Basically. There is no off-the-shelf solution to our economic stagnation. No communism, no socialism, no “small government.” Nothing works well, and we’ll have to stumble along until we find something that does.
People don’t like that, understandably, but people are also stupid, so they vote out whatever party is in power as if that’s going to change something. Well, if by so doing they vote in morons like Trump, it will change things, but not for the better.
If it was a “working class revolt”, they’d all just be killed. These are entitled thugs who have been privileged all their lives, allowed to run wild. To threaten people, to attack and kill people, to steal and destroy. They’re mad that some people are saying that maybe they shouldn’t beat their wife, murder gay people, harass and attack women, threaten politicians they don’t like, and all the other things they’ve spent their lives getting away with while the government carefully ignore it. They don’t act like a “revolting working class”, they act with the kind of fearlessness and heedlessness of people who can’t even grasp the possibility of consequences for their actions because they’ve never faced any.
I agree. This is not a “working class revolt” at all. If so, wouldn’t Biden have gotten traction with some of his policies and with his pro-union stances?
This is straight up anti-immigrant hatred, along with misogyny & lgbtq hatred.
Trump hasn’t gotten this far with pro-worker policies. If anything, his policies have been anti-worker. He’s gotten this far by dividing people and stoking fear & hatred.
Exactly; it’s the same xenophobic divide-and-conquer tactics the Right has always used. It’s just a slight updated version of the rhetoric used to whip up fear and hatred of everyone over the decades from enslaved black people to the Chinese “Yellow Peril” to the Irish. The targets change but the attitudes are the same.
Most of the people who showed up for 1/6 were privileged, I agree there. Musk goes right along with that. The leaders and most ardent followers are privileged.
I’m not saying bigotry isn’t a factor, but it isn’t THE factor for a lot of them. How do you explain the major inroads Trump made with black and Hispanic voters if it’s all about getting the brown people?
It’s not one-dimensional.
I have a MAGA relative I mentioned upthread whom I don’t believe is a racist. He’s been angry at “Teh Government” for as long as I can remember. He thinks it’s broken and wants to see it torn down for a rebuild.
So we can argue whether being indifferent to the racism makes you racist, but that doesn’t mean all those indifferent people voted Trump BECAUSE of the Racism.
Religion and the shared connection of perceived conservative values is all I can come up with.
Religion is a huge one, and they were always going to vote for the anti-abortion party.
I called it a working class revolt because, and I’ve said this 100 times, there are a lot of people who think that post-war experience of good, middle class factory jobs is their birthright. And we’re not just seeing that in the US. It’s all over the world. I’m not really sure WHY the romanticize factory jobs so much, but they do.
That’s why I get a little defensive over all the hate the rest of the world is sending the US. Probably something like half the democracies in the world have their own version of ascendant MAGA.
I was in Belgium and I had two different drivers (work, so I had a car service) tell me that Belgium needed a Trump.
There are scores of populist racists in every country I know of (I’m in Europe), but the American reality, as we speak, is at another level, and Trump was re-elected by Americans knowing all of what’s to come.
Well, yeah. Someone working two jobs and still barely able to pay the rent isn’t going to travel to DC and trash the Capitol because their guy didn’t win. Doesn’t mean they didn’t vote for Trump.
This is meaningless.
Do you think no one who voted for Barrack Obama could possibly have been bigoted?
Do you think it’s impossible that someone could have been radicalized into bigoted positions in the decade plus since Obama’s last term?
Trump’s base consists of two components: bigots, and people stupid enough to be duped into thinking Trump isn’t a bigot.
It’s not that most of those jobs were “romantic,” but there was a sense of security in knowing that if you put in your 40 hours a week on the assembly line, you could afford to raise a family, buy a decent house and have two cars in the driveway, with a nice pension waiting for your when you retired.
And it’s not just non-college-educated blue collar workers who are frustrated with the state of things. People of my generation, who grew up in the '80s and '90s, were led to believe that if you went to college, it would be like having a golden ticket to the middle class. Instead many of my generational cohorts wound up with a mountain of debt and unable to secure decent paying jobs in their fields. And the emergence of AI probably isn’t going to make that any easier.
Are you aware that this sentiment was and continues to be actively engineered by a rather small number of people? If you look at the various movements, it’s always the same group ginning up the discontent. Here is a short article about it:
Among the names frequently seen are Steve Bannon, Viktor Orban, Marine LePen and Dominic Cummings. There are many others. They are from different countries, but their goals are similar: To destabilize democracies throughout the world.
My point is, the discontent felt around the world is not organic. It’s being engineered. There’s quite a lot written about this if you spend some time researching it. Scary how successful they’ve been.
It seems to me that there’s two separate phenomena / groups of voters, with the two blending into each other as well. Yes, the traditional bigots form the bulk of Trump’s base. These are people who have likely voted Republican their whole lives unless they are old enough to have been of voting age back in 1964 and earlier, before LBJ “lost the South for a generation” when he signed the Civil Rights Act.
There’s also, however, what seems to me like a significant and growing presence of people who are against the intellectual elite. This comes off with the appearance of a “working class revolt” but it really isn’t about working class in the traditional sense of labor unions, worker’s rights, the struggle between management and labor, etc. It’s more about being against well educated people who are giving correct but painful recommendations for the problems we face. Anthony Fauci and his recommendations on how to respond to COVID-19. Environmental scientists and their recommendations on what we should do about global warming. People don’t like being told that they have to sacrifice for the common good by well educated professionals. And that’s what the perception is regarding the Democratic Party and their platform, that it’s all about telling people what they should be doing because “we know better”. The fact that people like Dr. Fauci and the environmental scientists actually do know better is tossed aside.
It’s this latter group that put Trump over the top. They have seemingly grown in number since back in Obama’s day, which is IMHO a big part of why Obama had an easier time in his elections than Clinton, Biden, and Harris did.
I’ve not said otherwise, though I’m not that familiar with what evidence it’s engineered exists. My point is only that it’s a global phenomenon.
No doubt. And saying that bigotry is the universal feature Trump supporters are voting on is about as accurate as saying “All who voted for Biden/Harris are woke and that’s why they voted for them.” (For whatever meaning of woke we here cannot agree on, but no matter).
And I’ve mentioned I know a few obscenely rich people, and a whole bunch of just really rich people from my time working for Private Equity (I am not one, FTR). They’re pretty much all Trump voters because: Taxes.
I think it’s both organic and engineering, and part of the engineering is channeling the organic.
I have to question your implied premise that such massive global discontent can be ginned up out of nothing. I can observe directly what’s happened in the US, and a lot of it is stuff that ought not have organically developed, such as white people’s fear of losing their majority, bigotry against immigrants, hatred of “wokeism,” hatred of trans people, etc., and all of this is fanned by the GOP and its kept media, but nevertheless, a lot of that is playing on the fear and prejudice that is sadly natural to the human species. On top of all that, there is economic uncertainty and dissatisfaction, which is entirely justified.
I think you see a lot of the same stuff in Europe. People have not liked the rate at which immigrants have entered their countries. This was a key element of Brexit. I think such discontent is more understandable in an ethnic nation state than in the “melting pot” of the US. Regardless, it seems similar, with politicians taking advantage as they will.
Ironically, it was watching a docu-drama on the Brexit situation that first made me aware of how pointed and widespread the campaign is.
I agree it’s not ginned up out of nothing. But the ploy is to play up to an outsized degree the irrational fears people have around “the other.” The people who are involved in accomplishing this – and it is all the same people, whether we’re looking at Hungary, France, the UK or the USA – do have the same objectives.
One of the first power grabs Trump made in 1.0 was to expand the reach of “news” sites (Sinclair, e.g.) that will flog his messages. This continues in 2.0 with allowing Tik Tok to go on and elevating the platforms of Mega and Xitter. The messaging is the key. It works.
Seeds grow best in fertile soil. I suspect that the messages that @Aspenglow mentions have always been there- certainly U.S. nativism has a history going back to the start of the country - but when they are being rewarded rather than ignored, they grow in reach and scope much faster.
Thank you. Much better said and with more brevity than I managed. 
Yes, the bad guys here and elsewhere, instead of being responsible, moral adults that try to solve problems and reduce tensions, are trying exacerbate problems and heighten tensions for their own benefit.