I was gone all day today, but there are quite a few things I want to touch on so I apologize in advance for this massive post.
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Originally Posted by station
The thing that all these people seem to have in common is lack of education. They seem to be missing even the most basic reasoning skills so changing their mind is nearly impossible. Quality of education should be one of the main issues we fight for because if we're all dumb then it's hopeless.
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Meanwhile, Trump has a woman heading the Department of Education a person who believes we have no responsibility to ensure that citizens are even
literate, let alone properly educated. DeVos might actually be the most terrifying of all of Trump's appointments, and he has a lot of awful ones. I have quite a few friends from Michigan, where the DeVos family is a big deal, and every single one of them has been ranting against her since the initial announcement was made. She is an absolutely atrocious pick for education; I'm really desperately hoping that she doesn't get confirmed. I can handle the other picks, but she's just a disaster waiting to happen.
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Originally Posted by RougeUnderoos
I think they might have seen it coming. I doubt they threw a dart at a calendar and it just happened to land on this day.
Agree with the message or not, this is an actual thing with hundreds of thousands (millions, possibly) of people motivated to take to the streets. The Great Pumpkin definitely doesn't care, and his half-witted supporters don't either, and it may not make a difference, but it's something.
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This isn't
just about Trump. This was an easy day to get millions of people to make a point, when there's already a lot of attention on DC and on policy changes. We have a new Congress and we have new Representatives, as well as a new man in the White House.
They want to be sure that all of these new people realize that we are going to demand that our voices be heard. As awful as this past year was, I feel like it could be wonderful to push younger people (and women especially) to be active and vocal in the world of politics. Watching this may well push more women to run for office, push more women to register to vote, push more women to get an education and go into law, etc. This is so ugly now, but seeing these young women (many of whom were likely too young to vote in this last election) show up in droves to make their voices heard is absolutely inspiring and it lifts my spirits.
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Originally Posted by CaramonLS
This is where you start to lose me. While I can agree that there is a portion of the Republican party which are racist, homophobic and xenophobic, you cannot lump these people together as one homogeneous group. I don't think that most Trump supporters are all that concerned about LGBT issues or see other issues (like the economy) as much more important. I think that sort of stuff only appeals to certain segments of the party.
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Note that I never called them racist or homophobic or xenophobic, because I don't think a large number of them believe that they are. But those same people--who would never claim to be racists/hate gays/etc--are terrified of change. "This isn't the America I recognize," which is a pretty subconscious call for the "good old days" where their towns were white, the characters on their TV were straight, everyone spoke English all the time. It's not hate, it's fear of change.
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You're in PA - you should see some of this, but the reason some people think illegal immigration and refugees are a big issue is because they think they are losing jobs because of it. As an unemployed worker, you see illegal immigrants coming across the border, you look at it and see one more person that you have to compete with for that job. And he can probably do it cheaper than you. Then the government talks about amnesty for these people and all you can think about is what the hell are they doing to help me when I can't find work?
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Someone else touched on this earlier--but the government already did plenty to help citizens to find work, it was up to those people to take that initiative. These are the "bootstraps" types of people, who complain about welfare and food stamps, but they don't ever actually turn that bootstraps argument around on themselves.
They want those old manufacturing and steel and coal jobs back, jobs their fathers and grandfathers had, where they didn't even have to graduate high school to make 40k a year to start. But those jobs don't exist now. Automation and progress have taken away most of those jobs, and you can't roll back automation or technological progress.
These people have to read the writing on the wall--the writing that's been there for decades--that the world around them is changing, and that they need to adapt to it. Again it's the fear of change and the refusal to move forward.
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Then only one candidate decides to appeal to them directly by speaking about renegotiating unfair trade deals which caused their factories to close. Talks about limiting H-1B visas because they feel they are bringing in foreign professionals to work for cheaper (speaks to American exceptionalism). While the other barely campaigns in your state. Maybe some people do think the jobs will come back, but others look at other protected Industries (like Agriculture) and sees them doing well and probably thinks that if we did reduce free trade, some of the jobs would come back.
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But again it comes down to heads in the sand, because when I try to talk with these people and point out that the guy talking about these trade deals is benefiting greatly from them by producing goods overseas, benefiting from H-1B visas by hiring temp workers from Latin America for his hotels, they just say "but he'll fix it! He's a businessman! He knows what he's doing!" ignoring all actual reality and fact, and if you bring up facts and stats and Trump's actual history as a businessman, they shut down and refuse to listen.
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Then you come by and call them a racist and they get their backs up. Not once did they really even think about race when working through the above equation and they shut you out completely. Rightly or wrongly they are looking out for themselves and trying to get by. They've seen wages stagnate over the last 40-50 years and think things are getting worse.
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They shut you out for many reasons. Actual scientific fact means nothing to them. I heard a group of Trump voters talking once about how Al Gore made billions lying about climate change, how it was such a complete and total joke, and literally
ten minutes later were having a discussion about how the weather is so much
different now than when they were growing up. We used to get snow and now we don't get any around here! The cognitive dissonance is
exhausting.
And beyond that, they keep voting for politicians who aim to bust unions. Wages raise when workers unionize. It's no small surprise that as unionization has decreased, wages have stagnated. But you cannot actually talk to them about that, because they've been brainwashed to believe unions are bad and teachers unions have resulted in overpaid educators, etc, etc.
Yet again--cognitive dissonance and not doing research and voting against their own best interests, and you cannot talk them out of those ill-formed opinions regardless of how much fact you back it up with.
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Originally Posted by CaramonLS
During this election you saw a lot of rust belters and unionized workers switch from (D) to (R) to support Trump - I'm sure there are some that don't want handouts like welfare or EI and some that do. They voted D for most of their life and it got them to this point, so they were frustrated.
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That's the thing, there weren't really a huge number of normally D voters that went R. West Virginia always goes red. Ohio often goes red. Pennsylvania and Michigan were the big surprises as they regularly go Dem, but the difference in votes was
tiny. Trump won MI with .3% of the vote, and PA with 1.2% of the vote. He did not win either state by a huge majority, he narrowly edged Clinton in both.
It looks like a huge win because the electoral college makes it look like a huge win. In all reality, the swing states that he won that give the map this huge swath of red were actually only won by a couple hundred thousand votes, among probably 15 million votes. There was not a massive shift to R for Trump, it was just enough of a shift to give him the win.
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Originally Posted by direwolf
Yup. Not to mention the fact that the new administration is about to take health care away from millions of people, defund planned parenthood, etc..
I'd say that's more than enough reason to protest.
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Also that they want to gut the entire department that deals with the Violence Against Women act, which would roll back a lot of laws protecting women from domestic violence, etc.
They want to cut funding to departments that deal with climate science and the development of clean energy. Trump wants to roll back regulations to protect our water, air, soil. They want to cut funding for the Arts and Humanities, for public television and radio, etc, etc. They want to lessen protections for the LGBT community. They want to cut funding to the department that investigates overuse of power by police.
There are a
lot of things to protest.
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Originally Posted by cDnStealth
Maybe, and stay with me here, the people who are protesting Trump's inauguration didn't vote for him to be the President. Just because he was elected doesn't mean the people who chose not to vote for him can't voice their displeasure. That can't be an odd concept can it?
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There are a lot of things at play. There could be formerly convicted felons who have served their time but are still barred from voting. There could be students who are here legally from another country who were yet unable to vote because they aren't citizens, but they're still worried about what this administration might do. There are teenagers who aren't yet 18 and thus weren't allowed to vote in this election.
Beyond that, it's a reminder to this administration that despite the fact that Trump won the electoral college, he lost the popular vote. That doesn't delegitimize his presidency, but it
does mean that he is not the leader of the majority of Americans. He won with a minority vote, and yet he promised to be a president for
all Americans. This is a way to try to remind him that the rest of us are still here. This is to remind him that even in many of the states he won, he did not win them with an overwhelming percent of the vote. He won, but not by much, not in PA, not in Michigan, not in many of those rust belt states that won him the White House.
Because in two more years, those girls who marched today who are 16 and 17 years old are going to be able to vote. This is to remind them to listen to those voices too.
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Originally Posted by Locke
Either way, protest away at the guy who hasnt done anything yet. Dont get me wrong, hes a massive buffoon and when he does do something we're going to have to invent a brand new scale for stupid.
But protesting on his first day?
"We dont want you!!"
Cool. Tough.
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He's done plenty.
He has flat out refused to show his taxes, which would prove what kind of conflicts of interest he truly has. He has refused to put his businesses in a blind trust as he's supposed to do. He has hired a woman who wants to dismantle public education to run the Department of Education. He has hired a man with zero political experience to run the Department of Housing. He has hired a man who has repeatedly been caught cheating his employees to run the Department of Labor. Merely by his cabinet picks
alone, he has given reason for protest.
Beyond that, this is
not just about Trump.
This is about the GOP trying to take healthcare away from millions of Americans. This is about the GOP trying to defund Planned Parenthood and put women's health at risk. This is about the GOP refusing to expand protections for gay and trans Americans (you can still be fired or evicted from a rental apartment/home in lot of states). This is about the GOP ignoring the science about Climate Change.
This is about so much more than us just not liking Trump.
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Originally Posted by GGG
So on day 0 he issued executive orders which appear to get rid of the enforcement of the individual mandate for the ACA. Without the individual mandate the pre existing conditions coverage will not be affordable.
The executive order in general is asking for the minimum enforcement required by law accross all agency. So environmental protection, Labour protections that are monitored and enforced by government have all been weakened.
So despite it being Day 0 people would have plenty to protest about.
What i don't get is what people in Calgary are Marching for
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To me it was a symbol of camaraderie, a show of support, a reminder to the GOP that they should be careful what they let Trump get away with, because the world is still watching. To me it was also a very big show against this current move toward protectionism and nationalism, toward this extreme right ideology that has taken root in the US and Europe.
