US Politics Thread

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grunge said:
Your guess is good as mine. but they both think he's some sort of rockstar politician fighting the establishment and can do no wrong. One of them is even buying MAGA merchandise.
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I know several people in Manchester and one in Birmingham that are also “diehard” Trump supporters. Only one of them has ever even visited the US, much less lived here. And they all fervently backed Brexit and will still not acknowledge they were sold a false bill of goods now (and that’s despite one of their businesses being absolutely destroyed by it).

I actually understand why people in the UK care about the US election, as it will have a significant impact on the UK due to outsized influence the US has on both our economy/culture and on our biggest trading partners (that’s not even factoring in geopolitical implications). Individual livelihoods and wellbeing could be genuinely impacted depending on who is voted in to the presidency, not only in the short-term, but also in the long-term.

But I still cannot understand why any rational, ethical, and compassionate person could support Donald Trump at this point.

I mean, he is now literally parasphrasing Hitler and Stalin at his rallies and in his interviews.
 
I suppose it gets to the point with some people where they become obsessive and almost radicalised in their political views by their own self affirming online activities. If you surround yourself with virtual noise that constantly confirms your views and 'others' those that don't conform then who knows how bonkers it can get......
 
grunge said:
Not wanting to derail the thread but this explains a lot about how this stuff happens.

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A great primer on what @threespires and I have tried to explain as to why the false “both sides” paradigm is so destructive: repeated exposure to views can be enough to establish perceived validity or merit of those views, especially if the exposure is coming via otherwise trusted sources, even if you should be able to actively discern those views to not be valid or have any merit in reality. Focusing only on “echo chamber” theory is incomplete and dangerous in of itself. When you continually platform views or assertions that objectively lack validity or merit alongside views or assertions that do objectively have validity and merit, you are slowly creating a base of respectability and potential “truth” to the views and assertions that in reality have no validity or merit.

Great channel in general, I might add.

Reminded of these (now older but still insightful) analyses of Trump from another great channel:









It is basically an indirect review of the Roy Cohn playbook.
 
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Mazzarelli's Swiss Cheese said:
What is the actual point of being a trump supporter in the UK (or a Harris one for that matter I suppose)?
I find myself 'siding' with Harris because I think her approach to the middle east is likely to be more temperate in terms of support for Israel than trump - therefore less likely to have a gulf oil crisis and the ensuing global economic shock. In general terms though I find the us election interesting as a spectacle but whoever wins won't make a difference to my life in the UK
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I see it as bring the most significant election for America and the world in my lifetime.
 
Mazzarelli's Swiss Cheese said:
What is the actual point of being a trump supporter in the UK (or a Harris one for that matter I suppose)?
I find myself 'siding' with Harris because I think her approach to the middle east is likely to be more temperate in terms of support for Israel than trump - therefore less likely to have a gulf oil crisis and the ensuing global economic shock. In general terms though I find the us election interesting as a spectacle but whoever wins won't make a difference to my life in the UK
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If the leading Western democracy descends into Trumpian chaos and autocracy, your life will never be the same again. The rules based international order will disappear. I don’t fancy Putin and his successors becoming the most powerful faction in Europe.
 
SebastianBlue said:
I know several people in Manchester and one in Birmingham that are also “diehard” Trump supporters. Only one of them has ever even visited the US, much less lived here. And they all fervently backed Brexit and will still not acknowledge they were sold a false bill of goods now (and that’s despite one of their businesses being absolutely destroyed by it).

I actually understand why people in the UK care about the US election, as it will have a significant impact on the UK due to outsized influence the US has on both our economy/culture and on our biggest trading partners (that’s not even factoring in geopolitical implications). Individual livelihoods and wellbeing could be genuinely impacted depending on who is voted in to the presidency, not only in the short-term, but also in the long-term.

But I still cannot understand why any rational, ethical, and compassionate person could support Donald Trump at this point.

I mean, he is now literally parasphrasing Hitler and Stalin at his rallies and in his interviews.
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The isolationist attitudes of Maga are part of the reason for Trump’s support. Many of those people simply do not support an international order or see the need for it. Maybe they don’t understand it.
 
KS55 said:
If the leading Western democracy descends into Trumpian chaos and autocracy, your life will never be the same again. The rules based international order will disappear. I don’t fancy Putin and his successors becoming the most powerful faction in Europe.
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I understand your concern, but we've already lived through it once and tbh it impacted me and people I know much less than Lizz truss did in a week or two.
Barring him starting ww3 or contriving to push up the price of oil (something I do worry he will do actually) I honestly don't think little old blighty has too much to worry about. We have political clowns aplenty of our own.
 
Mazzarelli's Swiss Cheese said:
I understand your concern, but we've already lived through it once and tbh it impacted me and people I know much less than Lizz truss did in a week or two.
Barring him starting ww3 or contriving to push up the price of oil (something I do worry he will do actually) I honestly don't think little old blighty has too much to worry about. We have political clowns aplenty of our own.
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In the 1930s there were plenty saying the same.
 
KS55 said:
In the 1930s there were plenty saying the same.
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Indeed. Or even advocating for the virtues of Hitler and Nazism, as we see on here for Trump and MAGAism.

The Daily Mail was once the country’s highest selling newspaper, but owner Lord Rothermere was more concerned with ‘Bolshevik troublemakers’ than an impending genocide​


LONDON — When Adolf Hitler entered the Reich Chancellery on January 30, 1933, the cheers of the Nazi stormtroopers in Berlin were echoed in Northcliffe House, the home of Britain’s then highest-selling newspaper.

The Daily Mail was not the only national daily to adopt an overly tolerant attitude towards Hitler during the 1930s, a position which reflected widespread public support for the government’s appeasement policy.

But it went far further than any other newspaper in sympathizing with the Nazis and it did so at the insistence of its overweening proprietor, Harold Harmsworth, the first Viscount Rothermere.

Lord Rothermere was a staunch admirer of Hitler and Mussolini, who also briefly flirted with fascism in Britain. Born 150 years ago this summer, Rothermere was also, alongside Lord Beaverbrook, the most powerful press baron during the interwar years.

As historian Piers Brendon has suggested, the two were “mad, bad, dangerous-to-know beasts in the newspaper jungle who did what they wanted.”

 
KS55 said:
The isolationist attitudes of Maga are part of the reason for Trump’s support. Many of those people simply do not support an international order or see the need for it. Maybe they don’t understand it.
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That is definitely an aspect of it. But then, I wouldn’t classify those people as especially “rational”, either.

I would also say that many either lack the knowledge, the interest, or the capacity to understand how Trump’s first presidency negatively impacted their lives, and how the second presidency will be very different even to that, with much more draconian and totalitarian policies and actions (particularly if MAGA takes both chambers of congress), and even more negatively impactful, both in the short- and long-term.
 
KS55 said:
The isolationist attitudes of Maga are part of the reason for Trump’s support. Many of those people simply do not support an international order or see the need for it. Maybe they don’t understand it.
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I think a lot of people would support such a thing - preferably the UN.
 
KS55 said:
The isolationist attitudes of Maga are part of the reason for Trump’s support. Many of those people simply do not support an international order or see the need for it. Maybe they don’t understand it.
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And I would argue it isn't. MAGA has a ton of military adherents, just as an example.

Here's how it worked, IMO: Russia invades Ukraine. Democrats hold the Presidency. President acts as most Presidents (all, save Trump, whose balls Putin owns) would and supports Ukraine. GOP agenda is "own the libs" -- i.e. oppose literally every single thing they say and do, no matter how rational or innocuous, and try to make them angry, which is our revenge for them saying our ideology isn't just wrong, and isn't just stupid, but is morally-inferior to theirs.

Ergo, platform becomes "isolationist", "you're spending hurricane relief money on Ukraine", "it's Zelensky's fault they got invaded", etc. etc.

When you look at every single platform plank and comment through the "own the libs" lens, it's much easier to make sense of MAGA. It's nearly always right.
 
I quite like this clip. Apart from showing how much the Republican party has changed, I can't imagine we'll see this sort of genuine exchange in politics again.

Which is a shame. It's all answering questions with another question, vitriol and dishonesty nowadays, and has been for some time.

 
FogBlueInSanFran said:
And I would argue it isn't. MAGA has a ton of military adherents, just as an example.

Here's how it worked, IMO: Russia invades Ukraine. Democrats hold the Presidency. President acts as most Presidents (all, save Trump, whose balls Putin owns) would and supports Ukraine. GOP agenda is "own the libs" -- i.e. oppose literally every single thing they say and do, no matter how rational or innocuous, and try to make them angry, which is our revenge for them saying our ideology isn't just wrong, and isn't just stupid, but is morally-inferior to theirs.

Ergo, platform becomes "isolationist", "you're spending hurricane relief money on Ukraine", "it's Zelensky's fault they got invaded", etc. etc.

When you look at every single platform plank and comment through the "own the libs" lens, it's much easier to make sense of MAGA. It's nearly always right.
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Maybe.
 
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