Let me see what I can do (WINK)

Same here. Wink!

I'll be your date.

Does a person's political views necessarily reflect on their quality as a person?

@DZhukovin Supporting trump isn't a political view, though. It's a statement of values.

@DZhukovin Actually in my view it does. If you're politically indifferent or tolerate poisonous, fascistic politicians like Trump then it suggests incuriosity and intellectual (and perhaps general) laziness. If you actually support someone like Trump, who to anyone who looks at the historic and legal issues of his conduct objectively, is a totally corrupt individual who is undermining institutions that have historically relied on some basic level of decency for their survival -- then you are either naive, totally opportunistic, or craven yourself.

Since respect is important in intimate relationships, that's a bit of a wet blanket I'm afraid. Hanging with a virulent Trump supporter because your partner is good looking or good in bed or whatever, is a bit of a Faustian bargain that can't last.

Yeah I know ... Trump supporters are not generally evil so much as un self-aware. There was an interesting interview awhile back with a Trump supporter who angrily endorsed the border wall (this was a Texas guy) to keep all those undesirables out. And then he proudly showed the reporter a school for the poor (mostly Hispanics) that he is deeply involved with and got all teary-eyed about this moving story he told about how people who attend pay whatever they can afford and this one woman could only afford to make tacos for the school lunches but it gave her children an opportunity for an education. Apparently he was oblivious to the fact that for the most part these children were those undesirables leaking across the border. In other words meeting these people face to face humanized them as something besides an identity as the Hated Other.

So sure, somewhere in those calcified conservative hearts there's love and compassion and caring, and it's reachable if done in the right way. So I don't hate them. But I don't trust them, either. They are complicit in the transformation of my country of birth into something I won't recognize at my death.

@GinaMaria

Okay. Does a person's values necessarily reflect on their quality as a person?

@DZhukovin Of course they do. Our values are who we are and how we interact with others. You can't separate a person from their values. Values may not be as intractable as personality, but I'm not interested in dating someone in order to change them.

@mordant

Okay, so what do you suggest to prevent the people who voted him in from voting for him again? Because we're only getting his behavior and policies since he's on the right, however the US loves to vote right-wing. Every election, all the Republicans need to do is use the Southern Strategy, appeal to religious sentiments, meet electoral college requirements, appeal to the emotional population, and then they have the election in the bag. What follows next is the same general policy themes that they usually pull. People are failing to realize that they're not able to dismantle such a party because they're not an ideological collective, but collaborate because they will reap more benefits as an ideologically non-collectivized team....so was the left's best response to this Hillary and Bernie Sanders?

@DZhukovin The left is divided between elitists like Clinton and progressives like Sanders. Both sides of that debate are intransigent. The elites don't want plebes sitting at the table with them, and while the progressives (especially Sanders) are far more pragmatic than that, there is a distinct hard-line contingent there too. As usual, getting Democrats on the same page as a party is like herding cats. Sanders has gotten the party to move distinctly to the left, but I don't think it is going to "stick". It's just pandering to keep the progressives from completely bolting. No one thinks that people like Harris or Booker or Gillenbrand have suddenly become progressives, but they'll sign on to Sander's single payer bill at least for now because they have to. By the next general, or by the time any of those run for President, all that will probably be forgotten.

The GOP is in my view self-destructing with its craven hold on to power at any cost strategy. Unlike the elitist and progressive factions of the Democratic party the traditional and Tea Party elements of the GOP are willing to hang together regardless of how it looks and regardless of the cost in terms of polarization and corruption. The glue that keeps them from repelling each other is the evangelical bloc, which enforces the unholy alliance of god, guns, and jingoism.

The Democratic Party would have done a more cultured and less overt version of the same thing as Trump, had Hillary won. Appearances would have been better, poor outcomes more gradual, but I'm starting to think the end result would have been the same at some point down the road. Both parties have decisively sold out the middle class and are systematically dismantling it.

So I don't have any hopeful proposals short of letting the two-party system self-destruct and hope we survive to build something better. A truly multi-party system on the Australian model would, I think, better serve us. (I like their "donkey voting" system).

As far as preventing Trump or worse in the future, I'd like to see reforms such as requiring all candidates for the Presidency or Vice Presidency to obtain a top security clearance before being allowed to run for the office. If that had been done, 80% of the asshats who ran on both sides in 2016 would have been disqualified, most especially Trump.

But there's no stomach for real system reform. So ... you tell me. I think the luck of the founding fathers has run out. Their system is considered sacred and immutable for practical purposes, but it's not working in the age of social media. It relies too much on honest men of good will, and politicians are engaged in a race to the bottom.

@DZhukovin I think it does, to some extent. Often to a large extent.

Hmmmm. Well, there's always hope for the future. That fits somewhere in between. You'll let us know, won't you?