I never supported Trump, but I can't find it in myself to join the opposition specifically because I don't understand them. When someone says "Why are you protesting Trump doing X, but not Obama doing X?" it's not a valid argument, and it's not a convincing argument, but that's not the point.
If your answer is "well, when Obama did X he mitigated the negative effects by also doing Y, and did X in political climate where it made more sense and yadda yadda" then I have something tangible to understand your motives. I can feel like I'm donating to an organization or protesting alongside people I understand the motives of. But by treating it as an insider secret only the smarter half of Americans will figure out, regardless of the issue or question, I'm left in the dark alongside the unenlightened Republicans.
Worse, Republicans, who will soon control 3 branches of government, get to say people are just predisposed to hating Trump and have no incentive to listen to protesters. My personal take has been the left has been thrown into chaos by Trump's unexpected victory and don't have a unified voice or reasoning. People won't speak because their afraid their reasoning might step on the toes of someone else's, so everyone just pretends its obvious and gathers immense support without saying anything.
Sounds like you're listening the noise and not the signal. There were plenty of people that were against Trump before the election and now he is doing the things he said he was going to do. They have real reasons to be opposing him, it just sounds like you are paying attention to memes and talking heads in the consolidated media.
> treating it as an insider secret only the smarter half of Americans will figure out, regardless of the issue or question, I'm left in the dark alongside the unenlightened Republicans.
The motives of the protesters are an insider secret? You can find them almost everywhere. Try the NY Times editorials, as a simple way to start.
> "Why are you protesting Trump doing X, but not Obama doing X?"
In general this question is: "You were wrong yesterday, why don't you keep on being wrong today?". The answer, of course is, "I'd rather stop being wrong as soon as possible. On this issue, I stopped being wrong today, and so today I'm trying to do better than yesterday."
Honestly, I care very little about people "protesting Trump". But I think it's great that people are protesting against misogyny, racism, militarism, fascism, anti-intellectualism etc.
Ok, so too few people were protesting extra-judicial drone strike assassinations under Obama. Lets not take that as a great reason to not protest them under Trump (or any further President). It certainly seems likely that Clinton would've had no scruples continuing to blow up Yemeni children in the name of "fighting terrorists". And hopefully that'd garner protests too.
> People won't speak because their afraid their reasoning might step on the toes of someone else's, so everyone just pretends its obvious and gathers immense support without saying anything.
This helps make sense of things a bit more for me as well, thanks. I listen to the left, and I very often agree, but at least as often I simply don't understand what they are on about, there is very often simply no logic to their arguments.
That they've read far too many threads of rabid unthinking "conservatives" and have now concluded that all conservatives are idiots. It's difficult to blame them to be honest.
Personally, I will always challenge idiots on my side, I don't often see the same on the other side, they tend to be much more unified and don't tolerate dissension.
That's commendable. I suggest that what you're seeing is also susceptible to perception bias. Regardless, HN is a place for civil and constructive discussion. However close-minded or obstinate we may believe others to be, it's counterproductive to express or engage on the assumption that they're unreasonable or irrational.
Then leave Reddit and Facebook for Reddit and Facebook. From my experience here, HN members really do value the community they foster here. Each of us is responsible for maintaining that, even when we — or others —sometimes slip.
I think it is a difficult question to answer if the difference between Obama and Trump seems about as arbitrary as choosing a sports team because it's based in your hometown.
Even though it is relatively new, I think moral foundations theory[1] is an excellent place to start in understanding how people assess moral choices that underlie political preferences. With imagination, try to understand how it is impossible to maximize the fulfilling all of these goals he describes simultaneously, and how the moral foundations inevitably come into conflict. Also, try to imagine how different people you know might prioritize one over the other.
For example, nearly everyone wants to claim that they are loyal to people they know well (people in their group) and nearly everyone wants to claim that they are just and would not harm people indiscriminately. Yet clearly people prioritize these two goals very differently. For some almost no inconvenience to others is too great in order to offset even the most minor risk, and for others almost no danger is great enough to justify the most minor inconvenience to strangers.
Hopefully, that sheds a little light on the idea that people have different fundamental goals.
Next, one might explore how effectively different policies achieve different goals. An example could be the topic of trade barriers. How will they affect total world economic production, or the economic production of individual countries relative to each other, the impact on total economic output within one's own country, and how that economic output will be distributed among different groups of people within the country.
And perhaps finally, how will people make their political arguments, given that the people who make political arguments are likely to at least have some intuition about what is likely to convince different types of people. For example, if you want a distribution of wealth favoring the top, then you'll likely talk about how a meritocratic system increases overall economic growth for everyone, rather than only just saying that you think they deserve it. And, if you want a more equal distribution of wealth you will probably talk about talent discovery from a larger pool of people, the value of social safety nets in encouraging entrepreneurship, or the inefficiency of workers who are made to struggle, rather than just saying that everyone deserves a moderate standard of living regardless of the talents they were born with.
Anyway, if you've never supported Trump, but don't see how his decisions have been different from Obama's it could just be that the overwhelming majority of people you know are negative about him, just as other people might never have supported Obama or Clinton because people around them complained about them often. Maybe one way to figure out what you would believe independent of peer pressure is to identify the different values politicians appeal to within a single party. Partly because people in Congress have very different constituents, it can be striking how much a people who seem unified within the same party are appeal to radically conflicting values.
> The left protest about Trump, but they're strangely silent about King Raedwald's invasion of Northumbria in AD 616[1]
It's a bizarre way to argue in favor of being politically detached.
[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/ukpolitics/comments/5r6zw0/the_left...