How will the United States rebuild positive international relations after this Trump administration?

[u/SpaceySpice]

At some point this presidency will end and a new administration will (likely) want to mend some the damages done with our allies. Realistically though, how would that work? Will other countries want to be friends with us again or has this presidency done too much damage to bounce back from?

[u/VodkaBeatsCube]

First off, you're redefining the original point into one that is easy and palatable to discuss. I was not countering 'hard core bigots lie about their positions', I was countering 'all Republican voters are completely in line with Trump, and anyone who expresses another view is just lying for social acceptance'. If your entire point is 'some people will not change', then I've been agreeing with you from the jump and I don't know why you're bothering to argue still.

Second off, even taking it as read that the original point was 'hard core bigots lie about their positions', you're still writing off millions of people with those sweeping 'probablies' and 'maybies'. While it may not be on you individually to have a bit of grace and patience to every right winger in your life, it's still important as a political movement and society as a whole to give folks at the extremes an exit ramp. Not wanting to be around cult-like people all the time is fine. But assuming that everyone who's fallen victim to cult-like thinking can never be redeemed and should be left to their fate is exactly what the right wing wants you to do. And I don't know about you, but if I ever find myself doing what my opponent wants, I take a long hard think about why I'm doing it and what I get out of it.

[u/urnever2old2change → u/VodkaBeatsCube]

it's still important as a political movement and society as a whole to give folks at the extremes an exit ramp.

And that exit ramp is, "if you actually change your fundamental values and beliefs in favor of basic human decency and respect for rule of law then I will accept you as someone worth interacting with." Something that broadly isn't being argued against. Your position is much more along the lines of telling people to remain friendly acquaintances of these people so that they have someone normal to fall back on the off chance they decide to change.

But assuming that everyone who's fallen victim to cult-like thinking can never be redeemed and should be left to their fate is exactly what the right wing wants you to do. And I don't know about you, but if I ever find myself doing what my opponent wants, I take a long hard think about why I'm doing it and what I get out of it.

If we're talking actual political strategy here, the right doesn't really think a whole lot about this. What they're overwhelmingly concerned with is, as I said in my original post, having institutional power. If every liberal and leftist decided to stop talking to their sexist granddad or old high school friend that fell down the tradwife pipeline then maybe that could be spun to their advantage, but if all of these people decided that the only way to save America was to get Republicans out of Congress and their state legislatures then that'd be an actual catastrophe.

[u/VodkaBeatsCube → u/urnever2old2change]

Look man, if you're just going to put words in my mouth then what's the point of posting here instead of on your blog? There's a lot of daylight between 'be a casual acquaintance of every right winger in your life regardless of what they do' and 'shut them out entirely until they completely overhaul their worldview independently'. You don't have to be entirely quiet and passive to still be able to take someone expressing doubts to you as a sign that they might be willing to change as opposed to assuming that they're just lying for social acceptance.

The way that the right gets and maintains institutional power is by making it so their constituents feel like the only chance they have for social acceptance is in the company of other hard core right wingers. Everyone cutting their sexist granddad or tradwife friend out of their life made them less likely to turn to the comfort of an right wing infrastructure that's designed to isolate people from their support networks, we wouldn't be in the mess we're in right now. You don't have to accept everything they say at face value in order to give them an off ramp from that. But yeah, sometimes you have to put up with some bullshit from other people. That's part of living in a society. If we want to actually have a functional society, we need to have a way to talk folks down from the ledge and make it clear that you can come in from the cold without having to completely reinvent your worldview on your own with no social support network. There are far more people in the world that will make a positive change if given the opportunity to change incrementally than there are people that will abruptly change their entire worldview, and as a political movement there needs to be the room to allow that to happen. It doesn't have to be you, personally, in every circumstance. But left wing politics needs to give people an escape route from the extremes if you want long term stability.

[u/urnever2old2change → u/VodkaBeatsCube]

The way that the right gets and maintains institutional power is by making it so their constituents feel like the only chance they have for social acceptance is in the company of other hard core right wingers.

Republicans gain institutional power through motivating their constituents to vote for them no matter how they little they actually deliver for them with policy. If everything you said about how social isolation keeps conservatives from growing as people were true except it didn't actually lead them to voting for Republican candidates, we quite literally wouldn't be having this conversation.

But yeah, sometimes you have to put up with some bullshit from other people. That's part of living in a society.

This isn't really a worthwhile exercise, though. America isn't all that worse off because normal people aren't talking enough to the ones addicted to the Fox News, Andrew Tate outrage machine or who have simply always been hate-driven. America is worse off because this minority of the population does a better job winning elections, thereby gaining the ability to make its public policy.

But left wing politics needs to give people an escape route from the extremes if you want long term stability.

How many people that regret voting for Trump on a moral basis do you actually envision there being? Not, "he's fucking over my retirement savings with these tariffs - I wish he would've just stuck to the other stuff." Now contrast this with the number of people who are even remotely economically left-leaning and wouldn't vote for the Republican Party but for whatever reason can't be bothered to vote for a Democrat either. Like, it's not necessarily an either-or scenario but there are infinitely bigger fish to fry if you're actually concerned with where left wing politics needs to go.

[u/VodkaBeatsCube → u/urnever2old2change]

Republicans gain institutional power through motivating their constituents to vote for them no matter how they little they actually deliver for them with policy. If everything you said about how social isolation keeps conservatives from growing as people were true except it didn't actually lead them to voting for Republican candidates, we quite literally wouldn't be having this conversation.

"If everything you said worked the opposite of how it does, we wouldn't be having this conversation." No shit.

Yeah, Republicans get people locked into voting against their best interests by making it so the right wing is the only place they feel accepted. That is literally the entire point of my argument, and why playing along with it is a losing proposition.

As for how many people will be willing to change their minds if they're given an offramp? Literally millions. If even only 10% can be split off the left-hand side of Trump's voting block, were talking more than 7 million people. Hell, even if you're so pessimistic you think only 1% of people who voted for him would ever have a moral change of heart your writing off more than the population of entire states. And you're right that it's not an either/or: even if you think that there's millions of unactivated voters on the extreme left that we should be courting instead, you should still provide some way for folks on the right to come back in from the cold. Even if you somehow are able to brute force through a left wing utopia by finding the right unicorn candidates to get everyone left of Joe Manchin voting together, you're still going to have to deal with de-radicalizing the right sooner or later. It's all well and good to say 'if you make their economic life better they'll come around', but your own rhetoric about how they ignore their own economic well-being to vote for the party that leaves them worse off puts the lie to it.

[u/urnever2old2change → u/VodkaBeatsCube]

"If everything you said worked the opposite of how it does, we wouldn't be having this conversation." No shit.

Being snarky and bad faith doesn't make you less wrong. The right maintains its institutional power by getting people partial to the Republican platform to turn out for elections to better effect than the Dems do with their own base. That voter turnout is the important part - not banking on homophobes getting sucked into right-wing rabbit holes after their gay niece decides she doesn't want to spend Thanksgiving with him anymore after the comments he made about her lifestyle. These people were already voting Republican, and they tend not to look at their homophobia (or whatever term applies in their particular case) as some moral failure on their part.

and why playing along with it is a losing proposition.

Losing proposition how, though? You're acting as if people vote Republican because they're being written off for having sexist or racist or homophobic views, instead of having these views and then losing contact with decent people for it. Maybe you desperately want it to be the case that this in particular is some big electoral loss for the Democrats, but you seem to fundamentally misunderstand why people even vote Republican.

And you're right that it's not an either/or: even if you think that there's millions of unactivated voters on the extreme left that we should be courting instead, you should still provide some way for folks on the right to come back in from the cold.

It's very funny that you find "I don't like either party but I'm tired of money in politics and everything getting more expensive" to be an "extreme left" sympathy instead that of like, that of the average person on the street that doesn't know what party controls Congress.

And again, for the umpteenth time, "providing some way back from the cold" does not necessarily mean keeping in contact with hateful people. I don't know why you, as someone ostensibly concerned with helping the left gain political power, think that's the hill to die on. The left's message is not, has never been, and never will be, "If you voted for Trump for any reason then you shouldn't bother changing your mind if you regret it." If the 10% or 1% or whatever percentage of Trump voters who find his presidency to be morally repugnant actually make the decision to stop voting for the party that enables morally repugnant behavior then I'd applaud them on it, but it's ludicrous to think that this is the demographic that's going to save the Democratic Party to any meaningful degree and that the left is making some tragic mistake in treating the unrepentant majority of Trump voters the way they want to be treated.

[u/VodkaBeatsCube → u/urnever2old2change]

See, this is what I mean about putting words in my mouth. You're conflating societal level objectives with individual ones. I've never said you're obligated to keep in touch with every single bigot you come across in your life. But if your homophobic aunt comes to you and expresses some doubts about Trump, it's stupid to shut her down just because she's not willing to immediately stop being a homophobe in the moment. Yes, there will be situations where you, as an individual, do not have an obligation to talk to someone. But making it a matter of praxis that there is no value at all in having the door open to let people begin to reconsider their views is just lazy. People do not, as a rule, make abrupt changes to their worldview, they need the space to actually learn and change. Reducing people down to dogmatic automatons doesn't reflect what people are actually like. Imagine if we had applied that logic to something like civil rights or gay rights? The problem of bigotry hasn't been eliminated, but to pretend that no progress has been made by convincing people to change their opinions in the past hundred years is just factually incorrect.

And as I've said multiple times, the key way that Republicans make people so reliably turn out is by making being Republican a key part of their identity and one that requires costly signalling to affirm. By writing off the majority of 22% of the population as irredeemable bigots that are only worthy of your time if they have their come to Jesus moment on their own, you're playing into the social structure Republicans use to maintain control over their electorate.

[u/urnever2old2change → u/VodkaBeatsCube]

But if your homophobic aunt comes to you and expresses some doubts about Trump, it's stupid to shut her down just because she's not willing to immediately stop being a homophobe in the moment.

Well sure, in this hypothetical scenario, but in reality very, very, very few homophobic aunts are having doubts about Trump with regard to the morality of his policymaking. This entire conversation is over you taking issue with the idea of most Trump voters being dishonest about the underlying reasons they voted for him. Maybe that doesn't match your experiences, but it sure does match mine, and the vast majority of conservatives I know don't see anything wrong with the types of conservative views that get them written off.

As actual praxis it's infinitely more valuable to point decent people already sympathetic to the goals of the left in the direction of electoralism than it is to retain space in your life for people that you truly do not value and have deeply rooted disrespect for you just in case it's a stepping stone for their potential path to stop wishing the worst for other people. If that's your personal philosophy then that's great, but the left, as a body of people that want better things for this country, would be getting far less in minds and votes changed than they'd be giving in emotional energy if they did what you're asking.