—That they are not under attack. The country has just shifted from their values and quietly moved on without them. But being (willingly) left behind is not the same thing as being attacked.
—That they (primarily white people) are not just as threatened as minorities. And also…
—That they are under no real threat from minorities.
—That Trump’s support is not hard to poll (it has barely shifted at all in 5 years), and there are not mass droves of Trumpers hiding out there in the shadows because they’re afraid to openly support him. He is just honestly not supported by a majority of the country, and never will be.
—That no one on Earth supports Trump for economic reasons, and damn near everyone who pretends to has cultural grievances that are actually motivating them.
—That there is a heavy overlap between people who pretend to like Republican economics and also just hate liberals on social issues or messaging or virtue signaling or anti-whiteness or whatever else, and that cultural grievances are just as important as actual money.
—That liberals are actually better for the economy. No Republican POTUS since James Garfield hasn’t had a recession, and that’s because he was killed 9 months into his first term. In addition to the robust economies of Clinton and Obama—preceded and followed by idiot Republican recessions—the time period Republicans are really in love with (that fabled WWII America to the late 60’s when a one income family could afford a house, two-car garage, their kid’s education, vacations, etc.) was the only time period since Andrew Jackson when Democrats actually controlled America.
—That liberals actually contribute much more to the economy. Not only are blue states subsidizing the red states at the federal level, but the largest drivers of American GDP? Blue states. California alone is the 5th biggest economy in the world, and yet the Republicans who are supposedly “good at economics” would be willing to let it secede just to get their precious cultural issues a bigger percentage of the country. The overwhelming majority of American GDP comes from blue states and blue cities in red states that Democrats control…That’s quite different from the Republican idea that liberals are “welfare bums” that don’t contribute much.
—That college campuses are not more liberal today than they were 50 years ago and/or full of “out of control” violent liberal groups. This is a huuuuuuge one. This idea that college campuses are bastions of extreme communism so hostile to Christianity, whiteness, conservative thought, and America that almost anyone normal would be indoctrinated there. …At one point in the 60’s and 70’s, college campuses spit on Vietnam War veterans, burned bras in the public square, wrecked several campuses, showed sympathy for outright terrorist groups like the PLA or Weather Underground, and Black Panthers once took hostages at Cornell University. NONE of that has happened under crybaby millennials who can barely leave their dorm room without a Xanax, let alone pick up automatic weapons and storm Cornell’s Willard Straight Hall. Yes, there are protests when some conservatives come to speak, but that’s been going on for a century. It’s just that conservatives now believe anyone who would hold a sign to picket them—an American right as old as the country itself—is tantamount to a riot.
—Protests have been around forever…They are not the same thing as riots. Republicans have tried hard to erase the distinction between protests and riots. Protests have been around as long as America has, including that Boston Tea Party they all love so much. Anti-tax protests, women’s rights, civil rights, labor rights, environmental protests, anti-war protests, wage increase protests, etc. It’s been going on forever, and Black Lives Matter is just a new version of an old idea: that black people are not treated very well in a country where they have no wealth, face staggering job/school/housing inequality, and a justice system that is stacked against them. Riots (like the ones in late May) are different than the years of BLM protests that have taken place peacefully.
—No, liberals are not more violent…Not even close. Just about any major historical assassination over the last century has been targeted at liberal Democrats—JFK, RFK, MLK, Harvey Milk, Medgar Evers, Huey Long, Alan Berg, Leo Ryan, etc. Gabby Giffords was almost murdered and was irrevocably damaged. Ceasar Sayoc tried to wipe out the Democratic leadership generally. Dozens of abortion providers have been murdered by rightwing types. Liberals from FDR to Larry Flynt have been shot or had shots fired at them. Timothy McVeigh committed the largest act of domestic terrorism, the Unabomber had a decades-long terror campaign, and Eric Rudolph tried to blow up the Olympics when not killing abortion providers. Post-2001, rightwing militias/far-right nationalists are neck-and-neck with Muslims for terrorist killings. 100s of civil rights activists murdered in the Deep South during the campaign for integration. …The biggest Republican assassination of the last century was the attempted assassination of Reagan, by a mentally damaged man who did not follow politics, wasn’t a liberal, and wanted to impress Jodie Foster…a lesbian.