Does being a Republican automatically lead one to assume that I am a racist, sexist, etc.?

Look, 20% of everyone is stupid, were stupid equals some combination of ignorance, arrogance, or apathy. Any two of these things in combination makes someone not only wrong, but completely resistant to change because they are unwilling to listen to other people. Being racist is stupid, being sexist is stupid, spreading horrible rumors about what you think gay guys do is stupid.

Disagreeing with one person in the comment section of an on-line post and then assuming their personal life is fulled with evil and vile activities is stupid. There are stupid people everywhere, and in America there are no consequences to being stupid and loud. "Everyone has a right to their opinion," is a common saying and stupid people are completely resistant to embarrassment, criticism, and self reflection.

Due to arrogance, ignorance, and apathy, stupid people just don't know when to shut up, and they never will. As for republicans? If you ran a political party that fundamentally existed to give old moneyed rich white guys what they want most from the government, to pay less in taxes and to keep things that are unethical from being / becoming illegal, then you would have to face the fact that you would represent a permanent minority.

Old moneyed fortunes were mostly accumulated by exploiting people (slaves, cheap immigrant labor, women who you could pay less than men) and resources (strip mine the mountains, clearcut the forest, pump the aquifers dry for industrial farming, dump your industrial waste in the river). White men who owned property were once the only people who could vote and accumulate wealth, so it took ethical arguments among the intellectuals and violent protests among the exploited to create an unstoppable majority to force that change, to make the law recognize that all people have civil rights. So if you are a person who yearns for the days when old white guys had all the power and you think it is your god given right to exploit whoever and whatever you can to become rich, that exploitation proves you are better than other people, then encouraging stupid people to join your party, and exploiting them with rhetoric to make them vote against their own self interest just makes sense.

The problem is that if a political party cobbles together a slim majority by appealing to the arrogant, ignorant and apathetic, the stupid people don't know that they are stupid and are supposed to shut up and do what they are told. They echo back the rhetoric that attracted them in the first place, louder and more extreme than ever, and assume that the loudness means everyone agrees with them. If you court fools to make up your political majority then you shouldn't be surprised that they act like fools, that they are hard to manage, that it costs millions of dollars in advertising to try and keep them on message, and occasionally the fools push one of their own to the fore front to take the stage.

Any republican who is willing to shout down their own bigots becomes highly respected by centrists and people on the left, but they only gain about as many votes as they lose, and once you strip out the bigotry and extreme rhetoric all a Republican is left standing for is an arrogant foreign policy and a willingness to do what ever big corporations want you to do. An understanding of this balancing act explains everything I know about the political dynamics on the right that I have witnesses over the last 16 years.

I cant really gove you an answer,but what I can give you is a way to a solution, that is you have to find the anglde that you relate to or peaks your interest. A good paper is one that people get drawn into because it reaches them ln some way.As for me WW11 to me, I think of the holocaust and the effect it had on the survivors, their families and those who stood by and did nothing until it was too late.