Difficulties Arguing With Trump Supporters

One interesting concept is that you can never win against a Trump supporter. Apart from this being a class topic, I have personally been in this position many times both in social media and in person to the point that it has hurt my head so much that I have stopped.

A lot of Trump supporters I have noticed rely on the Bible, science, and personal reasoning. The reason why I do not understand this is because none of them have any religious, scientific, sound ground to argue upon. 

The first case is the Bible. In my encounter with Trump supporters, my goodness have I heard enough of climate change is not real *gives verse* capital punishment is God's will *gives verse* women are inferior to men *gives verse* the earth is flat *gives verse* and so on and so forth. As I have explained in a previous post, the Bible is not to be read as a factual book, rather truthful and being very careful with interpretations. For example, God said he would not flood the Earth but did not say anything on our dependence of fossil fuels, let he who is without sin cast the first stone, Eve was formed out of Adam's rib (his side) to show that they are equals (again Genesis is not to be read literally or factually), the flat Earth simply breaks so many laws of physics and logic that it is really not worth mentioning how this has been used. Although Trump supporters use the Bible a lot to make claims, a lot of them are inaccurate not only in the eyes of a non-believer but also in those who believe in Christian doctrine.

Trump supporters also use a lot of pseudoscience and irrational logic with unsound arguments. This as many of us have seen, has been manifested in topics that we see today such as vaccines are bad, there is no proof that greenhouse gases are causing climate change, etc. Other Trump supporters such as Ben Carson, whom I thought was a cool person when I met him 3 years ago in person, has made claims such as "Illegal immigrants caught voting should be stripped of their citizenship." As many people do not know, the word illegal immigrant is not only a derogatory statement but also hard to comprehend because how can a person be illegal? If a US citizen commits a crime do they lose their citizenship and become 'illegal'? Chances are no, but the ridiculousness of the argument that undocumented immigrants when caught voting, there is a secure process to this as I have served as an election judge, should be stripped of their citizenship causes so much of a  headache but people believe it and support it! So not only do Trump supporters interpret scripture wrong, but they also use pseudoscience and controversial logic in order to support their claims. 

Now the analysis. Since these tools that many of Trump's supporters use to make claims are mostly inaccurate, it seems intuitive that it'll be a very simple conversation that a person with the right knowledge can simply share to change the person's perspective. Not quite. There seems to be a culture of misinformation in the lives of many Trump supporters. This culture is supported by digital media as we have heard in class, the more you click on a video, for say YouTube,  the more relevant videos you can see so if we endow ourselves in a culture of ignorance, it can  potentially have negative consequences nationally and worldwide as we are seeing today with our current president and his administration. Of course, the counter-argument can be that if you click on an ignorant video, that you may also click on a video that can give you accurate and non-biased information. The only problem with this, however, is what incentive to people have to do so? If you are comfortable hearing that our country is the best and that other countries hate us for our freedoms, that we treat everyone as equals, and that climate change is a hoax invented by the Chinese, then you have no reason to be placed out of your comfort zone and believing another reality that is not your own, especially when your reality puts you on the most privileged groups in society. This is why it is difficult arguing with a Trump supporter, aside from their pride (as most humans have when they are wrong) it is not to their benefit to believe otherwise. As a matter of fact, it is the fear of losing social status that causes this ignorance that is then being fed by biased media outlets. In many cases this means, no matter how eloquent you may speak or how much evidence you present, many of his supporters (I cannot generalize all since few are realizing their mistake) simply do not care and will hold to their beliefs that maintain them in power.