As a Republican in deep blue Massachusetts, I’m usually a dissenter. So I know what it feels like to play the role of the opposition. I respect the role of those who dissent, and I believe in the right to voice dissenting opinion is essential to a democratic republic such as the United States. Without dissenting opinion as a part of the discourse, we’d be no better than anti-revisionist Stalinism.

Yet three primary characteristics mark this post-election’s dissenters as different from any dissent I’ve noticed in the past. The first is the absolute irate, vindictive, intolerant and hateful tone and rhetoric coming from the dissent. The second is the fact this hateful tone and rhetoric is wrapped in a knowledge bubble. And third is that all the greivences and accusations that are coming from this camp are filled with mischaracterizations, outright lies, and bigoted assumptions.

Traditionally, dissenters dissent because of truth. This is because it is only truth that will give them power over the establishment. It is only truth that will cause a stir to those who rule. When Sojourner Truth bared her breasts to prove she was a woman to those who mocked her for looking like a man, she was standing up for the truth of her personal dignity as a freed woman. When Rosa Parks refused to sit in the back of the bus, she was speaking to the truth that she was a human being with all the rights and liberties that all human beings and citizens of the United States enjoy. She was speaking to the truth that the 14th ammendment of the constitution guaranteed her right to equal citizenship. And when protestors dissented against the invasion of Iraq in 2004, they were standing up for the truth that Iraq was not responsible for 9/11 and we went to war for unjust causes.

“there is nothing to fear, but fear itself.”

However, today’s dissent against President-elect Trump does not speak for truth. It speaks for fear. My sympathy to you dissenters, is that I know your fear is real to you. You fear everything you believe Obama worked for is going to go away. You fear in a supreme court that will overturn Roe V. Wade. You fear global warming. You fear an America overrun by popularism, racism, misogyny, nationalism and maybe even a Trump dictatorship. You fear for yourself and you fear for America. You have every right to your feelings, but the truth is, your reasonings to feel this way are not founded on truth. By playing to your own fears, you are missing your opportunity to dissent with purpose. You are missing your opportunity to compromise a platform. You are missing your opportunity to begin a dialogue with the Republican party. Instead, you just talk right past us with your own propaganda bubble that you’ve been brainwashed to believe.

I pity a person who has been been so brainwashed by the establishment regime that you think progressives are the only champions of truth through science. That you believe your policies and agendas are the only ones based on sound judgement and principle. That you think that being intolerant of other political beliefs is the ultimate show of solidarity with your cause. You delete your Trump supporting friends because you can’t handle a difference of opinion. The real truth is, it only fortifies your bubble and prevents the opposition from ever hearing your voice. When your bubble bursts, it will be even more painful because of these actions.

And if you, Trump hater, Trump dissenter, have read this far, I’m proud of you. Because it means you are willing to at least try to figure out what is going wrong on your side. And I will not disappoint. These are the facts you have overlooked (in bold) which you refuse to accept in your bubbles. Let me help you pop it. It might hurt a little at first, but then it starts to feel real good:

The left does not have a monopoly over the facts. This is self evident. Having a particular political ideology does not mean that your facts are somehow more factworthy than the opposition. The reason why it appears like the left is less wrong, is not because it is necessarily less wrong, but because the appearance of being less wrong is a savvy means to promoting a progressive agenda. The problem is, that when the left is wrong, such as was the case with the left promoting Nate Silver’s predictive map at www.fivethrityeight.com, you have an excuse to say, “well we are not always correct, at least we recognize this.” And while I admit, this is a virtue, it becomes more difficult for the left to leave their destructive progressive agenda driven bubble. There is no “wake-up call” and the bubble becomes recycled air poisoned with carbon monoxide. As you keep telling yourself, carbon dioxide is the real problem. And you know this to be true and there is no other path. Wake up, because the metaphorical carbon monoxide has put you to sleep. The Wikileaks documents are true. I think the saddest part about this election, was how so many people bought into the lie that Wikileaks was just making the emails up, despite evidence that indicates their legitimacy. And people actively sheilded themselves from learning about them. Saying, “Oh, it’s just a bunch of normal emails.” Or “All politicians do this”. And worst of all, when the main stream media reported on a wikileaks document, they selected only those documents that were “soft” on Clinton. Like how Podesta might have said something mean about her, but nothing of substance such as the Morocco or UraniumOne deals, which only sources like Breitbart or Fox news gave a fair report. Media Matters, supposedly a fact checking organization, failed to recognize that it is not just one email or one deal alone that indicates how the Clinton Charities utilized pay to play, but rather the entirety of the evidence that indicated State department favoritism to Clinton donors. So when Media Matters fails to see the pattern of corruption because not all elements are in place on a single issue, they fail to recognize the standards of justice known as a “preponderance of evidence” and “clear and convincing evidence.” By putting the standard at beyond a resonable doubt on this concern, they fail to recognize that the standard for a presidential candidate is “Not even an iota” of evidence to suggest corruption. This means that there should not be the appearance of corruption and a candidate with this level of evidence should step down. However, this is what the Morroco email shows: the appearance of corruption, and this is exactly how Fox news reported it. Anything other than this perspective is speculation or spin. When a media watchdog group spins a story to say that there is no evidence beyond a reasonable doubt, however, the standard is not even an iota of evidence to suggest corruption, those who think an organization like Media Matters is truthful get lost in their bubble of double standards. (Double, bubble [sic], toil and trouble.) In the past, the media, whether left or right leaning, held candidates to this standard, and the candidate would resign in response. Usually the candidate with the least appearance of corruption would claim victory in the primary. So, until the left recognizes that they were wrong to back a corrupt candidate in the primary, and stop whining that she was “The most qualified candidate in history”, when this is clearly false, since corruption disqualifies a candidate, Trump supporters might be able to start listening to your concerns on the issues. Because, we don’t feel listened to at all, with one interesting and notable exception: Michael Moore. The Russian hack happened, but it had no known connection to the Wikileaks documents. This is an interesting one. Because the only way to know the truth of this statement is to have access to intelligence reports. They are not classified reports, but they are still difficult to access. So for the most part, we have to take the word of officials on statements regarding intelligence reports because access to them is limited. We know for a fact that Russian Hackers breached the DNC servers. However, a close read of that article shows that the intelligence indicates it was a standard act of espionage and that there is no evidence that any material actually left the servers from this particular hack. There is no indication of Russian interferance with the election. In fact, the hack was significantly about getting information to learn more about Donald Trump. So there is a disconnect here. If we know the Russians did not access or download any of the DNC leaks such as donor lists and emails, yet the DNC leaks contained donor and finance informaiton, where did they come from? Interestingly, we know the answer to who was responsible for the DNC leaks. It was Guccifer. He claimed responsibility for the hacks and plead guilty to the crime. He’s not an agent of Russia, he works alone for his own purposes. So, when we hear that 16 out of 18 intelligence agencies believe the DNC was hacked by Russia, we don’t hear the rest of the story: the proven truth that is somehow markedly different from the false media narraives we have all been fed. The great unwashed just assumes it was Russia behind the Wikileaks documents when there is no evidence to support this. In fact, Wikileaks have categorically denied Russia’s involvement and all indications point to the late Seth Rich as a source. Instead, the accusation of Russia’s involvement was just a means for Hillary Clinton to start a new Cold War. This to me is extremely dangerous and irresponsible at the highest of levels of media discourse. She essentially fooled her constituents into believing there was some Russian conspiracy with the Trump campaign, but it was just misdirection and lies from her camp. Hillary Clinton worked with the DNC to rig the primary against Bernie Sanders. This was the big news of the DNC leaks Clinton supporters ignored. Until Clinton supporters recognize how corrupt their candidate was, and that her corruption extends to the processes of her own party, you’re just going to keep talking past your own party’s dissenters and you will accomplish nothing. Donald Trump is not a racist. You site cases like housing segregation lawsuits, when Trump and his father were representing the will of his existing tenants. You keep posting that clip of Trump saying, “Look at my African-American (friend).” Which was a gaff, but doesn’t indicate racism. You keep siting a small minority of Trump supporters who appear racist, but they has nothing to do with Trump. Or maybe you site certain articles written for Breitbart, which while not written by Bannon, were on behalf of Steve Bannon’s publication. Yet you fail to read past the clickbait headlines or the context of the media zeitgeist that drives the income of the online news world. Hillary is guilty of these same kinds of racially charged rhetoric, but there is no main stream opposition to her rhetoric or racist ties. She got a free pass from the media. She was responsible for the racist rhetoric against Obama during the 2008 primary. And Obama was responsible for the sexism during that campaign as well. And Hillary is responsible for making a mountain out of a molehill by painting Trump and his supporters as in line with the KKK. It’s simply mischaracterization of the people and cherry picking of incidents. Either both Trump and Hillary are racist, or neither Trump and Hillary are racist. Let’s give them the benefit of the doubt here. Despite out of context appearances, Trump did not mock a disabled man’s disability. This got passed around a lot. But did you see this? It is clear that he was demarking the reporter’s backpedaling and groveling, not his disability, as this was how he has indicated this kind of rhetoric from others in the past. Trump is not a rapist. In the days before the election, all charges against Trump were dropped because there was no case. This same case had been filed before in a different state, and was also dropped then. So stop calling him a rapist. And stop calling his supporters misoygnists in support of a rapist. Or rape appologists. It’s just false. And until Trump dissenters get behind the facts, they’ll keep talking past us Trump supporters, who in fact do not support rape, or a material loss of agency in any form, “rape culture,” misogyny or racism. The left, by failing to respect our choice of candidate Trump, who we chose, not because we are racist or misogynist, but in spite of being labeled as such by ignorant leftist bigots, at risk to the detriment to our character, the left is fanning the flames on the real racists and mysoginists who can now get their messages out there. This is the left’s fault. If they didn’t give a voice to racism by creating their racist straw man, which propped up real racial tensions and sentiments, it wouldn’t be a festering problem. And if you didn’t realize, the established left is just as racist and patriarchical as the established right, despite appearances. The clear winner tactic of rhetoric can only work if there is also clear loser set up as a straw man, but the fact of the matter is, your mischaracterization of those who support Trump is so off the mark by categorizing us with the clear losers of racist and misogynist thought, that it has backfired, and it will continue to backfire until the real racists rear their ugly heads. And not all of these racists and misogynists will be white nationalists. This, most of all, is why you need to stop this divisive rhetoric and come to terms with losing the election. There are scalable ways to create carbon neutral clean coal-ethanol energy production and recycling process. “Yes”, a Trump Dissenter says, “but what about the planet?” As a philosopher of science, I am scientifically literate, and I have reason to believe that man made Carbon Dioxide can contribute to climate change. However, this does not mean that the only alternative to fossile fuels such as coal, gas and oil is enegry sources that depend on batteries, solar or wind. Nor that it is the best time for us to have a renewable energy source policy. In fact, it has never been a better time to get into clean coal technology. The problem with clean coal prior to this year, was that there was no means to recycle or make use of the captured carbon gasses. We would have to compress and bury the waste gas. And this created a problem for storage and potential leaks. However, there is a new technology that converts CO2 into useful ethanol. This means we can build clean coal-ethanol hybrid energy plants, recycle the captured CO2 into ethanol, then recapture the CO2 from ethanol which also works to power the plant, which is recaptured to create ethanol again, creating a carbon-nuetral energy cycle from a fossil fuel source with high efficiency. Cheaper than subsizing renewables, which may also depend on relatively short battery lives (20 years or so before they are useless), this coal-ethanol hybrid technology is cheap, abundant, and makes managing on-site environmental waste problems much easier than nuclear energy. This will give us enough time to really work on nuclear fusion as the future of energy, without unnecessary subsidies to wind and solar, which themselves have their own environmental problems associated with them. Just because a group I don’t support, supports my candidate, it does not mean that I support or agree with the group that supports my candidate on any issue other than choosing to vote for such candidate. This is a clear statement of logic. So by shaming the majority of Trump supporters by equating us with organizations like the KKK, and by labeling a diverse group of conservative and disenfrachised millenials as deplorable, racist, alt-right basement dwellers, you are in fact talking right past us. You aren’t taking the time to give us any sense of human diginity to exersize our constitutional right to vote. You are becoming the very bigots you are accusing us of being. Perhaps you justify this as, “Now it is your turn to feel what it is like to be marginalized” without ever knowing that many of us have already felt what it is like to be marginalized and belittled. It’s a part of the human condition and the left has now assumed a priviledge to dole it out from this false narrative of their being uniquely oppressed. From such a perspective, a Trump supporter has no perspective, but this is not a perspective of truth. We have a perspective and we have a right to this perspective. And while you have a right to perspectives that aren’t true, it does nothing for any side for you to continue to talk past us.

If you fail to see the truth in these bold facts, you’ve been brainwashed. Seriously. No joke. You have been brainwashed by the MSM, your facebook feeds and twitter feeds. Even if you disagree with my point, my choice of candidate, and even have a clear understanding of my personal biases, you should not choose claim the above facts are false of made up, or you are the one at risk for being the ignorant bigot, and it is your bias that far greater than mine.

This is a warning. The warning is not that Trump will be a dictator, or that the racists will take over the world. Trump won’t be a dictator. We have checks and balances in our system that prevent this. The warning is that in your short-sighted dissent, you will fail democracy by ignoring the truth and sheilding yourself inside your bubble of media bias and belief that somehow you are “less-wrong” which verifies your bias. You continue to mischaracterize your potential allies on the other side of the aisle and fan the flames to the very hatred you swore to fight, causing your own self-imolation embroiled by your own politically correct version of hate. Stop it. I will say it right now: Stop it.