Straight, Cisgendered, White Male here and I truly don't understand Alt Right and Trump supporters.

In My Humble Opinion
141

Full disclosure - I did not vote for Trump. However, I do know a lot of people on both sides of the political spectrum so I will give you my theory on the Right’s tacit acceptance of Trump and the Alt-Right.
First of all, OP, that you identify as “cisgendered” is part of what you don’t “get”. A lot of people don’t like this atmosphere of extreme politically correctness and identity politics. Like why is being part of the 95% of Americans who are heterosexuals who culturally identify with their birth gender considered a “thing” that needs to be called out? Or similarly, now every Halloween costume seems to be under intense scrutiny so as not to be considered “cultural appropriation”. Sure, we can all agree that “black face” is not acceptable. But depending on who you talk to, Pancho Villa style costumes, even historical figures like Cleopatra are considered “un-PC”.

Everything seems to be “bias” this and “microagression” that. So if you are a white, heterosexual, “cisgender” (especially male) with a good job, there is this perception that to “Progressives” you are the enemy.

So that’s just the PC culture stuff.
On the economic front, there is a perception that Liberals hate business and rich people. People like Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez have done little to help this perception. Contrary to popular belief, most conservatives are not “stupid white trash hicks” (more on that later) living in Iowa. I don’t have to drive more than an hour outside of Manhattan to find a Trump sign (that isn’t attached to one of his buildings). Most of the conservatives (also libertarians and objectivists) I know are solidly middle class or working class suburbanites. People who are more likely to be working/worked at AIG, Lehman and Arthur Andersen than sitting in Zuccotti Park in the middle of the day banging a bongo. So their perception is that Democrats and Liberals want to come in, over-regulate and tax businesses and hard working people to set up programs for lazy, whiny extremists.
Finally, conservatives simply don’t like you (liberals and progressives). They think you are weird and over-privileged, pretentious, crybabies. They know you think they are morons and hicks and racists. They think you are disloyal pussies who shit on the American flag while real patriots take on high risk jobs in the military, police and fire department. People who would rather bitch and moan to legislate stealing from others in the name of “fairness” instead of going out and working for what you want.
Anyhow, that’s the impression I get from my more right-leaning friends.

142

I understand more now. Though many of his supporters are practically cult members, in my humble opinion. They would stand by their leader no matter what. It’s sad.

I feel like the “progressives” saying white, straight, cis, males are"the enemy" as implied, are few and far between. They are a vocal minority. I do think progressives want people to be aware of the bias of people on what you might benefit from that. That’s as far as the PC stuff.

Thanks to those who contributed, even if I think you’re wrong.

143

Btw, in this specific case, I think identifying as “Cisgendered” is relevant to the conversation, despite thinking people perhaps over specify.

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The tactics of both sides is to portray the most extreme elements of the opposing side as their “normal”. Conservatives present Liberals as leftist PC communists and Liberals present Conservatives as racist, xenophobic crony capitalists.

145

First and foremost, he was pro-business. We just got through eight years of a massively anti-business, socialistic President. American business was not expanding or growing like it should. And if Clinton had been elected, we would still be stagnating.

As soon as Trump was elected, business started opening up. Jobs are up, economy is booming. This is why he was the best candidate, in the opinion of 60+ million people.

And an aside to Kimstu - his job is not just pissing off liberals. That could be considered a bonus. Republicans could have elected Jesus Christ and the liberals would be bitching because Hillary was “entitled” to be the President. It was her time, and all that BS.

146

There’s an academic out there named Walter Russell Mead, who writes about what he calls “Jacksonian America”, which is in large part, the segment of the population that voted for Trump.

His articles seemed very pertinent to me- in a lot of ways they describe the culture I grew up in, and if my family hadn’t been a bit smarter and a bit more aware of the world around us, it would be the culture I’d still be part of. (my cousins still are for the most part).

Even though it’s 20 years old and about US foreign policy and warmaking, it’s eerily descriptive of the MAGA-hat wearing demographic. I think you’ll see a lot of overlap between “Jacksonian America’s” attitudes and those of the Trump followers.

http://www3.amherst.edu/~pmachala/Current%20Politics/Case%20Studies%20in%20American%20Diplomacy%20-The%20Readings%20FOR%20the%20FIRST%20and%20SECOND%20Class/Mead,%20The%20Jacksonian%20Tradition.htm

Worst of all, Trump and his cronies actively realize all this and cultivate it.

147

The cost of this aid to American business is a Wild West of unregulation and the consumer getting fucked on a daily basis like no time since the robber baron days. No thank you. We can do great business and still protect the little guy.

148

The extra $5,000 a year the average American household pays for internet access, cell phone bills, and airline tickets over their European counterparts is a clear example of how the consumer gets fucked in this system. And many people simply aren’t aware of it or deny that it’s even happening.

149

Yes, I think the “cisgendered” thing is a great case-in-point. If you told my dad he’s going to have to say “cisgendered” to describe himself, he would shout, “What!” and shake his head in disgust. And a milder form of this is affecting a great many people. It’s over-sympathising, over-empathising, asking 98% of people to accommodate a vanishingly small proportion of the populace.

When I was a child, my teachers would talk about your personal rights being a circle around you. You’re right to do what you do within your circle. It’s when your circle overlaps with others that you need to be considerate - i.e., your actions shouldn’t impinge on others’ rights, hurting others.

And that’s what I think conservatives feel like when we tell them they have to share their bathrooms with the transgendered. It’s all and good, they think, that they do their own things. Who cares if they get surgery and take hormones. But now they’re imposing themselves on our turf. Why are their rights more important than mine, my wife’s, my daughter’s?

So they think terms like “cisgendered” aren’t helpful, but asinine.

It’s impossible to overstate how much they dislike it and dislike the mindset behind it.

150

I don’t get why this is an issue. I mean, the vast majority of Americans aren’t in the military either, but nobody gets offended that the word “civilian” exists, or thinks that the existence of such a word means that the military are somehow imposing themselves on everybody else’s turf or forcing everyone to accommodate them. How is “cisgendered” any different?

151

I’m sorry, but this is straight out of the alternative facts playbook. I would provide cites to demonstrate how your statements don’t line up with reality, but experience tells me you will continue to ignore them, so I’ll save us both the trouble.

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I think they would be more offended if they felt like they were forced to identify themselves as “civilian” outside of very specific contexts.

153

Does anyone here honestly believe that somewhere people are forced to identify themselves as ‘cisgendered’?

I’ve never heard of anyone being forced to use such a word to describe themselves and am hard-pressed to imagine a situation in ordinary life where it comes up - does someone with a broadsword come up and ask door-to-door whether people are the same gender as they were assigned at birth? And if you answer ‘yes’ or ‘no’ instead of ‘cis’ or ‘trans’ they cut off a hand? What’s actually being objected to here?

154

I’m an eternal optimist (and even if Taesahnim won’t read cites, other posters might be interested in them), so I’ll provide a link to a Bloomberg analysis showing very clearly that contrary to Taesahnim’s claims, the Trump economy is merely following the multi-year trend of steady improvement in the Obama recovery.

In fact, as far as we can tell after only a couple years, the Trump economy is actually starting to flatten out some of the upward trends of improvement we saw in the Obama economy, notably in the area of job growth.

155

It’s also misleading depending on how fine-grained the data you use in. There’s been some evidence, for instance that business profits/“growth” have been up, and unemployment has been down, but it’s largely because of the cutting of full time employees or highly paid positions, leading to people taking multiple shitty jobs while the employer makes higher profits. “Low unemployement!” (a lot of people have 2-3 jobs they can’t live on). “High business growth!” (because now they’re converting more revenue into profit and/or are getting better strangleholds on the market due to mergers or other dominance)

156

You dad doesn’t have to say he’s cisgendered. Unless he’s on a dating site or something.

I only put it in the title because it’s relevant to the conversation. Would you or your dad rather the cisgender label didn’t exist at all?

I mean, come on.

157

In my day, we didn’t need a word for analog recordings or electric guitars.

158

Regarding “cis”, I’ve always found it amusing that it’s a bad organic chemistry joke that has seemed to worm itself into the vernacular.

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Yep. Nobody’s denying, for instance, that having Trump for President has reassured and emboldened the portion of the business sector that makes their money by irresponsibly exploiting workers and/or the environment, or by relying on governmental cronyism to provide them with lucrative special favors. If what Taesahnim actually means by “business started opening up” is “the robber-baron types realized that they were being given a free hand in their destructive looting of the country to the detriment of everybody else”, then he’s not far wrong.

Outside of the exploitative robber-baron types, though, the Trump Administration hasn’t been particularly good for US business overall. As those notorious radical-commie unwashed hippies over at Fortune magazine pointed out just a few days ago,

Even the usual crony-capitalism goodies of deregulation and tax cuts for businesses didn’t push the overall performance of the Trump economy beyond simply continuing the expansion of the Obama economy. And in the process they enabled a massive rats’ nest of environmental damage, workers’ rights abuses, and federal debt coupled with delusional levels of denial, none of which is going to be sustainable in the long run.
Self-described “pro-business” pro-Trump Republicans like Taesahnim have nowadays largely assumed the role of rowdy teenagers taking advantage of an unexpected parental absence to throw a wild party for their friends where they waste masses of food and drink while trashing their house. Their definition of a “booming” economy is essentially looting available resources for their own benefit while irresponsibly ignoring the inevitable negative consequences farther down the line.

Of course, the Trumpist RepubliTeens do know on some level that eventually Mom and Dad will come home—i.e., a Democrat Chief Executive will be in charge—and take away their stolen booze and stop them from puking all over the lawn and tearing up the sofas and putting roofies in girls’ drinks. And maybe, horror of horrors, they’ll even be made to clean up a little bit of the mess they made and pay for a little bit of the stuff they broke and apologize to the neighbors. At which point they will resume incessantly whining about how they’re “stagnating” under the “anti-business” tyranny of the responsible grownups.

But they may not get a whole lot of sympathy. Hell, by this point, as that Fortune article makes clear, even a lot of the “pro-business” friends that they invited to their wild party are getting kind of disgusted with them. Because it’s one thing to recklessly waste and destroy stuff while providing a lot of “free” goodies for your friends, but another thing to behave so erratically and dangerously that you seriously risk setting fire to the whole freaking neighborhood.

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Not such a bad joke either, with a perfectly reasonable parallel to the ancient use of the Latin prefixes “cis” and “trans” in geographical contexts.

I suppose we could have used “homogender” and “heterogender” to designate the distinction in gender identity that we now use “cis” and “trans” for. But AFAICT those words now mean something other than “gender identity same as birth sex” and “gender identity other than birth sex”. Plus they risk potential confusion with the similar terms “homosexual” and “heterosexual” (another category distinction that most people didn’t realize we needed to be able to make until within the last few decades or so).