FEBRUARY 5, 2020 – (Cont.) Now back to Facebook. A short while ago, my wife posted a meme reminding viewers that if the Democrats hadn’t won the House in 2018, Trump’s misconduct with respect to Ukraine would never have seen the light of day. A cousin of hers—an ardent Trump supporter, as it turns out—went to town with his comments. My wife’s friends took him to task, but the cousin persisted. Encapsulating his fusillade was the following (verbatim):
You believe what you want. Trump best President EVER!!!! He will be reelected because he works every day for our country. Obama was the worst and laziest president ever. Trump does something great every day. He takes no salary and did not need the job to become wealthy like the Clinton’s and Obama’s. Explain to me why a man with everything took this job. A lesser person could not take the heat.
It was as substantive as a sports fan all decked out in the colors of the home team, jabbing the air with his fist, and screaming, “Go green and yellow!”
But over last weekend came my own Facebook exchange—not with the MAGA cousin but with total strangers. For background, read my February 1 blog post (“All Funked Up”). The next day, I dared to tangle with a pro-Trumpster by asking for specifics in response to a “Trump is great” comment. Again, as I had with the MAGA folks at the Trump rally in October, I was not out to convince or even to argue. I was just asking polite questions seeking substance for the opinion that “We must re-elect Trump in 2020.”
But why, specifically, do these people think we must? I wanted to know!
This is the closest I got (again, verbatim):
I’m not going into specifics cuz I don’t have to prove or cite anything. You will never persuade me to think or have values like the Democrats. Democrat view on abortion is s BIG one and the other is how they interpret the constitution.
The less civil responses were not helpful, to put it charitably.
I have numerous additional examples (exchanges with Trump supporters—on Facebook and in person) that are consistent with the ones cited here—enough, I think, to suggest a disturbing pattern, EXCEPT . . .
Hold the “send” button!
When I read to my wife the full exchange in which the excerpt immediately above appeared, she said (in so many words), “Before you get too cranked up over those people, remember, they could be posted by someone in Russia using a fake Facebook account; someone hired to create division among us in order to ensure Trump’s re-election.”
Gulp!
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© 2020 by Eric Nilsson
