at the idea of talking to Trump voters. Why should I converse with someone who hates me?

Because you don’t know that, and the question assumes that you do. Come to think of it, that thought is pretty hateful in its own right.

And for those who are afraid that conversing with Trump supporters will “normalize” him, get over it. He is the new normal. Period.

I don’t like that, any more than you do. But we need to make sense of it. If you think you can do that by retreating into your echo chamber, think again.

The only way to learn about what happened on Tuesday is to talk to people on the other side. And the only question is whether we can find the grace — and the courage — to do it.

Jonathan Zimmerman teaches history and education at the University of Pennsylvania. He is the author of “Whose America? Culture Wars in the Public Schools” and eight other books

My response. Please tell me not to actually email him.

Why does everyone assume that liberals never talk to/never have to talk to conservatives/MAGAts/Trump Voters/Etc?

First, a brief comment specifically on the conversation depicted above: it breaks my heart to see all those young people voting for getting to watch women die from lack of medical care, but what can you do. Also, "They were super nice" to fellow college students. See how they'd treat someone they thought was below them.

Which brings me to my main point.

I am a Black woman. Queer, too. I have dealt with conservatives all my goddamn life. At 12 I was recruited into a program where I got sent to an expensive school on a (partial) scholarship, to be an Ambassador For My Race. I got told all manner of racist and sexist bilge by my fellow students.

A few years later I joined a mailing list chock full of Libertarians, not a few of whom I'd bet voted for Trump, and spent several years arguing against the cruelest forms of individualism and for the idea that humans who aren't White, Male, AND college educated are fully sapient too.

I worked in a school for rich people's children and on a hospital wing at a desk. When you're a friendly looking person sitting at a desk people say whatever goddamn thing goes through their mind to you, and I had to make listening noises and nod while people told me they were voting for A Maleform Chunk of Republican Extruded Product over a competent woman, or how they saw a Black kid with a bike and wondered where he stole it from, or what a great businessman The Orange One was, and I couldn't even say what I really thought.

And there's the Internet. Always the Internet. Where I've been told rapes don't happen, Black women should be forcibly sterilized, and women take "too much" advantage of divorce laws, among other charming bon mots from local conservatives.

You want me to willingly go talk to Trump voters? Have you seen what they've been saying, loudly enough we can't avoid hearing it? "The 19th Amendment should be repealed". "Kamala Harris is a whore." "Violent Crime is at an ALL TIME HIGH and only Trump can bring it down" "Puerto Rico is a floating island of garbage". And I don't even WANT to repeat what they've said about trans people. Absolutely disgusting.

Ahahahahha I just got a phone call which stopped in my ranty tracks. But yeah.

Let me finish up with an anecdote. I used to have a man in my filking friend group (he wasn't my friend but he thought he was) who used to rant to me about his Libertopian ideals which would wind up in laments about how no woman he knew would date him. I would contemplate telling him, "if you want to get laid, become pro-choice, so women know you won't try to Baby Trap us," but I decided not to.

I'd bet $5 that asshole voted for Trump.

Why should I give these people access to hurt or scare me ever again? Especially now that I'm going to have to listen to them jubilantly enshrine bigotry in law for at least 2 more years if not eternity?

Comments

[sovay]

Why does everyone assume that liberals never talk to/never have to talk to conservatives/MAGAts/Trump Voters/Etc?

In my experience, it's unavoidable.

*hugs*

[dewline]

Same.

*hugs on offer*

[lunabee34]

Ha! Indeed.

[sabotabby]

You can't avoid them and they don't shut up. They don't pretend to believe anything other than what they believe. They're not mysterious complex puzzles that need to be solved or coddled. They are the powerful and the insecure and they need to be kicked solidly in the nads.

[magid]

^ This, thank you.

[cellio]

Those folks aren't interested in listening or in dialogue, so why expose yourself to more of their hurtful spew?

I would willingly participate in a dialogue with a Trumpist who wants an actual dialogue, who wants to know my perspective and not just talk at me, 'cause I do want to know what makes those folks tick. But it would require some sort of matchmaker to find people for that, because that kind of openness is far from the norm. (And they'd say the same of us, I'm sure.)

[kore]

SERIOUSLY

That article reveals a lot more about one white guy's experience than anything about "people who should listen to Trump voters."

[honigfrosch]

That article made me throw up in my mouth a little. For fuck's sake. Trump voters have been gleefully and loudly telling us for years why they do it, and you do NOT need to coddle them by pretending that their decisions are completely intransparent and unknowable unless you give them a platform. Also, oooh we were so surprised they were normal - blegh, people also say that about serial killers and literal nazis that worked in concentration camps. Fuck that guy.

[filkerdave]

I live in Wyoming. I can't help but talk to Trump voters.

They hate queer people. They don't much like brown people. They're mostly not too fond of non-Christians.

They voted for Trump because he hates who they hate.

[lynnenne]

Yup.

[dewline]

Damn.

[princessofgeeks]

My entire extended family are Republicans. I do not have to spend any additional time listening to Republicans or Trump supporters to understand them. I am around them ALL THE TIME.

[dissectionist]

That is a spectacular example of telling on your own privilege without realizing it. He’s clearly in a position where, because he isn’t personally targeted by the right-wing and has the ability to keep himself out of their spaces, he can avoid hearing from them unless he seeks them out. And his privilege creates the massive blind spot where he assumes everyone has the same experience as he does.

[kore]

"He’s clearly in a position where, because he isn’t personally targeted by the right-wing and has the ability to keep himself out of their spaces, he can avoid hearing from them unless he seeks them out. And his privilege creates the massive blind spot where he assumes everyone has the same experience as he does."

Yes THIS.

Also the fake happy ending "we talked about football, the real religion here haha" made me want to spit.

[cellio]

Wow. Just wow.

There are a lot of people out there who need to get out of their bubbles and try to understand people not like them. But it feels like this dude's lecturing to the wrong audience, y'know? After all the hate, all the bigotry, all the felonies, all the "justification" to shit on women and non-whites and the queer and Jews and immigrants and... -- he wants us to offer an olive branch?

That thing he did with the college students had ground rules and careful planning. This is not at all like talking to the racist uncle at Thanksgiving dinner.

[dissectionist]

he wants us to offer an olive branch?

And the thing is, the olive branch won’t even get us anywhere. It’s not going to make a single one change their votes, because we can’t appease them by saying, “OK, you don’t want abortion, we’ll just have our side outlaw abortion too and then you can vote for our side. OK, you think gender transition should be outlawed because it hurts kids, but also you’re not willing to listen to any trans person or medical authority on this subject, you won’t change your mind, so I guess we’ll have to be anti-trans so you can vote for us.”

When their desires are against human rights and they won’t listen to science or participate in a shared reality, it doesn’t matter if we know their reasons. We can’t change our platform to one of hate in order to be a valid option for them.

[pameladean]

This sanctimonious nonsense person thinks that the experiences of college students are representative. Possibly such young people had never talked to a Trump voter before, SO FUCKING WHAT? What a dumb set of conclusions.

And did any of the Trump voters ever talk to a voter who voted against Trump? No, why does that matter, all initiative of any kind is always, always shoved away from right-wingers and onto the rest of us.

I hate these stupid people.

P.

[full_metal_ox]

This sanctimonious nonsense person thinks that the experiences of college students are representative.

And what’s betting it was predominately white, culturally Christian, and abled college students—whom psychology has a history of using as the gold standard for everything?

[conuly]

Why the hell is it always on us to bend over backwards to understand them?

[amaebi]

Framing that tacitly makes them the standards and rulers, of course.

[amaebi]

You are right.

This columnist’s take is like imagining that there’s not much public information about white people or straight people.

[kore]

"Several Penn students told me afterward that they had never held a conversation with a Trump voter before that evening. And they were surprised that people who voted for Donald Trump were so…normal."

That is a LOLOLOLI I WISH on both counts.

And no normalizing Trump is not good! He is NOT the new normal!

[cmcmck]

This is the very same shit that KEEPS telling people like me that we needs to talk to TERF's and transphobes.

Tried that..... didn't work.

How do you talk to someone who wants you deprogrammed or dead?

[minoanmiss]

Exactly. Exactly

[xenacryst]

Yes. My uncle is, in fact, someone who'd probably not actually want me dead if you asked him outright. I'm sure he'd say I'm a beautiful person and that there would be some other way I could get my meds if Planned Parenthood ceased to be. Yep. And he'd tell me a lot of other things with a well thought out libertarian philosophy, and he'd be articulate, and everything. He absolutely wouldn't be on the internet saying disgusting things about what should be done to me.

But he threw in his lot with the people who do want me dead. Who want a bunch of people to stop existing. Who would like it so very much if all :hand waves: this troublesome riff raff just went away. It would be so much more peaceful.

I'm sorry, I'm not going to stop existing just so you can be comfortable.

And the fascist murderer state in power will use your complacency, your desire to just be left alone and live out your days in some kind of relative comfort - it will use that to crush us if it can. And then it will crush you. And I have no need to work with people who will apologize for that.

[cmcmck]

I've never been one to worry about making people comfortable by not existing.

I started existing in the fullest sense at fifteen in the late nineteen seventies and am now in my late sixties and I have plenty of people around me who are glad that I exist including my (cis male as it happens) partner of thirty two years.

I may not have been abe to be a mum but I am an aunt and a great aunt! :o)

[full_metal_ox]

Let me finish up with an anecdote. I used to have a man in my filking friend group (he wasn't my friend but he thought he was) who used to rant to me about his Libertopian ideals which would wind up in laments about how no woman he knew would date him. I would contemplate telling him, "if you want to get laid, become pro-choice, so women know you won't try to Baby Trap us”…

Let’s not forget the influx of younger male voters who’ve been taught that a vote for Trump will somehow guarantee them a Pussy-To-Me Pipeline: no social skills or personal hygiene required. (And younger female voters who really don’t get that June Cleaver On The Prairie is the most ahistorical of constructs.)

[minoanmiss]

It will never not be funny to me that when I was a little girl my father told all the little girls he could talk to * that we should have educations and jobs and not rely on a man to take care of us.

*my father was superintendent of our (fundy) church's sunday school, so he talked to a lot of kids.

[lynnenne]

What We Just Learned About American Values https://thetyee.ca/Analysis/2024/11/06/Just-Learned-American-Values/

Pretty much sums up my feelings.

[minoanmiss]

what an astute article. thank you.

[hitchhiker]

jfc. are we now going to get a wave of articles trying to humanise trump voters?! as i said elsewhere, my one hope for them is that they are finally emboldened to gloat about voting for him, and are then stunned by how quickly and decisively their social circles shun them.

[minoanmiss]

You called it! Most astutely.

[mekare]

Yeah the blind spot is a mile wide. *sigh*

[lokifan]

I know that some of my fellow liberals will bridle at the idea of talking to Trump voters. Why should I converse with someone who hates me?

Because you don’t know that, and the question assumes that you do. Come to think of it, that thought is pretty hateful in its own right.

Arrrghhhhh no, sorry, indifference to whether someone lives or dies IS hate. Even if they don't intend it.

Also, "They were super nice" to fellow college students. See how they'd treat someone they thought was below them.

Exactly!!! And as you say, we have to hear their terrible opinions and threats all the time.