Looking at exit pool demographics might help if you're struggling to have any empathy for a Trump voter. They are largely working class and undereducated and astonishingly diverse for a republican candidate in recent memory.

Trump hurt the poor the last time he was in office. Republicans literally WROTE DOWN ALL THEIR PLANS to hurt the poor and destroy the country well before the elections. Anyone who saw that and still voted for them gets no empathy.

Voting for a party explicitly demonstrates at least acceptance of if not outright support for its platform. You don't get to absolve yourself of support for kicking puppies because the FooBar party also includes a modest tax cut in its policy agenda that you really want.

It doesn't matter if the opposing party advocates for raising taxes or even eating kittens.

That's true even if realistically, there are no other parties capable of winning. You can support a third party, abstain out of protest, or even begin a grass-roots campaign to start yet another party. You can even try changing the FooBar party from within, so long as you don't vote for them until sufficient change has occurred.

Similarly to “silence is complicity.” Refusing to oppose a party by choosing the other is indicating acceptance of what they will do.

Virtually no independent thinker is going to support either major party's platform, for the simple reason that both parties have a collection of inconsistent policies that are an incoherent ideological mishmash. Therefore you do not so much vote FOR a party as you instead hold your nose and vote AGAINST the other one.

When you vote for a party, you may not fully agree with all their policies, but you are stating that the drawbacks are acceptable compromises. When you vote for FooBar, you might not want puppies to be kicked, but you consider it a tradeoff worth making if it gets you that tax cut.

If you are looking at the political landscape of the US as an independent thinker, and are questioning whether abandoning the principles of human rights and liberal democracy are a tradeoff worth making, then I really question whether your thoughts are really as independent as you would like to believe.

This certainly might be what you believe their platform amounts to. But it is most certainly not their explicit platform. Accuse people of what they actually have done, not what you believe their actions to be logically equivalent to. Otherwise there can't actually be a reasonable discussion, because you're giving off heat rather than light.

I think your point is that Project 2025 is not Trump's explicit platform, which is correct (although this doesn't affect my statement which was about his explicit platform). However, if it looks, walks, and talks like a duck, we also need to be willing to call it a duck. Project 2025 goes significantly above and beyond Agenda 47, the group behind it explicitly endorse Trump, and many of Project 2025's authors are involved in the Trump administration. Being an "independent thinker" does not mean accepting what both sides say at face value, it means looking at people's behaviour and drawing judgements based on that.

You can't hold who they voted for against people in a two-party system. There just isn't enough choice.

According to polls, slightly more women voted for Trump in 2024 than in 2020 and significantly more minorities voted for Trump in 2024 than in 2020 (https://www.nbcwashington.com/decision-2024/2024-voter-turno...). One party energetically claims to be on the side of the oppressed but the oppressed don't exactly seem to be flocking to be on the side of that party. Makes you think, doesn't it?

The Democrats cannot win as long as there's a substantial faction inside it unwilling to face the reality of what voters actually think instead of what they want to tell the voters to think.

Here is a Republican take that is about as biased as your take on Republicans. "Democrats are fully infected by the woke mind virus, destroying merit in favor of DEI, promoting antisemitism in support of Hamas terrorism, and suppressing free speech in favor of totalitarian control."

Both partisan perspective have some truth, and a lot that is false. For example, while it is true that Trump represents a threat to democracy, threatening democracy is not part of the Republican party's explicit platform. Conversely, while it is true that there has been a sharp rise in antisemitism on the left, most of that really is antizionism. (That said, if you try to make Palestine free from sea to sea, where will over 7 million Jewish refugees go? You're unlikely to be more lucky than Hitler was in the 1930s in finding a country who is willing to accept them. What happens then?)

However, these days the American political landscape looks a lot different. I understand having priorities, but if someone believes that a magical make-eggs-be-cheaper plan should have a higher priority than their friend (i.e., me) having basic human rights, why would I want to be friends with them? It doesn't matter if they personally agree with the politician's strip-their-friend-of-basic-rights plans or not, the fact that it isn't a priority to them at all says enough.

I'm cheering for you!

Access to gender affirming care for trans minors is banned in more than half of US states. The very same medicines are allowed to be given to cis minors.

In 13 US states bathroom bills prevent trans people from comfortably existing outside of their homes for more than a few hours at a time.

It has only been 22 years since sodomy laws were found unconstitutional. It has only been 10 years since gay marriage was legalized nationwide. Thomas wrote in his Dobbs concurrence that Lawrence should be revisited. Several state legislatures have passed resolutions calling for Obergefell to be overturned.

While less of a "basic right", the Trump administration has banned trans people from serving in the military. Visibility of gay or trans characters in media available for minors is also regularly threatened. Products for trans people sold at stores like Target have led to bomb threats.

The Cass report conclusions and recommendations should be listened to, it was a way better and more thorough study than the Netherlands study that begat all of the "gender clinics" in the US and elsewhere. https://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/ukgwa/20250310143...

> In 13 US states bathroom bills prevent trans people from comfortably existing outside of their homes for more than a few hours at a time.

As far as bathrooms, i feel uncomfortable in public restrooms. I don't know what the rate of people that feel uncomfortable in public restrooms, but those of us that do find family or single occupant restrooms, and know what places have those. No one wants to piss in a literal trough, i could be wrong.

I don't consider sodomy a basic human right, but i could be argued with, i guess.

I don't see what "bomb threats" have to do with human rights, in this context. Is there a human right to have products available at Target? If everyone boycotted Target (like they did with Bud Light), is that a violation of human rights, too?

I am unsure why people keep deleting their replies. It is possible to have a reasoned discussion about inflammatory topics.

You can think this, I suppose. But let me tell you that a very large number of LGBT people do consider these things to be questions of their basic rights.

there's groups of people that think all kinds of things are "basic rights" but it doesn't mean they are. I could say nothing is a "basic right" since any example you can give is violated globally. Maybe some stuff should be globally truly basic rights. But i am willing to listen to arguments that any of these things are a basic right as it stands.

just a for instance: Sodomy. saying it's a human right implies that sexual intercourse is a basic human right. I am unsure if you really want to make this argument.

[Here](https://www.eeoc.gov/newsroom/removing-gender-ideology-and-r...) is an EEOC's "literal directive" pulling back on relevant cases. If you want specific cases then [this article](https://www.cbsnews.com/news/eeoc-transgender-discrimination...) references specific ongoing cases that have been dropped by the EEOC.

And I do think the ability to have consenting and private intercourse without being imprisoned is a human right. I did not expect that this would be controversial.

If you're talking about employment (which the EEOC appears to cover) - i've been fired for not cutting my hair short enough. I've been fired for refusing to wear a tie for a cubicle job. In the US, employment is at-will, generally. If that's what you have an issue with, then let's talk about that. Even if the issue is with hiring discrimination of any kind, i can get behind that, too.

And there's a subtle, yet perceivable difference between what you said, "sodomy laws" and your statement now about "consenting and private intercourse." i also notice you didn't mention "between adults."

I don't really want to have a side-channel discussion, here. The employment vs housing statements, you either had a typo, or it was a red herring, i am unsure. I feel like this is devolving, perhaps of my own fault, into a god of the gaps argument.

The discussion of housing is separate from that and is instead a point about the fact that LGBT people do not have federal protections in this domain. I thought that my post was very clear. LGBT people do not have any federal protections in many domains (housing for example). They have protections in some domains (employment, via Bostock) and even that is backsliding because of the EEOC's changing behavior.

Only adults can consent. The sodomy laws struck down in Lawrence were about consenting and private intercourse, both in general and in the very specific case of Mr. Lawrence.

I am extremely uninterested in any discussion that smacks of painting gay people and their relationships as in any way related to child rape.

https://www.findlaw.com/lgbtq-law/housing-discrimination-pro...

> At the federal level, you can find protections for renters in the following:

    Federal Fair Housing Act
    Bostock ruling
    The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Equal Access Rule

Federal legislation, or at least clear jurisprudence, is needed for this protection to meaningfully stick.

...

> I am unsure why people keep deleting their replies. It is possible to have a reasoned discussion about inflammatory topics.

I also think it is possible, but I don't think your first quoted statement here is compatible with that discussion.

Maybe it's a good theoretical exercise, but life is too short for me to appreciate the various reasons that might drive someone to become an asshole.

I really should read the philosophical school of "me good, you bad" it sounds so convenient.

I thought the GOP was pretty clear throughout the election cycle, from President to local office, that their desired world can only come to be through a drastic restructuring of the Constitutional status quo ante.

I don’t know that “I only voted for (e.g.) tax cuts, everything else is collateral damage and I’m not culpable for it,” is a defensible moral stance.

It's more about watching people pivot towards unquestionable evil. "Empathy is a sin" is such a deep, dark line in the sand. I'm not going to just stand there and watch you cross it.

Well, Alabama outlawed abortion except for life of the mother. A federal judge had to rule that the state can't prosecute doctors and reproductive health organizations for helping patients travel out of the state to obtain abortions. The Project 2025 plan is for the Republican controlled Congress to at some point pass the most restrictive federal abortion law they can get away with.

That is stripping away the rights of women to choose. There are many religious conservatives who support this.

You're doing what so many people do in the abortion debate, and begging the question. You can't simply sidestep deep differences of opinion on moral issues by declaring your position to be right and theirs wrong. It's wilful ignorance of a whole lot of nuance that exists on this topic, nuance that must be engaged with if one wishes to be effective in having a discussion.

If they want to enter a scientific discussion on viability and neural development for when to start placing limits on abortion, and how making victims of rape or incest carry to term is ethical, then we can have a meaningful discussion.

Otherwise, they can feel free to go have their own theocratic community in the wilderness where they don't choose to have abortion. Also known as Alabama these days, unfortunately for those stuck wandering the wilderness with them.

I would be very glad to be cut out of your life if I was friends or family with you. Most pro Palestine beliefs are pro humanity and not anti-semitic at all, they come from the same place people wish existed back in WWII when no one spoke up against atrocities.

I also think especially in today's political environment, political beliefs at least partially reflect an individual's core values. In some cases I may not want to associate with people that have fundamentally opposing core values to my own. For example this guy's interviews with his parents: https://www.tiktok.com/@thenecessaryconversation

Most of the time this is just being an enabler, who excuses, makes up rationales and blames "the other side" for not being nice enough to extremists. Especially when we talk with about fascist close groups. People who say this achieve only limitations on the opposition to extremists. They rarely or never manage to move extremist into the center.

> I’m pretty sure that they weren’t voting for those candidates for the express purpose of stripping away those rights and there were other policies and values that they were voting for.

Why are you so sure? There are plenty of conservatives who openly talk about it. It is not being tolerant when you decide that no one is allowed to do that observation. You are not being neutral here, you are biasing the discussion toward the extremism when you do it.

Sure. But this is that age-old meme: You know those people (most people?) in 1930s Germany who supported the Nazi party but they perhaps weren't really for annexations and genocide. You know what they call those people? Nazis.

People who voted for Trump are responsible for the fate of Ukraine, the demise of Nato, the fallout with Canada and Mexico, the inevitable inflation and economic turmoil of tariffs etc. And that's of course even if they only voted for Trump because they hold "traditional republican values", or because of single issues like gun rights, migration or taxes.

> tolerance is necessary

Tolerance stops at intolerance. You can never tolerate intolerance. Apart from that, politics also relies on a few fundamental things like the reliance on facts and experts, and respect for the rule of law. Obviously you can't ever tolerate "politics" which starts to tamper with either of these. Luckily I can keep a tribe which consists of people who agree with this, which can vote for any party in my parliament, and is 98% of the population. I'd hate to be in the US though where the tribes cut down the middle of the population.

I've cut off my aunt who still claims the 2020 election was stolen. The data I worked with to support fragile communities was removed/altered in the transition (CDC Social Vulnerability Index). I've already lost my job in the federal purge. I have a [former] coworker who was born intersexed that cannot be legally recognized by the government. I'll likely lose my right to marry due to my aunt's beliefs. My boyfriend will likely lose access to lifesaving medication with cuts to funding. My grandma is paying for hospice care with social security and claiming Trump is fixing the country. I'm renewing my passport; several friends have already left the country.

I'm sure there were people who voted for the Republican party in the last USA election for purely economic reasons. However, "anti-woke" policies were absolutely the most important issue for a lot of people. Just this week the attorney general in my state posted an "April Fool's Day Joke" where the "joke" was him standing next to a LGBT flag.

I don't know, man. If they're really your friends, those should be non-negotiable.

In some markets, about one third of the entire Trump campaign advertising was fear-mongering about how dangerous LGBTQ people are. They wouldn't have spent so much on this if they didn't think it was a uniquely important to their constituents.

I think you're unequivocally wrong if you don't think that Conservatives in the US are above voting for a single issue.

I don't know enough about the Palestine/Israel conflict to be able to make an informed opinion on it, so I won't comment on that.

Wise, given the guilt & political climate. But, see also:

  Progressive except Palestine (also known as PEP) is a phrase that refers to organizations or individuals who describe themselves politically as progressive, liberal, or left-wing but who do not express pro-Palestinian sentiment or do not comment on the Israeli–Palestinian conflict.

I tend to be pretty progressive, so it's probable I would be more on the Palestine side, but I try not to express strong opinions on things that I haven't done at least a cursory amount of research on, and I also don't really want to be labeled an antisemite or racist or anything like that.