You forgot greedy. Some voted for Trump out of greed. A corrupt regime willing to dole out favors for its friends is sufficient to explain support from those who have something to gain from the corruption.
OK, so what are we missing when we assume the reasons for people supporting Trump are authoritarianism, nativism, racism, irrational fears of things they have been told Democrats are going to do, and greed?
as usual, everything he says is either a lie or a half truth or otherwise wrong. There's no significant opposition among CO Republicans to the all mail in voting system, it doesn't disadvantage Republicans, the prison where Tina Peters is confined isn't "maximum security", she's not 73 years old (she's 70) and she was convicted by a jury of her peers for election tampering and bypassing safeguards put in place to prevent it.
People like him explain why there's a sentiment of awe with LLMs despite their hallucinatory nature. Those who are impressed don't know enough to know the LLMs get things wrong.
I'm literally responding to people expressing exasperation that anyone could be that stupid as to be/support MAGA. My response is to literally say "wait, actually, yes you can understand them". Which is surely an important step towards (somehow) either engaging with them or somehow dealing with them. You know. Politics. So I think you are wrong to say they are not worth understanding. They have a vote, collectively they have power and right now they're weilding it (to the great detriment of many). How is that not worth understanding??
I and, I think, many others here don't believe that. Not long ago in this very thread it was being pointed out that MAGA had considerable issues with learning that their beloved President might be a child rapist, that this might be the issue to shake (some proportion of them) loose from their mental affiliation with 'MAGA'.
That you and other leftwing people can summarise where MAGA is today in terms of all you hold unholy and wrong in the world (and not, I readily admit, without justification) doesn't mean you understand the WHY of they got there.
This is the question you've implicitly asked in your other thread, about even being able to have a conversation with a conservative today.
Yeah, past experience says that Republicans will just lie and say Dems care only for LGBTQ and the media will repeat that as gospel, regardless of what the Dems say or do.
Less that than turning the cognitive dissonance up to 13 and explaining to themselves that it wasn't really rape/sexual abuse because _______.
Trying to downplay social issues doesn't seem to work well. The right will hammer them over social issues that might not even be part of the platform, while people who care about those issues will see a party abandoning them on core ideology.
All you're doing is demonstrating in great detail why the effort involved in trying to deprogram MAGA isn't worth it. Bypass them directly and go for the non-voters, they're a much easier target and you don't need a huge number to turn the next elections around. Nearly a third of eligible voters chose not to vote last time, and there are a multitude of current examples of why "Vote this dangerous group out" impacting them on a daily basis that it's a no-brainer.
To address the second part first, I do agree that the Democrats have not played up Trump's venality enough. However I believe that was because of the "How DARE you call out racism/fascism and call a racist a racists" snit-fit the media and and the supposed wise centralist 'Third Way'|'No Labels' groups pulled. Which aided the right in their standard DARVO tactics.
I think the latter part of what you're saying is mistaken. Voters for Republicans are allowed to forget or ignore these issues when nobody or too small a number of people are pushing them into the spotlight. That's why I say do it all the time. Don't let them ignore it without making the conscious decision to do so. Sure they can ignore it then but if you make it only then, you deprive them of some fraction of their voters, and you persuade a larger number of the not-committed that they are the bad guys and promoting actual criminals as their political candidates.
You have to keep bringing it back. You have to say, sure, it's Trump being Trump, because at heart Trump is a criminal, a fraudster, and an abuser of women. And it's Republicans being Republicans because at heart Republicans see government not as an organization of by and for the people, but as an instrument for securing their power over the people and ripping them off. Everything else they say and do is in pursuit of those goals.
IDK, in a same world, this could be used to convince Republican voters to drive Republican politicians into the sea. I mean, they have told us about family values for so long that this should be able to get more than "Republican voters staying home", even if they aren't going to elect Democrats, we shouldn't be satisfied with anything less than a changing of the guard on the Republican side of the aisle.
The day after the 2016 election I told someone it felt like we failed a national character test.
If the subject comes up, I just say we've all known he abuses women for years. Now we just know a lot more, and it extends to children. But voting for him in 2016 for me wasn't at all political, because it didn't get that far. He disqualified himself by failing to meet the lowest bar of morality.
Kick the can down the road just like TikTok's US-fragmentation agreement being suspended for all of 2025 until it's profitable for someone (or the dirt is worth being dumped on someone else)? Laws don't really matter anymore...
I didn't vote for him, ever, but back in 2016, I thought well maybe a change is good. But we all saw, he just kept lowering the bar. Till now.
I think there are folks who may believe "It can't get any worse. I can't afford health insurance for my family, or I have to get payday loans, etc."
Donald Trump is the most quintessentially American person that’s ever become President of the United States, so yes.
