“Every crowd has a silver lining.”
– P. T. Barnum
“There’s a sucker born every minute.”
– Barnum Associate David Hannum
“(Y)ou idiots just don’t understand …TRUMP understands ME!”
– Trump Supporter Maxon Roads
On April 6th New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof published a column entitled, “My Most Unpopular Idea: Be Nice to Trump Voters.” Kristof was motivated by a reaction to a column that asked his mostly progressive readership to keep an open mind about those who voted for Trump. “One problem with the Democratic anger is that it stereotypes a vast and contradictory group of 63 million people,” Kristof wrote, adding, “”Sure, there were racists and misogynists in their ranks, but that doesn’t mean that every Trump voter was a white supremacist.” Addressing his liberal readers, Kristof wrote, “The blunt truth is that if we care about a progressive agenda, we simply can’t write off 46 percent of the electorate.”
Another blunt truth is that we have to write off some of them by publicly shaming them.