Donald Trump thanks you for your support.
No, that isn’t true.
They want their votes, but they don’t want them. Look at this message board as an example. This board is largely left-leaning and I would say the American contingent votes overwhelmingly Democratic. Start running through and look at the language used about Evangelicals, older people or rural people. At best it is neutral and frequently it devolves into slurs and slanders very, very quickly and this message board is one of the tamer ones. This isn’t language or attitudes that says ‘Hey, I want you to be part of my movement.’ It’s more like ‘You’re the problem and the sooner we get rid of you the better.’ Maybe I’m just reading too much into it, but I bet I’m reading into it pretty much the exact same thing that they are.
I don’t think one size fits all of Trump’s base. But I think there are characteristics that are fairly common. These are solely my own observations from when I lived in the state with the most Trump supporters per-capita, so no cites, and YMMV. I left about 4 months before the election but still have many friends back there, some of whom are definitely Trump’s base. (And yes, I’m conflicted about this.) Please note that I’m not referring to Trump supporters in general but to his base as I know it.
Many of them are political neophytes who didn’t vote in previous elections because they don’t really understand politics or much about the Constitution and view all politicians as crooks. They still don’t see Trump as a politician but as a businessman who can straighten out this country. To them, he knew how to successfully play the game. If he didn’t pay his share of income tax, that shows how smart he is, that he knows how to work the system, a system they don’t trust. Most have little trust in the federal government.
Trump, like Fox News (the only news they trust), makes the solution to every issue simple, probably because he thinks simplistically. That appeals to people who distrust what they don’t understand. I don’t mean they’re dumb, but many are concrete thinkers who don’t handle shades of grey or complex, abstract social or political ideas well. Immigration problem at the Southern border? Build a wall! Literally a concrete solution. You don’t like something Trump has done? Then you’re a liberal and can be dismissed.
Much of what Trump catches flak for is stuff they themselves have thought but haven’t dared say. Even those who don’t quite agree with him on, say, racial issues, see Trump is telling it like it was instead of what they view as mealy-mouthed PC BS.
They like Trump’s in-group bias, which mirrors their own. They see his insults as a sign of strength and as flipping off the PC.
I still disagree. People on this board actively denounce bigots, hypocrites, and liars. But I don’t see people being denounced for being Evangelical, old, or rural. I’ll note that I am old and rural (and straight, white, and male); if people like me were being attacked on this board, I’d notice it.
I am white, rural and, up until recently, Evangelical. (I disavow the name now because they voted Trump.) I am not old, but claiming this old fogey message board is against old people is too ridiculous to talk about.
I do remember some casual talk of “flyover country” and “rednecks.” But never have I seen such devolve any further than that. When anyone actually is upset at the white working class, it is all about politics. When it devolves, it’s about politics, racism, or anti-intellectualism.
Now, I do admit that the Democratic Party hasn’t fought the Republican message that liberals don’t care about rural people, and that they somehow do. We mistakenly thought this country was more moral than it has been shown to be. (See Trump above.) I do think we need to push the messaging that we do care, ala Bill Clinton.
But I do not agree that we don’t actually care. Other people have already detailed why. The entire liberal ethos is to not be the ones who only care about the rich.
The problem is that the Ed Earl seems to think that helping others means hurting him. And that’s dangerous. Heck, I can’t figure out what you are even talking about when you mention things that hurt you but helped others.
Really? Just up the page someone posted this:
The “they” here, as near as I can trace it back, is “the straight white men who believe that homosexuality is immoral”.
That is pretty extreame, most people don’t give too hoots if someone thinks that homosexuality is immoral they care if they try to force those beliefs on others through legislation.
The “straight white man” has nothing to lose except for the fact that they may have to compete on a level playing ground, and extend the same freedoms they claim to support to other humans.
And is it because they are white? No.
Is it because they are straight? No.
Is it because they are men? No.
Is it because they consider other fellow americans to be not worthy of the same respect and rights that they demand for themselves, and pick out passages from a bronze age book to justify that? Yeah, I think that just may be it.
They desire harm to come to those who have done nothing to them, I can see why there is a bit of animosity towards them.
You are basically complaining that people are being held account for their actions, while trying to conflate that to being held to account for who they are, in order to draw a false equivalency to between those who work towards denying others the ability to live their lives, and those who work to prevent them doing so.
So, yeah, I agree with the sentiment that if they are a person who twists their religion in order to justify hatred, well they are going to die, and they are probably going to die miserably afraid and alone, that’s just the way things are, that’s how they have chosen to live, and I have no sympathy.
Reminds me of the Beatles movie Help!. The unforgettable Leo Kern is a vaguely Hindu-Kali cult leader who has just finished having tea with the (very uncomfortable) Archbishop of Canterbury and says…
“I think the Archbishop and I can agree to disagree on the issue of human sacrifice.”
Like I said, people on this board have no problem calling out somebody for being a bigot. But bigotry isn’t a religion.
Trumps base are single issue voters (abortion, guns,etc.), racists, misogynists, and people that are highly motivated by spite. Spite is a very strong motivational tool. A lot of trump supporters are ok with their lives in the toilet as long as he is pissing off women, minorities, and liberals. You know, people who used to know their place.
Do you really want to go down this road?
I’m a straight white man. 57 years old. Very comfortably middle class. I live in the rural mountains of Colorado. Basically agnostic/atheist. Not that it’s anyone’s dam business but my own.
People are welcome to have their opinions, thoughts and feelings. I enjoy sharing those opinions. The line is crossed when they try to force their opinions into law and policy. Law and policy that is *designed *to hurt others. Others that they disagree with but doesn’t affect their lives at all.
I stand by my statement to “Let them die lonely and afraid” IMHO, these people that hate others because they are different can’t be reached. They have the capability to reason, to think, to educate themselves, but refuse to do so.
I have more empathy for rabid racoons.
Who is the board member who denounces people from the Southern USA as traitors?
I don’t know who that poster was. But I vaguely remember them. The civil war was a 158 years ago. We are discussing the current traitor. Just the one. (well we could include most of congress, but one step at a time)
Is the poster in question germane to the discussion? That’s cool. What did you want to discuss about previous traitors?
Or is your question a whoosss. And the poster is participating in this discussion?
I don’t recall the guy’s name. Nice enough guy until anything below the Mason-Dixon comes up. 
You’re exactly right- the Democratic party hasn’t fought that message at all.
I don’t know if I’d portray it as necessarily a moral choice issue, or that helping one group hurts another though. Based on what I hear, there are a lot of people who feel like they pay too much in taxes for little *perceived *benefit. And they see high profile social programs that seem to be useful for other groups- typically poor ethnic minorities. So they begrudge them those programs- the oft accused “welfare” is a perfect example. I have to figure that those programs are either not used much in rural America, or they don’t realize that “welfare” is a catch-all term that doesn’t define any single program, and that those programs are actually in use in rural America, and they don’t even realize it.
I also think there’s a pretty huge component of not wanting to actually get government help if they can avoid it- it’s seen as emasculating to not be able to support one’s family, at least in part, without the help of an outside agency. So they’d much rather have jobs than social programs, and value the economic stuff a LOT more than other forms of assistance.
To shift the debate a little… the people I ***cannot ***figure out are the middle/upper-middle class who are so staunchly Republican that they can’t see the forest for the trees, so to speak. They’re at least economically secure, if not necessarily comfortable, and typically live in the city or suburbs, go to church every Sunday and live the super-white-bread life. They don’t have enough cash for the Republican party rich-guy stuff to affect, and nor are they poor enough for the Democratic social programs to affect. But they vote Republican like their lives depend on it, and I don’t quite understand it.
Bingo.
I don’t believe it should be legal to believe in human sacrifices.
And still we haven’t jailed the environmentalists.