How can the same America that overwhelmingly voted in Barack Obama and then voted in Donald Trump be racist? Trump actually took a lot of previous Obama democratic blue collar workers. I think many folks don't realize that many American's just don't like many of the Democratic party's policies. I know its easier to call people racist but that just doesn't seem the case. And i'm a brown skinned foreigner that grew up in a small suburb of Houston. It actually pisses voters off and pushes folks to Trump that they're called racist just because they disagree with the Democrat's policies.
It's been extremely disheartening to watch. I was never a racism is dead person, I've always know it was still really bad below the surface. I had absolutely no clue it was still this f**king bad.
You can thank ignorance for that. Socrates argued against 'one-man one-vote' for this reason, saying that voting is a skill and not just random intuition In the dialogues of Plato, the founding father of Greek Philosophy – Socrates – is portrayed as hugely pessimistic about the whole business of democracy. In Book Six of The Republic, Plato describes Socrates falling into conversation with a character called Adeimantus and trying to get him to see the flaws of democracy by comparing a society to a ship. If you were heading out on a journey by sea, asks Socrates, who would you ideally want deciding who was in charge of the vessel? Just anyone or people educated in the rules and demands of seafaring? The latter of course, says Adeimantus, so why then, responds Socrates, do we keep thinking that any old person should be fit to judge who should be a ruler of a country?
The counter-argument is that even supposedly educated people can believe and endorse supremely bad ideas. They just are more skilled and competent at coming up with rationalizations for it. Case in point: I believe this guy Christopher Langan, who is popularly believed to have the highest IQ in the world, is a 9/11 truther.
...Samuel L. Jackson, as I paraphrase, said it best (and a bit more pithy)… ...we have to learn that there's a difference between someone being educated and someone being intelligent... ...one gets "educated" on a certain topic in a certain way... ..and it's not a far cry away from being "indoctrinated" or "brainwashed"...
In my opinion, there is a difference between being literate, learned and educated. Many tend to equate the latter two. That being, there is also those that support ideas for their own selfish motives or hidden agenda.
If I could travel to the future say about 150 years I would love to read a few academic studies regarding everything going on today and potentially the next 20 years. There is going to be some evil that is documented over these years. How this virus was handled is very interesting. As someone posted here about a person almost dying but still voting for a man like Trump. Being left with choices like H Clinton and ancient Biden. It’s surreal
We are at a crossroad I believe. Either we solve the issues like climate change, income inequality, racial and religious conflicts, or we are headed toward something bad like world war. This is alot like early 1900s. Even though Joe is elected, I don't think he is the person to lead us out these problems, he have done his job of removing the dear leader. I hope some great leader can lead us in the near future.
To answer your question, what you're asking is true of many sections of society. How can gang members killing each other not see something is wrong? How can people seeing homeless not see something is wrong? If you're an alcoholic/drug abuser, how can you not see something is wrong (or even get into it in the first place)? If you beat your wife, how can you not see that's wrong? How could people in a cults that abuse women/children not see what they're doing is beyond bizarre? Yet all these things happen across all walks of life regardless of race, religious beliefs, etc. My best answer is that sometimes if you're a tree, you don't know about the rest of the forest and if you're above the forest, you can't see the plight of an individual tree. A rural white farmer may not give a damn or know much about the urban kid being mistreated by a cop since the only time the farmer ever runs into a cop is at a restaurant or church. The urban kid has no clue about the devastation a trade war or bad weather can have for a farmer's crops or livestock. But they all gather amongst their own kind who understand one another. You've basically formed gangs of like-minded people who have little clue about the other gang's history/plight. Their world is that group... they think the same, they talk each other up the same, they have similar likes and dislikes, and they have their own reality to an extent. There are a lot of people who like Trump's policies, but can't stand his personality. If Trump's personality were better, this election would've easily been his. I guarantee it. I know people who would vote for him this year if he didn't act like a troll/jackass and embarrassingly so often. Maybe act a bit more mature. There are others who value his positives more than his negatives and are convinced that the Democratic Party is full of "commies/socialists" and evil to corporations, so no matter what he acts like or who he is, what he represents is far better than the alternative, so they choose him. He also "stands up to China", and of course they're Communist. BTW, fast forward to today and I remember waaaay back in high school, we were shown a film called The Wave about the Holocaust and how students were easily influenced and recruited by the Nazi regime. While watching the movie, we thought it was so stupid and how that could never happen in real life, and more importantly could never happen to us. I can't remember how we felt at the end -- my guess is we still thought "that could never happen -- people aren't that gullible". One of my most memorable memories of my high school years is about that film and how classes I thought would never serve me any use (since I had no interest in history, government, etc) are what I think about the most nowadays. It's to the point I'm about to hunt down my teacher of 30+ years ago, write her an email, and say "yup, you were right... this stuff is important".
... ....look, man, lemme do this.... ...you see this here thing that we're all communicating with each other with? The internet or interweb or whatever? ...would you believe that there are people who are supposedly "scientists" who have tried (and may still be trying) to undo or outright disregard the physics that have enabled us to create devices like computers, that can transmit digitized signals and data along fibers and filament, that can be used to send and receive information across the world... ...(a world that's still round...or more accurately, an oblate spheroid, since I've recently encountered an increase in scrutiny of my intelligence)... ...in order to further a belief in a planet not being as old as geological data suggests it is? Or even the carbon found in fossilized remains of once-living creatures says is the age of the planet? If the strong and weak forces of physics did not behave as we've observed and theorized and learned about...there wouldn't be an internet for some of these nitwits and conmen and "higher-level" thinkers to spew out their half-baked garbage in order to reach the masses and inform them of the real truth... ...the same people who don't like science and such are often times the very people who benefit the most from its implementation and application. In my estimation, most of these types of things are obvious examples, generally, of man's reach exceeding his grasp. What's even weirder is that, often, what men grasp tends often to be things that shouldn't be held onto so tightly in the first place...
