You forgot one. Misogynist. And probably a bunch of other …phobias . But otherwise you covered it well.
And it should have been a dumpster of deplorables. But gonna need more room for them all.
No, I didn’t miss that one; I was quoting her.
As the phrase goes, “the cruelty is the point”. Trump voters vote against their own interests because they are much, much more interested in hurting “them” than they are in their own self interest, or even survival (as demonstrated by their reaction to COVID).
Trump will hurt and oppress people, and that is what they want - more than life itself.
But that’s a viewpoint fallacy. They see that they have challenges, they don’t live on a trust fund or make $200,000 annually or live to the standards they see on tv. They know they struggle financially. But what they fail to see is the privileges they do have. There are others with the same challenges and financial hardships and education gaps, but who also face additional challenges of race or religion or sexual identity. Challenges such as a habitual national recurrence of preventing their family from accumulating wealth independent of business success, e.g. the Greenwood race massacre. Or prejudice against their living their self identity, e.g. homosexuality and transgenderism.
Or constant pressure from society to judge them as morally inferior because they don’t attend a church, they attend a temple or mosque, or have no religious affiliation.
So the poor white might not be living on Easy Street, but he’s not living in the ditch next to rural lane, either.
Well, exactly so. But, as you note, they don’t see (or can’t understand) how others have it even harder, because of their race, gender, religion, identity, etc.
Their race, gender, religion, identity, etc. Is their problem. I suppose true, in a mean spirited way. But that person that can’t figure out how to get out of their own self imposed rut, wants those others punished.
Sure, but feelings are feelings. You can’t argue people out of feelings.
By that same logic, almost any oppressed black/lesbian/transgender person in America is still “privileged” compared to perhaps 60% of people elsewhere in the world, but they wouldn’t like being told that. People naturally measure up rather than measure down.
Well, that’s not 100% true, but only if the other person is receptive to arguments.
I know of a couple of situations where discussion helped me see why my feelings were wrong. But I was open to the conversation and the context. In general, it’s more true than not that you can’t logic someone out of a position determined by feelings.
But it’s very fair to measure against people in your same society, versus another country or another continent. Our country is supposed to value fairness. But point out where it isn’t fair, and get an argument that “those people shouldn’t count”.
Right Wing Populism. It works by making promises that they cant and wont keep, and blaming bad things on a minority or the existing government.
They also dont know any better- they watch Faux news and listen to Conservative Talk radio.
The three big lies the GOP is pushing- The Economy is bad, crime is out of control, and the Border is open.
Yeah; the infamous right wing media bubble is a real thing. That’s one of the problems with the argument that we should try to persuade them to change their mind; they won’t listen. It doesn’t matter how persuasive you are if the other person is simply determined to not listen to you.
I put this quote on another related thread, but it belongs here, too:
If you can convince the lowest white man he’s better than the best colored man, he won’t notice you’re picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he’ll empty his pockets for you.
–Lyndon B. Johnson
“You have to vote for one of us!” (“It’s a two party system”) from The Simpsons
“Treehouse of Horror VII”
The Simpsons
Originally aired October 27, 1996
From 2019:
“He’s not hurting the people he needs to be”: a Trump voter says the quiet part out loud
A Trump voter hurt by the shutdown reveals the real reason the president attracts hardcore supporters.
“I voted for him, and he’s the one who’s doing this,” Minton told Mazzei. “I thought he was going to do good things. He’s not hurting the people he needs to be hurting.”
He’s not hurting the people he needs to be hurting.
Think about that line for a second. Roll it over in your head. In essence, Minton is declaring that one aim of the Trump administration is to hurt people — the right people. Making America great again, in her mind, involves inflicting pain.
This is not an accident. Trump’s political victory and continuing appeal depend on a brand of politics that marginalizes and targets groups disliked by his supporters. Trump supporters don’t so much love the Republican party as they hate Democrats, a phenomenon political scientists call “negative partisanship.” They like Trump not because he sells them on the GOP, but because they believe he’ll stick it to the Democrats harder than anyone else.
I think of you ask the majority of Trump supporters, they would deny it’s about cruelty. They don’t want to see themselves that way. They think themselves good people.
So they rationalize.
“Illegal immigration is bad because it’s illegal. We are a country of laws, and all those people are making a mockery of the system and violating our national integrity. We should be able to control access to our country and its resources so that they aren’t squandered on people who don’t pay taxes and violate the law.”
“Illegal immigrants are flooding the country. They will overwhelm our national culture and change things, like make us have to learn Spanish. They will ruin the national culture that I love.”
“Gays are taking over everything. Suddenly they are all in our faces. I disagree with that lifestyle, it’s immoral. But we have to allow it, we can’t stand up for what’s right. That makes it harder to teach our children right and wrong when society allows and protects immoral behavior.”
“Transgender isn’t real.1 Those people have a mental condition, it should be treated like any other mental disease, instead of promoted and flaunted.”
“Transgender isn’t real, it’s just perverts who want to prey on women by going into their private places. Instead of sneaking around, they brazenly walk in the front door, and we let them. Something has to be done to protect women and little girls.”
"Yeah, we had slavery and Jim Crow, but those are the past. There’s no more systemic racism. Blacks and other racial minorities now have an equal chance to succeed. They choose to live in ghettos and glorify violence and criminal i.e. gangsta life. They choose to not participate in social structure like marriage, opting to live off welfare. But plenty do fine, and that’s proof there are no longer racial hindrances.
Therfore, affirmative action is unnecessary, and it’s now just reverse descrimination. If you prioritize racial minorities over whites who are better qualified, that’s not fair. If you create special programs to reach out to minorities, you’re sending a message that whites are second class. If you spend resources to provide mentoring and other guidance to specific groups 2, you’re short-changing whites who don’t get those programs3."
They don’t see the distrust of others, the faulty assumptions, the disregard of the reality those others face.
Then there’s the outright not wanting to see “handouts” going to the unworthy. That isn’t cruelty per se, because they judge those programs as fostering a dependency on handouts instead of encouraging self-sufficiency.
1 Defiance of reality that makes them uncomfortable.
2 That have historically been excluded from those types of opportunities.
3 Because they already have access to those opportunities.
Ninja post seems to contradict me, but I’ll argue even that woman doesn’t see herself as cruel. “Hurting the right people” is hurting the miscreants, the ones taking advantage of the system, the ones making life harder on the “good people”. Criminals, lowlifes, freeloaders, conmen, etc.
Well, maybe not certain conmen.
It is interesting and perhaps inexplicable that the poorly educated portion of Trump’s base (heck, maybe it’s prevalent throughout the entire base) considers the prosecution of financial and election frauds to be an overreach by the criminal justice system.
Project 2025 de-fanging the DOJ and FBI will make the next Trump administration the Golden Age of Grifting.
You know, I get a laugh out of this- UK has multi parties- they have issues, and they chose Boris Johnson a Right Wing Populist. Israel has multi parties- and they chose Netanyahu - a crook and a right wing populist. See, when you have multi parties a smaller party can rule the nation by making one of the two larger parties a deal to form a majority. This is why Israel is more or less run by Right Wing super conservative religious factions. Italy has multi parties- and they more or less choose a fascist as their PM. France just barely ducked the same thing. Shall I go on?
Multi parties is no better (and sometimes worse) than a two party system.
All in how it’s sold. The right has been pushing the narrative that the libs are out to get Trump, that it’s all just nasty politics, for so long and hard, nothing matters. Trump’s not guilty of any actual wrongdoing. Just like the two Impeachments, the left will stoop to every low they can think of to get him.
The same people who chanted “lock her up” over Hillary’s perceived wrongdoings with classified email are cheering that the judge just threw out the case on Trump’s willful mishandling of classified materials case.
“See the started with an impeachment, and when that didn’t work, they tried it again. Then they forced him out through election shenanigans, but that wasn’t enough. They went after his business, and chased him with civil suits, and sicced the FBI on him for some documents. They even went after his private life to wreck his marriage by chasing phantom affairs and hush money payments. It’s ALL just the kind of malicious politics from third world nations.”
Of course if it really was trumped up third world politics, the cases would look like the trials of Brittney Griner and Evan Gershkvich and Alexei Navalny.
Right. So Parliamentary systems have lots of parties and award representation by vote tallies, but to form a government leadership, they have to form party alliances, which can destabilize at any time and force a new election. Whereas the US has a two major party system that only those candidates are viable at the national level. Except those two parties are basically coalitions that have a slight bit more stability.
Religious moralizers plus pro big business, small government oversight economicists plus rural anti- government intrusion types gather forces against alternative religious folk and no religious folk, government oversight of business to protect citizens, government provide services to assist citizens in need types, and ethnic diversity groups.
That leaves a middle ground of small, single issue parties and people who don’t really fit any of the main categories to float as independents and provide the shifts that determine the outcome. In other words, our coalitions are informal at the edges that provide the vote margins.
Good way of putting it. It is not that multi party system is bad, mind you- it is just that it really is no better than a two party system, and slightly less stable.
It just isnt some magic wand that would solve the USA political issues.
And given the details of the federal constitution, federal laws, state constitutions, and state laws, all times 50 states, the 2-party system is fore-ordained.
The Founding Fathers were reasonably bright guys for the late 1700s. They knew nothing of game theory and unwittingly created a system that guaranteed the eventual development of a 2-party system. Any other configuration is unstable and will quickly coalesce to just two parties.
Absent a total rewrite of all election and voting law from end to end it must be so; the math is unequivocal.
Agree, and occasionally a 3rd-party candidate who has absolutely no chance at winning becomes a turd in the punchbowl.