Breaking up families since 2016
Very good all.
Why do people need to go to a building, and listen to someone to affirm your faith?
It’s just a building. That’s all. The preacher is just a person.
It’s crazy that people are wandering around trying to find someone to tell them to do the right thing.
It’s worse that they don’t know what the right thing is. NO one is going to get them out of their hatred for their fellow man. No one.
The mis-step is that they are looking for someone to guide them, since they can’t do it themselves. An more importantly, and, they want an excuse for their actions.
If your need someone to tell you right from wrong, you are beyond help.
Circling around, I totally understand the fellowship of going to church, or believing the same things. But for myself, I have little ‘faith’ in people that need to do that.
I can’t help but think Trump Deragement Syndrom (TDS) was in full swing prior to COVID. So much of Trump’s behavior in 2015 and 2016, nevermind his past, would have eliminated him from being a serious candidate for the presidency. He insulted John McCain for getting shot down during his service as a Naval aviator during the Vietnam War. I cannot imagine any presidential candidate before Trump insulting a member of the Armed Forces for getting shot down and spending time as a prisoner-of-war and getting elected. Particularly by Republicans.
Just as point of info, this is usually understood as a critique by Trumpists, to mean “obsessive overreaction by liberals to Trump’s foibles, which really aren’t so bad.”
I’m not absolutely saying that Trump has a charm built out of, rather than harmed by, breaking the norms. It’s one of the things that I mentioned my father not-so-happily admires.
I’m wondering if the transition from cheering the guy who breaks all the rules to near-messiah like religious fervor was amplified by the isolation of COVID along with the vast increase in various religious organizations demonizing the Feds for forcing them to curtail their services.
What I would like to know is, how do you break through? I know PLENTY of folks who aren’t hateful…
So, why do they buy in?
I have attempted the 20/80 grievances argument. I might as well yell at my feet. And most of the people who know me know I am reasonably intelligent, but in spite of the fact they know me, and ask me for guidance on EVERYTHING else, won’t touch politics or religion.
Please mark it, though.
Both my boys get to vote, this year. I will NEVER tell them how to vote. Nope. Never.
Nathan scored a 35 on the ACT. Mitch scored a 34. (He spelled his name wrong…)
I know who they are voting for, because they told me. Rest assured, the racists and misogynists and assholes are dying off.
My Aunt Debbie is a Trumpist. She’s also the kindest, most wonderful person I’ve ever known. I can’t bear to ask her about this because I want to love her forever.
She was also married to my craziest, most evil uncle, who just died…yeah, I’m gonna blame it on him.
This is the thing I can’t get my head around. Some of the sweetest, most giving people I know are trumpists. I just don’t get it. So for me to say why they voted or will vote for trump is just not possible. It’s some sort of twisted psychological puzzle.
I have a … (parses relationship) wife’s - cousin’s wife’s mother (my wife’s cousin, married someone outside the family [duh] and it’s that outside wife’s mother) - who is an incredibly sweet woman, who embodies the best of most Christian ideals: she works at a food pantry, takes care of hurt animals, never has a harsh word for anyone.
She’s a Trumpist.
Oh, not rabid, and not hateful, but 100% convinced that though he’s an ungodly man, he’s doing God’s work. It helps that thanks to the Fox-news media sphere, she never gets to see more than the tiniest fraction of the hate he spews, the disjointed nature of his speeches or anything else.
Why?
Well, she’s in her late 70s, doesn’t have cable, watches broadcast TV (of which 70%+ is probably Fox), and works with fellow Christians, who likely also are of an age and also give Trump the benefit of the doubt.
For some older individuals (this board probably being a huge outlier) if you don’t have much internet and social media access, all you’re going to see is broadcast and word of mouth. And if the broadcast is Fox…
I admire her practiced morals, but she is a creature of what she watches: inner city is all violence, all the time, groomers are everywhere, and kids are being brought up to be socialists.
I comprehend how it happens, but I will never understand. (making a distinction from a prior thread)
I don’t believe you can watch Fox News on broadcast TV, only cable or satellite.
I know some such Christian Trump voters. One of my ex-girlfriends was a Trump voter and one of the nicest people I’d ever met. Such voters don’t like Trump’s behavior or irreligious nature, but the gays, abortion and transgender-ism is just so unacceptable to them that they conclude they have no choice but to vote against Biden and the D’s. Their ideal president isn’t someone like Trump; their ideal president is some hyper-religious charlatan figure like Jon Ramirez or Rick Joyner.
I try very hard to not discuss politics in real life. Even before Trump I didn’t want to discuss politics. My parents never discussed politics. I don’t even know what they were registered as. My father grew up in Frank Hague’s Jersey City so he knew very well about corruption in politics. Hague was a democrat and an ally of FDR. The only president I know he voted for was Nixon in 72 but so did everyone else. I don’t think he was loyal to any party. He died long ago.
Although we don’t have long discussions I know my wife hates Trump. My siblings are liberal as far as I know. So is my daughter although who knows if she will take the time to vote. Beyond that I don’t really know. One of my wife’s uncles is a republican and I know voted for trump. I don’t know if he still feels that way. He’s also one of the best and smartest people I know and extremely accomplished in his own life. He might just hate Biden enough to continue to vote that way.
None of this matters on such a small scale. There is a zero chance of my state going to Trump.
Thankfully true, a combination of being a pretty Blue state and too many Jersians that know people that know people that Trump screwed over on small business deals.
We’ve collectively always known what a buffoon he is, but sadly I still have Pro-Trump neighbors and one is an actual contractor.
There are people I once felt close to who voted for it, I’ve emotionally detached from them and now they’re just acquaintances. I no longer give a fig how they vote.
That’s on me for communicating poorly, I should have said “watching the News on the local Fox affiliate” which is, granted, less prejudicial, and thankfully not a 24-7 thing, but the local Fox affiliates in rural Colorado absolutely do echo the ravings of the mothership.
But again, less so, and less frequently.
The answer is easy for me: Most people are dum-dums.
Sure, there are people who love the racism and evil. Those folks may or may not be dummies.
But there are plenty who are otherwise fine people, but they lack critical thinking or analytical skills, they’re intellectually incurious, very low information, incapable of formulating a coherent argument, rely on their gut for what should be fact-based conclusions, etc. You know, dopes.
And we place critical, existential political decisions in their collective hands.
There’s another aspect: Spite.
Suppose that you are a patient. And you have two doctors.
One recommends that you take the wrong medicine, but he treats you in a way that makes you feel very validated, makes you feel good about yourself, listens to you attentively.
The other doctor is a jerk who recommends the right medicine, but treats you with contempt, is rude, won’t listen to anything, and makes snide comments about your background and your upbringing and beliefs.
A lot of patients would choose Doctor 1 over Doctor 2. It’s human nature, even if the first doctor was wrong. That’s why many Trump voters went for Trump. He made them feel good, even if his policies were wrong. Whereas many progressives made conservatives feel insulted, even if progressives had lots of good economic policies.
The following quote from the long-dead TT-RPG “Dark Conspiracy” in-world philosopher, was printed out by me, and posted on my dorm room door back in the 90’s.
"Saying that democracy is the best form of government is nearly as great an understatement as saying that the Pacific Ocean holds more water than any tin cup you’ve ever seen. The issues are so clear, the truth so solidly anchored, that I have no patience with people who think that there’s even anything to argue about.
"Someone once said to me, 'Some-times the people are lazy and stupid, and make poor decisions. It sometimes takes a strong leader to protect them and choose the right course.
'“So a nation of stupid and lazy people, because of a strong, intelligent leader, is saved from its own sloth and folly? Where is the justice in that? Democracy isn’t just the best form of government; it’s the only one even remotely worth a damn. Only democracy guarantees that people get what they deserve.”
Zena Marley (Early 21st-century mercenary-philosopher)
In those days, it was perfect for a cynical college student, so sure in the rightness of his “enlightened” nation. As an adult, seeing tons of people turn their backs on their fellows to embrace the clay-like feet of various dictators and wanna-be’s, do I keep returning to the final sentence with more rueful amusement.
Of course, that was also long before I was aware of how horribly stacked the system was, where a perpetual minority of stupid and lazy people (intellectually lazy in the case of modern MAGA) could so thoroughly screw the rest of us.
Yeah my best friends of 30 years - a married couple who met in high school, when I was in high school with them - are now political lunatics. I don’t think we’ve ever actually talked about politics together, but the guy has made his stance absolutely clear on social media. The lady holds the same beliefs just keeps them more quiet. They have a Gadsden flag (“don’t tread on me”) in their yard.
We were the best, closest friends until 2015. Now I see them 3 a year when we do our 3x a year holiday get-togethers (kid’s birthday, pumpkin carving and gingerbread house making), catch up on all the goings-on, completely avoid politics, and part ways.
It hurt for a minute but I don’t miss them now. I mean, they make it pretty clear how they feel about People Like Me, or I guess Ideals Like Mine and I am the most Person Like Me that they know so 
Anyone else I know who might be voting for Trump, I only know them because I need to (co-workers), and I will keep needing to know them after the election so I don’t even bother to delve any deeper into their politics.
I agree fully that there’s no viable alternative to democracy (that I’m aware of, anyway) and that it gives us the government we collectively deserve, for a certain definition of “deserve.”
The government a low-info, impulsive, dumb electorate deserves can be a shitty one. If it’s a good one, it’s mostly luck.