He’s had the record for America’s worst businessman since the ‘90s. Has never started and finished a business venture at all. (Unless you count the recent grifting.)
“Buy my book! Buy my steak! Buy my ties!” Fucking carnival hawker.
But all that increases his fan base. “He’s rich, so he must be smart. He says he doesn’t pay taxes, so that makes him a genius!”
I still think if he never was on The Apprentice and made up to look successful, he wouldn’t have made it past the first debate. Just taken a few million and cheats more at golf.
Something that got me curious about regarding this quote: since Trump was only a national political force starting in 2015 or so, were these “hardwired” people reachable before then? Did they just have their faith in someone else, like Rush or Fox News? But surely it wouldn’t have been as fervent, right?
I think he did on an HBO show? Vice? They showed his current office, being two rooms. No conference room, but decided to “build” one in Trump Tower at network expense
If that show hadn’t been canceled he would not have run for President. I think that he ran out of spite (like he does everything else). He expected to loose and then start his own anti-Hillary network that would make FOX news look like the standard barer for honesty.
I think it’s a fantasy that Trump created anything. There isn’t really a “Trumpism.” Trump doesn’t have political beliefs. He is an avatar of how these people have always felt. He acted the way they wanted someone to act, and that’s what they supported. They don’t believe what he believes because they think he’s a rich powerful businessman. They believe he’s a rich powerful businessman because they want to, because he says what they want to believe. Nobody else before him had the total absence of compunction to be pigheadedly on the attack 24 hours a day, that’s all.
The next Trump isn’t going to be a guy who specifically adopts Trump-like philosophies or mannerisms. It’s just going to be a person who has the same natural ability to channel these people’s hatreds, in whatever form that takes. They’d rather have a pencil-necked bureaucrat who is willing to call AOC and Maxine Waters slurs than a rich powerful alpha male who isn’t. That’s been true for decades.
This is a good question, and it has more than one answer. While Trump supporters all look the same from here – some took different paths to the land of stubborn opposition to reason. That might possibly explain some of the issues raised since you posted this question.
In this guy’s case, before Trump he was devoted to being the enemy of Obama. We had a very long, very animated lunch years ago that was all about “the governmental overreach” of not allowing ranchers to take over parks or other governmental lands. Again, governmental overreach in MANDATING vaccines!!! The outrage is stratospheric. He never saw anything Trump ever did as particularly unusual or anti-American, anti-democracy, or anti- basic human rights. Trump was never, in his view, guilty of overreach- but Obama and Biden are just . . . !!!
For additional background: back in school he was mostly apolitical but many of us were young and uninformed and disengaged. Well not disengaged – just had not yet engaged. But he was older and more experienced, not exactly world weary but more engaged. The difference between a sheltered 19 year old and an independent 25 year old was a hundred miles.
Before Obama was president, I don’t recall him having very strong political views. He was apparently old enough for Vietnam (or Viet Nam as we spelled it back then) but became an objector when asked to serve. Later he volunteered out of some residual guilt over not having manned up (and possibly a lack of steady income). In college he was much more invested in Biblical Kingdoms outside of time and space – now he believes (with what seems like the bulk of Evangelicals) that to be a good Christian one must be VERY politically active and in a very, very “values” manner. Of course “values” is code for unfathomably conservative even to the point of contradicting logic and democracy.
Another closer friend (more time spent together on a daily basis- but not for as many years of history) believes Trump was the greatest president of her lifetime. She had no interest in politics whatsoever until Trump ran and her “Christian” media feed started brainwashing her. Until then she refused to address any politics with the exception of bakers asked to provide cakes for evil purposes and birth control being in Obamacare.
Although the roots of White Nationalism go back many decades and come straight out of segregation, in the last ten or twelve years those roots have spawned a movement of single issue voters who are engaged, self-righteous, and uniquely uninformed (except by their Facebook and Twitter feeds). In my experience, they are all angry and scared and highly motivated to fight like this is a holy war – which it is to them!
For example, my college friend the first example, has a daughter who is gay and even married to a same sex partner. Watching him introduce his daughter’s wife during his wife’s 60th birthday party was a study in controlled rage. He managed to say “daughter-in-law” but with a combination of shame and contempt I couldn’t have imagined. Even his love and devotion to his family – even first hand experience with reality is not enough to inform him of the larger truth of acceptance and common respect. He preached (and still does on occasion) on family values routinely, but to him it means barely tolerating at best. Acceptance, respect, embracing differences are signs of spiritual weakness and moral decay.
All of these people (many other examples these two are representative of) hate, hate, hate, me for leaving the Republican Party. But they weep for me over leaving the ‘One True Faith’ of White Nationalism. But it doesn’t matter to them because the two are combined in a manner I have a hard time accepting. Apparently, Christianity and American twenty-first century Republican politics are a match made in heaven and ordained by GOD above for the salvation of all mankind!
I have relatives who are even more invested; former law enforcement who want to go back to the time of their childhood and will if drawn out, admit life was better when women and minorities knew their place. One uncle sat me down and explained how the KKK was not “just a racist” institution. They were the good old boys who kept society on the right side of things-- if a fella was beating his wife they would drop by and convince him to stop. If a different fella was gambling the rent and food money away, the fine southern gentlemen would lay a beating on him so he knew the path of righteousness! White or black didn’t matter he assured me, it was not as much about race as about acting proper. When I was nine or ten it sounded, while less than idea, perhaps okay. By the time I was fifteen or sixteen I knew he was full of shit. About nine or ten years ago I replied to one of his e-mail blasts that was full of wrong facts and even more wrong conclusions. (I had given him a chance to clear up the facts himself but he refused even when I showed him in black and white.) I replied all to embarrass him and received death threats for months. I offered everyone of those hateful, uninformed hillbillies the opportunity to discuss the issues and convince me they are right so I could learn from them. Not one offered a single fact or even opinion. They did offer to send me to meet my maker – or to Russia (they still hated the USSR back then- even though it no longer existed) or China where my views would be appreciated however.
Just like during the Crusades, White Christianity is the problem. They are stubbornly causing deaths and making wars over issues that make no sense at all. They are deeply opposed to abortion due to sanctity of life issues — but they are also adamant second amendment supporters and also capital punishment advocates. How does that square with sanctity of life morality???
According to everything I have read on the subject, Steve Bannon deserves credit for uniting the Alt-Right with the Christian-Right. They were not allies except in small groups like the KKK mentioned above (small as a proportion of U.S. population). But now they are in an endless feedback loop where the sole message is fight the opposition, our way of life is threatened by the gay agenda, women’s rights, and minority rights!! They have a common enemy and the enemy of my enemy is my friend. The militant alt-right has gotten a little more bible into their verbiage (doesn’t contradict the main point!) and the Christians have gotten a little more racism into their propaganda (well, even Jesus didn’t like ‘The Jews!’). Now the same talking points motivate the entire base. And as Jimmy_C points out, it is all because they want it to be true- not because it actually is true.
Yup. And as American politics is increasingly defined by a sort of identity-based opposition, as opposed to material policy differences, it becomes easier to maintain that kind of alliance. On the one hand, it’s genuinely puzzling to see genuinely terroristic white supremacist elements, woo-woo spiritual healer types, and septuagenarian fundamentalists all equally embracing Q-Anon type lunacy in the way that you saw during the Trump presidency.
But then on the other hand, you point them all at the party of Pete Buttigieg and Kamala Harris and Hillary Clinton and (sorta) Mike Bloomberg and it’s like, OK, well, I suppose I can see that they all would love for all of those people to be sent to Gitmo. If someone started yelling loudly enough for all of those people to be sent to Gitmo, I can see them all ironing out their differences.