The Trump-loving libertarians are a weird batch. Typically the trumpanzees I deal with are GOP, and my strategy is to actually talk up the LP in an attempt to use Chase Oliver as more benign trash can to drop would-be Trump votes into.

For actual libertarians who are already planning on voting Oliver, I point out that a fascist victory would be fatally damaging to every party except the fascists - 3rds are fucked right along with everyone else. Their best strategy is to nudge the current system into a model more conducive to a 3rd party victory, specifically via ranked choice voting so people can feel safe voting for a 3rd without worrying about the spoiler effect. To do that, they need to vote blue to keep the fascists out of power, as a vote for more time to refine their party of preference and preserve a political model that could lead to that party’s victory.

Trump LPers are harder to speak to, to the point of being a lost cause in most cases, but I can understand wanting to give a little extra to help out a family member. Start digging into policy questions - less who he wants to win, and more what he wants to accomplish. Assess those goals, and consider if someone other than Trump would be better to achieve them.

This debate technique is called “steelmanning” and requires putting yourself in the other side’s shoes, and building their side up in a way that’s compatible with yours, vs the usual talking points nowadays, which are usually just strawman bullshit that will never get anything done.

Good luck!

Veteran here. Donald Trump fucking hates us.

If you want to ‘support the troops’, vote blue.

Forethought has never been his strong suit. If the on-paper pitch was good enough, it’d be in-character for him to just go for it without considering any of the 'what if’s.

Did we ever get actual footage of his ear? The day of, we saw an ear with blood on it, then today we saw an ear with a bandage covering it. Are there any shots of the ear cleaned up enough to see actual tissue damage?

The tinfoil hat in me is still wondering if the performative display we saw was something like a gunman hired to pop a few shots at expendable followers behind Trump, so that Trump can duck below where the cameras were aimed, slather some shit on his ear, then pop up with that cheesy movie-esque fist pump.

Kinda expected info on the gunman to snuff those kinds of theories, but it’s sounding like he was just another dipshit Nazi who could easily be duped into a deal like that, then popped off by the SS.

The ear itself could disprove it, but so far I haven’t seen any articles with a pic.

This guy looks like a dorkier HP Lovecraft

Kinda looks like fetal alcohol syndrome to me.

🍻

Not out loud. Sometimes (but increasingly frequent) the quiet part slips out, but they’re still kinda-I-guess maintaining an ostensible veneer of constructive and pro-American values.

So you’ll see the evil shit that makes them cheer, followed immediately by “he didn’t mean it like that” “he was just joking” “buttery males!” “Sure a few trans people might get the shit beat out of them / killed, but it’s for the greater good of keeping our bathrooms secure!”

It is! Whipped it up for the Political Memes community… and then got banned from Political Memes for ‘advocating violence’. Um… whoops.

Maybe it’s temporary? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Charity… my choice would be any of those most at risk by a turn in the political environment. Planned Parenthood, any LGBTQ+ resource… if you get a kick out of that meme enough to merit a $20 donation, I have a sneaking suspicion that the venn diagram of your values and mine is pretty close to a clean circle, so if there’s something specific you had in mind, you definitely don’t need my permission (not that you ever needed my permission on how to spend your own money, but you get the gist!).

Edit - To be clear, posting that image in this thread is the 2nd time I posted it. The first posting was in Political Memes here. I realized in hindsight that that might make the post in this thread -not- OC. I created the image, but the one here isn’t THE original.

Idk, the attempt didn’t go great. Wake me up if there’s another though - might be interested in a t-shirt showcasing that one.

Naw, my first post here was a botched attempt to open some criticism with light humor, but I admittedly went for the lowest hanging fruit. @PunnyName@lemmy.world was right to call me out.

Well, if the legal justice system won’t do it’s job, maybe a vig- …oh wait…

The disability? No. The sentence it produced, given the context of the event that just happened? Yes.

That said, the meat of my last post was the criticism of the message. Beyond a chuckle at “lol, battle” I don’t really care that he misspoke. I do care that we’re being told to just sit pretty in the midst of things like the planet burning up and the Nazis coming back. He talks about us settling our differences of opinion with civility like the opinion being discussed is whether or not pineapple is good on pizza… we got bigger fish to fry. One of those fish already had its own world war; we fried it the first time with a fuckton of violence. If violence isn’t the way this time around, what’s the plan? Voting is good and well: do it! I definitely will. …but we’ve been voting, and the existential threats persist. He wants us to be nice and quiet. Okay… so give us a road map of how that’s going to actually work.

“But in America, we resolve our differences in the battle box!” -POTUS

Um… yeah, Joe, that’s sorta the problem right now.

Speech tl;dr: “My fellow Americans, cool your fuckin jets and play nice.”

Kinda weak imo. While yes, it’d be nice if people weren’t so dissatisfied with politics that they turn to violence, let’s maybe address some of the things that are making people unhappy instead of just telling them to remain passive in the face of existential threats to our rights, our nation, and our planet.

Not to knock Biden specifically - this is just the state of our politics. Please do still put the Biden in the ballot (NOT battle!) box, or it gets the Nazi again.

Dude I saw a faded-ass ‘Bush / Cheney’ sticker on the way home today. Cult is as cult does.

The LP definitely has potential for growth. I’d love to see them eventually take the GOP’s seat as one of the big two. All the social stuff would pass pretty much overnight cuz that’s a win for everyone; we’d just bash heads over where to (not) spend money and what (not) to regulate, but that wouldn’t be a bad thing - at least the two parties would each have a clear objective for voters to weigh, vs the GOP’s nonstop contrarian bullshit for the sole sake of contrarian bullshit. It’d also force the blue team to get their shit together and run some actual progressives instead of this race for second-worst we keep dragging our feet in. I can’t stand this loop of voting for someone because they’re not a Nazi. It’s necessary, cuz I don’t want the fucking Nazi, but is that really the highest we can set the damn bar?

My political wet dream is to look at a ballot and actually hesitate for a minute because all of the options on it are good options and trying to pick out the best one becomes a difficult task. That will never happen as long as it’s red vs blue. Yellow vs blue though… there’s potential.

Steelmanning

I didn’t know there was an actual word for it!

The abortion shitshow was actually the topic of that lesson because of how tribal each side has gotten. That was… idk, 15 years ago? Not much has changed lol. Initially we were just told to prepare a debate on it, so we ofc pulled heavily from whichever echo chamber we adhered to, and we had all our (very flawed) talking points ready to go. Then the prof dropped the ol’ switcheroo. Thoroughly broke highschool me’s brain - in hindsight it was pretty funny to be in the middle of a room full of people who thought we knew our shit, all suddenly realizing we don’t know squat.

That was a fucking good prof!

The LP… they sound alright on paper. The non-agression principle is solid. All the emphasis on a ‘free market’ sounds nice if you assume corporations elect for ethical practices when they’re not mandated (lol). I can talk em up in the scope of a lunch break; it’d be hard to keep the ball rolling much passed that though.

I mean, you’re being sarcastic, but being able to give an elevator pitch for something you’re personally against is a great skill. I was a speech & debate nerd in high school, and that was definitely one of the more valuable lessons.

If nothing else, it helps to understand what ‘other side’ is thinking. We (self included) have a tendency to demonize others who don’t align with our values.

Abortion is one of the best examples of this. If you look at the other side exclusively through the lens of the other’s echo chamber, you have 1) misogynistic bigots who want to control women down to their organ function and punish them for failing to adhere to a religious standard that they don’t subscribe to, vs 2) women who recreationally murder babies and redirect responsibility for their promiscuous lifestyle onto the healthcare system.

I think this is why we never make any meaningful progress on that controversy: all of the mainstream arguments are shit arguments in terms of their ability to actually resonate with the people they’re directed at. You can probably guess where I stand on abortion based on my first post here, but I can 100% make a pitch for either.

Other topics are no exception. I fucking loathe the MAGA crowd, but calling them a Nazi isn’t going to change any minds. I don’t love the LP, but they’re significantly more benign than the GOP. The two have overlap, so fuck yeah I can work with that. I’d love for the LP to continue to grow and refine itself - best case scenario is the GOP shrinks to an obscure extremist group, while any shreds of sanity flock to the LP to make a much more productive rival to big blue. I don’t have to actually support the LP to want them to do well in that regard; if I can boost them at the expense of the GOP, win-win!

I’ve been making pitches for the libertarian party to my trumpanzee coworkers. It’s a similar flavor of bullshit as the turds the GOP is already feeding them, so they’re somewhat susceptible to it.

No chance in hell I’ll be able to convince them to vote Biden, so burning a would-be Trump vote on the spoiler effect is the next best thing.