US Politics Thread

[KS55]

The amazing ignorance is widespread. Blame the dems for a poor campaign. They didn’t actually warn anybody.

 

[Vic]

Even more own pick-up trucks.

I don’t think of Trump’s voters’ selection of him as a striving of his support base for the nation to be better off — I look at it as a pool of people who aren’t where they perceive others are financially, believe a certain subset of people/politicians are exclusively to blame (not themselves), and see Trump as their angel of retribution who won’t necessarily restore their own glory, but will make the perpetrators of his voters’ unhappiness suffer.

Socially, they’ve been brought up in and grounded themselves in a socio-religious construct which the left has deemed morally-wanting — anti-DEI, anti-immigrant, anti-abortion rights, anti-LGTBQ wide-scale rights and acceptance. It’s okay to be black, foreign, childless and gay as long as they know you personally and you’ve been deemed acceptable company — that you “fit in.” But not as a class — only individuals. As such, they don’t just feel looked down upon, but perceive that they’ve been told their beliefs are “wrong” morally. That raises hackles.

It doesn’t help the rest of us that, despite the vast majority of Trump supporters like being conservative but not extreme, that the vast majority of the GOP — Trump included — has often hemmed and hawed about the support of extremists for fear of offending them. Imagine not wanting to offend the KKK.

Anyhow, even those who @Username Required mentioned — his friends and neighbors — focus on these aspects, and they don’t sound anything like poor or destitute or bigoted or desperately yearning for a better life. Their primary motivations are fear-based, as he noted. And it’s 100% addition by subtraction — a zero sum game. Nearly every plank of the GOP’s platform has “others suffering” as a component. Read it. I did.

Thanks for the reply. I'm not sure where the GOP platform is to read. Is there a "manifesto" as such? I can't imagine how most of what Trump says could easily be written as a cogent policy!

Have I understood the bit about what raises hackles? That people who criticise the morality of abortion, being gay, or of immigration, or of equality legislation (equality at the heart of the constitution), have their hackles raised by liberals advocating more liberal morality?

What I can't get my head round is that the aspirational mindset - anyone can by merit have a good and prosperous life - has a corollary, that it must be my fault if I'm not prosperous. Teleevangelists preaching a prosperity gospel (faith rewarded with prosperity) compound that (and with the implication that "others suffering" is their fault).

 

[BlueHammer85]

The amazing ignorance is widespread. Blame the dems for a poor campaign. They didn’t actually warn anybody.

Sure they did in plenty and it would make zero difference- half of Americans want to ‘own the libs’ and make America Great Again. There was no getting through.