Former President Donald Trump’s supporters say they hold him as a source of true information over their family, friends, and religious leaders, according to a new CBS News/YouGov poll out on Sunday.
it’s not a cult, guys
Not even when they hand out the Flavoraid
When are they going to drink it?
As soon as their supreme leader gives them the go-ahead.
I only signed up for the bunk beds and matching sneakers…
It’s bleach flavor
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Pure brain rot, Jesus Christ.
They prefer Trump over HIM, too.
What does an emo band from the mid 2000s have to do with it
Literally. You can’t blame this on people of faith any more…
If you told me 10 years ago Donald Fucking Trump would be the head of the largest American cult of all time…
Just… What the fuck guys? What the actual fuck.
The only way you can control people is to lie to them.
and…
If a man really wanted to make a million dollars, the best way to do it would be start his own religion.
– L. Don Trumppard
At least Hubbard could form a complete sentence.
That part is genuinely the most baffling part to me. Like, I can see why somebody would fall into the cult of a really charismatic leader, a great public speaker that gets to your emotions etc.
But I can’t decipher half the shit that man says. He’s not just incapable of forming a proper sentence with a point, but he also has a terrible speaking voice, making his incoherent ramblings even harder to understand when not transcribed.
He says the offensive stuff that’s been repressed for 60 years on the political stage. Trump could use the N-word with a hard R and his polls would go up.
His transcribes are incoherent. His speeches are like listening to music. You don’t even know all the words, but you get the feeling. That’s all they are looking for.
“Look, having nuclear — my uncle was a great professor and scientist and engineer, Dr. John Trump at MIT; good genes, very good genes, OK, very smart, the Wharton School of Finance, very good, very smart — you know, if you’re a conservative Republican, if I were a liberal, if, like, OK, if I ran as a liberal Democrat, they would say I’m one of the smartest people anywhere in the world — it’s true! — but when you’re a conservative Republican they try — oh, do they do a number — that’s why I always start off: Went to Wharton, was a good student, went there, went there, did this, built a fortune — you know I have to give my like credentials all the time, because we’re a little disadvantaged — but you look at the nuclear deal, the thing that really bothers me — it would have been so easy, and it’s not as important as these lives are — nuclear is so powerful; my uncle explained that to me many, many years ago, the power and that was 35 years ago; he would explain the power of what’s going to happen and he was right, who would have thought? — but when you look at what’s going on with the four prisoners — now it used to be three, now it’s four — but when it was three and even now, I would have said it’s all in the messenger; fellas, and it is fellas because, you know, they don’t, they haven’t figured that the women are smarter right now than the men, so, you know, it’s gonna take them about another 150 years — but the Persians are great negotiators, the Iranians are great negotiators, so, and they, they just killed, they just killed us, this is horrible.”
…for example.
A verbal masterpiece. One for the history books.
Japanese translators hate him!
No, really, they hate him.
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One for the history books. Right next to the Declaration of Independence.
Who ever said this ought to be president!
- Trump voters 2016
“Biden is senile!”
- Trump voters NOW
It does sound like some of the boomers I know when they just talk. Like my mom will ramble on like that. My friend’s mom, too.
Like listening to Rob Zombie
Clinton is a great example. Great speaker, knew everyone’s name, talked in broad generalities. He and Obama are two of the best republican presidents of modern times.
obama was republican???
He couldn’t do much because of the do nothing congress, but the things he did do other than some health care reform were pretty regressive.
I’m from the future year 3023, we have cloned Sylvester Stallone and genetically modified him to somehow have an even harder to discern speech pattern than he has in your time. He is our great leader, bow before your incoherent God!!
Because America has spent decades elevating ignorance to be the highest virtue. Donald Trump is the end-point of American culture. He’s what everything’s been leading to.
I heard that towards the end his drug use broke his writing ability. Does that make you feel better?
No, but thank you for trying.
He said in the 1980s he considered running as a democrat.
Maybe they’re one of those suicide cults?
Let’s hope.
You could have told me 40 years ago and I would have believed it instantly. Ronald fucking Reagan.
Fucking. Morons.
Literal fascists.
If only Smedly Butler had told us.
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This is absolutely grade A batshit crazy, not just your average dystopian batshit crazy.
All the lead poisoning is getting into the boomer’s reasoning and reading comprehension skills.
It’s advanced batshit crazy
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You don’t believe in God? This is him, he came back.
I mean, if you read the Bible, especially the old testament, the Abrahamic God basically acts like a spoiled toddler. It tracks.
Will Eric die for our sins then?
I don’t think Ivana was a virgin.
She could say she was and a substantial minority would believe it hook line and sinker.
A lot of words to say CULT
Not the smartest bunch. Unfortunately, that bunch seems to encompass 30-40 percent of the American population.
Half of all people are dumber than average.
Half are dumber than the median, not the average (although they’re probably close)
There are different types of average, median being one of them. What you are thinking of as the average, is probably the mean. Median, mean and mode are all types of average.
Weirdly the mean statistic says that we are all stupid. It also says we have ugly shoes for some reason.
That’s just plain mean! Bad statistic!
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Trump has made a great litmus test for shitty humans. They even wear hats so we don’t have to waste our time trying to find out their beliefs through dialogue.
I feel like there’s gotta be some really smart outliers skewing that average
Half of all people are dumber than the median. I am assuming the mean is actually higher than the median so chances are way more than half of all people are dumber than what people normally think of when they think average.
My father is one of them. Because of his idiotic glorification and idol worship of trump, my family has told him to fuck off. Haven’t talked to him for almost 3 years now. He even believed the big lie
Pretty much the same for my family. My parents were always hard right conspiracy types but it used to be that they still had something redeeming about them. I don’t like to remember the Thanksgiving Dinner of 2009, the last time we got together.
Hey mom I am dating a girl and it is getting kinda serious. Also I finished that engineering degree and loving working in a big city. Plus you know I flew out here to see you guys. Can we maybe talk about something besides Obama being a Satan Muslim for like a minute? No?
same shit happened with my biological half-sister. i drove 16 hrs one-way to visit her. what does she want to talk about? making fun of transgenered people. i left early. never again will i visit her. i rather go to the beach.
My sister called me today, and I didn’t answer because I was at the beach. I said it. I meant it.
Yeah, tore my family apart too. So bad now that I’m pretty certain it’s irrepairable. Guess there was a lot of underlying issues but there always is with family right? This shit really just scratched the scab off and the pus came pouring out. Still though, I think family is fragile in many cases and you just make it work, but when something this polarizing comes around it can shift the balance enough to start a casastrophic cascade. The GOP is an ice-9 motherfucker right now. They turn everything they touch into complete shit.
I’ve found political hatred is actually one of the worst traps to fall into. Personally I thought some of obama’s policies were good, although implemented incorrectly. I was hoping trump would be similar, but he turned out the complete opposite. If it doesn’t involve making the rich richer he didn’t want anything to do with it.
That’s really sad
True, but I’m a firm believer in the motto of you made your bed now lie in it.
I mean I get it. I don’t talk to my own dad (not political reasons). However I am a father myself and it would be really sad to raise my kid for him to just say “later” and never talk to me again. Then again I wouldn’t believe Trump and his cult. Still sad to think you could be alone because of something that has nothing to do with me.
Ones politics has everything to do with that person.
Our political identies cone from who we are and our world views.
No it isn’t lol
You have to know politics are a portion of a person’s existence. It should not be the focal point of their existence. It should be an agreed upon direction and and a disagreement amongst certain things.
Not this. This is not politics. This is bored people with nothing better to do than to fight the system because they didn’t find anything actually valuable in what they were taught was value. They bought a sham and need to sell it again because they can’t admit they bought a sham.
You have to know politics are a portion of a person’s existence. It should not be the focal point of their existence. It should be an agreed upon direction and and a disagreement amongst certain things.
Political ideology comes from who you are and what you believe about the world.
The compromises that we make as a larger community are not necessarily in line with my personal politics, but I recognize it’s necessary to make those compromises.Saying “it’s not really their fault “ is bullshit, dismissing them because they’re “just bored” or whatever….
That’s how we wound up with trump in the first place.
These aren’t children. They have agency, they made a choice. Even growing up in such a cult, a time comes where you make that choice. They might be stupid, they might be getting lied to, but ultimately they choose to be assholes.
And we’re watching them tell us their politics: straight up hate.
When did I say it’s not their fault? It is 100 percent their fault.
I agree, I feel sorry for the man getting lost like he did. But I will not raise my family around such a narcissistic attitude.
I have a sister that’s the same.
I would have never guessed she’d fall victim to such a thing… she’s intelligent and Trump prior to running for election was the type of person she’d despise. I don’t know what happened. It’s like the person I knew got taken over by a sick, alien virus that’s destroyed the person I remember. She’s angry, condescending and downright hateful to anyone that tries to talk to her about the lies and real evidence she ignores. It’s sad, and I miss the sister I remember.
Same with my father. He was a great guy until he jumped on the Trump train. Now he is a hateful, bigoted racist that thinks if you don’t think the way he does you aren’t worth his time. I learned my thought process from him where you don’t blindly follow someone else. Research, research and more research before you commit youself to something. Make sure you are making an informed decision, hell he is a retired cop, he was a detective, he knows how important it is to look at the evidence and make the right decision. But not since Trump, he even started looking up Qanon shit to base his decisions on. I miss who he was, but I won’t join his beliefs just to keep him in my life.
Your father is still probably following his process, but one of the most dangerous things Trump did was sew distrust of trustworthy sources. If you throw out government agencies, the mainstream media, and what scientists say, then doing extra research ends up coming from rightwing sources and just pushes you further right. And it’s a hard thing to defend against because government agencies can and have been dishonest and the mainstream media usually is.
Yea they have and the media is pushes a narrative that only focuses on the negative side. Back when I was younger the media at least reported some positive news, but now it all sensationalized and antagonistic rhetoric
The media shows us what we want to see.
They are looking for eyes and for clicks and it’s what gets the most of them.
Part of the reason I look at more than one source for my info. If I see a blurb of something that catches my eye, I’ll read an article then search up other sources of info.
I trust nothing the media says without researching multiple sources. If all the sources are getting their info from the same place, I look for outside means. Like world wide news mentioned her in the states, I will go to local sources for the info. As long as it’s in English language.
You didn’t read my previous comment.
I’m sure he was a good father to you since you miss his old self, but being a cop in no way implies that he’d be intelligent or competent in any way. In fact, it would provide some of the explanation as to why he’d be joining the cult of an authoritarian figure. Not only are cops often required to not be too intelligent, they also already belong to an authoritarian organization, so it wouldn’t be a big change to jump on the Trump train. It’s not exactly a coincidence that he has such strong support among law enforcement people.
https://abcnews.go.com/US/court-oks-barring-high-iqs-cops/story?id=95836
Again, I know that people can be good fathers regardless of their professional lives, and I don’t doubt that he was good to you. I’m not looking to be offensive or attack you, I have nothing at all against you personally. It’s just slightly jarring to see someone’s status as a former cop being held up as evidence of competence. It is not now, nor has it ever been a good thing to be a cop.
No no offense taken. My dad wasn’t your normal cop. He actually showed empathy as well as sympathy towards situations. He never had that billy badass mentality like most do. Hell even when he went to talk to someone in inherently bad parts of town, like the Watts in LA during the riot era or even like Harlem as the gangs started getting bad, he would leave his firearm in the car. And he stood in solidarity with those that looked at cops like they were the devil themselves. His outlook changed drastically during the trump administration.
He didn’t believe socialism was a bad thing, unless it turned into violent rhetoric. He was always a progressive conservatism. Everyone had the right to voice what they believed in as long as they didn’t push their narrative to being the only right answer.
Now the only narrative he believe in is conspiracy theories, such as engaging with a gay person WILL make you gay or that everything is evil unless it’s the far-right wing way. My father has even gone to the point of denying the innocent until proven guilty, now you are guilty for even thinking that it might be a good idea. The man has changed for the worst, if I didn’t know any better you’d think he had Alzheimer’s and only focuses on the wrongs of people, no matter what, even if they didn’t do anything wrong, unless they believe how he does. It’s actually scary. If you don’t think like him you should be shot on site, that’s not the man that raised me.
I’m actually ashamed to call him my father.
Admitting she is wrong about a single fact would bring the entire house of cards tumbling down… Imagine having to admit you are wrong about everything you have come to represent. It would come with soul crushing pain to your ego, and these people can’t confront that.
That sounds about right.
It is sad to hear how we let the wealthy class and politicians divide us on culture wars and identity politics.
We should be talking more to the people we don’t agree with and come together over class lines, working class vs. wealthy class.
Trump and Sanders were both able to create a grassroots movement for a reason.
Talking is the way to get to what we share in common, instead we focus on what we disagree on.
That’s a nice sentiment, but there’s no talking to these people. They WILL NOT listen to their family or friends. Any information they absorb must be from Fox News, Trump himself, or the other far right information platforms.
They don’t live on the same level of logic that the rest of us do and approaching them with logic only angers and confuses them. They become belligerent, obtuse, and steadfast in their views. It can’t be broken through logic because it’s a cult and they’re not operating with logic.
My father is also one of these people.
Makes me wonder if deepfakes of tucker carlson is the only way to unfuck things at this point
Unfortunately you are right. But haters and bigots don’t want to talk about bettering themselves, they want destruction of what they don’t like.
I miss the 80’s and 90’s where people had their differences but listened to the other side without whataboutisms or evil rhetoric.
Jesus. Imagine sacrificing your family for that orange traitor cunt.
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Unfortunately it has happened to a lot of families. At first I thought it was a case of that won’t happen to us, but I was wrong. My family is one of the victims of trump in this respect.
My idiot parents voted for trump once, so I get it.
Sorry man. I hope he comes around.
He’s ~ 80+ years old, I don’t expect him to. At least not before he passes away.
I feel like we need some sort of legal protection for circumstances like this. no objective analysis of these people’s behaviour would agree that they’re acting rationally, and probably can’t even be considered to be in their right minds. should we risk individuals so afflicted being able to determine the direction an entire country takes? do they pass out voting forms at mental institutions?
Disqualifying a candidate is the intended legal protection. Unfortunately, I’m not sure that will ever be used effectively if it’s not done to Trump.
that’s not going to work for his supporters, though. they’ll scream conspiracy and the next capital riot might not be such a joke.
Rioting will come and go. Assuming a disqualification is recognized by enough people, then the noise makers will go back into the woodwork for a time.
There’s a lot of misguided people out there who would vote for Trump if he was on a ballot but would not start a civil war if he was not.
I feel like it’s true to say that we are the closest we’ve been to a civil war since the last, but that doesn’t mean that the risk of civil war is high.
If Americans actually voted this wouldn’t be an issue. The problem is the only people who actually vote at every chance they get are these types.
Actually, yes.
I feel like this could be a slippery slope for whoever is in charge and if not done right which is more than likely it’ll be like going back in time where anytime someone disagrees with something “you’re being hysterical” then you get institutionalized.
it certainly carries risks, but then, seemingly so does doing nothing to address it. I wonder how many people would still be alive if trump had never gotten a first term.
As I understood, that was one intent of the electoral college.
To your last question I mean
so if a country manages to reach a critical threshold of cultists, the government should just hand over the reins, despite the likelihood it will never again (or at least, for an extensive period) see a fair election?
You said mental illness, which is what I was referring to. Also, cultists are (generally, unless they’re otherwise forbidden) allowed to vote as well (unfortunately).
I really think that many moderates and liberals simply don’t understand the grasp that he has over some people. This is how post WW1 Germany became Nazi Germany right before WW2.
We can make fun of it. We can complain about it. But what I rarely see is people studying it and trying to understand both the draw and the origins of this deadly attraction.
As much as we want to simply call these people “stupid” or “clueless” (which many people in this thread have already one) but it is much deeper than that. In fact taking that simplistic approach only makes it that much easier for him to recruit more people. The Left is so quick to minimize the hardships that many Trump supporters have faced in the past which might have pushed then to join his cult. If you constantly push groups away and this cult is openly embracing them and saying they understand their pain, then you can’t be surprised when you hear headlines like the one for this story.
Well, yeah people call them stupid because they have the most access to facts out of all humans throughout history and yet work hardest to reject ALL of them except those they want to believe.
And I don’t think most people were all that quick to dismiss these people’s pain at first, in fact a lot of us have felt it firsthand. It’s just really hard to feel sorry for people who are proudly bigoted, hateful, and willfully ignorant.
You’re right, it’s not helpful to call them stupid and dismiss their views, but it’s honestly like we have no choice. How do you help and have empathy for people who would make your friends’ existence illegal? How can you take seriously someone who constantly screams about problems that don’t really exist, and are solely based on fearing people who have no interest in bothering them?
Seriously? Real questions.
I miss who my uncle used to be. No idea how he can do a complete 180. His father, who was an illegal immigrant must be rolling in his grave.
How do you go from attending your friend’s gay wedding to telling that same friend they should get divorced and seek help?
it makes me think that this constant recital of “people are waking up” is more like people have fallen for deceitful marketing. if he happily attended a gay wedding beforehand, then the only reason he speaks down upon it now is because he’s been programmed… played like a kazoo, if you will
because playing a fiddle actually takes some semblance of knowledge, and god knows these guys don’t have that lmao
Doesn’t that go both ways though?
On one end you are programmed to accept gays,
On the other you are programmed to reject.
And before all that, you are programmed to understand the concept of gay.
It’s all programming. Now that social programming happens so quickly and such large scale… Humans weren’t meant to handle that much programming.
Now, some people, at some point, start to question all programming. Those are the most resilient to direct programming from others, and the most able to program themselves based on judgement of all the programming going on.
But for the rest it’s just a frustrating mess of self inconsistencies.
Rather than trying to understand their pain, my opinion is that the US right wing voter is under the control of one of the largest propaganda networks in history. The evangelical church, the billionaires that own local TV stations (Sinclair), Fox News, AM radio, and now social media echo chambers have led to a complete epistemic closure of the American right. Facts cannot penetrate that wall. Science cannot penetrate that wall. No amount of Democrat messaging can penetrate that wall. Seeing something with their own eyes cannot penetrate that wall.
History teaches us that this kind of propaganda leads to a very bad ending. Civil war, genocide, authoritarian dictatorship… pick your poison. America needs to find a way to dismantle the right wing propaganda apparatus, without that I see no hope. (I know, doom and gloom.) I sincerely hope I’m wrong.
They’re not actually in a lot of pain. Their struggles with poverty and drugs aren’t fundamentally different than those of the left.
What they actually are is secretly hateful and bigoted, and those beliefs are deeply rooted cultural beliefs for them. Trump just made it socially acceptable for them to be openly hateful like they’ve wanted to be for so long, and gave them the promises of fulfilling their white nationalist dreams, so they jumped all over his dick.
It’s not actually that complicated. I had the misfortune of growing up around their ilk, and have rolled with them for two years because of the lockdowns, so I know the score.
You have a rather simplistic view of this. That might be true for what you saw, but please don’t project this to all MAGAts out there. The Left’s insistence of always turning EVERY goddamn thing into a race issue only makes matters worse and completely misses a whole ton of underlying causes that we as a society should be looking at. If the Left could keep themselves from getting race-baited for even 10 minutes, we might be able to accomplish something one of these days.
Nah, it’s mainly a race issue. Do not confuse your 1 semester course on modern history in college with my 40 years of suffering under the heel of vile racists both Black and white. The MAGA movement is mostly made up of racist whites who think like this and dumbasses who sympathize with them thinking they’re the exception simply because the MAGA cultists choose to tolerate them to better enable them to manipulate others.
You’re the problem. You’re just the type that helps radicalize others.
The only one being problematic and immature here is you, friend. My life experience might be inconvenient for you but it trumps any of that carefully crafted nonsense intended to convince people to sympathize with Trump supporters you conjured up (or wrote with Chat GPT, I don’t know).
At some point the allies decided to just fight fascism with force because the time to soul-search the Germans’ support for the Nazis just would have been a waste and delay the unavoidable.
There’s not any one seriously questioning today whether the world should have waited a bit longer to see if they could figure out just why the Nazis were doing what they’re doing…on the contrary, the consensus is that if the world had acted sooner, a lot of tragedy could have been avoided.
Americans have the chance now to stop these new Nazis - there’s no point in understanding evil.
You’re conflating two different questions into one. ‘Is there a time to punch a Nazi,’ and ‘If we study Nazis, can we figure out how to stop people from turning into Nazis that subsequently require punching.’ I’m personally of the opinion that the answer to both is yes. There is absolutely a point in understanding evil because, as we are having so comprehensively demonstrated, Nazis are not a one-time problem. Letting things get to the stage where punching is required has consequences.
“Race-baited”?
Seems like someone doesn’t want to acknowledge how deeply that segment of the population is embedded in “otherism” of all kinds.
Racism is endemic, and for you to call pointing out this very obvious fact “race-baiting” belies a serious lack of awareness on your part.
I’ve been fascinated with how the religious right has stood behind someone so obviously out of line with their ‘principles’. There actually have been people doing interesting work on that front, if you know who/where to look. I’d definitely recommend the book “Jesus and John Wayne” by Kristin Kobes du Mez, which chronicles the growing power of conservative Christianity in government starting back in the 40s through the election of Trump, and how electing Trump really was an expression of their values, not a departure from it. Podcasts like “Conspirituality” and “Straight White American Jesus” also try to take an honest look at the cultishness and where it’s coming from. What’s hard is that deradicalization is hard and often has to be done one person at a time. When we have one percent of the country needing to be deradicalized, maybe we can find people to go talk and make connections with each person. When it’s 30% of the country, that’s a much different proposition. Maybe society can figure out how to do that better–Conspirituality sometimes talks about how cults differ as leaderless, online only groups. Maybe social media can also reach people… But it won’t if kids can’t find information online that challenges the worldviews their parents want to program into them.
And recently, that Amazon Duggar documentary “Shiny Happy People” came out, and it’s not a bad entry point to understand the issues I’m talking about either. I think it does a good job to show how these ‘throwback’ values play on nostalgia too act as an on ramp for people to raise their children in–children who are then encouraged to be literal warriors for Christ–or their GOP allies.
Hey, I’m running a community here on Lemmy that is focused on the topic of echo chambers and the way they form, and I think you might like it:
Excuse my shameless plug, lol
Hi there! Looks like you linked to a Lemmy community using a URL instead of its name, which doesn’t work well for people on different instances. Try fixing it like this: !bridgingthegap@unilem.org
Ha, thanks bot
The part that is fascinating to this Canadian, is that a lot of his supporters’ hardships are increased by the policies of the GOP. The demographic that is the largest recipient of federal social aid in the US is poor white people in the South and Midwest. Yet they continually vote for the party that has a clear policy of eliminating these programs.
Just before 2016, I saw this video that I wish I could find again. This journalist went somewhere in the Rust Belt to talk to these (overwhelmingly white) people. Of course, she got the usual “We believe in God, Guns and Country, and active trying to change that… Yada yada” stuff. But the interesting part was when she had an exchange with some fellow that went sort of like this (from memory):
“So, you’ve voted Republican all your life?” “Yep.” “And in your lifetime, have things gotten better, of worse for you?” “Oh, way worse.” “So… You keep voting for the same party, and your situation never get better?” “Yeah. But it could…” “Right, but it hasn’t. So why not try voting for the other party and seeing?” “Yeah, but it could!”
I’m not sure how you fix this type of “logic”.
I tried finding that video a few times the last few years, and couldn’t. Maybe it’s time to try again.
I think it’s possible that a lot of people don’t fundamentally understand what voting does. They see it as more of sports team color than the actual underlying policies being driven by political campaigns.
A decent number of young people around me think (or thought) that voting doesn’t matter, that the only way to accomplish anything is through violent, disobedient protests.
But those don’t fund infrastructure plans to rebuild schools and give schools bigger budgets. Those don’t help people get the subsidized vaccines every child needs to be healthy. It doesn’t help establish an impartial body for drawing voting maps. It doesn’t help establish rights and minimums for the bottom 35% of families in the US. It doesn’t decide public foreign policy or local bus and rail routes.
Voting does.
It’s a message our young people need. Voting, and the due diligence and research you need to do to make an informed vote, usually takes less than one hour if you look at all their campaign issues, education, and political depth (did they work for a government before, what positions were they in, what were their accomplishments, etc.).
It is all about messaging.
Republicans are masters are connecting with people and selling them a cart full of lies. These people could sell icecubes to eskimoes.
On the flip side, Democrats couldn’t sell a starving person a free meal. It is infuriating to watch. Democrats can make big wins and they are afraid to celebrate them because of asinine “liberal guilt”… because god forbid someone somewhere might not be doing so good, so we shouldn’t celebrate our successes. It is exhausting dealing with these people. They will suck the fun and excitement out of a room.
The Democratic party should be acting as the “hype man” right now for Biden’s successes as President. Reminding people where we were and how much we have accomplished. They should have been doing this for the last year, but even if they started now, it wouldn’t be terrible. Will it happen? I doubt it. They should also go on the offensive and attacking Trump and the entire GOP but Dems tend to be too spineless to ever do that.
Policies of Trump… I don’t know. About year two into his presidency, wages went up quite a bit in areas I lived in. Jobs became more available. General craziness was down, except for all those spouting hate at Trump the entire time.
I’m not saying I particularly paid much attention or attribute community growth due to his presidency, but things were getting better while he was president and dramatically tanked a year or two after Biden took over.
Just the general feel of places I’ve lived over the past 8 years or so.
For reference, I lived in low density suburban/rural areas during this time. May be way different in proper cities.
Wages have gone up much more under Biden who after all, inherited a badly crippled economy in the 1st place. Trump talks a lot, makes big promises, tells lots of lies, but meanwhile his only legislative accomplishment was to sign a giant tax cut for the rich that was completely written by congressional Republicans rather than his own administration.
And that’s not even mentioning all his foreign policy blunders and the fact that he was an international laughing stock among all our major allies.
I could go on but I won’t.
On the low end I haven’t seen wages increase, if anything they’ve fallen, but they may be more to do with the whole of 2020 craziness that resulted in even greater worker shortages amongst the laborers, and the system comming back to equilibrium.
Foreign policy blunders? Pretty sure that’s the first thing Biden did. Jump out of Afghanistan so fast we abandoned Europe and trampled some of our own.
Then there’s the whole, cripple the European economy thing. I know there’s more to it than that, but with the Ukraine thing, America really pressured Europe into crippling itself.
But I digress. I’m not trying to defend trump, nor attack Biden. Just note my casual observinces of my local economy.
As much as we want to simply call these people “stupid” or “clueless” (which many people in this thread have already one) but it is much deeper than that.
Further, doing so will galvanize their support for their guy.
People like to imagine that making it obviously shameful to follow a guy would discourage people, but if you are open to considering the guy, you just get pissed, dig in, and let your persecution complex run wild. Famously, Hilary Clinton did a misstep in calling Trump followers “deplorables”. Which might have been an apt word to describe his die-hard adherents, but a much broader population took that as an insult, that the perception of “it’s us or them” had been validated. Even if they didn’t believe in Trump “per se”, the culture is absolutely support your guy, no matter what, or else the bigger evil other guy will ruin your country.
No one wants to believe they are being conned, that they are being manipulated. That the person they believe in is so bad. In the rare case where someone admits they were for Trump, but now recognize that he is a bad person, they are still likely to face ridicule for having ever been in a situation to fall for Trump’s shtick.
Making something obviously shameful is to do so with reason. Telling people they are stupid and being manipulated is not people reacting by digging in, they are just responding to personal attacks. That falls to self-defense. Rational discussions about your own beliefs give others a chance to accept them. Trying to force them is just… Well… Facisim.
I don’t want to “study” or empathize with magats.
I want to belittle and (electorally) destroy them into irrelevance.
I grew up in a magat household. They’re magats because they’re fucking morons. I solved the mystery for you - no additional study is required.
I got in a debate once with my mom about the age of the Earth (of course she’s a young Earth creationist). I brought up the speed of light - we see things that are farther than 6000 light years, so the Earth has to be more than 6000 years old. Her rebuttal: “What if the sky is like an Etch-a-Sketch that God is holding up for us to see?” How do you reason with someone that believes something like that? Do you really think I if brought up stellar parallax or spectroscopy or stellar evolution that would change her mind?
My grandma, I bought her an iPad 10 years ago so she could get on Facebook and watch YouTube and stuff. Big mistake! Now I have to hear stuff about how Hillary Clinton has been arrested and convicted by a military tribunal and is wearing an ankle bracelet and will be put in prison after the 2018 election. Adrenochrome. Comet Ping Pong. Democrats want to chop off elementary school age boys penises. Bamboo ballets. Mike Lindell. Ballots dumps. Obama controls everything. Porn in schools. Democrats are trying to make us eat bugs.
Prior to the iPad I had probably heard her mention politics like less than a handful of times in my entire life.
She wouldn’t get the COVID vaccine… Even though she’s 83 obese, arthritic, congestive heart failure, diabetic, and has had two previous heart attacks. Then she got COVID and almost died, was in the hospital for more than month, now on oxygen at home… STILL WON’T GET VACCINATED.
These are not people that reason or think about anything. The only way to get them on our side would be a propaganda network to compete with Sinclair, Fox, OAN, Newsmax, Hannity, Neck, Levin, Shapiro, PragerU, Crowder, Savage, Breitbart, Daily Caller, Daily Wire, Project Veritas, The Blaze, WND, Candace, Jordan Peterson, The Washington Times, etc… And then pump that down their YouTube and Facebook feeds. Unfortunately I don’t know any left wing billionaires that want to create competing institutions to these things.
Not to mention the right wing message of simple solutions, zero thinking, and your prejudices are actually a good thing is hard to compete with.
I agree. Fundamentally, these folks that support him now are not doing well. It’s not the same for everyone. Some are feeling disenfranchised from parts of daily life, some are experiencing undesired change, some are terribly unhappy and don’t know where to point their frustration, etc. Trump isn’t a likely cult leader. He isn’t very charismatic like we normally associate cult leaders. But he came with the right message at the right time and for a very large segment of our population, that message made sense to them. It gave them a REASON for how they were feeling, even if they didn’t understand their own feelings in the first place.
When the day comes that the spell is broken, society must be ready to re-engage with these people in a meaningful way. Otherwise we are doomed to repeat it with the next person to show up and given them another reason.
But what I rarely see is people studying it and trying to understand both the draw and the origins of this deadly attraction.
Take a look at Bob Altemeyer’s “The Authoritarians”, available for free at https://theauthoritarians.org/options-for-getting-the-book/
He’s a psychologist who has studied the right-wing authoritarian personality type. Here, 'right-wing" is a term in psychology, and doesn’t mean “American political conservative in the 2020s”, though there’s a considerable amount of overlap.
There’s a lot of grim reading in this book, and some of his attempts at comic relief are a bit dad-jokey, but on the whole, I heartily recommend this to anyone who’s wondered what makes a fascist tick, and whether Trump supporters have anything in common with actual fascists (as opposed to just namecalling on the Internet).
Oh, we know that Trump and Fascism have a strong grasp on certain people; that is why we have been alerting everyone since 2015. We know the history and the extreme dangers to the planet that someone like Trump is. We won’t rest until the threat is removed.
You can’t remove the threat without understanding it. Simply calling his supporters “idiots” don’t do it. And that has been done countless times in this thread already. Yeah it feels good to make fun of them and call them names, but without understanding their motives and their history and what led them to be MAGAts, someone new will simply come along and take his place when he finally keels over and drops dead. The WHY is the single most important thing in this situation and far too many of times when I bring up the fact that these folks feel marginalized, I get downvoted and simpletons just scream out “no, it’s because they are RaCiSt”.
We will take care of them once Trump is removed from the election. These types will expose themselves, and thousands will break the law to express their anger their fascist leader won’t be President. The best way to eliminate the right is to put up barriers, and they will show themselves and destroy themselves simultaneously. The job of actual American citizens is to shame them and prevent them from being part of civilized society because of their actions. We MUST make examples out of them, or we will continue down this cycle repeatedly.
All you are doing with that strategy is radicalizing them even further. If they break the law, then by all means throw the book at them - the current punishments that J6 people are getting is pathetic. These people should have been tried for treason.
But if it some random Joe 6-Pack who likes Trump but hasn’t hurt a fly and had no part in J6, then your method only makes things worse, quite frankly. You are proving to these people that the gob’ment IS after them. Their delusion has now become a reality.
You need a stick and carrot approach. The stick is harsh punishments when they do something bad, but the carrot is to entice them to enter normal society and leaving all that craziness behind. Minimizing their problems and struggles only makes thinks worse. This whole idiotic idea of “white privilege” which is the left loooooves to go on and on about is part of the problem.
And let’s be clear here. Even when Trump is gone, these people will be looking for their next Dear Leader. Luckily no one on the horizon had the pull that Trump has had. No one in decades has had his pull. And we might not get another “Trump” like person for years to come.
But none of this stuff addresses the underlying reasons why these folks fall for this stuff. part of it is seeing their future has reduced economic advancement compared to prior generations. Many - but not all - of these people are probably just barely getting by. They might even see their kids have it potentitally worse. No upward mobility makes people do crazy things.
They will all end up in prison and we move on. This is what has to happen to finally get past the American Civil War. We have to show that the United States has no place for them, force them to leave the nation. That is how we move forward.
Dude, there were about 170M people registered to vote in the US.
We are talking about 20% of 170M people.
That’s 34M people.
Our current prison population is already considered way too high compared to other industrialized nations and its at “only” 1.2M people.
You’re not understanding the enormity of the problem.
No, we fully understand the numbers. Most of those 34 Million are 65 plus so removing them from the civilized population won’t damage the economy outside of maybe Florida. As for arrest, you only need to lock up about 2% for the rest to shut up and color.
One thing I’d like a better understanding of is the percentage of people that really are rabid Trump supporters vs the people who just voted for him because he was the Republican candidate. I feel like the polls at this point are worthless and we really won’t know how many of them there really are until the primaries. Maybe we will get a better view after the debates.
Anyway, I’m curious if you or anyone else has stats as to how many cult members there really are?
I personally don’t have a problem with Republicans. l think low taxes, small, government and even religion are a valid world views. I don’t necessarily agree with it, but I understand why they do, I just wish they backed someone who respected our institutions.
They claim about 60% of GOP votes. That translates to about 20% of all voters are hardcore MAGAts. Even if that number is rounded up a little, I would say at least 15% are the rabid Trump supporters you are talking about. That’s roughly 25M people. That is not an insignificant number of people. Then there will be a ton of other votes for Trump and the GOP simply because some people will vote for their party regardless.
Now in THEORY I could agree with you that having a party push for low taxes and small government isn’t bad. But the GOP hasn’t believed that in decades. They might still campaign on that message because who doesn’t want their taxes lowered, but there is absolutely nothing “fiscally responsible” about that party and every time they gain power, they prove that.
And that is my personal biggest worry is that if Trump somehow doesn’t win the GOP nomination, some other Republican could step up and start singing the same “lower taxes” bullshit that they’ve been trying for ages but ultimately when they get power they will try shoving religion down our throats, cut abortion rights even further, cut taxes - but only on the ultra wealthy, which will leave the rest of us with even more massive deficits - and increased spending on military programs we simply do not need.
Republicans have proven time and again that they do not deserve support.
There appears to be a good example of Spain in the 30s before the civil war. Both sides saw each other as the devil incarnated. There was no talking with each other,no middle ground. Bloodshed was the only way they were going to sort it out in the end.
Except that the Left doesn’t really see Trump and MAGAts as being “devil incarnate”. They kind of do, but they spend more time writing funny memes or posting snarky comments on Twitter than anything else. They are simply not taking as seriously as they should.
The Right sees this as war. Not in political discord and verbal debate, but as an actual fight for survival.
You don’t see earnest studying of it because both established parties enjoy the “Go Sports Team” dynamic it’s part of.
One of the most frustrating aspects of this whole situation is listening to the absolute braindead takes I hear from the left. There’s a lot of coastal elitism going around and it almost makes want to side with the magats just out of spite. I hear armchair socialists who have never done a day of physical labor in their lives making fun of farmers while stuffing their faces full of cheetos made from corn grown in Iowa. The few attempts I’ve seen to reach across the isle have been from the patronizing position of “we need to teach these hateful know-nothings in flyover country about their privilege and how to vote properly”, instead of trying to learn why they believe what they do and how best to reach them.
I know that they’re wrong. I know this because I was raised in a stable household by loving parents and was given a good education, but I get why they’re angry. To be honest, I’m angry too.
What the fuck are you talking about?
I’m talking about years of cultural division and social neglect which have helped construct a funnel on top of the populist to fascist pipeline, into which an entire generation of young midwestern men are being dumped.
I know these people, they are my family and friends. Many of them started out as promising future-socialists. Then they looked to people who were supposed to be their allies in coastal blue states, and were immediately met with ridicule and derision. This provided a chance for fascists to swoop in and say “fuck those assholes, come roll with us and we’ll change the system together”. A lot of young men naïvely took the bait, and were radicalized in short order.
Christian fascism relies on a persecution complex, and you(collectively) have been helping feed into it.
You’re not pointing at anything.
I’m from the fucking Midwest. Any “young man” that ate the fascist bullshit ate it because they were fed it from their friends and families. It wasn’t the scapegoat “coastal elites” or the “globalists” or the “bankers,” it was a learned behavior. My dad eats that shit and tried to feed it to me and my siblings. My grandpa eats that shit and fed it to my dad and aunt.
If you want to blame anyone, blame Fox for making it so easy for anyone to feast 24/7 on fascism talking points where you turn your brain off. My dad is a smart guy, no question about that. Lots of Republicans are! But that never stopped him or any of them from being a dumb piece of shit loser. Because he chooses to ignore the facts as they are presented to him. He chooses not to know what the 16th Amendment is. He chooses not to understand the costs of education. He chooses to believe the lies that are said to him when you give direct video or picture proof otherwise.
Because if he didn’t, he’d be wrong. And I think he can’t accept being that fundamentally wrong.
I’m not blaming any one thing for the rise of fascism in America. There are a myriad of factors which have built up over the past 50 years to bring us to this point. MY point, was that ONE OF THESE FACTORS OUT OF MANY HAS BEEN AN INCREASING HOSTILITY BETWEEN GEOCULTURAL REGIONS OF THE UNITED STATES. This has helped, in addition to the aforementioned other factors, to reinforce a sense of political isolation, and political isolation mixed with economic desperation and preexisting prejudices breeds extremism.
The only people to blame for fascism are fascists and those who profit off of them. It just so happens that I chose to bitch about this one specific element in this specific comment thread because it is one that I feel is often overlooked, you absolute mollusk.
You were the one that assumed I wasn’t from the Midwest, not I you.
The increasing hostility isn’t the cause of “coastal elites,” though, so it is still misplaced rage. The only one you can reasonably blame for that would be the upper class, which, regardless if you understood it or not, is not the same thing. The term “coastal elite” is a loaded term to target certain types of people. It is, as you already put it, another way to isolate, but also one used by fascists themselves., which is why I put heavy emphasis on your usage of it.
But, yes, I do agree that I am typically a slug of some sort and that my mucus trail is both far and wide.
I agree that the coastal elitism is terrible, but please realize that that’s not something “the left” does. It’s something that liberals do. The Bernie-type left generally doesn’t do that type of thing, and has suffered similar kinds of attacks from Clinton/Obama liberals for it (ex: being called “Bernie-bros”). They very much understand that racism and misogyny accusations are wielded as weapons by liberals when given the slightest opportunity. As far as I know, this has been an internal rift within “the left” that has severely hobbled it since the 60s/70s, promoting capitalist and elitist liberals instead.
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trying to learn why they believe what they do and how best to reach them.
Can I upvote this more than once??
This is very, very spot-on.
And the fact that someone here has downvoted you speaks volumes to the very point you are trying to make!
The Left is extremely exclusionary and in many ways has HELPED Trump more than almost anyone else. Yes he’s a piece of shit. Yes he deserves to die in jail, but stop pushing groups away because eventually they could end up falling for MAGA propaganda. We are already seeing reports of how an alarming number of white male teens are joining right wing groups. What does the Left do? Make it worse by calling out bullshit like “white privilege” or calling them “incels” or simply “racist”. These guys are just kids and they hear one side that is constantly degrading males and constantly blaming whites… well what the fuck do you think those teens are going to do? They are going to find a group that accepts them. It is so obviously and yet so infuriating how the Left can’t see what they are doing.
These guys are just kids and they hear one side that is constantly degrading males and constantly blaming whites
I don’t hear that side anywhere. I hear at most maybe a few sporadic dumbasses. Maybe get your ears checked.
It’s a cult
I was downvoted for this comment on another thread:
1/3 of the electorate would be happy to have trump rape their kids live on C-SPAN and would line up to suck his asshole as an expression of gratitude.
I stand by it.
They would only agree to that if Trump had asked for it and in return he would torture liberals, then they’d line up for it.
He’s unapologetically hateful towards “the left” and they love that. He’s their vehicle to hurt us which is what they ultimately want as we’re all “Goldstein.” Reich wing media plays their “2 minutes hate” every day to remind them to hate “Goldstein.”
The fact that Jews were the first to secularize in the rapidly secularizing West will be used against them until it can’t be. As if being the first means you caused the rest to follow suit. I was naïve to feel surprised about this fact, but it still feels like a disaster.
EDIT: in hindsight I see my comment can be read in terrible ways - I am all in favor of secularization and nearly converted to Judaism a lifetime ago before I started taking Wellbutrin, no problem with Jews here.
Only if their kid was liberal. Then they’d be ok with it.
Where did you get downvoted?
I feel that the (crazy) leftists would support this.
I got told I’ll get kicked out of my own apartment by someone who isn’t on the lease if I make fun of trump and Republicans out loud lmao.
Me and my mother are on the lease. Her BF who lives with us isn’t . Apparently he’ll kick me out of my own apartment (I’m 25 btw. Not a kid.)
