One Video That Could Actually Sway Some of Trump's Die-Hard Voters Away from Him
A video by Peace House flooded Facebook newsfeeds with a call to treat fellow citizens with respect regardless of what they choose to do in the voting booth.Â
The video, titled Dear Trump Supporters, set out to parody Trump supporters by sending Muslims to a Trump rally wearing "Muslims for Trump" shirts, in a move to highlight how unlikely Trump is to pick up voters who follow Islam.
Watch what happens:
Peace House expected the result to be hilarious, as it was when Samantha Bee tried to find a young gay black man's motivation for supporting Donald Trump.
However, what they found when speaking to Trump supporters was closer to home than they expected. The issue was the lack of reasonable conversation between supporters of different candidates, and not inherent in the supporters.
The video filled a significant gap in calm, sane approaches to speaking to voters on the other side of the party/candidate line. Rather than name-calling and generalizing all Trump supporters ("racist," "fascist"), we should appeal to the root of the problem driving people to Trump: poverty, disenfranchisement, whether real or imagined. In an election that seems to have gotten out of hand, the rational approach has a welcome audience from both parties, based on Facebook reactions to the video.
The "other side" can easily devolve from enemy to non-human entity in an age where differences of opinion can be kept out of digital "safe spaces" with a click of the "unfriend" button on Facebook (or a more rigorous pursuit, as "South Park" parodied).
But all humor aside, it does seem like this election has veered from voters making fun of candidates, to candidates making fun of candidates, to voters making fun of voters. A call to remember the humanity and diversity of those on the butt end of a joke could help further the conversation.
