What can truly be done about "Trump supporters"

Great Debates
1

This isn’t about the elections. I used ‘Trump supporters’ as a shorthand for the white, male-dominated, anti-education, anti-elite, nativist, anti-science, angry, racist, misogynist heart of what I consider to one of the most intractable problems with the United States. And not only the US, apparently.

They are not “conservative”, in any useful sense of that word. They are not motivated much by religious or moral ideals, unlike evangelicals. They are not particularly motivated by traditionally conservative fiscal ideas either; although they hate paying taxes it appears that is simply part of their general hatred of government. Which seems to me to be more about “foreign elites” telling them what to do. To them, the world outside of their cohort is foreign, not understandable, and their enemy.

They are extremely reminiscent of David Fischer’s Borderers – glorifying violence and defiance, suspicious of ‘outsiders’, extreme gender roles, tribal, disliked and despised by all the other American cultures, culturally incapable of making into the middle class by any means other than blue collar or agricultural work.

My question is, what can possibly be done with such an intractable, impenetrably destructive and self-destructive group of people? Obviously, a very large group now.

Seriously, I have no clue. Those factory and mining jobs aren’t coming back, much less those sharecropper and plantation overseer jobs. We do not have another Australia so that’s out.

I don’t mean to create another let’s-bash-the-troglodytes thread. I am hoping for positive suggestions.

2

Wait them out, when discussion and thoughtful attempts at persuasion don’t work. There’s fewer of them every year.

3

As a Frenchman, a suggestion immediately springs to mind. But y’all already got a War on Drugs and one on Poverty ; I fear the impact of a good ol’ Terror would be lost in the rhetoric.
Still, I mean, we have a few good guillotines left in storage, don’t be afraid to ask. You’ll have to provide your own pikes however.

4

Surely the problem isn’t the morons in your midst, the problem is everybody else prepared to hold their nose and facilitate them simply because they can’t see past partisan politics.

5

I think that observation is true, but the reason it is true is that there are too many voting morons to ignore. You can see past partisan politics all you want if you don’t feel like being reelected.

6

After five paragraphs of “let’s-bash-the-troglodytes,” I can’t image that you’d actually get that!

7

Well, maybe OP’s not advocating vigilantism and mob violence. That would be stooping to the level of the “opposition”.

Maybe institutionalization and eugenics? Something nice and scientific. Give the bitches science. Bitches love science.

(not really)

8

Treat them like human beings and interact with them. I am not saying condone their attitudes or behavior, but rather try to show by your good example that there is a better way of thinking and living. Education is key to changing these people, but most people resist education by force.

9

I have a Modest Proposal…

10

Well, the best answer is to do the following:

A) Assume that Trump supporters are all stupid
B) Assume that all Trump supporters are racist
C) Assume that all Trump supporters are uneducated
D) Assume that all Trump supporters are misogynists

Then tell them that since they all meet the criteria listed above, they desperately need your help. You can show them the error of their ways!

Or, maybe, you could actually try and understand what they want and what they think the problems are.

Na, it is easier to take the intellectually lazy route and assume that all of their concerns exist only because they are horrible people. Plus you get the added bonus of feeling superior! A Win/Win for you!

Slee

11

This Cracked article explains it well. Many people support Trump because they’re in rural America that has been economically ignored and has a lot to lose from free-trade deals or job outsourcing.
People are quick to demonize Trump supporters without considering them individually. I spent time with two friends recently whom I hadn’t realized were Trumpers until recently. They are extremely kind and generous folks and about the furthest thing removed from the Trumper stereotype that one would think.

12

No way - too tough and stringy. Or maybe too fatty?

13

Great, our supposedly enlightened viewpoint of how to deal with “those people” is genocide…

I think the real way to start down this road is to understand where that crowd comes from. Nobody is born racist, or nativist, or misogynist. Those are learned behaviors and viewpoints.

Now, some of those may be learned from economic conditions (“I had a job until all those <insert slur here> came by and took it from me!”), social conditions (“I was the top of the heap in high school until those <insert slur here> came along!”) or romantic conditions ("I had my heart set on Susie until one of those <insert slur here> stole her away from me!), but I think in general it’s picked up through family conditions. After all, if your parents are of a particular religion, chances are you will be too. If you parents have a certain job, well, following in your father’s footsteps isn’t as common anymore but it isn’t surprising when it does happen. It’s the same with many forms of bigotry - ma and pa hated those people, so that must be what I should be doing too!

Obviously I don’t think it’s a good idea to go around breaking up families, and forced integration (like with busing students of different races around in the '60s) tends to cause more resentment than anything. The thing that seems to work is something that happens as a side effect more than anything else: urban voters tend to be more worldly and less “-ist” because they have to interact with a wide variety of people day in and day out. People that are more rural, or more religiously isolated, or otherwise kept around the same group of people all the time easily fall into tribalism and picking up the bad habits of their parents. (I don’t mean that rural/etc parents are bad people - urban parents pass on bad habits to their kids as well, it’s just that those kids are exposed to more circumstances that challenge assumptions than kids that have never seen someone different in real life)

It seems to me then, that the trick to overcoming bigotry is to make it easier for different groups to interact so they get more normalized to each other. Things like reducing transportation or education barriers would help in that regard. Interestingly, it seems that the rise of social media is having a bit of the opposite effect: since you can control what you see and media sites try to tailor their content to fit you, you’re more likely to have an echo chamber effect, which is the opposite of what needs to happen.

It’s not an overnight fix (social changes rarely are), but I think the trick is getting people exposed to the “other” more often and earlier in life so they are more likely to realize that the other is not so different after all.

14

My answer is that Democrats need to become better politicians. I’ll list my assumptions and why I think having Democrats that are better (as in more highly skilled) politicians could solve the issue. Here are my assumptions.

  1. Democrats represent the interests of working class white people better than Republicans.

  2. Working class white people that vote Republican do so because Republicans are better than Democrats at running as populists despite the fact that Democratic policies would help them more than Republican policies.

  3. Democratic policies I’m referring to include things like making college more affordable, increasing jobs by investing in wind and solar energy to offset lost coal jobs, rebuilding old infrastructure, improving access to affordable healthcare, and a tax policy that would hit the wealthy harder while making it easier on working class people.

  4. Republicans, in contrast, are offering trickle down economics and for some reason the working class white folks are buying it. They seem to genuinely believe that if only Trump, the Koch brothers, Sheldon Adelson, and others like them get their tax cut, that those people will use the money from those tax cuts to hire them. Why anyone would believe that is a big mystery.

  5. Therefore having more highly skilled Democratic politicians can solve that mystery and show those working class white people why they are wrong about the Republican policies. Once elected they can enact the policies I noted above.

  6. Once those policies are in place and white working class people are personally benefitting from them, the Republicans will be forced to change or lose their base.

15

I thought a number of 2016 polls showed that Trump supporters are on average in the upper middle class, with a salary significantly above the mean/median of all US workers. Cite.

16

In every country about 15-20% of people are right wing authoritarian. The US is no different. Trump supporters tend to score high on authoritarianism, higher than other gop voters. However new research may contradict that.

What is important is having checks and balances so they cannot cause too much destruction to society.

We survived having the kkk, we will survive this.

17

The worst thing about those people is their tendency to stereotype large groups of people and then use those stereotypes as a reason to hate them.

18

I’d suggest there is SOME percentage of folk at either end of the spectrum who - um -don’t appear able or willing to positively participate within our current economy/institutions. Every Trumpian troglodyte is likely balanced out by a “welfare queen” or “undeserving immigrant” on the other end of the scale. Of course, these are not monolithic groups. There are likely different combinations of multiple factors contributing to each person’s situation and attitude.

I’d imagine some percentage of folk on both ends of the spectrum are going to resist any change. You are ALWAYS going to have SOME percentage of extremists and malcontents. So what you need to do is figure out what a society can do to appeal to those potentially malleable folk. Socially, I imagine many intolerances will be moderated simply by trends. When folk see that GLTBs are just people like they are, women can work most jobs as well as men, folk of all colors are just trying to lead their lives - I’m hoping the trend will be towards increased tolerance/acceptance.

Personally, I think (some) religion is a significant factor in many folks’ intolerance. So I’m hoping the trends towards reduced belief will lead towards improved acceptance.

Folk on both ends are hurt by economic prospects. Your guess is as good as mine concerning what would create a greater number of low-skill jobs which would support a decent lifestyle.

But lacking that, I’d say the best thing is for the rest of us to simply live our lives the best we can. Our examples will bring about those who are capable of change and, hopefully, the others will become increasingly marginalized.

19

It could be, but it’s also possible that the article is based on flawed statistics. The 72k figure is self reported income in an exit poll of primary voters, who generally aren’t really all that representative of the electorate. Pretty surprised that Silver doesn’t seem to mention that at all in his analysis.

20

Maybe hate them enough to cheer when the person they are following calls for the jailing of the opposition when they come into power, and/or call for a revolution if they don’t get their way in the election? Who’s supporters have been doing that more and more lately?