By Scott Tibbs, February 1, 2017
I saw a pretentious Tweet the day that Donald Trump was inaugurated that said "If you voted for the guy who brags about assaulting women, I don't really care what you think about violent protest."
Come on, now. It was not that simple, and even Trump's most dedicated opponents need to recognize that. There were many factors in the 2016 Presidential election, and we should not forget that Hillary Clinton was a terrible candidate. A great many people voted for Trump not because they supported him, but because they opposed Clinton. The same was true the other way around. You cannot boil it down to one thing. It oversimplifies a very complicated choice and needlessly throws over 60 million people under the bus.
I have a burning hatred for the "he did it tooooooooo" nonsense that gets thrown about constantly. It abandons principle for taunting. That said, if we are going to use Trump's remarks about grabbing women as a disqualifying standard for Trump's voters then the same standard applies to Clinton's voters. After all, Clinton defended her husband while he was sexually exploiting women, sexually harassing women and mabye even committing rape. Groping is not as bad as rape, in case we are not clear.
Remember, this is not my standard. I am simply applying it evenly.
Furthermore, policy positions matter. Trump voters thought they had a better shot at good policy with him. On issues like trade, immigration, gun control, abortion, taxes and regulation, Republican voters thought they had a much better shot of getting good policy with Trump than with Clinton. Even if Republicans did not trust Trump much, they at least would be listened to with him in the White House. Clinton would be openly hostile and would be aggressively pushing a Leftist agenda.
I did not vote for Donald Trump. I do not judge or condemn those who did, especially considering the alternative. Voting for Trump was a completely reasonable, rational choice and I have many family members and good friends made that choice. They are not racist or misogynist. I am really tired of self righteous Leftists looking down their noses at Trump's voters.
Finally, pretentious Tweets like the one I quoted above fail tests of basic logic. Arguments do not become invalid because of who is making them. That is an ad hominem logical fallacy. Either "violent protest" (also known as rioting) is unacceptable or it is not. The person making the argument is irrelevant to the factual and logical merit of that argument. We need to spend a lot more time thinking and a lot less time feeling.
