Yes, but WHY are they dysfunctional? Their genes are presumably as good as genes during the Enlightenment. (Has anyone compared the IQs of MAGA people vs sane Americans?) Is social media to blame? The anxieties of present-day life?
Some watch propaganda all day long on Fox or other conservative media, so they only see positive stories about Trump and negative, false, and scary stories about anyone opposing him. Some are essentially cult members. And, MAGA is a comfortable place for bigots of all stripes – racists, misogynists, white supremacists, homo- and transphobes – and Trump says it’s OK to feel, say, and act on those beliefs.
The scope of news they get is very limited. They only watch/listen/read(read is questionable) things that support their racist and bigoted views.
And so it’s blame, blame, blame the ‘others’ for their crappy choices in life.
Some though, like my BIL support him because they are in the top tier and get tax ‘relief’ or because he supports oil production and is against renewables.
Also - “Well, the insurrection was bad, but you can’t expect me to vote for a woman, I had no choice but to vote for Trump”
Marjorie Taylor Greene has recently been attacking Trump relentlessly about how he’s splintered MAGA. Says his record low approval ratings are a direct result of him abandoning his 2024 campaign promises: no foreign wars and make things affordable. Says of course the GOP is going to get shellacked in the midterms. She’s not wrong, but at the same time it’s plain as day that she’s cynically positioning herself for a 2028 Presidential run.
God help us.
Well the thought is that she,Tucker Carlson, and a bunch of others who Trump now calls “low IQ” individuals, run as a third party, recognizing that the GOP nod is either Vance or Rubio, dependent on who has kissed Trump’s rear better. And yeah that would be a fine thing.
It’s still a condemnation of the country he has even double digit approval.
A Republican President wouldn’t answer for anything, they’ve learned from Trump that they can just ignore the law and do as they will. They are beyond punishment or consequences. It would just mean that a non-senile Republican would be in a position to complete the US’s transition to permanent one party rule.
Slavery. It all goes back to allowing the slave states in, including their culture of outright denial of reality they developed to justify holding slaves. The result is that America built into its foundations a large subculture ideologically devoted to hatred, ignorance and insanity, which now controls the Republican party and the country.
Even with a wholly Democratic Congress?
I agree completely. Racism is baked into the United States.
Their first priority will be to shield the Republicans and suck up to them, not punish them. More than the welfare of the country, more than their own survival (as demonstrated by their reaction to the Jan. 6th attack), pandering to the Republicans at any cost is their primary, overriding goal in life.
Warning for @Der_Trihs, bumping up to the Modloop for possible suspension. You’ve been modnoted and warned about hijacking threads and it doesn’t seem like you care at all. I am recommending it is time for a suspension. 5 warnings in the last year is far too many.
While reviewing, you get a day off to think about posting here on the SDMB.
And a new approval low: 31%
- Democrats lead Republicans 47% to 35% on congressional generic ballot, Reuters/Ipsos poll shows
- Women favor Democrats 50% to 32% over Republicans, widening party’s congressional advantage
- Some 68% disapprove of Trump’s handling of economy, including 37% of self-identified Republicans
I think at this point if all the people who approved of Trump voted Republican and only the people who strongly disapproved voted Democrat, it would still be a double digits bloodbath for GOP.
The question remains: Why in hell is it not down to 10%, if not 5? Zero is too much to hope for but I could live with one American in twenty still liking the man.
But one in three makes me sick.
Take your pick:
- Sunk cost fallacy
- My team right or wrong
- Cult-like worship
- Extreme propaganda silo
- Axiomatic “a Democrat would have been worse”
It’s way past rationality. Some people have previously talked about a lunatic fringe being as much as 5% in a normal distribution. Add in all of the above, and it’s sadly easy to get to 30%.
And given just #5 above, figure an even more terrifying percent of those Republicans/MAGA who do disapprove would hold their noses and vote for Trump or whomever he endorses.
The only upside to his irrational polling numbers, is that it seems to be dragging down other, possibly more competently evil candidates for the midterms.
Even Nixon still had an approval rate of 24% when he finally resigned.
I recently learned about identity-protective cognition which is a form of reasoning where an individual dismisses evidence that contradicts their core beliefs. The thing is that it’s not based on the intelligence of the individual, rather isn’t a subconscious process. I first observed this phenomenon as an undergrad in my Biology 101 course where I saw some of my fellow students shut down when we covered the chapter on evolution. I’ve seen the same thing with Trump supporters who simply shut down, refusing to engage with any evidence that contradicts their world view. Fake news.
Despite all his considerable faults, Nixon was at least a patriotic American who accomplished many good things – opened up trade with China, established the EPA, and made a good-faith effort to reform health care. Whereas virtually everything that Trump does is wrong and stupid, often reckless, and often entirely self-serving. That Trump’s approval rating is higher than Nixon’s speaks only to the enshittification and ignorant gullibility of contemporary American society.
One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we’ve been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We’re no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It’s simply too painful to acknowledge, even to ourselves, that we’ve been taken. Once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back.
–Carl Sagan
There wasn’t any evidence to approve him before, so why would the evidence that he’s awful convince all those people to disapprove? Evidence doesn’t matter to them.
Don’t forget that the richest men on earth are spending hundreds of millions of dollars to propagandize in Trump’s favor. That kind of money can’t buy everything, but it can buy the good will of fools.