When this Trump mess first started, you would see a few supporters drop off with each new revelation/misdeed/gaff, but I’m not seeing that happen much any more. It’s as if those that still support him have done it for so long that they have decided to go all in because backing out would be seen admitting they were in the wrong the entire time-they have invested so much emotionally that they feel they have no choice but to stay in and hope that in truth Trump is some sort of mastermind with a secret plan that will enable them to say “See? I had faith in him for a good reason!”.
Of course there are those that actually like the direction he takes us and the way he is doing it and/or rejoice whenever their political enemies are upset, but I would hope that these are in the minority of his current supporters. I just notice that no matter what the current revelation is it doesn’t seem to cause anyone to change their minds about him. It’s as if there is no line drawn for them that will cause them to say “This is too much for me, I’m leaving”
If I’m wrong, tell me…but also please tell me where you draw the line.
You’re wrong about the “minority of his current supporters” thing. The people with qualms about blatant racism, sexism, and fascism have peeled off, leaving the ones who approve.
There are surely individuals amongst the millions who can still back out, but I’d agree that for the great majority, there’s no backing out.
It doesn’t take a lot of effort online to find out what Trumpists say, think, and believe, and there perception of the world simply isn’t the same. The facts you take for granted don’t exist.
You know the meeting Donald Trump Jr. had in Trump Tower with Russians to get dirt on Hillary Clinton? To you, that’s a problem and you cannot understand why others don’'t see it that way. To the majority of Trumpists, that meeting never happened. Despite the fact Donald Trump Jr. has confirmed it did and it is a documented event that truth did occur, most Trumpists do not believe that meeting ever took place.
To make my point, let’s just take the most recent developments: The taking of children from refugee parents, and the later revelation that they were also taking infants and toddlers. Was this a tipping point for any Trump supporters on this board? Was this even a tipping point for any Trump supporters that any of you know personally?
I think that this is where you are mistaken. There is a wide streak of mean-spirited thought in modern conservatism, and a general feeling of ‘just desserts’ when confronted with human suffering. Trump is delivering on exactly what he campaigned on- he has no consistent moral or political framework other than hurting people you don’t like, and feeling no guilt whatsoever. I begin to think that last bit is his most endearing trait- He offers no apology, suffers no guilt, and that is cathartic for a large segment of the population.
You are making it sound a bit like the movie “The Purge” and I would still hope that, as a country, the majority of us are above that.
OR, it did happen, and Putin is truly our friend for getting dirt on evil Hillary.
As Stonebow said - ‘just desserts’
I would hope that some Trump supporters, or former supporters, would chime in with their opinions-I don’t want this to be a one sided pile on.
Yep. Just like they don’t know that Mueller’s investigation has already produced convictions. Even when it comes out of Trump’s own mouth, (or Junior’s, or Manafort’s, or Flynn’s) they just refuse to acknowledge it. It’s infuriating and exasperating.
Do you guys not have any Trumpian friends? There are certainly die-hards, but most of them can back out. The problem though is that they don’t live in the same world that we inhabit. They live in a world where they are being constantly gas-lighted. All of the time. I have offered this challenge to others and I have done it myself. Spend one week only watching Fox News and not getting Facebook news from your friends. The world actually shifts under your feet. The news and rhetoric that they are consuming is diametrically opposite of ours. Things that we see as Trump failures to them are great victories. They are living in a world populated by 1000 al-Sahhafs. If you look at the family separations as an example - there were two themes in their rhetoric. One was that this happens to American criminals too. If you’re a criminal in the US, they put your kid in foster care and these migrants are criminals, so they are being treated the same way we treat Americans. That’s a disagreement of opinion, but it was the other theme that was more insidious. It was that these separations were tragedies, but were actually the result of Democrats and that Trump was trying to stop them, but the Democrats wouldn’t let him. That is a sincerely held belief. No amount of evidence can convince them otherwise because they are getting 100x the evidence from their news sources that this is absolutely true. If you listened to Fox News, you’d hear stuff like, ‘The Obama-era law to separate children at the border came to the forefront of the news today due to Democratic Congressman blah blah blah.’ Things that were absolute lies are being sold as the truth and then confirmed by all of these talking heads. Interviews are taken out of context, minor mislabeling of pictures turns into proof of a greater conspiracy. And this has been happening for years. In their news sources, migrants aren’t families escaping poverty and violence, they are gang members kidnapping children and selling them into sexual slavery. They’ll hear one or two anecdotes and they are presented as indicative of every migrant. In their news sources, it’s tariffs that are working. When Harley Davidson moves, it’s not because of policies that force their hand, but because they are traitors to their country. Every bad thing that Trump does is the result of Democratic smear campaigns and not real. He doesn’t get any credit for the thousands of great things that he has done (What are they? We don’t know, because he never gets credit. In their mind, this multi-billionaire is the most oppressed guy on the planet. Poor thing.)
Those movies are successful for a reason. ‘This isn’t us’ has become the new ‘thoughts and prayers’ and ‘all lives matter’- a truism that somehow manages to not be true.
And I stand by my assertion. It’s not unique to Trump, either. Remember Abu Graib? All of the circumlocutions about whether the people held there could be actually innocent of wrongdoing? And the whether what we were doing to them constituted torture? The most terrifying realization I had during that period was that all of the discussion was a sham- quite a few of my neighbors KNEW innocents were held there and KNEW what we were doing was torture. It was what they wanted, and they’d take any excuse to see it happen.
Now, is it a majority of Americans? No. But it’s close, and the people of ill will are more reliable voters.
Once again-This isn’t the “Why do you oppose Trump” thread, and I would like to give voice and hear from their own words the reason for continued support and what line they may have drawn that would change their minds.
This is it. This is my mother. She lives in an alternate reality, and there’s enough non-political space left in it so that we can interact in the same ways we always have.
I’ve wondered too if we can ever get her out of it, and I don’t have an answer.
I think your hopes are forlorn. Any Trump supporter who is introspective enough to be able to answer this question will likely be aware that their support is indefensible. They’ll either hide in shame, or lie about their real motivations. Anyone who truly does believe all the nonsense that Trump and his enablers are pushing, likely isn’t introspective enough to be able to give you a coherent answer beyond “MAGA! U!S!A! U!S!A!”
I don’t think so. I, too, would like to see any evidence of this.
And I think posts like this are a part of the reason why they won’t respond.
Well, maybe. In truth, however, Trumpists largely only pay attention to their own social media sources, and that’s part of the problem.
The SDMB doesn’t cultivate a wealth of conservative posters; those that are here haven’t been bashful in their participation in threads about the child separation, and that’s probably the best place to find that answer. But some of us have been watching and waiting for almost 2 years at this point wondering whether THIS will be the thing that breaks the camel’s back. I’m done being disappointed.
And like I said, this is not unique to Trump. In Nevada, Evangelicals are lining up behind a literal pimp to represent them.
Yup, you really hit the nail on the head! This mindset that you so eloquently described fits some relatives and acquaintances of mine (more than I care to think about). Fox News is the only media outlet that they trust. Everything else is “fake news” put out by evil libruhls and satanists. Truly scary stuff!
Of course that does beg the question, how did Fox become the only trusted news outlet? I suspect it is because it tells these folks what they already know in their hearts- that the world is a scary place, full of enemies that look and think so differently than you that they barely qualify as human, and must be resisted by any means necessary by you, one of the few true patriots left.