Dialogue on Trump Supporters

"Trump is in favor of ripping screaming children from their parents' arms and separating them indefinitely.  Eighty-seven percent of Republicans support him, and therefore support this. The party is massively dominated by huge sociopaths."

"Oh yeah? Did you support Obama?"

"More or less."

"Right, so in that case, you support--just for instance--the ongoing atrocities committed by Saudi Arabia against Yemen, which he aided and abetted. See how that works?"

"Obama did bad things, but he also did good things. It's not pretty, but when you're deciding who to support in politics, you have to exercise a certain degree of pragmatism. That's just the way it is."

"Uh...and you realize that a Trump supporter could say the exact same thing?"

"But they don't, do they? Instead, they show up in facebook threads on the subject to piously opine that the people being ripped away from their parents deserve it because their parents should've worked harder to become legal. You know--like a sociopath would do. And if there are people saying this, you know there are a shitload more thinking it."

"Yes, there is some percentage of republicans who are truly bad people in that way. But you haven't demonstrated that it's all of them."

"No, it's not all of them. It's eighty-seven percent of them. The remaining thirteen percent are overrepresented in the media because outlets want to be seen as letting conservative viewpoints be heard but don't want to put the basic savagery of Trump supporters on display, but the ones who like Trump--yup!"

"Well...you have to admit, as inconceivable as it seems, there are people who are so monumentally myopic that they either aren't even aware of these things or look at them so glancingly that they don't make any impression on them."

"Doesn't exactly shower them in glory."

"No, but that's not what we're arguing about here."

"So...these hypothetical Trump supporters who don't like racism; they just like the other things he's doing. Can you, like, give me some examples of things they support about him?"

"Well, there's the tax-cutting and the regulation-slashing and the trying-to-get-rid-of-the-affordable-care-act and the general he-tells-it-like-it-is bellicosity."

"Wow, great. So the argument is that they like him because he tries to do things that will hurt people--but it's not racism per se."

"Well."

"And in any case, I fucking doubt that. Apart from the billionaires themselves, who the fuck wants tax cuts for billionaires? And who wants their kids to be able to inhale more pesticide? This is the shit that people put up with or hand-wave away because they like police brutality and raging against kneeling NFL players. Is there any evidence that that's how it works?"

"Well, you must remember that friend-of-a-friend on facebook who was convinced that Trump was providing lots of help to veterans."

"Yes, and she didn't seem very smart, did she?"

"Not the point."

"So our argument is that some Trump supporters are racist and some are dumb-as-rocks? Is that it?"

"Not mutually exclusive categories."

"Right, but those are the two?"

"Looks like it."

"Okay, I'll concede that not all of his support is predicated on racism. But it's more than a little, I'll tell you that much."

"Alas."