I fucking hate this nonsense. The majority of Trump voters don’t wake up twirling their moustaches & swooshing their capes, wondering what the most wicked, inhuman acts they can perpetrate is. They voted for a man they were told would listen to them, and represent them. A thread. https://twitter.com/nototally/status/1325191980360425472

Look at this picture. Look at it good and hard. You’ve seen it before but look at it again. And actually think about it for a minute.

There’s a MASSIVE right wing messaging machine, and it’s terrifying. It covers newspapers, it covers television, it covers social media, and it talks directly and effectively to people who feel ignored and abandoned and left behind. Perfect targets, in fact.

And why does it exist? Because the RNC (and the money behind the RNC) wants their fucking votes. That’s it.

Trump voters are human. They made the best decisions they could, with the information placed in front of them.

Mock them and deride them for falling for the grift and being swindled or misinformed, but that’s because they hurt you, and you want to hurt them back.

Nothing good lies at the end of that path. God bless the civilised world for not allowing victims to decide the punishment for crimes perpetrated against them, because we’d lose ourselves. Every last one of us.

Look at the Marshall Plan. There were enough voices who wanted to keep Germany and her people on their knees after WW2. No punishment too harsh, no length of time too long.

Ostensibly to rid the world of Nazism once and for all. But it wasn’t really. It was vengeance.

Against that backdrop, Harry Truman delivered the equivalent of $130 billion in economic recovery programs to Western European countries INCLUDING ONLY JUST RECENTLY NAZI GERMANY at a time when an awful lot of people would have happily let Germany rot.

Let’s put it another way. Star Trek 6. The Klingon Empire is fucked,l and on the verge of collapse. Captain Spock is trying to open diplomatic channels. “They’re dying” says Spock.

And so here we are. Having to do the right thing when recriminations are running high and why does it always fall on us? Frankly, you want to drive a tank up to a Trump rally and brand every last one of them so we’ll be able to spot them in public forever.

(This isn’t to say David Duke gets a pass, btw. The Koch brothers weren’t simply misinformed well wishers who got it horribly wrong. There’s a toxic ideology at the heart of right wing America that demands its own Nuremberg trials).

But calling for civility towards Trump voters isn’t about tolerating white nationalism. That’s too easy an argument to make.

Love the sinner, hate the sin. It’s about showing compassion for our fellow humans & lifting them out of a hole, EVEN if it’s one they’ve dug themselves into. Then sealing it up once and for all, together, and hoping someone would do the same for you if you ever needed help.