They may have had the credit cards for a trip to Washington that they couldn’t reàlly afford, which would fit the thesis of the article, that a lot of them were people with poor financial positions. 
Why would they have to pay for lawyers? They were coming on the orders of the President himself, to carry out their patriotic duty to save the election from the corruption in Washington.
Right, they expected DJT to meet them at the capitol and thank them for restoring the presidency to him. They’d never get charged, they’d be celebrated.
Meh, I don’t buy that these were people living paycheck to paycheck. Lots of people have had financial squeezes at least once, and lots of people recover from it – I think they were probably doing relatively okay. If you’re really in the financial shithouse, you don’t take the better part of a work week off, spend several hundred dollars on AirBnB, dine out in one of the most expensive cities to take a vacation in, and participate in political rallies hundreds or even thousands of miles from home.
This wasn’t a case of people rioting over food prices; this is a case of privileged people angry about losing power and privilege.
This is the state of American society today:
TJ Ducklo told a reporter “I will destroy you” and for that he lost his job, lost his formerly-good reputation and now has to face cancer while being unemployed and shunned.
Donald Trump incited an insurrection that directly led to the deaths of 5 Americans and he will go unpunished and is being embraced as the most powerful and influential figure in Republican politics.
….
This isn’t making me feel good about the state of American society today.
I certainly never meant to imply that all failed businesses or financial problems are the result of bad decisions. But I’m also not one of those posters that gets into an argumentative back and forth about the parsing of a sentence for twenty posts. I don’t do that. Sorry.
My comments were made in reference to a specific group of people (January 6th insurrectionists) relative to the analysis made in a cited article. The article noted that many insurrectionists had long-running ( pre-pandemic) financial problems and was trying to connect their actions to deep-seated psychological issues caused by insecurity and instability, possibly going back to childhood.
My observation was that since participating in the storming of the Capitol was a bad decision to end all bad decisions, maybe the insurrectionists with long-standing financial problems simply had a knack for bad decisions and that those decisions might be related to their propensity towards magical thinking, which I see as the unifying characteristic of an otherwise varied group.
This statement was not meant to reflect upon any of the millions of people with financial problems that didn’t attack Congress on January 6th, as I have no evidence of their decision-making ability and this is a discussion about the insurrectionists, not the financial problems of non-insurrectionists.
I’m also not claiming that all or most of the people that stormed the Capitol were also bad with money. I’ve read other analysis that said the opposite. But it seems that some of them had financial problems, and I’m pretty comfortable speculating that the financial problems of that subset might be related to bad decision-making and magical thinking.
Business owners and white collar workers are not immune to financial difficulties.
It’s not just racism, not anymore. Some people are racist out of ignorance, a fear of the unknown, a worry about those they do not understand or believe to have the same values.
Other people are hateful. They want to hate, and will direct their hate at any available target. Trump supporters are not just racist, in that they don’t just hate people of a different skin color, they hate anyone that doesn’t fit their “tribe”, any acceptable target of their ire.
They voted based on hate. Hate of their fellow countrymen, even the white ones. They want anyone who is not a part of their tribe to be hurt, to suffer, to wither and perish.
As one Trump supporter whined: I don’t understand it. “(Trump is) not hurting the people he needs to be hurting!”
The voted him in so that he could hurt people. They did not care about making anything better. About fixing problems. About actually governing.
They wanted him to hurt “the people he needs to be hurting” In other words “those other people, not me and my tribe.” The thinking may be race-based, but is not necessarily so. “Other People” need to be hurt.
I think that you are very correct here.
You don’t have to be good with money to have money, you just have to have an income source that covers for your bad decisions.
I know people with 6 figure jobs that don’t know how they are going to pay their mortgage next month, not because they don’t make enough, but because they spend too much. They make poor decisions. They eat out every night, they buy luxuries they don’t need, if they have money in their pocket, they spend it. I know people with much lower incomes that have the same mindset, but they are less insulated from their decisions, as they have less of a buffer. They don’t just worry about paying rent next month, they aren’t sure about eating tomorrow either.
I also know people who have low incomes, and yet are financially stable, because they spend wisely. I also know people with low incomes, who are not financially stable, because no matter how wisely they spend, they do not make enough to survive on.
The first group do not think about the consequences of their actions. They don’t consider spending that dollar now, and then not having it when they need it later. They think that somehow, things will just work out. If they don’t work out, it’s someone else’s fault. Even the ones on low income will spend whatever they have, right now, and let tomorrow take care of itself.
The second group are very aware of the consequences of poor decision making. They know that anything they spend now, they don’t have later when they need it.
Anyone can have financial difficulties, no matter their situation. But bad decision making certainly increases those difficulties.
There is also particular type of bad decision making that is related to magical thinking, and frequently causes financial problems.
The most common one that I’ve seen is substituting prayer or appeals to the universe or whatever for critical thinking.
People that weren’t sure their business idea was workable, but they prayed on it and God told them to “go for it.” People that overcame their “resistance” (ie justified doubts) and started some venture because a psychic told them it was their destiny. People that send money to prayer scammers that promise the Universe will return it to them tenfold if they only follow instructions.
I’ve spoken a lot lately about my new age conspiracy theory former friends, the “conspiritualists”. One day, several years ago I walked into their business and one of my friends was reading an article. It was an article about starting a business, and how you shouldn’t do it unless you had a solid plan and a realistic financial outlook.
This article made him very angry, and he went on a rant about mainstream society crushing dreams and killing potential and what about faith…faith should be enough, the MSM just wants to kill everyone’s dreams.
It’s the same mentality that draws people into MLM’s and get rich quick schemes. It’s a particular flavor of financial irresponsibility, and it’s related to the kind of delusions that lead to January 6th.
I had my doubts as to whether not starting my business was a viable idea. I was risking everything, I cashed out my 401k, and pulled all the equity from my home.
But, I made the decision, not based on prayer or scripture, not based on voices from above, but based on spreadsheets. (And I used OpenOffice, a free program, to do so.)
I do know people who started a business based on little more than a desire to start a business. Depending on what they were doing, sometimes it worked out. I know a bar owner that has no idea what he is doing, he was just a bartender who had an opportunity to buy the bar he was working at. If it were not for the fact that a bar is pretty much the easiest and most straightforward business there is, he’d have gone bankrupt, he’s a decent bartender, but has no concept of what he is doing business wise.
I know a lot of Trumpers and they fit this profile. BUT, most of them have financial difficulties because they can’t manage their money, not because they don’t have any. Most live very comfortable middle-class lives, while genuinely believing that they are deprived. Furthermore, they believe they are deprived because their tax dollars are going to welfare bums. (These people froth over free cell phones for poor people). Those who don’t have enough money are in that position because they have no skills so they make minimum wage. Interestingly, they oppose increasing the minimum wage. Both groups are also mostly middle-aged, facing the reality that they have maxed out their earning potential, with a less-than-rosy future ahead. They are bitter and resentful of poor people AND rich people. And they are all profoundly racist, though every single one believes they are not.
Most do live paycheck to paycheck because every penny of their paycheck is committed to payments. Everything they own is purchased on credit, they never ask “can I afford this?”, they ask “can I afford the payments on this?”. They never question the interest rate, the total cost, quality, or even whether they need it, but it’s important the salesman be a ‘Christian’.
These are people who regularly pay $300 to watch a bunch of videos of Dave Ramsey telling them how to be financially responsible (he is promoted by churches because he lists tithing as the #1 step in managing your money).
I’m talking about a particular flavor of “bad financial decision maker”. I thought they were pretty common, but I may be wrong. But there’s more to it than starting a business without research.
It’s the guy that’s always going into business for himself, and he’s going to get rich selling dietary supplements or flipping real estate or day trading stocks. They believe in the mythical big score that’s always around the corner. They never connect failure to the viability of the initial idea, and keep making the same mistake multiple times.
It’s the woman that “follows her heart” and quits her accounting or paralegal job to work full time on her music, or her reiki practice, or whatever. If you suggest she should maybe keep her avocation part time until she has more financial cushion, you’re lacking in faith and don’t believe in her, she trusts the universe even if you don’t. Toxic brightsiding, I think they call it.
It’s the young -or not so young- person that thinks they’ll never have to work because they’re going to be the next big social media influencer, and buys stuff they don’t need on credit because “if you’re going to be rich, you’ve got to look the part.”
It’s not just making bad decisions, it’s making bad decisions because you hold a worldview that’s disconnected from reality, one in which the upcoming miracle is going to make everything better, in which the delusion is always going to be made real tomorrow.
For what I think are obvious reasons, I think the insurrectionists might be susceptible to this kind of bad decision.
See: Ralph Kramden in The Honeymooners. People like this have been around forever. And other folks have taken advantage of them for just about as long.
And Trump draws them to him like a magnet. Lots of people voted for Trump, but only a tiny fraction of them came to Washington on Jan. 6. These were very motivated people who were ready to do his bidding from the moment they arrived. He said “fight like hell,” and that’s just what they did.
Good to know.
I’m still disagreeing with this. From the article:
Anyone on the edge of financial precarity who was able to regain their footing would have had to have, according to your idea of financial success, made some financially good decisions. I think that people who had a childhood of financial precarity or previous financial precarity in their earlier lives and made enough money to be standing there at the Capitol that day were either very fortunate, or under your definition of good financial decision making, made some good decisions.
I would include “chronic lottery players” in this list. I’d put a substantial wager (heh) on the probability that a majority of these insurrectionists don’t miss a week buying one or many Mega Millions type tickets at their local gas mart.
That would support my observation that there is a lot of magical thinking in this group. By magical thinking I mean strong conviction that I will be saved from my difficult life of woe by outside intervention, i.e., lottery win, strongman guru, knight on a white horse, reversal of fortune, etc.
I think you’re on to something here — seriously.
Perhaps. I think it’s more likely that many of those folks have more than one maxed-out credit cards.