I can’t tell what, exactly, you’re talking about.
With not a lot of digging I was able just now to find people online who actually believe the following things:
This isn’t hidden racism, it’s an alternate reality.
Nice post. My participation started to wane immediately upon Obama’s election. There were certain elements creeping into political discourse and I’m sure we all noticed them. So I have a slight quibble with your saying they made the tent smaller. “Smaller” is not the word I would use.
Somewhere during that time, the Keystone XL pipeline was an issue, and for reasons I still cannot fathom it was full-on wall-to-wall support of this thing, with a few detractors who were pronounced RINOs and dealt with accordingly. I was left questioning the cheerleading, and the hostility toward opponents in support of a structure, and kind of wondered if it was a filtering mechanism. “You ask too many questions, you’re out.”
I am talking about the fact that, when you went looking for reasons why people support Trump, this -
is what you found. It’s the same reason that all the polls said Hillary was going to win, and she didn’t.
“Which of the following reasons explains why you support Trump. Is it because
[ul][li]He is a racist []He is a homophobe []He is an undercover agent for Putin []He is a crook []All of the above”[/ul]“Is there an option for Other?” [/li]
“No.”
:shrugs:
Regards,
Shodan
So, do please tell us, what *is *the right answer to that? :dubious: You complain that we don’t understand, but what is it that we don’t understand? You complain that we don’t listen, so what is it you want us to hear you say?
I am not sure you can point to this as someone blind to the other side and blithely accepting what they hear in their own echo chamber. Afterall she did win the popular vote so it is not all that surprising a poll showed her winning the election.
After Anthony Bourdain’s death I was re-watching some episodes of “Parts Unknown” and there was an episode with him in the mountains of West Virginia.
He asks them why Trump and they respond that Clinton said she was going to close the coal mines and Trump said he would keep them open.
That is a reasonable reason to like Trump over Clinton if you are earning $90,000/year mining. Thing is neither of them could do much to keep their promise. I am surprised they do not get that part of it.
IIRC, Ms Clinton did not say she would close the mines, only that they would close, it being the will of the Dollar Almighty. She was telling the truth, she should have known better.
She also made the mistake of telling them that, with miner employment shrinking due to automation and fracking, she was wanting to set up and maintain programs to help them to retrain for jobs that wouldn’t go obsolete as fast.
That is not something that they were interested in, so they supported trump, who presided over shutting down the programs to retrain out of work miners.
I know 63 million Americans voted for him, but is this the right message board for this kind of conversation topic? We don’t have many Trump supporters to begin with, and we are pretty hostile to them too so most probably stay silent.
But its difficult because the hostility isn’t always unfair. Calling Trump’s base (not all his voters, just his base) authoritarian white nationalists who don’t respect democracy (which I do call them) is true. I don’t know. Stuff like that drives them away, but its not exactly wrong either. It creates a hostile board, but on the other hand are we supposed to bury our heads in the sand and pretend it isn’t true?
I’m seeing two fractures right now. (Sorry Czar, not a Trumpist, but I live in Trump country). The first is the children. Churches are broadly not in support of what has happened with immigrant families being separated. Disapproval of what was happening did extend into Trump’s base. When you see things like Sessions’ church impeaching him for acting against their values and Franklin Graham speaking out against the policy, Trump’s base is impacted. It’s the only reason that he “reversed”, to the extent that it was a reversal. He lost some voters with this issue, and if he doesn’t convincingly wrap this up, he will lose more.
The second fracture that I see is the tariffs and the economic policy. There is a bloc of voters who chose Trump because they believed that he would bring back steel, coal, <insert your industry> and save their jobs!!! Americans are losing their jobs now, and their employers are telling them exactly why. If this continues through the summer, this is another bloc that will start moving off of Trump.
I watched his speech yesterday and it was interesting to note when people weren’t clapping. They weren’t clapping during the immigration part. They weren’t clapping during trade. They sat there and listened politely, but in comparison to other Trump rallies where every word was greeted with waving flags and whistles even when they weren’t cheering, it looked very different.
I think there are a lot of Trump supporters who heavily discount what Trump stands for, on the basis of what they feel Trump won’t stand for.
Trump won’t stand for uppity women or uppity black people. Trump won’t stand for any Mexicans crossing the border. Trump won’t stand for questions, or for the existence of opposing viewpoints. And Trump refuses to appear to give in to anyone or in any situation, even if it’s bad for him and bad for everyone. I think that’s a big part of why those who like him, like him.
The United States will turn into a Third World hellhole, but he stuck to those libruls, by Gawd!
What was it you hoped to accomplish with this post? If you were trying to confirm what others say about conservative posters overreacting and exaggerating, well…congratulations, I guess, but I hoped for more.
Shodan’s post does make perfect sense in the context of what I suggested - avoiding/minimizing/not caring what the guy stands for, because “at least he’s not…” and “at least he doesn’t…”
I suppose, then, the real question is this: Why do you support Trump, and why is that reason more valuable to you than his apparent negatives?
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I just read a snippet in passing where (I think) it was a Harley Davidson employee or similar discussing how his job would most likely be lost the way things are going and has he changed his mind and he replied something to the effect that if Trump decided on that course of action, it must be the correct one because he’s so smart and good at business.
So there will never be a point where all of his supporters will leave. Their identity is too wrapped up in his success and they can’t separate.
Plus, how could they? So many of them are single-source information people and if something that wasn’t propaganda actually got through to them, they’d just be brush it aside and say “well, he’s good at the rest of it.” They don’t have all the information, will not seek out the information.
Harm is justified when more important things are at stake.
Current policies are doing significant harm, and liberals can find nothing in the situations that they can see as justification for the harm. Many conservatives DO see certain things as justification, and liberals don’t know what those are. Conservatives are saying “It’s obvious”.
No, it’s not obvious. Say what’s justifying the harm.
Then there are those who, to their own horror, realize that if they try to back off now he (or his cult unconditionals) will ruin their [business/community/individual reputation] with one tweet. Or at least cause enough damage to disrupt what they thought was their life plan and make them sorry they crossed him, which is just how he rolls.
This is something I too have perceived: some of his rank-and-file are resigned that, what ya gonna do, we will get screwed by “the system” because that’s just the Way of the World. But at least what the country stands for will be the right sort of things to stand for.
IMO, if you’re looking for what morally bad thing Trump might do to lose supporters, you’re probably looking in the wrong place. Trump will lose his supporters at the next recession. Because
a) regarding sepoy and others’ excellent points about the information bubble, the one thing that Fox News can’t disguise from people is their own actual economic circumstances
b) no matter what you think about gay rights, immigration, or sexual harassment, pretty much everyone agrees they don’t want to have less money than last year.
I must admit, that I have been surprised by the resilience the US economy has had in the face of general Trumpian dysfunction and incompetence, but if he gets his trade war, that will probably change (notice that the upward motion basically ceased at about the time the steel tariffs came in)
Really all he needs to do to prevent this from happening is not stir the pot and let business do its thing, but I suspect he’ll be unable to help himself. So, like everything else he touches, it will turn to shit.
I really don’t wish a long drawn out recession on you guys. For one thing, it will probably impact the whole world one way or another.
But it sounds a whole lot better than a nuclear war
I think that many Trump supporters *are *probably too far in; it’s a pretty common part of human psychology that the more time / money / social embarrassment we spend on something stupid, the harder it becomes to accept that it’s stupid.
But I don’t think that’s the main reason why his base is solid.
I think bigger factors are the cult of personality, and also that these remaining people only get their news from a bubble. They only hear criticisms of trump delivered in the form “Lying CNN once again tries to smear the president…but what about uranium one?” or whatever.
(Aside: I was actually pleasantly surprised that the child separations at the border got any traction; I thought pro-trump media would find a way to spin it such that his supporters and most of the right could handwave the problem, and then nothing would change, like with so many other outrages.)