I was thinking more about this thread today, and about conversations I’ve had with my parents over Thanksgiving and Christmas, etc.
They are smart and caring people, basically lifelong Republicans, although they thought the Iraq war was a disaster and that Bush was the worst president of the modern era. Fairly sure my dad voted for Obama in 2008.
Anyway - they are pretty much what you’re looking for here, rational supporters of Trump “the man.” And the main reason they support him, and that they wouldn’t agree with many of the criticisms expressed in this thread, is that they are working with an entirely different set of facts than you are.
They mostly watch Fox News, and maybe a few other sources, but they don’t spend a ton of time seeking out information on politics, and aren’t active on social media. By and large, Fox simply doesn’t report all the negative stories that tend to rile up the CNN / MSNBC / Twitter / New York Times audience. If Trump says something stupid or controversial at a press conference, CNN might spend the entire evening talking about it, and bringing on experts to wring their hands over what this means for the country, etc. - and Fox will just ignore it. Meanwhile, Fox may run a story about how Trump did something good, and CNN will ignore it, or add some negative spin (“But experts say this is not sustainable…”)
These aren’t lies - they’re just a different sampling of the truth, that overlooks or doesn’t emphasize many of the harmful consequences of what Trump is doing.
I suspect that, if you somehow got my parents to watch CNN for a month instead of Fox, they’d be as horrified as you are.
I’m glad we finally have a thread where Trump supporters are given a respectful hearing. I would ask the Republicans kind enough to explain their reasons to focus on competence.
Yes, yes, we get that you like to give aliens strong incentives not to enter the country illegally; yes, we get that you want judges who’ll repeal Roe v Wade, repeal Voting Rights, and repeal pro-Democratic Party laws like the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002. Yes, we get that whites are the victims of huge bigotry in a country where blacks and Allah worshippers are handed your money and your jobs. Yes, we get that tax cuts for rich corporations will help your 401Ks; and yes, we certainly understand that you want your Guns, guns, guns. But what about basic competence? Does that even matter anymore?
Trump stripped the CDC, cutting its budget dramatically every year, and disbanding its pandemic response team. Good? He’s alienated our important allies in Europe while cuddling with dictators, even Putin. Good? His closest advisor is the nitwit Kushner. Good? He’s disbanded environmental protection at a ferocious rate; I thought conservatives wanted to conserve the environment. No? Due to rampant firings and incompetent leadership, the institutional memories of State Dept., Dept of Energy will take at least a decade to recover. Good?
He sends Florida triple what it requests for tests and ventilators while denying aid to Michigan because their Governor is not “appreciative.” Are you proud of this President? Is he competent? Do you think it’s important to have a President who is competent?
Yes, I’m addressing YOU — the one who voted a straight GOP ticket except for Gary Johnson in the top slot because you couldn’t quite get yourself to vote for the Nincompoop, though you approve of his policies. And I’m addressing YOU — the one who was “forced” to vote Trump because the alternative was to vote for the Wicked Witch of Benghazi. You don’t have to wear a MAGA hat and have a sub-90 IQ to be called a “Trump supporter.”
I’d like Republicans to tell us why they’re so proud of this sheer incompetence. (Please list the news sources you use; and post some links to confirm you’re not in a Fox bubble and are even aware of the incompetence.)
Here’s a link to excerpt and a link to the Fox interview. The context of the quote was Fox hosts complaining about their difficult task in competing with social programs on the merits.
You know why Republicans project that sentiment onto Democrats, accusing them of being “ghoulishly gleeful” about the current situation? It’s because that violent collapse is what every single Republican hoped for when Obama was president. We have Trump on tape calling for economic collapse leading to a violent cultural revolution, and Republicans still voted for him. Cultural revolution is the only real thing they believe in.
But isn’t that what many of us have been saying for years; That Trump supporters have surrendered reality for delusion. I think most of us can agree that believing “alternative facts” is simply a delusional way to excuse the acceptance of lies. And if your parents could have their views changed simply by being exposed to factual information outside of the Fox News event horizon, then how is that substantively different from being deprogrammed after having been indoctrinated cult members?
Wrenching Spanners said “Getting the outright lies out of the way first, of course Trump had a lot of bombast, some of it untruthful.” This is certainly minimizing Trump’s inability to tell the truth about almost anything. Lying about crowd sizes? No big deal. Muslim’s dancing in the streets? Pass. “I’ll release my taxes”? Bombast. “We have the virus under control”? No biggie. “I knew this was a pandemic before anyone called it a pandemic”? Just Trump being Trump. Regardless of his or Republican policies on anything, it is beyond my comprehension how anyone can support such a pathological liar. One cannot believe a single word he says. My greatest fear is that he gets into another war based on complete bullshit. (Although his lying and ineptitude concerning the current crisis may cost more lives than all of our mid-East misadventures combined, he’s already calling himself and his polices the best).
So please, please explain to me how you can ignore all his lies. I mean “bombast”.
Many, many laws are about imposing will on others and controlling people. There is nothing at all special about that. Abortion opponents, literally think abortionists are murdering babies. They don’t care about the legal definition or murder or whether you think its a baby or not. You may not see it that way, and that’s fine, but they do, and nothing you say is going to change that. Many, many laws are in place to prevent one from doing harm to others, e.g. “control” through “power”.
To them, virtually NOTHING Trump could do is more evil than murdering babies, not even kids in cages, and that’s why some simple lip service about abortion will get them to vote R every time. No democrat is going to be openly pro-life, other than maybe to say they “personally” wouldn’t have an abortion. To take a cynical view of it, Republican politicians probably don’t want to abolish Roe v Wade, because if that ever happened they might lose their grip on these single issue voters.
I think Absolute is on to something. Many Trump supporters like competence as much as anyone else. They aren’t supporting him because they like incompetence, they support him because Fox News, etc. ***portray him as being highly competent.
[ul]
[li]Up until a few months ago, Fox News was continuously emphasizing the stock market’s record highs and economy’s red-hot performance. Hardly a week went by without them commenting on how the Dow Jones or Nasdaq had hit yet another high. That sort of news could lure even moderates/fence-sitters into becoming pro-Trump when hammered long enough.[/li][li]News such as Trump ordering the raid to kill al-Baghdadi, leader of ISIS (never mind that Trump himself nearly gave out too much secret intel in his comments later on), which came across as Trump’s “Obama kills bin Laden” moment;[/li][li]Trump filling in court vacancies at a record clip, eclipsing both Bush and Obama;[/li][li]Dozens, if not hundreds, of news stories which could be described as “Trump owns the libs” or “the Deep State conspires against Trump, but fails,” or “Trump does something to show how great and powerful America is;” or some story of illegal immigrants committing murder in America, etc.[/li][/ul]
Someone who already had some pro-Trump leaning to begin with could watch this steady diet of pro-Trump news and genuinely believe he is a strong, competent leader.
It’s precisely because there were so many other Republicans running that Trump soared to the lead, combined with winner-take-all format. They cannibalized their own traditional-establishment vote.
At the risk of derailing the thread, this most likely wouldn’t pose a problem because overturning Roe would mean the fight against abortion was/is still far from over. Abortion would still remain fully legal in many states. It just wouldn’t be legal in all 50 states. Pro-lifers would just continue their war on a state-by-state basis, likely never succeeding in the deep blue states.
I think your latter bullet gets closest to the truth. Trump supporters define competence differently than other people. They believe the government cannot possibly do anything right and wastes every dollar it gets, therefore destroying the government is seen as competent governance. They also believe they are the only true Americans, therefore a core competency is oppressing or deporting everyone who isn’t like them.
Another excellent article on our glorious leader. You can get the gist of it by the title in the link. In other words, he is too stupid to realize that he is stupid - a dangerous trait for a leader in time of crisis.
If it was Trump that was causing the increase why would it be in big cities where his support is the lowest? In NYC where antisemeticattacks are on the rise most of the perpetrators are young black men. That is unlikely to be Trumps fault.
I don’t think this is reflective of what happened. Right wingers watched Trump come down on the escalator and lost their collective minds because here was a guy speaking directly to their core being. The other GOP candidates were clearly too short, too polished, not loudmouthed enough, and had ugly wives.
But whether or not whether or not your parents get a filtered version of the consequences of his actions, they do get a good representation from Fox of the message the president is trying to convey at the time. Going back the the link presented by the OP, how do they react to the fact that way he obviously contradicts himself. Do they simply forget that he ever said that the virus would be no problem to the US, when he later claims that he always knew it was a pandemic before anyone else did? Do they accept both statements as true despite the fact that they contradict each other? Or do they acknowledge that he is lying but don’t think it matters?
Because there are very few Jews in buttfuck Mississippi. Even the dumbest racist can figure where to find them. And when you send a message that it’s okay to be openly racist, you don’t get to pre-qualify which violent asshole you are going to trigger to do something heinous. And arguably, if you’re trying to start something, it’s not in your interest to be picky. If a black guy stabs a bunch of jews in New York, you’ve accomplished multiple goals: 1) Jews attacked, 2) Blacks viewed as violent criminals, 3) Redneck White Supremacists PROFIT!
Threatening violenceto opponents ““If they bring a knife to the fight, we bring a gun,” Obama said in Philadelphia last night. “Because from what I understand, folks in Philly like a good brawl. I’ve seen Eagles fans.””
Describing opponentsas “bitter people clinging to guns and religions”
He did praise white supremacists as “good people”, and he did spend several years spreading a racist, evidence-free conspiracy theory. Among many other things, of course.
Ahh, the halcyon days of 2008 when such things were considered “divisive”! What children we were!
To answer the OP again, everything can be boiled down into a nutshell: When you’re angry or desperate, you’re not exactly going to focus on nuance or subtlety. Anger and desperation make those things fly out the window.
When you’re trailing by three touchdowns in the fourth quarter of a Super Bowl, you’re desperate for anything that works. You aren’t going to say, “Well, this quarterback (Ben Roethlisberger) gives us the best chance to win, but he has a history of threatening women or deliberately defrauding people of money.” That isn’t the time or place for that.
I would ask the Republicans kind enough to explain their reasons to focus on competence.