[molson]

How do you guys have such horrible facebook friends?

I think one of the reasons I used to not quite realize the depth of Trump's base and how influential they were is that I just never saw them in real life. I have maybe 400 facebook friends - and zero public Trump supporters. Zero. There's 3-4 people that pass around lazy conservative memes once in a while, but they aren't really the super-hateful versions.

I live in one of the reddest states in the country, and I do see some Trump bumper stickers and flags around election time, but, I have nothing to do with these people. I work in state government, surrounded by Republicans (I assume), and I've never heard a single positive word about Trump. Not one. I'm sure some of them voted for him, but they would never admit it. And while we don't really talk politics, I hear plenty of vague comments about the state of the Trump presidency generally as like a "who the fuck knows what's going to happen next" kind of thing.

It's not that I specifically pick my facebook friends and people I hang out with at work based on politics - it's just kind of what my background and lifestyle is, I don't cross paths with these kinds of people. And I shoot guns in the desert for fun sometimes. But among every social and professional informal group I'm a part of, if someone said the slightest racist Trump-rhetoric kind of stuff - it just wouldn't fly, it just could never happen. It's been a revelation to me how much people hear this kind of stuff in their lives and on social media from people they know.