Like all countries, we have average and below average understanding of general things, and here it is always “how the government works”. I believe most people don’t understand how an election works over how important it is to be popular and support celebrities. All of his supporters I’ve asked never answer my questions, like, how is Trump going to achieve that? I get, “He’ll fix it. He will.” :rolleyes:
They think presidents can just conjure up new tax laws and demand better oil prices, but they don’t understand that presidents CAN’T do these things. They can’t build walls with junk bonds either.
They are angry because they don’t understand how it works. Period. So along comes a celebrity with inherited money…
Back to the anger issue: Everyone has a grievance, but some folks feel that their grievances aren’t taken seriously. They will rally around someone whom they feel does speak for those grievances.
Assuming that’s a real question, by not letting them starve in the dark when their corporate masters decide their jobs can be done much cheaper overseas?
I believe, however, you are starting from a false premise (paraphrased, the primary goal of taxing and spending is to create a dependency class). Have you ever seen a bona fide party document that states this objective? Could you share this document with us?
You believe the Democrats tax and spend class warfare politics are truly well intentioned? Yet you don’t see how those same policies incentivized moving production off shore and into the black/gray market with illegal labor?
Rewarding stupidity, destructive behavior, and sloth does exacerbate resentment.
I think there’s a lot of truth to this. Another facet I would like to mention is that the ideology of capitalist society tells us that if you are willing to work hard, you can have a decent life. Economic changes which drive down the demand for unskilled and semi-skilled labor not only hurt these people in the pocketbook, they also strike at their self-image as a “hard worker”; since the system rewards those who work hard, there must be something wrong with them if they get laid off and can’t find another job. This blow to their self-esteem makes them even more anxious than the economic realities of their situation would warrant, and more vulnerable to appeals based on fear and scapegoating of the Other.
Also, the changes in the global economy which have hurt the white working class have coincided with, though aren’t directly related to, the trend in recent decades for increased rights and respect for minorities of various kinds. This makes the uneducated worker susceptible to the argument that the civil rights movements have somehow caused their economic problems, and reasserting the dominance of straight white Christian men over society will in in turn solve these problems.
Progressives think they are a bunch ignorant, racist idiots. This is not some crazy notion they have, it’s 100% true. Some progressives will try to be polite, but eventually when the mask slips this how they know they are viewed.
They work hard, follow the rules of the American Dream and don’t get much traction. No one is really looking out for the interests of the white middle class / under class. The democrats aren’t; and the plutocrat fellating Republicans certainly are not although will try to keep them in line with racially with tinged dog whistles and appeals to patriotism.
Good jobs that will pay the bills are very, very hard to get. Low skilled jobs like lawn care and construction helper etc. you could rely on in the past if you were in a pinch are harder to get and are filled will immigrants. Progressives tend to discount white working class frustration on this score as if it’s no big deal. For many in desperate circumstances it’s a very BFD.
They have been “handled” for so long by the GOP elite they have scuff marks. They are poorer than ever and realize they have been bullshitted.
they look at what Trump shows of his life to people, men want to be him, women want to be with [a guy as rich as] him.
he’s one of the few billionaires who likes to be around “regular folk,” whereas other billionaires only mingle around other rich people. Trump loves [selling shit to] ordinary people.
and yes, there are probably a lot of people who think he’ll stop the changing demographics of this country
Well, because among other things Marx got wrong, a social class is not merely a set of people of the same economic status or economic function. It is also a sociological entity. People of the same class do not just work at the same kinds of jobs or earn the same level of income, they live in the same kinds of neighborhoods, go to the same schools, socialize with each other, marry each other, and absorb a similar outlook growing up. The white and black working classes are really two different social classes, and will remain so until socialization and neighborhood and intermarriage between them is a great deal more common than it is now.
Well, here, as I’ve posted before in this forum, is another angle: Trump’s base is what Donald Warren, writing in 1976, called Middle American Radicals or MARS. As John B. Judis writes:
Now, that analysis includes racism as an important element, but racism is not the whole explanation. (And it would be better for the above to say “working class” than “middle class,” they’re the ones to whom it mainly applies.)
As for Trump, his authoritarian style appeals to the MARS psychologically, and, after the usual pattern of demagogues other than Communist demagogues, he is focusing most of the MARS’ attention on the “below,” even though it is really the “above” (that is, the 1%, not the government except to the very considerable extent to which it acts as their agents) who is to blame for their declining job prospects and economic marginalization and disappointed white entitlement. (The only “above” Trump regularly blames is the political establishment.) And his approach works, it appeals to them, just as George Wallace’ strategy of blaming the blacks and biggummint did.
