Why do people who claim to love free speech support a President who so openly hates it?

[Vic]

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1035122954697433088?s=19

I'm sure psychologists and the like would argue that there's a FYGM aspect to it, that the concept of free speech can be conflated at the personal level to a "freedom" to hear only what one wants to hear, but I believe there's more. After all, what person doesn't love their own freedom? And at what point does the expansion of one's own freedom become the suppression of others'? And if one crossed that line, what could be the reasoning for doing so if not for a belief in freedom from responsibility and morality? And at what point does this lack of morality devolve into oppression and tyranny?
Not really philosophical questions when we're watching it play out right now. This tweet is the President's most liked this week.

 

[yllus]

I find the lack of world response to this tweet way crazier. The President of the United States is publicly urging the head of a media company to be fired because said media company routinely airs critical news about him. But that's like the 1,291st most objectionable thing he's done so who has the time...

 

[Vic]

I find the lack of world response to this tweet way crazier. The President of the United States is publicly urging the head of a media company to be fired because said media company routinely airs critical news about him. But that's like the 1,291st most objectionable thing he's done so who has the time...

Absolutely appalling that the President of the US would so openly oppose the 1st amendment in that fashion.

 

[ImpulsE69]

I don't know what to think anymore, but then so many people these days want to control what others think and say, so it makes sense they have no problem with a president that wants to. The internet and social media have really f'd peoples minds.

 

[Skyclad1uhm1]

They want freedom to say what they want, not freedom for others to say anything they don't want to hear. Just like Putin, Modi, Netanyahu, Duterte, Erdogan, IS, Al Qaida, etc and all their followers Trump and his followers are fascists and are a danger to mankind.

 

[trenchfoot]

Trump being the consummate Hypocrite in Chief uses social media as his primary weapon of choice to attack his enemies yet denigrates the use of it when it accurately points out how despicable his behavior is in how he (arguably) exploits it to his advantage.

Add to this mess how Trump uses blatant lies to fight back against the facts and truths about him and what we've got here is an concerted effort by Trump, his minions and his lackeys to rewrite, distort, dismiss, deny and obfuscate how untrustworthy, how discredited and how unscrupulously dishonest he is as a man let alone as, of all things, POTUS.

 

[Moonbeam]

A competitive society is a society filled with hatred and contempt for those who are losers. Trump tells the loser class it's them that make America great. More than logic or truth or their own physical welfare, they want and are made by Trump to feel good about themselves. How can being praised by the greatest president ever be a bad thing? What would you rather be, the failures in life or what makes America great?

 

[trenchfoot]

A competitive society is a society filled with hatred and contempt for those who are losers. Trump tells the loser class it's them that make America great. More than logic or truth or their own physical welfare, they want and are made by Trump to feel good about themselves. How can being praised by the greatest president ever be a bad thing? What would you rather be, the failures in life or what makes America great?

A very unique situation where the symbiotic relationship between Trump and his base is also a self-destructive one built on falsehoods, an infinite number of lies and totally ignored broken promises. If and when Trump gets his ass tossed out of office, these losers that became winners will become losers again. Question being, who are they going to turn to, considering his base includes Tea Party reactionaries, white nationalists, Nazi's, the KKK, traditionalists, nativists, isolationalists, hypocritical evangelists and of all things, supported and abetted by the donor class who have reaped fortunes from keeping this coalition intact in order to keep Trump's anti-working class agenda in force.

I can't imagine another Trump clone coming to the fore to take his place as the champion of these extremist groups that have led the party astray. So then who will be The One who would be willing to make their twisted dreams come true, no matter if their dreams are only fantasies wrapped in empty promises all tightly secured with shackles made of hateful fearful divisive rhetoric?

Trends tell me that it will take someone worse than Trump to keep these losers happily hateful and angry at those boogeymen they were scared into believing in.

 

[cytg111]

A competitive society is a society filled with hatred and contempt for those who are losers. Trump tells the loser class it's them that make America great. More than logic or truth or their own physical welfare, they want and are made by Trump to feel good about themselves. How can being praised by the greatest president ever be a bad thing? What would you rather be, the failures in life or what makes America great?

America failed its citizens when it allowed that segment to reach critical mass. Time to give Trump the boot and remedy the underlying problems in American society that made this possible to begin with..

 

[ch33zw1z]

Liars gonna lie, no surprise they elected dear liar

 

[Puffnstuff]

When a nut job is backed by organized religion that only gives mulligans to R's what do you expect to happen?

 

[UglyCasanova]

Free speech/thought/ideas is under attack these days. Trump is just one part (albeit the most visible, vocal, powerful part).

 

[ch33zw1z]

Free speech/thought/ideas is under attack these days. Trump is just one part (albeit the most visible, vocal, powerful part).

discuss the topic.

 

[Puffnstuff]

Free speech/thought/ideas is under attack these days. Trump is just one part (albeit the most visible, vocal, powerful part).

Free speech is only welcome when it supports the radical right's agenda, otherwise it shouldn't be allowed.

 

[fskimospy]

People’s ideology is transmitted from leaders (be it political, media, whatever) to followers, not the other way around. They cared about free speech in the past because that’s what they were told to care about. They don’t care now because of the same reason.

This is not unique to conservatives but it’s been particularly strongly shown in them recently.

 

[VRAMdemon]

Photographic proof the Trump & Co. want to control the narritve so badly that they'll try and prevent any public record of things that don't fit into it..

https://apnews.com/00314ff4578f462d...-blocks-news-photographer's-shot-of-protester

A volunteer member of the advance team for President Donald Trump blocked a photojournalist’s camera as he tried to take a photo of a protester during a campaign rally in Indiana.

A photo taken by Associated Press photographer Evan Vucci on Thursday in Evansville shows the volunteer stretching out his hand over the lens of a news photographer’s camera after a protester disrupted Trump’s campaign event.

Trump paced on stage at the Ford Center as the protester was led out.

His campaign didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment late Thursday.

Harassing, assaulting, or disrupting the fact-gathering media makes you wrong. Wrong in that history will judge you to be wrong. They're trying to create their own truth, their own reality. They're at war with liberty.

 

[1sikbITCH]

Conservatives treat everyone else as sub-human. Laws don't apply to animals so you can do whatever to em. Like slaves. The GOP has no more great men like John McCain. At least none that I see.

 

[Moonbeam]

People’s ideology is transmitted from leaders (be it political, media, whatever) to followers, not the other way around. They cared about free speech in the past because that’s what they were told to care about. They don’t care now because of the same reason.

This is not unique to conservatives but it’s been particularly strongly shown in them recently.

I find this confusing and causally backward. For one thing I don’t see much in the way what I would call leadership, particularly in the Republican Party. I see Trump using the fact that people have themselves and the resultant need for some delusional state of value as compensation, as a tool to manipulate them. So his form of leadership is derivative of and a result of self hate. Real leadership would teach the vital need for humility and the destruction of the unconscious feeling we are worthless. Democrats seem to want to lead by empowering other collections of self haters via identity politics.

Always and everywhere when it comes to free speech, we want to hear our egos flattered and any implication of how we really feel suppressed.

I think what you leave out of your analysis is that leadership, the real thing, can exist only because the soul of every person instinctively seeks God, or self realization. You will get nowhere, I think, if you leave that out.

 

[realibrad]

I find this confusing and causally backward. For one thing I don’t see much in the way what I would call leadership, particularly in the Republican Party. I see Trump using the fact that people have themselves and the resultant need for some delusional state of value as compensation, as a tool to manipulate them. So his form of leadership is derivative of and a result of self hate. Real leadership would teach the vital need for humility and the destruction of the unconscious feeling we are worthless. Democrats seem to want to lead by empowering other collections of self haters via identity politics.

Always and everywhere when it comes to free speech, we want to hear our egos flattered and any implication of how we really feel suppressed.

I think what you leave out of your analysis is that leadership, the real thing, can exist only because the soul of every person instinctively seeks God, or self realization. You will get nowhere, I think, if you leave that out.

Far too universal of a statement. If that were true, people would not engage in debate with people they disagree with.

 

[Moonbeam]

America failed its citizens when it allowed that segment to reach critical mass. Time to give Trump the boot and remedy the underlying problems in American society that made this possible to begin with..

There can be no deprogramming so long as the ego protects us from the awareness of our own self hate. Where you use America failed, I think we should read ‘I failed’.

 

[Atreus21]

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1035122954697433088?s=19

I'm sure psychologists and the like would argue that there's a FYGM aspect to it, that the concept of free speech can be conflated at the personal level to a "freedom" to hear only what one wants to hear, but I believe there's more. After all, what person doesn't love their own freedom? And at what point does the expansion of one's own freedom become the suppression of others'? And if one crossed that line, what could be the reasoning for doing so if not for a belief in freedom from responsibility and morality? And at what point does this lack of morality devolve into oppression and tyranny?
Not really philosophical questions when we're watching it play out right now. This tweet is the President's most liked this week.

I can't speak for supporting President Trump. I can say that threats to free speech these days originate more often from the left than the right.

 

[Gryz]

You will realize the logic behind Trump, when you realize that:

What you’re seeing and what you’re reading is not what’s happening !

 

[fskimospy]

I find this confusing and causally backward. For one thing I don’t see much in the way what I would call leadership, particularly in the Republican Party. I see Trump using the fact that people have themselves and the resultant need for some delusional state of value as compensation, as a tool to manipulate them. So his form of leadership is derivative of and a result of self hate. Real leadership would teach the vital need for humility and the destruction of the unconscious feeling we are worthless. Democrats seem to want to lead by empowering other collections of self haters via identity politics.

Always and everywhere when it comes to free speech, we want to hear our egos flattered and any implication of how we really feel suppressed.

I think what you leave out of your analysis is that leadership, the real thing, can exist only because the soul of every person instinctively seeks God, or self realization. You will get nowhere, I think, if you leave that out.

While I agree that calling what the Republicans have 'leadership' might be a stretch, I meant more that people in positions of power mold the views of their followers. Trade, for example, or Russia. Do you think that Republican voters all woke up one day and decided they didn't like free trade anymore but really liked Russia? I don't think so.

 

[fskimospy]

I can't speak for supporting President Trump. I can say that threats to free speech these days originate more often from the left than the right.

Are you trying to do the thing where you equate college kids protesting to the federal government threatening to revoke the licenses of networks who criticize the president, the president calling the press the enemy of the people, etc?

Just as conservatives are the principal terrorism threat facing the country today, conservatives are the principal threat to free speech today. Only one group is using the power of the government to keep people from saying things they don't like.

 

[Hayabusa Rider]

Liars gonna lie, no surprise they elected dear liar

Even my pup barked at Trump on TV, no kidding.

A problem, a serious one, is that there exists a position that there are truths larger than the facts that require willful deception to promote an agenda. Deliberate lies regarding false reports against North Vietnam to gain support for the war were based on that concept.