You're splitting hairs. Fine, it's not 50%. It's 48% or 45%, of the voting population. What does it matter? The point stands that a statistically significant number of people hold a set of ideologies and views that has been marginalised.
Before the 2016 election I would never believe that someone like Trump could win, because the media and prevailing signalling from America was that Trump-esque beliefs were a tiny minority. Clearly that turned out to not be the case. And that's the lesson from marginalising and suppressing 'undesirable' views. It doesn't make them go away. Here they are, dominating America. Deplatforming those people, depriving them of public voice, censoring their views, all that did was harden their resolve and create a massive blowback effect that shifted people on the moderate side of the spectrum towards radical.
You can argue about fine detail stats all you want, but America is currently being run by Trump and all the so-called undesirables have risen to mainstream status. Which is what my comment was all about. I'm sure you'll agree that if winning the presidency merely takes a 'slight' advantage in gaming the system, then the vote was already split on a knife's edge.
Before the 2016 election I would never believe that someone like Trump could win, because the media and prevailing signalling from America was that Trump-esque beliefs were a tiny minority. Clearly that turned out to not be the case. And that's the lesson from marginalising and suppressing 'undesirable' views. It doesn't make them go away. Here they are, dominating America. Deplatforming those people, depriving them of public voice, censoring their views, all that did was harden their resolve and create a massive blowback effect that shifted people on the moderate side of the spectrum towards radical.
You can argue about fine detail stats all you want, but America is currently being run by Trump and all the so-called undesirables have risen to mainstream status. Which is what my comment was all about. I'm sure you'll agree that if winning the presidency merely takes a 'slight' advantage in gaming the system, then the vote was already split on a knife's edge.