Basket of hate

“You know, just to be grossly generalistic, you could put half of Trump’s supporters into what I call the basket of deplorables. They’re racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamaphobic — you name it. And unfortunately there are people like that. And he has lifted them up. He has given voice to their websites that used to only have 11,000 people – now have 11 million. He tweets and retweets their offensive, hateful, mean-spirited rhetoric. Now some of these folks, they are irredeemable, but thankfully they are not America. But the other basket–and I know this because I see friends from all over America here–I see friends from Florida and Georgia and South Carolina and Texas–as well as, you know, New York and California–but that other basket of people are people who feel that the government has let them down, the economy has let them down, nobody cares about them, nobody worries about what happens to their lives and their futures, and they’re just desperate for change. It doesn’t really even matter where it comes from. They don’t buy everything he says, but he seems to hold out some hope that their lives will be different. They won’t wake up and see their jobs disappear, lose a kid to heroin, feel like they’re in a dead end. Those are people we have to understand and empathize with as well.”

This is what Hillary Clinton said.

Could she have used a better descriptive word, most likely; does it take away from the truth of her statement, not one word.

I’m fortunate to know many other folks in that “other basket” and they do have their concerns about the direction of the GOP this election cycle, and they do have their issues with the language of politics – on both sides. I share most of that same thinking. It concerns me, and it bothers me.

Today, more than any day, as we remind people to #NeverForget, try to remember what happens when you blindly follow charismatic people who promote hate (however thinly veiled), and persecute a group of people based on their sexuality, religion or their gender. We end up with wars, we end up with planes being flowing into buildings and killing thousands of people and we end up repeating history … the bad version of history. Just because an American says it, doesn’t make it more right or more true, than if someone from Germany, Cambodia, Afghanistan or Iran said the same thing. Hate is hate, and right now, there is one group, one big basket of people who enthusiastically stand behind one voice that is – in my own thinking – deplorable.

I’m tried of this, and I’m tired of people not thinking for themselves, regurgitating hate, and hiding behind it because it’s politics. We are better than that.

(X-posted: Facebook)