So we’re gonna do this huh.

It’s true, I do understand people who support Donald Trump to be the sort of people who would support a repulsive man with no redeeming qualities like Donald Trump.

There’s some value in attempting to understand the mindset of a person who cheers explicit calls to harm others. But to give that attempt such priority, with so little effort expended in understanding what it’s like to be a person whose harm is being cheered, is revealing.

The reason there’s so much pushback against this flood of “folks in Trump country” profiles, and it isn’t because such profiles are useless. It’s that the preponderance reveals an outsized gap in our empathy priorities.

The tone in the framing of these pieces almost always reveals an gap of social imagination, because they are far more fascinated by the normalcy of the people who support such an atrocity, rather than contemplating what it is about normalcy that serves atrocity so well.

We aren't confused. We understand that the people who support Trump are mostly nice, and mostly normal, and mostly not actively bigoted.

That's why they're so useful to Trump. Their nice normalcy provides a cover for his atrocity.

They're his Many Fine People.

I really thought we had learned this lesson. I thought we had phrases like "The Banality of Evil" specifically so we wouldn't fall for this bullshit again.

If you support somebody who promotes white supremacy, and you're very nice, then you are a very nice white supremacist.

I don't care what it's like to be a Very Nice Person who has to hear themselves considered shitty for supporting an atrocious white supremacist fascist piece of shit.

I care what it's like to be Black and KNOW your country hates you, and Very Nice People are just fine with that.

I don't care what Very Nice People tell themselves so they can still look in the mirror.

And I certainly don't see any reason to cater to their bullshit worldviews via qualifying clauses preceding a list of observable truths.

VNPs are the most flagrantly coddled people on earth

Go ahead and support Donald Trump and Republicans, Very Nice People. Don't apologize for it—we know you're not sorry.

Speak your minds.

Prepare to be understood.

In other words: https://twitter.com/juliusgoat/status/1151785090139197440