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Re:Those who exercise free speech should also defend it even... by krapp on Thursday June 25, 2020 @07:12AM (#23639273)
>I'm pretty confused how America keeps going down this path even after an actual 50% of the entire population revolted against the 'good' ideologies and voted in Trump with religious fervour.

About 60% [0,1] of "the entire population" voted at all, and out of that population, votes for Trump and Clinton were split almost evenly, with Clinton still getting a slight majority of (a couple of million) votes, which isn't actually relevant due to the electoral college. At the end, the margin that decided the election was about 80,000 people[2].

I'm assuming good faith on your part, but the premise that half the country revolted against political correctness by voting in Trump and handing him a mandate is a populist myth. Trump is the result of having gamed the system slightly better than his opponent and nothing more, with far less than half of the population voting for him, and many doing so because he was the only option their party provided.

[0]http://www.electproject.org/2016g

[1]https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2016/11/10/13587462/...

[2]https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/12/01/do...

Re:Those who exercise free speech should also defend it even... by missosoup on Friday June 26, 2020 @03:34AM (#23649644)
You're splitting hairs. Fine, it's not 50%. It's 48% or 45%, of the voting population. What does it matter? The point stands that a statistically significant number of people hold a set of ideologies and views that has been marginalised.

Before the 2016 election I would never believe that someone like Trump could win, because the media and prevailing signalling from America was that Trump-esque beliefs were a tiny minority. Clearly that turned out to not be the case. And that's the lesson from marginalising and suppressing 'undesirable' views. It doesn't make them go away. Here they are, dominating America. Deplatforming those people, depriving them of public voice, censoring their views, all that did was harden their resolve and create a massive blowback effect that shifted people on the moderate side of the spectrum towards radical.

You can argue about fine detail stats all you want, but America is currently being run by Trump and all the so-called undesirables have risen to mainstream status. Which is what my comment was all about. I'm sure you'll agree that if winning the presidency merely takes a 'slight' advantage in gaming the system, then the vote was already split on a knife's edge.

Re:Those who exercise free speech should also defend it even... by NhanH on Thursday June 25, 2020 @07:52AM (#23639554)
I am just going to assume the GP already knew everything you just said and reply that you are missing the point.

Change 50% to 30% and his point does not change. There are large number of American who voted for Donald Trump with religious fervor, and unless you are planning to do a Thanos, you will have to come to term with them.