A look inside the basket of deplorables

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They are not America's best. They are sexist. They are Xenophobes. They are racists. And some, I assume, are decent people...

All kidding aside, Hillary was right that Trump has both drawn support from and raised the hopes of some of Americas worst. We know that some Trump supporters are perfectly decent Americans who don't espouse these heinous views, but there are those others and I will be using this thread to look at what makes them so very deplorable.

First look under the lid of the basket, and what do we find, is that a centipede? A woodlouse? A bloodworm? Silverfish? No! It's........

Racist Charles Wasko, just resigned Mayor of West York, PA.

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-37694347

And what's that, scuttling behind the Norwegian Rat?

On the same BBC page with the piece on nasty ex-mayor fron PA, there is a video interview with white supremacist Richard Spencer, quoted by the BBC as saying, "Donald Trump's arrow is pointing in our direction." Please take a look at the whole deplorable interview at the URL above.

While I appreciate your concern, don't you feel as a moderator enforcing a political bias and declaring a voter demographic as misguided or deplorable is against the very PPR rules?

I get it. Passions runs high in the election period, but Walrus by comparison is a lot more balanced in his posting.

EDIT: Edited one word.

Last edited by TheSpectrum on 18 Oct 2016, 8:31 pm, edited 1 time in total.

To quote the amazing TallyMan from the PPR rules:

Because people do not follow your mantra and political leaning it does not make them as a whole or in part misguided or deplorable. There are some bad people in the world but you shouldn't associate all their behaviour onto another innocent person or dismiss them as misguided if they don't fit the narrative you are trying to describe for that subset of people.

Moderator mod thyself.

He might have covered his behind there, but I suspect if I said something similar about Clinton supporters or "The Left" I would quickly get a flipper to the face from The_Walrus.

I suspect that by "balanced" you mean Walrus is a bit to the political right of my views?

In any case, let's be transparent and frank.

First, I am not enforcing a political bias. You and anyone else is free to post your own political thoughts here.

Have you seen the posts from Dox, Jacoby, Nurseangela and Mikah, for example? If I were "enforcing a political bias" you wouldn't.

Instead you see me posting my own stuff and sometimes trying to rebut the things posted from the right. This is called expression and dialogue, not "enforcing."

Second, I am under no obligation to pretend to be balanced in my political views. Perhaps you misread the site guidelines or PPR rules?

For your reference, the rules: viewtopic.php?t=73837
PPR Guidelines: viewtopic.php?t=204613
You may also be interested in site owner Alex Plank's views on the election: http://wrongplanet.net/important-electi ... -autistic/

I am not just a moderator, but also a member and I can post as such. When I am moderating, I will put a tag in front of the comments like this [moderating]
[not moderating]

When acting as a moderator, I will do my best not to let my partisan political passions influence any decisions that I have to make. If you feel that some decision I made as a moderator was unfairly influenced by partisan considerations, you can have a chat with me about it in PMs or complain to the other mods.

Moderation is mostly not about partisan issues, though. It's about the rules. Don't make personal attacks or attack protected groups, don't spam or post obscenity and you should be fine.

When I post in my role as WrongPlanet member rather than moderator, I will not be pretending to have views I don't.

I hope that clears things up for you. If not, please feel free to PM or start a thread in the WrongPlanet forum about this issue.

Indeed. For the vast and larger part of Americans, the only electoral involvement that they enjoy apart from voting itself is to mimic the griping and kvetching taught to them by the various campaigns and the news-media camp followers. These Americans have been slowly recruited into the sport-ified world of 21st century politics where idiocracy and "the team" rules.

And, they don't even see how they have been played.

Last edited by AspieUtah on 18 Oct 2016, 8:40 pm, edited 1 time in total.

No, they're still very much going against the groups of people rule.
They're saying the good ones are misguided and the bad ones are deplorable.

Walrus also points out that during this period people aren't following it.
Check the top stickies.

I'm not saying you have to believe anything but what you believe in but you are clearly going against the rule in the sticky. Even your first sentence is a "joking not joking" thing.
It has nothing to do with where Walrus sits on the political scale. While I can't speak for him he is very much not supportive of a lot of the conservative views in this forum, but he is at least fair and doesn't step over that boundary.

You stepped over it with this thread.

Well, no. That was an attempt at humor. In using the word "Deplorable" I am referencing Hillary Clinton's remarks about the nastier part of Trump's fan base. In using the "Some I assume are decent people" I am referencing Donald Trump's remarks about Mexicans.

The people I am calling deplorable are white supremacists, racists and the kind of sexist who comes up with a phrase like the one on the T-shirt at this link: https://twitter.com/sallykohn/status/78 ... 76/photo/1
I can't post the image because it would violate WP content rules.

To be clear, this thread is not about Trump fans in general, Republicans in general or right wing people in general.

It is about those white supremacists, racists, religious extremists and sexists whose views are deplorable. These are people like Richard Spencer, whose views it is against guidelines to post here.

Guilt by non-association

Who cares what some dumb guy joked about on Facebook?

Do leftists want their jokes policed?

see how easy it is for you to hate your fellow Americans, you have dehumanized Trump supporters and speak in eliminationist terms

Even if you excuse that...

"We know that some Trump supporters are perfectly decent Americans who are just sadly misguided this year"

You've made a foregone conclusion that many people here are therefore misguided, and regardless of whether you post as a member having someone make that statement with moderator in their name can be quite off-putting for people looking to have political discussion here that does not fit the moderation team's views. Add to that, the PPR rule about Groups of People.

I think you are making stuff up here. Nowhere have I said that people who don't agree with my politics are deplorable

If you look at the people I have actually called deplorable, Charles Wasko and Richard Spencer, they are public figures who have chosen to support Trump who make extreme racist statements.

If you can find any language where I suggest that all people who support Trump or are on the political right are deplorable or associated with these particularly nasty Trump supporters, I will happily remove that language because it was certainly not my intent to communicate that idea.

Your "Sadly misguided" point is taken.

But if you want me to say that Charles Wasko's posts about Obama or Richard Spencer's and his European Identity drive for more pivilege for whites is not deplorable, there we will have to disagree.

Why are you back peddling to these first couple of remarks?

And I wouldn't disagree. You'll be happy to know Charles Wasko has quit.

Thank you.

It would seem a lot of people cared. Enough people to have a bunch of public meetings after which he resigned. Enough people that the BBC heard about it and sent someone to report on it.

It takes me a while to think and type, so I respond to one thing, and then another.


Yes, that's why I called him the ex-mayor. Seems like a good thing for the town.


You're welcome.

On the sexist/Misogynist front, have a look if you can stomach it--t-shirts and posters revealing a view of women, along with an appreciation of Clinton.
http://nymag.com/thecut/2016/10/the-mos ... llies.html

An uncensored look at some of the views expressed at Trump rallies from the New York Times

The Times called out three phrases in type below the video:

Kill her!

Trump that b*tch!

Build a wall -- kill them all!