It also didn’t help that the Fox propaganda machine launched during the Clinton presidency, and had twenty years to vilify Hillary Clinton. I understand people being republicans and voting republican all their lives because their parents did (god knows I see enough of these people), and I understand people not liking Hillary Clinton. But Fox propaganda made a lot of people think of her as demonic, pure evil. It was easy for those people to vote for the ‘non evil’ option.
Let’s not forget the celebrity factor. Loads of folks went to those rallies just to see someone famous.
True. And the shitty reality show played up Trump, like he was some sort of super shrewd businessman, rather than the incompetent buffoon of reality. A LOT of people voted for him based on that fake image. I know a lot of those people (people I see at work, for example) have been disillusioned on that point.
No more than 20 more threads – 30 tops – and I think we’ve got this one figured out.
A lot of folks didn’t think she was a decent person. I thought she was lousy. I just knew Trump would be much, much worse.
Don’t forget No Country.
“We’ll look into it.”
This. We mostly don’t decide on things like this. We just narrate what our “gut feelings” told us to do, and try to fool ourselves that it was a conscious and logical choice.
Regarding people on disability - I have a friend who lives in a rural area in a flyover state with a high percentage of people on disability. I asked him that specific question - why are these people voting for Trump/Republicans when they themselves survive through government disability payments.
He has talked to many of them. The general theme is that each thinks that they and their family members are legitimate, but all those other people are welfare queens/fraudsters who need to get a job.
The cognitive dissonance is unreal with these people. I have witnessed it first hand myself - I grew up in that type of area (even though I no longer live in such an area).
(emphasis added by me)
And that’s a good example of why all the claims that Trump voters are not racist just go straight down the crapper. Sure, the people SlyFrog’s friend talked to didn’t overtly express racial hatred or superiority, but really, how else do you explain that statement? It’s not cognitive dissonance for the sake of cognitive dissonance; it’s disregarding facts and believing lies b/c they feed into pre-established stereotypes about who’s a “good American” and and who’s not, based at least in part on race.
And to kneecap the whole semantic argument about what really counts as racism, let’s just put it this way: the attitude expressed by the people SlyFrog’s friend talked to has a strong racial component, with racial ignorance, racial stereotypes, etc.
And that’s just an inherent, unavoidable part of the answer to “Why the hell did these people vote for Trump?” – b/c they have, at least in part, racist attitudes. Period.
It’s the flip side to the whole concept of proportionality that I was talking about last year: the group we are discussing may not be full blown Illinois Nazis (although some are), but to act as if there no component of racism to their behavior is just willful denial and disregard of reality.
#1 answer before the mid-terms – his supporters think his tax cuts are making them richer
To be fair, it’s not just about race (although these people are undeniably racist). They do the same thing to people in their own community (which is like 99% white).
Again, I grew up in that type of community myself. Even back then, people were always obsessed with who was “on the system,” immediately followed by a diagnosis that they didn’t need to be because just last week I saw him walk into the hardware store and he seemed perfectly fine to me, blah blah blah.
It really is a weird cultural thing where everyone out there on the system is a deadbeat, except of course for the person saying it, because he really has that thing with his back that he got at the factory 20 years back that keeps him from working.
I did not say this is “just” about race. I said there is a racial component.
Our whole weird way of viewing racism in this country is part of the problem. On the right, there is a view that the term “racist” only applies to people who are essentially full blown Nazi-style white supremacists and no one else.
But it’s clearly evident that for a big chunk of Trump voters, there is a racial component to their voting/attitudes. And that racial component helps explain why they would vote in such a foolish and wrong headed way.
I’m curious, SlyFrog, how did you read my post and then somehow think I was saying it was “just” about race? I was pretty clear about the whole “racial component” thing.
I would reverse it - I’m not sure how you read my post and decided there was a racial component to it that was the sole thing you really talked about. I understand you may not have been talking “just” about race, but that was in fact the only thing you talked about, in response to a post that had nothing to do with it. My post was about disability claims in rural areas (and the Trump vote), and from it you decided to talk about a racial issue for some reason. Which is fine, but I think is pretty misguided on the particular issue I was discussing. I think that racism has very little to do with rural Americans on disability. It just felt like you tried to shoehorn it in, presumably because race it is a hot button thing for you (I don’t know, I’m just speculating - I don’t follow your postings).
I think I’m just going to stick with “And that’s just an inherent, unavoidable part of the answer to “Why the hell did these people vote for Trump?” – b/c they have, at least in part, racist attitudes. Period.” as my view here.
You mean the complete absence of cognitive dissonance. If they were smart enough to experience cognitive dissonance they might actually vote differently.
I do agree with that. Many of them vote for Trump, in part, because they have racist attitudes.
I even personally know a Trump supporter who has told me that Trump allows people to say what they’ve know is right, but that no one was allowed to say anymore. He was just so frustrated about having to pretend that things were different than they really are. It was clear he was talking about racial matters, and that he can now talk about brown people and shit hole countries.
Hah. That’s probably correct. They should be paralyzed by the cognitive dissonance between their political views and their actual reality, but it does not seem to bother them in the slightest. It’s absolutely bizarre to me.
Like I’ve said before: dumb people don’t know they’re dumb. They think they’re smart. This causes a lot of problems.
There is admittedly a lot of Dunning-Kruger going on with these people. They are also fed a diet of it by their media - lots of bloviating about the common sense of the average person in the heartland, how they’re simple folks but they know better than the elite, etc. Essentially your basic pickup truck commercial/Dr. Phil homespun wisdom bullshit. When you are uneducated, the solution to preserve your ego is to actually turn education into a negative, and to believe you have some special common sense insight into things that the “educated types” don’t have. So rather than “people who have actually studied the issues and know better,” you get “a bunch of pointy headed idiots from Washington,” “Drain the swamp,” etc.
That, in itself, is part of how Trump got elected. What frustrates a lot of educated people about Trump (his very clearly not liking to read, study, or think deeply about anything, but instead just go with his gut and blather exactly what is at the top of his head at the moment) is very much a positive for these people. Because it’s how they live their own lives.
That’s right-wing authoritarian thinkers for you, aka the Republican base:
They are highly submissive to established authority, aggressive in the name of that authority and conventional to the point of insisting everyone should behave as their authorities decide. They are fearful and self-righteous and have a lot of hostility in them that they readily direct toward various out-groups. They are easily incited, easily led, rather un-inclined to think for themselves, largely impervious to facts and reason and rely instead on social support to maintain their beliefs. They bring strong loyalty to their in-groups, have thick-walled, highly compartmentalized minds, use a lot of double standards in their judgments, are surprisingly unprincipled at times and are often hypocrites.