I'm deeply disappointed at the response that the Presidential election has evoked from my industry. Today, the CEO of a food delivery service, Grubhub, wrote a letter to his employees that essentially paired Trump voters with "hateful politics" and, while he didn't directly say it, inferred that if you support Trump, you should resign.
Everyone has a right to their own opinions, but in the same letter, he contradicts himself by saying, "I firmly believe that we must bring together different perspectives ... including ... cultural or ideological preferences."
The mantra of the left seems to be, "We're all about inclusiveness, unless you disagree with us." The hypocrisy of this mindset is ridiculous.
This party of "tolerance" is the same party whose supporters ruthlessly beat up Trump supporters. Before the election, anti-Trump demonstrators protested right here in Orange County by destroying police cars.
Quite honestly, I'm sick and tired of the hypocrisy of the left. Tolerance and inclusion needs to extend beyond the things that they agree with. It seems as if they lose all civility when people disagree with what they've decided is the difference between right and wrong.
Democrats have put themselves into this frenzy by misinterpreting statements by Trump and assigning new meanings to things he's said. Let's look at three Trump statements and analyze them without yelling and screaming at each other.
Misinterpreted Statement #1:
What Trump actually said:
"...total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until our country's representatives can figure out what is going on."
What Democrats say Trump said:
"Trump wants to get rid of all Muslims!"
If you'll recall, Trump made this statement shortly after a terrorist attack by a Muslim extremist. While an ill-advised statement, I fail to see the part where Trump says he wants to ban all Muslims from America. (It's unfortunate that the only groups who want to cause mass destruction to America come from a small subset of an extremist Muslim viewpoint, and that's what Trump was referring to.)
Misinterpreted Statement #2
What Trump actually said:
"They're bringing drugs, they're bringing crime, they're rapists." (On illegal immigrants from Mexico)
What Democrats say Trump said:
"Trump is anti-immigration, hates Mexicans and wants to break up families!"
Completely ignoring the fact that this statement holds merit (read on), Democrats have hijacked this statement to somehow encompass anyone from Mexico.
But what Trump is actually referring to is vetting people who come into America (just like the Muslim statement) to ensure their intentions for coming here are pure and simply want a better life. As an example, there's the time last year where a Mexican national, who had been deported 5 previous times, shot and killed a woman in San Francisco. That's what Trump is talking about.
I don't see how people can claim Trump is anti-immigration when his wife came from another country. I guarantee you Trump doesn't want to ban people from coming into the country. He just wants to get our house in order before we can be the savior of the world.
Misinterpreted Statement #3
What Trump said:
"Grab them by the pussy. You can do anything."
What Democrats say about Trump:
Trump is misogynistic and sexist and hates woman.
Really?? Obviously this another horrible thing for Trump to say, but to somehow draw the line between this statement and say that Trump hates woman is an absurd stretch. I'd also like to point out that I've heard plenty of similar statements by my liberal friends when in certain social circles. (This is a douchey guy thing in general, not limited to our President-Elect.) The left has construed this statement to be something completely different in order to smear him and create a false narrative so as to sway potential voters away from him.
This is closely tied to overuse of terms like "racist" and "sexist". The left has managed to hijack these words and generalize them for the purpose of smearing people. They also seem to use race and sex as the primary lens they use to interpret things. I'll give an example:
Yesterday I saw a tweet that referred to the person in the screenshot below being a "racist jokester":
I failed to see the racism in that statement, so I followed up for clarification and the poster said this:
"maybe "racially insensitive" to talk about a civil rights political prisoner on a day when a bigot was elected us president"
If I follow his train of thought, it's something like this: Nelson Mandela is a minority, so talking about his time in jail and talking about it in context of Hillary going to jail is... racist? I honestly can't even follow the mental logic. It makes zero sense!
By and large, the left sees race and sex as the basis for everything. If someone does something they don't agree with, and the victim of the statement or action is a minority, they instantly jump to the conclusion that it was racially motivated. But if we look at both of the above links (the Trump supporter being beaten or the woman being shot and killed) where both victims were white, I don't hear a single mention of race being a factor there. If the situation were reversed, race is the only thing the media would be talking about.
Paul Krugman recently said this:
"We thought that the nation, while far from having transcended racial prejudice and misogyny, had become vastly more open and tolerant over time. It turns out that we were wrong."
Krugman's worldview assumes the misinterpreted definitions of "racial prejudice" and "misogyny" described above.
Race and sex are used as trump cards (bad pun) when they are factually inaccurate. But by simply making the accusation, they win.
A couple more tweets I've seen:
"Most qualified woman in the world loses to the least qualified man in the world. In case If you were confused about what misogyny looks like"
"It's not about Trump or Hillary. It's about the fact somebody ran on a platform of straight up racism and the U.S. liked it."
If you've read this entire section, you'll know what I have to say. Not electing Hillary has zero to do with being a woman and has everything to do with substance of policy and character, and voting for Trump has zero to do with racism and has everything to do with fixing things seen as broken.
The left needs to stop assuming people don't agree with them because of sex and race. It's bigoted to believe that's what we're voting on.
The left has managed to create this sort of absolutism where if you don't agree with them, then you're wrong! They build their platform on "tolerance", but what they practice is far from that. They essentially believe that if you don't agree with them, then you're uneducated and dumb. (Or deplorable!) Name-calling doesn't sound much like tolerance to me. You can't have a conversation with someone who refuses to hear an opposing viewpoint.
This post was from a Facebook friend of mine yesterday:
Sounds pretty tolerant to me!
I want to make one thing clear, and I believe I speak for President-Elect Trump when I say this: We want assimilation. We are not against anyone coming here. We want America to be the greatest country in the world. People I've met who have come here through the proper channels are some of the best people I know. They've studied American history (for their citizenship test). They understand the Constitution and the principles of America that made it great - the freedom of religion and speech. They come here because they realize it's the best system in the world and they want to be part of it. They have made America their own. Those are real Americans!
People come to America because they want something better! What Trump wants to curtail is limiting the people who don't understand what makes America so great. If we ignore this problem, it will continue the slide to make America just like everybody else. There is a difference between embracing American culture while holding onto the good parts of your own culture, and coming here and trying to make it just like where you came from. (Living in Southern California, I see this often.) If you want to make America just like where you came from, what was the purpose of coming to America in the first place?
I often see behavior of people who don't go through the proper channels as the following (not just immigrants but also visitors): They trash our country, commit acts of violence, and have a sense of entitlement to be here.
When something is yours, you treat it differently. Trump isn't against people coming here. He simply wants people to come here the proper way, because when you do that, you act differently.
I'll end this with a great post from another Facebook friend of mine:
Hillary lost in part because she and her supporters called all the non-racist, non-misogynist, non-homophobic, non-bigoted everyday ordinary people racists, misogynists, homophobes, and bigots every day. Well, ordinary people got very sick and tired being called that, went and voted against Hillary. Hillary has lost. Now her supporters, instead of re-evaluating their personal conduct and strategy of convincing people to share their views, continue to scream, throw tantrums and call everyday people racist, misogynists, homophobes, and bigots for not voting for Hilary. Maybe look in a mirror and see what hate looks like.
I implore you to re-evaluate the lens in which you see the world. There are bad apples everywhere, but in general, people who voted for Trump are not racist, misogynist, homophobic or bigoted. We just want to continue making America the best place in the world, and now after eight years, we finally get to try a different strategy to go about it.