Have you tried holding a calm, rational discussion with your democratic friends over why you supported Trump?
Impossible.
Have you tried to hold a calm, rational discussion with those same friends over why you opposed Hillary?
Easy.
And somehow, the Democrat Party managed to ignore that simple fact. Lots of voters could not stand Trump. But they would refuse to defend Hillary.
And that’s part of the reason why liberals lost. But it’s not the entire reason.
Protesters are rioting (some rioters are protesting). Anger seems palpable. Facts are rarer than accurate poll results. The entire republican side – every single citizen who voted for Trump – has been universally branded by the left as racist, homophobic, small-minded and just generally evil. Deplorable.
And I think that’s the real reason why the Democrats lost.
Liberals (including the MSM) killed intelligent discourse. They assumed you were a Hillary supporter. And assumed you were a “bad” person after they found out you weren’t a liberal. The door slammed shut. Nothing, nothing, you said after that disclosure mattered. Not your facts, not your feelings – nothing.
The left won the cultural war. Except they didn’t. The opposition just went underground and adopted quiet guerrilla tactics because they were simply tired of being immediately attacked and branded as fools.
I would not even begin to consider putting a Trump sticker on my car in sunny Los Angeles where I somewhat reluctantly live (City of Angels it is not – but the weather’s not so bad). I have known for over a decade that you simply cannot bring up conservative values in conversations. If you’re lucky, people just look at you funny and turn away. Condescending dismissal.
Liberals’ problem, their Achilles Heel, is they are convinced they won the Cultural wars and therefore everyone else has either been converted or died off. Like Romans, they got lazy and complacent through their very stridency. Said less politely, they started to believe their own bullshit – because they had succeeded in shouting down everyone who disagreed with them. And the media was more than complicit – they were the ringleaders.
Rather than entertaining open, curious and intelligent discussion they preferred to take solace in silence – or the CNN soundbites they could endlessly repeat to their friends.
And so, they were taken unawares. Waking up, shocked, stunned to see they had lost not just the House and the Senate but the presidency and with it the Supreme Court.
Oops.
After the shock wore off the revulsion set in. How could this be – what is wrong with these right-wingers and where did they come from? Conservatism was dead – reserved for fools and dinosaurs – right? And so the left took to the streets to root out this new-found evil and voice their rage over this national treachery. Perhaps a moment of quiet reflection in a “safe space” would have been better served.
As Ben Shapiro noted “The left is concerned about a Trump presidency being volatile and damaging. So they riot and burn things.”
Hopefully, that silent majority of us on the right can avoid falling into any sort of similar trap. Hopefully we can listen and understand some of the anger being expressed. We have a great amount of pent-up frustrations ourselves but we will try to put that energy towards constructive use. Towards making America great again (I heard that somewhere).
To those angry liberals I offer this olive branch. We will try to hear your real and honest concerns. We will try to engage you in open discourse. Because we are not all evil and racist – we just have differing views. But bear with us for a bit. Because we have a lot of work to do in the coming year. We are going to be very busy. But we’ll still try to lend you an ear and a hand.
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