For my brother, it let him openly be sexist, racist, homophobic, anti-trans, and hateful. I haven’t spoke to him since 2017 when we got into a big fight and he said some pretty horrid things about my wife.
I’ll never understand the mind of those people. I mean granted I’m gay, so I guess I’m more empathic to minorities, but if I was a straight, white, cis man, what would I win with hating these groups or what would I lose by letting these groups exist?
I’m a straight, white, cis man and I don’t understand it either.
Like the lawn sign in front of my friends’ house says: “More rights for others doesn’t mean less for you. It’s not a pie.”
Everyone likes to feel superior in some way. To a lot of people, they were born superior, especially those who feel like they are not important in any other way.
"Donald Trump is a poor man’s idea of a rich man, a weak man’s idea of a strong man, and a dumb man’s idea of a smart man.”
Authoritarianism in general has a certain appeal in how much it simplifies life. In a liberal society, life is more difficult and complicated, as each person bears a certain measure of responsibility for learning about and understanding a broad variety of issues, if they want to be a responsible voter.
Authoritarianism removes this complication. If you just want to live your life on a sort of auto-pilot, without having to wrestle with a constantly changing world, then you can just let some authoritarian take care of all of that for you. So long as they sound like you want your leader to sound, you can fall into their trap.
Works great for simplifying things. Everyone would probably be authoritarian if it actually produced good results. Except it just doesn’t, history has pretty clearly demonstrated that it quickly runs out of steam, stagnates and then decays, where more liberal societies remain more competitive and innovative for much longer.
This is exactly it and thank you for expaining it so well.
The desire for simple explanations, from an inability to understand complexity but also from fear of what seems like chaos, is also what underpins a lot of religious belief out there: life is a lot less scary and simpler if everything without an easy explanation is explained by being the will of a god or pantheon.
Hence why if you engage the populists (not just of the Right) in conversation pretty much everything boils down to a world view of black and white with no greys, “my side” vs “the other side”, no subtlety, no empathic understanding and so on.
Mind you, in some countries with voting systems rigged to enforce a power duopoly like the US, this kind of thinking has been activelly promoted as normal since forever because it justifies the power duopoly in the eyes of most people (if you think human problems are two-sided, two-sided politics looks like a reasonable way of allocating power, rather than looking like an anti-democractic suppression of most options), so it’s hardly unexpected that they’re the most fertile fields for populists preaching simple “explanations” and simple “solutions”.
https://www.facebook.com/THEDiDiDelgado/photos/a.271621723285520/306669263114099/?type=3
Apologies. Couldn’t find an original link.
“If he can be rich and powerful by hating all these people, perhaps there’s a chance for me?”
We live in a vast digital spectacle, but we don’t participate in the spectacle – we consume it. Since nothing is real anymore, since our entire reality only exists through digital media, and since we have absolutely no agency, why not vote for a shit-poster for president? It’s fun as hell to watch him troll all those tedious snobs in DC. Fuck those guys.
Then enough people voted for him that something incredible happened. He won. That wasn’t supposed to happen! For once, something changed, and everyone who voted for him was a part of that change.
Actually accomplishing something is fucking intoxicating. It’s so easy to get hooked on that heady feeling of mattering at all for once in our pathetic, powerless, alienated existences as cogs in a giant wasteful plastic machine. We spend months, then years, then decades drifting without meaning, working jobs we hate, taking our kids to shitty day cares we can barely afford, waiting 19 month to see a doctor about that new weird lump, and so on.
For these people, reality has never been so real. They’re actually in it now, doing things. They’ve chosen a new content-creator-in-chief, and they want his content to take over the whole spectacle.
Well fuckin’ said. It’s all so tragic.
Back in the 2016 election when he had just announced his candidacy, I recall being semi-interested in him after the first GOP debate, based strictly on his performance. His policies already sounded like racist trash (building the wall), BUT the appeal I saw from him was his apparent independent nature. He was a billionaire that wasn’t beholden to anybody, he could potentially reshape how everything was done in Washington, which has become so dysfunctional. He could work with both Democrats and Republicans (he was friends with the Clintons after all), maybe he was just running Republican, but he’d veer to the center after getting elected.
Obviously none of that came to pass and he’s just a fucking grifter who tried to become a dictator, but at the time that was the potential he had. It was an election where everybody wanted somebody who would make a big change. Sanders was far and above the best candidate to “shake things up” in DC, but then Democrats went with the most establishment candidate they could find.
I heard a lot of rhetoric (on Reddit) along the lines of “yeh, we’ve had politicians. What if we need a business man? Trump can run it like a business and make it efficient”.
Seemed fairly logical to me. As a non-american I hadn’t heard of him, wasn’t hugely into politics (let alone American politics).
I remember chatting with mates, and it came up, so I mentioned that perspective. Thankfully, they called me an idiot, described the actual character of trump, and why that was a terrible idea.
It wasn’t difficult to corroborate what they said, and suddenly the whole facade fell away in front of me. That coincided with t_d taking over Reddit, and it became painfully obvious none of it was in good faith nor organic.Did no one pay attention to the news when he was just a real estate grifter? From a decade before, he was clearly without integrity, clearly skating across the line of legal, clearly not dealing fairly with those he did business with, clearly acting mostly in service to his own ego. I do see the appeal of a businessman to lead the country but not that approach to business
I never saw any of that.
2016 was a bit of a political awakening for me (well, maybe 2014, but it was a slow start).
I’m not from America so “Real Estate Crook” never crossed my path
then Democrats went with the most establishment candidate they could find.
Yeah, I’m really hoping for some more interesting Dem options soon. Probably not going to happen in 2024, but I’m hopeful for 2028. Biden has gotten a lot done, and I’m really thankful he has brought some decency and normalcy to the WH, but I’m still looking forward to other options.
I think this is the most logical argument I’ve heard about him in a while. Thanks for the perspective. I’ve hated him from the beginning, but this does explain a lot.
Billionaire of someone else’s money. They is always strings attached to that sort of money
Sure but the point is that the billions didn’t come from the GOP so he wasn’t “owned” by them necessarily. Theoretically he would not be bound by any political party whereas other politicians are.
Turns out both are owned by the same and by each other
He’s the only one who can stop the Clintons and other satanic reptilians from consuming fetus juice in pizza parlor basements.
I am so sick of this. If I want to consume Fizza (fetus pizza) then it is my God given right as an American!
I believe Fizza is forbidden in the Bible.
No, that was feet stuff. Feet stuff is forbidden in the bible. Easy mistake to make, they sound the same when you say it fast.
Feet stuff is what makes us Christian: John 13:1-17
Not in my Bible!
Rural people bitter at their lack of cultural influence in mainstream culture think he’s their ticket to social control
My guitar instructor first voted for Obama and then for trump. I think it came down to guns, increasing cost of living and generally just growing to hate democrats? He doesn’t hate me (knows I’m pretty liberal, but also I’ll bitch about democrats in a heartbeat). Spoke with his wife (much more level headed) and it seems… A tone of defeat? Cost of living is high, hard to raise a family on a set income, and for them Trump represented someone who would change things instead of the usual status quo represented by the democrats and the usual GOP. I think it is that, guns, and he is not really wanted by either party so they like him. He’s not a politician.
Not a bad assessment. I voted for him in 2016, and given the current situation, I’d probably do it again if he was the chosen candidate. That said, I think he’s done what was needed as a disruption to the system, and I would rather have somebody with less of an ego to stroke, and ideally less involvement with the financial elite.
Edit: Bring on the downvotes, I guess. I simply provided an honest perspective to help answer the posted question.
The only disruption a rich, white, old, NYC real-estate mogul provided to the system was saying the quiet parts out loud and forcing establishment R’s to choose between embracing his bullshit or alienating their bigoted base.
I can understand desperation, but it seems like the primary disruption has been a weakening of our democratic system and the ability for anything to get done at all, I don’t understand how this is seen as a positive even if life is expensive.
I also don’t understand how things like tax cuts that roll themselves back for normal people and not for the rich are seen as helpful.
Thanks for your honest answer, but how do you view the fact that he refused to accept defeat and tried to undermine the country’s democracy? Does that concern you? Honest question from a non- American.
Not to pull a whataboutism, but this happened in 2016 as well. Claims of Russian hacks and election fraud from the left, and the infamous “Here’s how Bernie can still win” meme that we all know and love.
It doesn’t excuse it from the right, but it’s not a uniquely partisan issue.
Well, first you did exactly pull a whatabout-ism.
More importantly though, the democrats claimed those were the things that caused them to lose the vote. They did not claim they did win, and those things were the things that point out that they did win.
“These are the things that made us lose” =/= “These are the reasons we didn’t lose”
Not all disruptions are the same. If you’re constipated you want to change the status quo, but that doesn’t mean shooting yourself in the dick is going to make anything better. So I think “we needed a change” is some combination of incomplete, dishonest, or thoughtless.
Also conservatives have bad takes on every issue so voting for one is not great.
Also conservatives have bad takes on every issue so voting for one is not great.
Everyone is the good guy of their own story.
Yeah, and some of those stories go “black people make me uncomfortable I don’t want them to live here” or “I don’t care about pollution I’m not going to be around to deal with it” or “we should just hang the gays” or any number of higher hanging fruit.
You can be the good guy in your story but if you vote conservative you are doing a bad thing, and you should stop.
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Hold up. OP asked a reasonable question and vector_zero gave his answer without being abusive or even unpleasant. The downvotes and your reply are not conducive to a reasonable discussion. This isn’t Reddit. We can be better.
Sure- I don’t see it like vector. But I’d like to think we could talk about it with civility.
That’s a losing battle I’m afraid. The power of an echo chamber is too strong.
FTR I was also disappointed to see the downvotes on an honest, if unpopular, opinion.
I absolutely hate Trump and I’m disappointed that an honest and unpopular opinion received downvotes. It reminds me of the single downvotes on comments such as “we need to stop gun violence.” It signifies partisan politics rather than open discussion.
Are we not supposed to use down vote for “I disagree with this but I don’t have the energy for a full reply”?
Downvotes should be reserved for comments that add nothing to the discussion. It’s not a disagreement button.
At least that was the original intent.
You can down vote and still be civil. While vector_zero gave a calm and honest accounting from their perspective, it was an effectively empty comment without any verification.
One could argue that, if you wanted a deep and data driven approach to the motivations of trump voters, you just aren’t likely to get it… Ever.
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You’ve effectively paraphrased Hillary’s “basket of deplorables” quote. Attempting to alienate your opponents and treat them like rabid animals is not a winning move.
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Do you not realize the purposeful damage people like you who voted for that sociopath have done and continue to do?
Toxic, divisive, and unproductive language. You’re also conveniently disregarding the fact that Trump’s opponent was the only person in the whole country capable of losing to him. You should direct your anger toward the people responsible for electing her during the primaries, rather than a lone person, in California (who therefore had no impact on his election), who cast his vote 7 years ago.
This person gave a cogent and reasoned reply to the question and allowed us to see the reasoning of people on the other side, an opportunity rarely afforded to us here. And your response is an ad-hominim attack? Really?
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Sad to see that our voting here is just as messed up as it was on Reddit. People will downvote a sensible cogent reply because they don’t like the politics of the poster. Then they’ll go and upvote a braindead 2 word comment like “fuck Trump”. Lemmings indeed.
No one likes bootlickers. What a shock.
You’re not going to get anyone not connected to the financial elites. They didn’t foresee Trump winning, and now they’re doing everything in their power to see that someone even slightly outside the system will never get elected again. You could fill 100 filing cabinets with all the crimes committed by all the presidents in the last century, yet he’s the only one thats actually having charges levied against him. The people prosecuting him don’t give a crap about justice, or whatever they think he did. They just want him out of the way. They’ve looked the other way at crimes 100X worse by others because they play the game.
I didn’t vote for him because I just got tired of voting for the lesser of two evils. The binary election system is a farce. People arguing between Democrats and Republicans are just useful idiots. I shall continue to be an unuseful idiot.
Couldn’t have said it better myself. Ranked choice voting would be a very welcome improvement to this garbage system, but obviously the government doesn’t want that to go into effect.
The Trump supporter I know thinks the government is run by tall white alien Democrats that rape children and drink theri adrenal fluid to stay young and that Trump has been arresting all of said tall white alien Democrats for crimes against children.
Or at least that’s what he told me when last I was still on speaking terms with him.
If you want more insight into how Trump appeals to some people, I can recommend Ian Danskin’s work about the alt-right. This is a good video to start with.
The Trump supporter I know is a store manager at a Home Depot and raped an underaged cashier. HR and Corporate protected him.
As ever, the appeal behind fascists is pussy bitches blaming “others” for their miserable failures in life.
I say this as someone who hates the man: At the time of the 2016 election, he was the most energetic politician of my lifetime. You could see that he excited his audience, people got caught up. And this was the party that usually has the less charismatic politicians.
It was also that Americans were sick of politics as usual. That’s also what drove Bernie Sanders’ momentum.
I think one of the major thoughts goes like this, somewhere deep inside, “If he’s an obvious idiot and a criminal, and he’s still a wealthy person and president, that means I COULD BE PRESIDENT PROBABLY IF I WANTED TO!!! I just don’t want to, I want to eat these Cheetos… but good to know I have the option.”
Also, just straight racism/sexism. Having an avatar to allow you to not feel guilt/shame for the parts of your personality that you know are rotten and wrong.
People are stupid and terrible, so he gives them someone they can relate to.
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