I am unique, thanks for noticing. I am a flaming liberal but it has never been a team sport for me. I break from Democrats/liberals when their policies don't make sense or don't make sense in the current climate. I am the first one to praise the GOP when they do something right, like I did when they were the first to abandon SOPA/PIPA. It just seems like I'm a rabid partisan because that is literally the only example of the GOP getting something right in the last 36 years that I can think of. On top of that, they only abandoned it because it was politically unpopular and have continued to push the same agenda in other ways.
Anyway, back on topic. Again, when someone says the right uses illegals as a code word, many do, but that doesn't mean we are saying they all do. In addition to that, many more are subconsciously racist when they assume every Latin American they run across is an illegal.
As for Trump's words, I believe we've been over this on the forum a few times. The only way to interpret his announcement speech is that he has never met an illegal that is a good person. If he had, he wouldn't have to assume some are good people, he would know some are good people. Now, do I think he has never met an illegal that he considers a good person? I don't know. I think he most likely has met some, in which case that qualifier was deliberately added to not piss off hardcore racists. I mean, why else would he have to temper a simple statement like "some of them are good people"? I think all but the most hardcore racists could agree with that statement. I also think it is possible, but not likely that his entire life exists in such a protected bubble that he has never had contact with any illegal long enough to get to know them. I say unlikely simply because many of his businesses have depended on illegals so not getting to know at least some of them seems preposterous, but this would be the one way that I can see that the statement isn't rooted in racism. The only other possibility that I see is that literally every illegal he has ever gotten to know has been a bad person.
A lot of people like to fixate on the "they're rapists" part, but in a vacuum that statement alone could be taken several ways, including that he just meant the bad ones are rapists. You put the whole speech together though, especially the "I assume" part and you have a speech designed to resonate with both conscious and subconscious racists.
On board with the GOP doing little good. That is what makes this more annoying, is that I am being labeled as a Right wing person because I think the Left is doing dumb shit. If you are not carrying the party line, you must be the opposition.
As for Trump's words, I think its very unlikely he has met many illegals. I personally did, but I lived in a city that was in a poor valley area of CA. Hell, my best friends mom was illegal. Thinking about it, I probably knew more illegals than I did legal Mexicans. Anyway, the fact that you can at least say he was talking about illegals. Most that I saw on here were trying to say he was talking about all Mexicans. Even Spy whom I respect on the Left tried to make the argument that he was talking about all Mexicans. I think trying to make him seem like he was talking about all Mexicans turned a lot of Moderates off because they saw Trump's comments as anti immigration and not anti Mexican.
Being anti immigration has become accepted when it comes to the Right. There are amazing arguments as to why immigration is overall good, but the problem is that the Left tries to make it seem like its only good. We know that poor people commit more crimes, and many that come over are poor. They come to make a better life, but they are poor. So you are going to see more crime, even if the rate is flat or lowers. We know that legal immigrants commit crime at much lower rates than the national average, but illegal measurements are not really known. Texas has done some small studies, but nothing large enough to use as quality. Those did show a slight increase as its rate though. But, instead of talking about how Trump got to his idea, he was just called a Racist. No real discussion about data or anything else, just racist racist racist. When people so quickly go to extremes it turns moderates off. I think had people tried to push back on his preconceptions with data, it would have gone a lot better. Opinion, but I feel like its reasonable.
I don't think Trump is smart enough to design a speech in the way you think he did. He rambles and says a lot of nothing most of the time, which is great for politics. He was hard to pin down, because he always spoke vaguely when possible. Its very common for people to say some even when they talk about the majority. I catch myself doing similar things, such as saying "I'm not a fan of" to say I don't like something. Not being a fan is very different from not liking something, but I picked up the habit in CA. I have noticed that many others do the same, where they use words and phrases in a socially acceptable way, but leaves room to be misunderstood. What I think Trump is good at is using those words and or terms in almost everything he says. That gives him an out any time he comes close to a point.
Back to my point though. The left is far to quick to label people racists, sexist, homophobic ect for small things. Those terms are not analogue to most people and slamming them with those terms makes them ignore those accusations. This is where the anti-sjw crowed comes from. If you look at the Bill Maher clip, you can see the woman jump on Maher when he says that, just because you are white does not mean your issues are not real. She counters with, so what, we need to cater to white males more... you know, for a white person, equality feels like oppression. It instantly dismisses any issue as white people getting upset for equality. We live in the US, so most of our issues are small relative to many other places. That said, telling people their issues dont matter, or that they are not issues just them being racist is going to turn a lot of people off in this country, considering white people make up the largest single race.
Facebook
Twitter