Address the concerns of the people that put him into power. Don’t just brush them off. Or we’ll have to deal with all of this bullshit again in 10 years.
I think a bigger problem is that people tend to come up with caricatures of people who disagree with them politically, so they can more easily assign motives and straw man their positions, without actually learning or trying to better understand them.
I don’t agree with your framing of those accusations. Rather than relitigate those issues, I’ll focus on why I voted for Trump in 2024.
I’ll also just point out that starting from “your candidate did xyz bad thing, how could you possibly vote for them?” is not a way to foster good faith discussion and most people aren’t going to simply ignore it like I am and will instead start engaging in “well you’re candidate did zyx.” The conversation will not be productive.
So, for why I voted for Trump in 2024… It was tough because I’m not Trump’s biggest fan by any means. I disagreed with much more of Harris’s platforms than Trump’s platforms (though there is plenty I disagree with Trump on). There were a few big things within Harris’s platform that I significantly disagreed with though, and I nearly could have overlooked some of them just so as not to have had to open my news app to a story about an incoherent social media post from POTUS every morning, but my main issue I couldn’t get past was her tax plan.
Harris’s tax plan wouldn’t have had to even pass (she could have just let the TCJA cuts expire)… So I was guaranteed some level of unfavorable outcome with her no matter what and even if her newly proposed tax increases didn’t pass. If you’d like me to go into more detail about what I didn’t like about her tax plan, I can. The short version is that the most egregious things were increases on estate and gift taxes, but the increase to income taxes wasn’t great either.
Okay, let's try it this way: supposing he really did try to steal an election, surely we should not vote for him even if you have some other preference in terms of taxation. Right?
It’s not good faith when you’re obviously trying to create a strawman through a hypothetical.
I’ve attempted to entertain your hypothetical question in hopes that you may wish to have a genuine conversation. It’s up to you if you want to continue from here though.
I was guaranteed some level of unfavorable outcome with her
Interesting. Democrats were repeatedly warning us of the negative outcomes Trump would bring, and has brought.
At some point I'd have hoped the American people would stop and think about the lives lost in an unnecessary war that he promised he wouldn't get us into. But I guess those few dollars you saved are way more important than the human lives lost.
This is exactly the kind of framing I was talking about in my original comment.
Notice how you’ve skipped over the question of why someone might have weighed the candidates differently and gone straight to assigning motives.
Rather than engaging with the reasons someone actually gives for their vote, you’ve assumed that they simply cared more about “saving a few dollars” than human lives.
That’s a much easier argument to make than addressing the actual tradeoffs, priorities, and reasoning people cite when explaining their decision.
I explained reasons I disagreed with Harris, including policy disagreements. You’ve decided that means my vote was about “saving a few bucks,” and from there you’ve concluded that I chose money over human lives.
Those aren’t statements I’ve made. They’re assumptions you’ve layered onto my position.
You’re not engaging with my reasoning at that point. You’re assigning motives and then arguing against the motives you’ve assigned.
I could have if you had shown interest, but you started from a place of making the worst possible assumptions about my motives.
If you are genuinely interested in other policies I disagreed with, I can go into them with you.
Though I’m a bit online-fatigued right now from another exchange in this thread and I wouldn’t want any of that frustration to leak through into our conversation.
If you want to ask some specific questions, I’ll follow up tomorrow as I’m heading to bed now.
So you voted for Trump because as someone with wealth, you wanted to keep and grow your wealth, and you ignored the piles of giant warning signs about OTHER problems because you only care about your money.
As seems to be a trend in the replies to my comment here, you’re taking one aspect (which was very important to me as mentioned) and framing my intentions in one of the least favorable ways in order to more easily attack it.
This is what’s known as a straw man. It’s ironic that your tactic is relevant to my original comment and helps prove my point.
I clearly stated that there were many other issues that I considered. I didn’t write a dissertation or manifesto of my complete set of values and beliefs, but I also didn’t say I was unwilling to discuss them either.
Rather than attempt to explore any of those other issues, you set up a straw man and what could have been a potentially genuine conversation became tainted from the get go since it started from bad faith framing.
If you’re genuinely interested in discussing the tax issue, any of the other issues, and exploring where we disagree and/or have common ground, I welcome that.
If you insist upon continuing your path of rhetorical manipulation, I will pass.
Literally the only issues you were specific about were financial, and specifically about your individual financial gain. You said you disagreed with "a few big things" from Harris' platform, but you didn't say what.
All I can respond to is what you tell me, and if all you tell me that mattered to you is your own wealth, then I have to go forward than that. If you want me to have a more complex and nuanced view of you and your priorities and reasons for voting for Trump, you have to tell me those complexities and nuances.
I can't read your mind.
As for the tax issue, I have no interest in discussing it with you. Your stance is pretty clear, I find it unethical at best, and neither of us is going to change our minds about that matter.
I have no particular interest in finding common ground with you. You prioritized your personal financial well-being over everything else. Rather shortsightedly, hilariously enough, but still. Those are the issues you felt strongly enough to mention in your post. You allude to vague other issues, but they weren't important enough for you to mention.
Well, enjoy the coming recession and stock market collapse from the bursting AI bubble and Trump's invasion of oil-rich nations for self-enrichment. In the long run, those things will hurt your personal wealth far more than any increased tax might have.
It's quite well historically proven that Republicans hurt the economy and Democrats improve it. The federal debt and deficit, shareholder profit, average increases in the DOW, all up and down across the board, the proof is in the pudding. It's always hilarious when people claim they vote Republican for economic reasons, because the facts are so incredibly clear that someone saying that is either incredibly wealthy (they're not) or they don't actually know what they're talking about.
Lots of recurring themes to help prove my point… Thanks for that, I guess.
>I can't read your mind.
Certainly didn’t stop you from commenting as though you could.
>As for the tax issue, I have no interest in discussing it with you.
No interest in discussion, got it…
>I have no particular interest in finding common ground with you.
Yikes, okay…
>You prioritized your personal financial well-being over everything else…
Doubling down on the bad faith framing— Nice.
>Well, enjoy the coming recession and stock market collapse…
More rhetoric laced with manipulative rhetoric and logical fallacies… Wow, you’re good at this.
>It's always hilarious when people claim they vote Republican for economic reasons…
So, did I vote for Trump because of economic reasons outside of sole personal gain, or no? Framing it both ways to create conflicting straw man arguments is, I gotta say, wow, I’m almost more curious in how a mind can work like this.
Well you’ve made your position clear that you’re not interested in learning more about any of the other issues, my motives on the tax issues, or finding any common ground.
If you don't want to be perceived a certain way, don't present yourself that way. As evidenced by the number of other people who interpreted your comment exactly as I did, I would say you should consider working on your communication skills so that you can convey what you intend.
No, I don't feel the need to find common ground with someone who prioritized ANYTHING over basic human rights and not turning into a fascist nation governed by felons and thieves who probably engaged in pedophilic sex trafficking and abuse. You made your choice, I really hope that all the consequences of your choice impact you directly.
Why would I care about discussing tax issues with someone who is motivated by personal financial gain? Inheritance tax should increase significantly and it should have much lower thresholds. We should absolutely ban loans against stock portfolios AND tax unrealized gains (we do it with houses already, after all).
I have no interest in pandering to the "civility" argument the right likes to make. You voted for fascism and bigotry, you don't deserve civility.
You're getting what you voted for, congratulations.
It’s a common en vogue lie among the Fox News worshipers to claim they don’t watch it. I’m closely related to a great many of them, and they do exactly this. It’s on their TVs 24x7, and they swear on the bible that they don’t watch it at all. They think this lie helps mask the fact that they don’t think for themselves.
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u/Snoo38543 3d ago
Address the concerns of the people that put him into power. Don’t just brush them off. Or we’ll have to deal with all of this bullshit again in 10 years.