Tuesday, June 26, 2018

ASKING FOR IT

Amanda Marcotte makes some good points.











Trump, the abuser, is treated as "a force of nature" who can't be expected to refrain from abusing in response to our behavior. This template is also applied to Trump's supporters.

Trump voters escape criticism when they endorse Trump's abusiveness, and engage in abusive behavior of their own, because it's widely believed that we have done something terrible to them. We've taken away their jobs and filled their communities with opioids. (I don't have the wherewithal to do any of those things, but somehow they're my fault, because I'm an "elitist" liberal.) We mock their guns (even though they still have them, in abundance). We make them press 1 for English. (That's the least infuriating part of every phone tree I've ever been forced to use.)

These, we're told, are genuine provocations, so it's okay that Trump supporters rally around a president who's a hater. We made them do it.

We didn't make them do it. And many of them aren't suffering very much.



That's the illustration accompanying a very good Politico story on The Villages, a large community of retirees in Florida that reliably votes Republican in every election. These folks aren't struggling with poverty, addiction, or job loss -- they live in crime-free gated comfort. And yet they're furious. They love Trump and hate NFL football players, and they make Democrats who move in feel unwelcome. America hasn't done anything genuinely terrible to them -- they've lived great lives and are now having a lovely retirement -- but I guess it's presumed that we're responsible for their resentments, because we won't let them have everything they want.

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