It’s because his base are fucking idiots.
I have lots of empathy for people and usually try not to judge people by demographics and happenstance, but this pestilence of right-wing mouth breathers all over the world is an absolute horror show.
Organized ducking idiots are truly scary. They're the equivalent of a stupid tsunami with all of civilization built on the seaside.
It's difficult to abandon your empathy, but we have to confront them to save us all.
I have very little empathy with people who are wilfully ignorant and determined to destroy others’ education or quality of life.
I definitely think plenty of them are ignorant and uninformed. But it goes much deeper than that. Many of them feel that government hasn't served or helped them in decades or even lifetimes. And they're not wrong in that.
The real problem is they don't view themselves as being part of the issue. They've externalized everything to the government and made it the government's fault. Therefore there's nothing they can do. Since they are blameless, in order to change it. They perceive themselves as having done everything right despite having done everything wrong. And so logically in their minds. The only solution they can see is to tear it all down. And hope the warlord that replaces this system will be slightly magnanimous to them.
It doesn't matter that it's a thing that never happened or lasted longer than a year or two when it did. Because the alternative would be to admit fault and learn from it. Something which culturally we've largely been conditioned to reject.
A very good analysis and much more generous than my hot late night take.
We're living through a zombie apocalypse. The zombies just happen to be more high-functioning than they are in movies.
Right, so stripping away all the bullshit: he’s a gaping, hemorrhoidal asshole, beloved by other assholes.
And a significant portion of the American population like assholes because they are assholes.
It's embarrassing that nobody in mainstream liberal circles seems able to answer this very basic question: why do people vote for trump? It's not that they are racist womanizing nazis (though some of them certainly are). That is some of it, that's the convenient story, but it really misses the mark.
I'm a through and through liberal, I vote D in every race, I vote in primaries, etc. Some other comments here have gotten some good points in so I won't re-iterate them. Before all you tankies jump in and tell me that the entire point of the two party system is to capture dissent and manufacture consent and how the only point of the democratic party is to move the needle as little as possible while staying in power as often as possible, yes, obviously, we're all impressed that you went to college, now let's move on.
I'll tell you what Trump's appeal is:
Your second point is far more important than many people realize. I was born, raised, and now live in "flyover country", and I totally get the appeal of Trumpism to people here. The sense of abandonment is real and pervasive. It feels at times like we've been turned into a caricature, a punchline for city-dwellers on the coasts. Just a bunch of dumb, racist hicks whose opinions and agency don't matter because "LaND DoeSN't vOte", as though there aren't millions of us living here, many of us even (shockingly) in cities of our own. Those cities don't apparently don't matter though because they're not NY or LA.
The amount of hypocritical elitism I see from supposed leftists who turn their noses at desperate blue collar workers in the rust belt hurts my heart every time I see it. The right's biggest recruiting tool here is not the racism, or the homophobia, or the crazy batshit christo-fascism. It's the ever-present messaging that "the left doesn't want you". If you want to belong somewhere, join the Trump train. These people used to be the leftists in North America a century ago. Now it's all been beaten and ridiculed out of them, and all that's left is populist rage and a list of enemies who have "wronged" them. When I bring this up in leftist circles though, more often than not the response I get is some variant of "lmao fuck off". I am still a staunch leftist, but it's through gritted teeth that I stand by some of my coastal comrades.
The land doesn't vote thing is about disproportionate representation, that somehow your opinions matter more because you're from a state with less people, not that "we" dont consider you worthy of having a say. It's just frustrating that tens of millions (costal state) = hundreds of thousands/single digit millions (think: Dakotas) in terms of representation and therefore control of the Senate/Presidency.
They are more likely to objectify and exploit other people, to behave rudely and aggressively and to dismiss social and environmental impacts. They have little interest in cooperation or community. People with a strong set of extrinsic values are more likely to suffer from frustration, dissatisfaction, stress, anxiety, anger and compulsive behaviour.
So, half the country has antisocial personality disorders, basically.
Everyone has this hot take about why people support Trump. It's not rocket science and it definitely doesn't require a PHD to understand (lord know he doesn't have one and none of his supporters do either). It's very simple: America is a country where half of the population hates everybody who isn't a conservative heterosexual cisgendered white man. Sounds crazy. But it's the truth. Trump makes these people feel okay for carrying such hatred. That's it.
Except that's not the case at all. Reality isn't that simple and if you believe it is then you need to get out of your bubble and start listening to your left-wing allies in Trump country when they tell you what is going on.
Wow since when did Cracked start writing the truth.
While correct, the why is also very important. It's not always pure hatred of the other out of nowhere, it's propaganda outlets causing you to believe the things/people you aren't entirely comfortable with are the exact reason things are so bad in the country.
We have a gigantic propaganda problem that has no real solution as our 1st amendment (rightfully) protects our media even if they're completely antithetical to our continued survival as a nation... It's fucked up.
America is a country where half of the population hates everybody who isn't a conservative heterosexual cisgendered white man
… but doesn’t that beg the question, why half of America is like that? I wouldn’t find the answer “they just are” sufficient.
Modern conservatives believe poor people have it easier than rich people and the majority ethnicity and religion are oppressed by the minorities. They are comfortable and uninterested in learning, but believe they should be treated with the upmost respect and consideration.
The factors are:
Lack of empathy
Stupidity
Fear
Its not just a lack of empathy.
its a downright terrified fear of empathy.
Because they think giving a shit about their neighbor might make them liberal, or gay, or whatever other weird connection their fucked up driven-mad-by-fox-news-brain comes up with.
Same reason they are terrified of trans people, because they are terrified of being attracted to a trans person cause, in their head, that makes them gay, which comes with the fear of being treated like they've treated gay people.
Honestly, almost everything comes back towards a baseless, ignorant fear. Mostly fear of having done to them what they've done or wanted to do to others.
This writer almost gets there, but stops short of figuring it out. He cites the current British treatment of the homeless, including a £2500 fine for rough sleeping: presumably if they had £2500 to spare, they wouldn't be out on the streets.
I think it's because the current batch of Conservatives are not content with simply using their extrinsic values to shape policy, they also have to use the tools of Government to punish people who don't share their values. Look no further than all the Culture War nonsense in the US these days. Our Conservatives have turned their heartfelt belief that life begins at conception and are using it to punish those who don't believe that way. And they are openly hostile to LGBTQ+ people.
I think this study is more at the root of the issue:
"One explanation for this might be that conservatives see "loyalty" as an innate moral principle and liberals don't. There was a study that asked people to explain how they judged scenarios as right or wrong. It came to this conclusion:
Liberals have three principles by which they judge morality: care/harm, fairness/cheating, liberty/oppression
Conservatives have six principles by which they judge morality: care/harm, fairness/cheating, liberty/oppression, loyalty/betrayal, authority/subversion, sanctity/degradation.
This explains why it's hard for conservatives and liberals to have a debate about morality. Say the topic is flag burning. The conservative would say that burning a flag violates sanctity but a law against it violates liberty, so the principle of sanctity must be balanced against the principle of liberty. The liberal doesn't see sanctity as a moral principle so only sees the violation of liberty. The liberal can see no reason to ban flag burning and can't understand the conservative's reasoning. However, both can agree that murder is wrong because it harms people, and that rich and poor must obey the same traffic laws because of fairness.
These are two extreme examples, but if I understand the theory correctly moral reasoning exists on a spectrum. A question for those who believe they don't see sanctity as a moral principle at all: if your beloved dog died of natural causes, would you be comfortable serving its body as a meal? If you hesitated at all, you're at least slightly morally conservative.
Dead link now: https://www-bcf.usc.edu/~jessegra/papers/GrahamHaidtNosek.2009.Moral%20foundations%20of%20liberals%20and%20conservatives.JPSP.pdf
Possible alt: https://daverupert.com/2017/08/jonathan-haidt-the-moral-roots-of-liberals-and-conservatives/
More differences:
Agreed, but it seems that Trump's rise has coincided with a change to those 6 conservative values. Sanctity in particular seems to be drastically less important than it used to be, as vulgarity has been embraced by the right to an unprecedented degree. Gone are the days when Ned Flanders and David Brooks personified the typical conservative. Vulgarity, foul language, lack of church attendance, sexual impropriety, substance and gambling use, etc are all drastically more acceptable today than at any point in America's post-WWII history
Having said that, there still are elements of Sanctity that these conservatives care about - kneeling during the NFL's national anthem being one of them. But these occurrences seem to be increasingly uncommon
It’s easy, he positioned himself as a political outsider. He’s a fake populist, and the rubes voting for him fell for it hook, line, and sinker. Of course, in reality he’s a sociopathic loser.
You want to beat Trump in the biggest political ass whooping this country has ever seen? Let a real populist run against him, to enact meaningful progressive change to positively improve the lives of all Americans. Won’t happen because we’re held captive by other sociopathic dinosaurs and corporations all looking to line their pockets, but it’s certainly possible.
This isn't anything that hadn't been said before. What they are describing is shitty people and assholes. Folks have been saying that for awhile now.
We are not born with our values. They are shaped by the cues and responses we receive from other people and the prevailing mores of our society. They are also moulded by the political environment we inhabit. If people live under a cruel and grasping political system, they tend to normalise and internalise it, absorbing its dominant claims and translating them into extrinsic values. This, in turn, permits an even crueller and more grasping political system to develop.
If, by contrast, people live in a country in which no one becomes destitute, in which social norms are characterised by kindness, empathy, community and freedom from want and fear, their values are likely to shift towards the intrinsic end. This process is known as policy feedback, or the “‘values ratchet”. The values ratchet operates at the societal and the individual level: a strong set of extrinsic values often develops as a result of insecurity and unfulfilled needs. These extrinsic values then generate further insecurity and unfulfilled needs.
This is the actual interesting point here. Framing with some epiphany about "extrinsic" and "intrinsic" values is just putting a psychology-friendly label on things we've been saying since 2015.
On the other hand, I fully admit I thought that Trump being elected would backfire big on the GOP, and that America, seeing how awful he was and how readily GOP members of congress flipped on democracy and embraced fascism, would recoil. I thought after a horrible 4 years, the GOP would be done in the country. And at first, it was true. The "Muslim ban" and his other nonsense always triggered 5-10% drops in polls, which then recovered thanks to Fox News and other news orgs normalizing it. And then...it just stopped. It became fully normalized around 2018. After that, nothing impacted his polls.
Now we're staring down 2024 with Trump at all-time highs and the right-wing base is just getting worse and worse. Trump's supporters have abandoned their moral standards, abandoned actually testing their candidate (Trump) against any values they previously held. So now, I at least find that this explanation makes sense.
It's a nihilistic view of humanity - that people will just get worse and worse if people like Trump continues to be allowed to make the behavior "acceptable." - but at least it explains the data.
It's the normalisation that disturbs me the most, the gradual slide into what would once have been seen as abhorrent.
Show some of the headlines from just this last week to people in 2015 and I expect most would recoil in horror. The GoP's presumptive nominee openly using racist dog whistles; a court case where the judge warned jurors to never reveal their identify because of the fear of reprisal from the GoP nominee and his followers; the raw fact that he sexually molested a woman in the 90s; his instigation of civil war on the border in Texas... To name but a few.
All of this stands shoulder-to-shoulder with articles discussing his political prospects, his strategy to win over voters, how he is polling among white, middle-class women... as if he is in any way a normal candidate.
We need to take a step back, to think about what is happening here. Sadly, the very people who need to listen are the very people who can't listen, people for whom any negative discussion of this candidate would merely serve to strengthen the narrative and reinforce the reality they've conjured into being.
There would seem to be no way out of this situation that won't take decades, and which doesn't stand every chance of being derailed whenever an election goes the wrong way.
Some psychologists believe our values tend to cluster around certain poles, described as “intrinsic” and “extrinsic”. People with a strong set of intrinsic values are inclined towards empathy, intimacy and self-acceptance. They tend to be open to challenge and change, interested in universal rights and equality, and protective of other people and the living world.
People at the extrinsic end of the spectrum are more attracted to prestige, status, image, fame, power and wealth. They are strongly motivated by the prospect of individual reward and praise. They are more likely to objectify and exploit other people, to behave rudely and aggressively and to dismiss social and environmental impacts. They have little interest in cooperation or community. People with a strong set of extrinsic values are more likely to suffer from frustration, dissatisfaction, stress, anxiety, anger and compulsive behaviour.
Pretty garbage takes here: we have the good, properly motivated group that votes for good guys and the bad people who are attached to the superficial and illusions...
This would not be different from a conservative analyzing the left as motivated by prestige/status (proper virtue signaling as approved by academia/mass media) and material gain through democrat policies, while the right is motivated by reason and real values, true philosophy, etc. Something I think we've heard done...
Pathologizing your political opponents is absolutely never a good look whether left or right does it.
I will not say that there are aspects of the above that are not true, however, just as how some leftists are very performative and only concerned with appearing correct and receiving accolades from people they admire. But to really suggest the majority of Trump voters (which are conservatives in general) are not motivated by their own principles and visions is just demonizing your opponents.
This article strikes me as the typical dayjob of "intellectuals" - to explain to the masses why they are being fucked not because how the system is fucking them, but because for some fancy esoteric reason.
Trump embodies a new fascism and the neoliberal system reducing effective quality of life and prosperity and education and manipulative media and science denial have paved the way for it for many decades. But to look at those root causes, the justified anger and easy manipulation would mean pointing the finger at themselves and at their masters.
So their job becomes one of confusing people to distract from meaningful change. A lot of this simply has to do with material prospects, and when it gets too bad it opens the door for people who promise inequality in order to solve it.
Conservatives believe in a hierarchy and stratification of society.
They simply place themselves as the leaders and arbiters of that order based on their self-appointed superiority. They will always place themselves at the top of the totem pole.
Therefore, even if they were to completely acknowledge their failings (not a chance), their failings will never be reason to upset that order; but everyone else's failings, perceived or real, will be more than sufficient to be kept to the end of the totem pole stuck in the dirt.
It's somewhere in the balance of these three points.
Lead. Hypoxia. Carbon monoxide. Stroke. Hypertension. Frontotemporal dimentia.
Jfc, this is pathetic, but sadly reflective of the actual big picture it thinks it's giving - trump is a symptom. He is not the cause, he is not the single issue that we need to "beat", the system that enables him to exist is.
That same system that indoctrinates all of society in to capitalism and the systems of oppression it (and the likes of trump) relies on.
The same system this psychologist is conveniently ignoring to get their nonsense published as some sort of revelation, when in reality it is serving that very system by continuing to deepen the divide in the working class and blame those being manipulated instead of those in charge of the system based on manipulation.
Some people being able to break free from that indoctrination doesn't magically make those who don't [insert ableist slur/armchair diagnosis], it makes them victims of a scam. And you don't free them (and by extension yourself) by blaming them and pretending like if only they voted for the other puppet in the 4-yearly illusion of choice show all our problems would be solved, you free them by ending the fucking scam.
(to be clear - this doesn't mean you don't hold people accountable for their actions, but that you look at the big picture to gain some fucking perspective and understanding, and then hold people accountable for what they're actually responsible for, rather than everything that is wrong in the world and systems far beyond their control, and then pull a shocked pikach face when it doesn't work. No fucking shit sherlock..)
I thought we went over this in 2016 and the answer was "Economic Anxiety".
Trump's team realised how many racists exist in America when they saw how popular his birther campaign was. These people are overwhelmingly conservative.
The interesting thing about America is that it was founded on the idea that people are equal, religion has no place in politics and conservative rules were holding back the common man. They fled the monarchies of Europe to create a more egalitarian society but ended up creating a divided and racist society with a capitalist aristocracy.
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