this post was submitted on 02 Jul 2025
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There’s a guy on our dog walking route that put up several Trump flags last year. My wife and I actually wound up having an interaction with him because he was spying on us through his cameras and got mad that we referred to the flags as embarrassing and said that Trumpism was a cult.
By mid-April, he’d pulled down all the flagpoles and didn’t even take the flags off them, just laid the poles with flags wrapped around them in the dirt by his driveway.
In May I actually talked with him. Initially I had no intention of trying to be nice to him - he just had done something sort of shitty a few days before (encouraging his dog to bark at our dogs). I was going to be like “Look, if you wanna call me gay slurs over your ring camera, that’s fine, but don’t encourage your dog to be hostile to mine.”
But somehow he tied his dog to military service, and while I was fully prepared to connect the lack of a veteran license plate to his statement to call him a liar and a Reddit ninja, he fielded the license plate question and said that he’d suffered a TBI that resulted in an appreciable percentage of brain dying, and that made him unable to be rational when he felt any sort of threat or insult. So he didn’t use the military plates, because he’d had negative experiences with motorists while using them.
I don’t know if I believe that - it seems dumb on the part of the other motorists. But I’m not willing to keep pressing for the sake of picking a fight. I’ll throw a barb, but not over-extend myself. It’s just not worth it.
So I listened, and we chatted - for like an hour and a half. My wife left after a few minutes with the dogs. We talked about politics, the world, our community, and how fucked everything is. He supported Trump because of the 2016 (Obama) economy. He believes in women’s rights. He is conservative, anti-immigrant, and believes in stronger policing. I told him I believe in increased social support, so folks like him can get out of the VA benefits trap. I told him I think the way to stronger communities is through stronger schools and increased civic engagement - more pride, less punishment. He even asked if we’d be willing to help train his dog better, because he notices that ours don’t bark at other dogs, and don’t pull on their leads. I told him I’d have to think about it, and ask my wife, since she’s the one who really had the patience to get our dogs where they are.
We parted - not as friends - but certainly not as enemies. Just - neighbors with a better understanding of each other.
My boyfriend keeps saying that America needs a strong leader who can unite the people across the political divide like Lincoln did. That Trump was a divider for all people and he spreads divisiveness and hate whereever he goes and that most of the divisiveness we have today is because of Trump. He took smaller issues and poured gasoline on them and now we are here.
He says the way out of this nightmare is not a violent revolution, but a leader who can unite the people and bring focus back to building a society that is better for all.
He doesn't want Americans to lose their humanity because of one insane asshole. I am sometimes in awe of his cold head and warm heart. I try to remind myself of his words whenever I hear the next new retarded thing Trump has done overseas and how it's gonna affect not just America but the rest of us too. I go a bit feral sometimes, ngl.
I think your boyfriend needs to read a history book... Two of the most famous events of Lincoln's presidency are the only Civil War in the US has ever had, and him getting shot in the back of the head by the opposition.
Not saying either of those are Lincoln's fault necessarily...
You may want to ask yourself why Lincoln was shot and what the civil war was about and who started it and why? You may want to look into what Lincolns actions were throughout his presidency.
I can give you a hint: he was trying to unify people across political divides and disagreements and he is largely known for being the president who ended slavery and unified the USA. Whenever I have heard about Lincoln, that is what I have heard way before his assassination and the civil war and I have never stepped foot in America.
To boil Lincoln down to only being known for the civil war and his own assassination at best shows bad faith and at worst a terrible lack of understanding of your own history, in case you are an American yourself.
Relevant text quoted.
Yes I am an American. An American who's great great grandfather marched his ass from Indiana down to the bottom of Georgia. In the late 1860s. An American who spent a week each summer following that path with his grandfather and visiting battle sites.
My argument was not that Lincoln didn't try to keep the country together. I was just pointing out the irony of calling for a strong leader to bring the country together, and then picking the one president who was in charge when the country split and went to war. It wasn't Lincoln reaching across the aisle that kept the country together. It was Sherman chasing the confederates to the ocean and burning everything behind him. They were stuck with two options, and the confederates picked the one that didn't involve swimming for the rest of their lives.
Okay, so you're just going to completely ignore everything I said and cherry pick me quoting you. What is with you people?
Lincoln was the one to make the difficult decisions to do away with an inhumane practice among other things and he wanted a united America. He did pretty much all the dirty work when the country was the most divided and least harmonious. Anyone who came after him and continued the work he started is a valid president in his own right, but Lincoln was the base for that future and part of why he is so remembered.
I still stand by that Lincoln isn't mostly known for the Civil War and getting shot. That may be true to you, but where I live and by most people who knows about him, he is famous for being the president who ended slavery and stood up against a cruel practice that had been protected and encouraged by the government for ages before him.
I do not understand why you are so insistent on poo-pooing on his legacy and ignoring the points I made. You don't know your own history.