Racism. Christian extremism. Both not exclusive to themselves. Both have felt ignored and feed on the the thoughts of being victims due to their “unpopular” beliefs. There is much more to this subject but this is the best I can simplify it.
It’s essentially these two things. And it’s easy to see from any political map that these divides line up really well along rural vs urban areas. People who live in cities have learned how to live together and tolerate each other (even if they don’t necessarily like each other). People in rural areas think of themselves as the ‘backbone’ of the country because or our early agrarian and later industrial development as a country. And in many ways, they really were. Farmers, miners, factory workers, etc.
But time has left them behind with factory farms, overseas production, robot factories, renewable energy, etc. They blame “the other” for their problems. The “other” or “the enemy” in their minds is often “big city” people with darker skin, or “academic pinheads” or “government bureaucrats” or basically anyone but themselves. To them, hearing news about something like climate change or same sex marriage is an “attack on their way of life and traditional values”. They haven’t learned how to adapt or take proper stock of their situation. They only know how to lash out at “the other”.
If rural people would calm the fuck down and gain some perspective, they could see that they have a lot in common with working people in urban areas. For example, we’re all being fucked over by greedy corporations and a tiny number of people with way too much money and power. But those same powerful elites do a masterful job of pitting all of us working class slobs against each other. This both amuses them and keeps us divided so we don’t build the guillotines. The country being ever on the brink of civil war is very much intentional.
And of course there are guys like Steve Bannon, who is like a comic book villain. Guys like that really do want to see it all burn to the ground so it can be rebooted in some fantasy world where “bitter old white males like me rule again”.
I’m interested to see if this rural/urban divide is going to shift in the future. With the ballooning cost of real estate and the rise of remote work, a lot of urban liberals are moving to more rural areas.
There’s certainly a group of people that enjoy city life, but a lot of people (myself included) just want some peace and quiet and only lived in or near cities to be close to work.
Small towns, small minds.
Don’t underestimate the sexism (particularly gamergate 4chan incels).
A large amount of angry, angry disillusioned people. I’m culturally close enough to understand a bit, if not 100% of it. There’s been a lot of cultural change really fast in the West, and increasingly bad economic conditions for the poor, rural and/or uneducated at the same time. As a result, a bubble of people who are completely reactionary and want to tear down the establishment has formed. Trump just managed to mobilize them.
The part I don’t really get is the appeal of the guy himself. It’s like they want to inflict him on the people they’re angry at, as if he’s a weapon and not a leader who will be in charge of them.
Yeah, lot of bitterness from perceived left wing elitism that they feel derided them and marginalized them, Trump is not a political platform, it’s just resentment.
As fascism always is.
They could have picked someone who’s not transparently a crayon-eating moron, though…
I don’t think fascism is capable of producing competent longterm leadership. Like the ideology preselects for loyalty above all, it’s rabidly anti-intellectual and scorns anyone perceived as being an intellectual elitist. It’s purely emotion driven and requires ever escalating emotional rhetoric to keep the based angry at external all-powerfully weak enemies (lazy mexicans stealing your jobs, sneaky jewish bankers crashed the entire economy, thuggish high school dropout gangbangers in the inner city are criminal masterminds responsible for all the drugs flowing through rural communities who would overrun everything if they were smart enough to unify, take your pick of contradictory scapegoat.)
That’s not to say incompetence means harmlessness, there’s a lot of blood that has been spilled throughout history due to incompetence.
Well, they certainly got straight to the point this time. The last time it took a world war before they really started to shit the bed. I’m grateful, if confused.
Well… were not on the other side of this yet. Were still in the sort of early 1930s Germany era where the real problems people face haven’t gotten all that much better, and the fascists have made many decently successful smaller attempts at power but haven’t quite succeeded in that big push for power. like the stuff that is planned in project 2025.
Yes, fingers crossed Kamala wins and we get another 4 years, at least (us in the rest of the world included).
Considering that both Mussolini and Hitler were also incompetent fucking morons, it’s no surprise that modern fascists also pick leaders like them.
They’re sending their best.
Trump represents modern conservatism, but he himself? I’m not sure he actually stands for a whole lot beyond his own orange bubble.
He’s mostly a blank slate (philosophically and intellectually) that the people around him can use to get their agendas enacted. He surrounds himself with sycophants and bootlickers, so as long as they promise him wealth and power, he is content to parrot the talking points he’s given.
Steven Miller, Steve Bannon, Alex Jones, and all the others…those are the real evil motherfuckers. When Trump is out of the picture, they’ll find some other half-wit to puppet. The fight won’t end when one figurehead fades in to history.
idk, just one dude’s thoughts.
(Just to be clear, none of that absolves him of the real damage he’s done. Malicious indifference is still malicious.)
I suspect one of them would directly take his place, actually. Trump is kind of an anomaly in not having redeeming qualities himself, if you look around the world and through history.
They were absolute geniuses compared to Trump, and put on a far more convincing show of honesty - particularly Hitler, with his faux-compassionate warmups and vegetarianism. Mussolini had an actual career as an intellectual before he was famous. Hitler sounds kind of intellectually average.
Mussolini had an actual career as an intellectual
Well, he certainly considered himself to be an intellectual. Whether he actually was one is another matter entirely
He made an actual living as a newspaper editor, and got some good reviews according to Wikipedia, so apparently he convinced other people too. At the very least, he could pass.
They do. They can’t lash out directly, so they are him as a legal way to do so indirectly.
They have to know it’s them next, right? I mean, clearly not, but that’s where I can’t mentally “be” them anymore. The rest is relatable, if mean.
people are realizing that the American dream was a lie and they don’t want to believe that the people they voted for all along are the ones who caused it
It’s called the American dream, because you’d have to be asleep to believe it.
Hello, fellow Carlin-ist.
It’s a big club, and you ain’t in it…or, you are in it if we’re talking about carlinists as a club.
The Carlinist club has no member status in the America club, unfortunately.
no, if you were a white middle class boomer born between 1945 & 1970ish who managed not to go to vietnam, you got to live the American dream. then we methodically voted for the people who stripped away all of the policies that made it possible
Hey, my boomer dad got to be a slave soldier AND live the dream.
Because his dad was a dentist and he could afford to pay for college after Uncle Sam, it turns out, got him shot twice, blown up once, and gave him leukemia.
But at least Vietnam doesn’t have universal healthcare.
actually 87% of the Vietnamese population are covered by social health insurance (as of 2018)
I know, I’m referring to the fact that all that got done to him to defend a fascist state against Big Scary Communist Ho Chi Minh who actually wanted to be a US Ally against Chinese influence in Asia.
And then they didn’t even fucking win. Which was probably good, but still.
The funny thing is it used to kind of work for a lot of small businesses and poor people in general. It sucked but you could do it. Only true visionaries like hunter s Thompson and Carlin really understood that the system was rotten before it all started to fall apart.
The far right have been stoking hate and resentment for decades. But before Trump they always tried to maintain an air of respectability as well as plausible deniability. Then came Trump and threw all that out of the window. Also he has a talent to spout any nonsense with utter conviction. That is perceived as authenticity by the people who feel left out by the political process and that are simply too dumb to understand any nuanced discussion.
After reading of what you wrote reminds me of Hitler when we learned in grade school. So if he gets elected American’s a pretty fucked.?
Have a gander at project 2025 if you want to know what that future looks like.
I and hate to admit it have read it all. And I never thought I would say it but one book made me feel unclean, dirty, and really question America so much I may find work elsewhere.
Yep, he’s literally Hitler, just without the mass genocide (yet).
We’ve always wondered how so many people followed Hitler, now we know
There is plenty of genocide, war, and all that. It’s just done at a sustainable pace and mostly in places that don’t look like US soil. Hitler rushed and got a reaction. This time it’s going to be worse.
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Anti-federalism – Deep rooted distrust of the Federal Government has been around since the dawn of the USA, though its often been part of the minority.
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Know Nothing / Native American Party – 1850s era movement. Protectionist, isolationist, nativist. Originally they popped up as anti-Irish and anti-Catholic, but overall the concept is that immigrants suck. The modern concept is: “I know nothing”, about the movement. The overall idea is that even in the 1800s, it was bad to look like a racist bigot, so you’d keep your support for these causes secret. Everyone in the party knows that “the Know Nothings are larger than everyone expects”, but no one really knows how big the movement is. And that’s the point.
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America First – 1930s saw the rise of Fascism vs Communism in Europe with the dawn of the Spanish civil war. The “America First” movement focused on isolationism and even pro-German / Nazi slant mixed with religious fervor. This was pushed by tech-gurus of the time: Charles Lindberg (airplane entrepreneur, first Trans-atlantic flight, etc. etc.), and the Christian Front. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1939_Nazi_rally_at_Madison_Square_Garden).
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NAFTA – 1990s free-trade by Bill Clinton opened up Mexico and Canada as incredible trading partners. However, local industry / local steel lost out as companies started to shop in Mexico for material. As Bill Clinton was a huge pusher of NAFTA, the anti-NAFTA political group consolidated under Republicans. This is likely where the bulk of blue-collar workers is coming from, especially because Trump started adding Tariffs / anti-globalism concepts back to the forefront of American Politics.
Some more recent context:
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Trump has been building his brand for decades as a very rich, very macho straight-talker. Even in the 80s and earlier, there’s a large number of Hotels, Casinos, Resorts, Golf Courses (etc. etc.) that have relatively high reputation among Americans in general with Trump’s name.
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Trump reads from the teleprompter in “another voice”, openly showing his disdain for public speaking and the political system. Anyone who has lost faith in the political system loves this. Trump pretends that the teleprompter is forcing him to talk and its all just a “through the motions” thing. Then Trump obviously goes off teleprompter and talks about different concepts, the “real stuff”. (Or so goes his branding). This simple trick is enough to get the gist to his followers: don’t listen to what I say (because I’m being forced to say this politically correct crap). This means that Trump’s true actions are only limited to the imagination of the listener.
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Trump is playing and leaning into the borne again Christian role. From a religious perspective, the “former enemy / former outsider” coming into religion is a common story and religious love it. Trump was openly a Democrat in the 90s / 00s before switching into Republicanism.
The “bulk” of Trump’s political style is Know Nothing + Macho + anti-political correctness.
I would add the admittance of China to the WTO as another proximate cause. And one which probably had more of a material effect than NAFTA; but, NAFTA had already become a GOP talking point and it just stuck. China’s entry to the WTO was also moved over the finish line by Bush II, though most of the ground work was laid by Clinton. So, it wouldn’t have had the same clean narrative as NAFTA. US Employment in manufacturing went into freefall in late 2000 and early 2001. This was also during a recession, so that is intermixed with the effects of those changes in international trade. But, even as the recession receded and the US entered an economic boom, leading up to the 2008 crash, manufacturing employment in the US either held steady or decreased slightly. It’s unsurprising that the same period saw a lot of offshoring of manufacturing to China. And this was also the period of Neoliberal economists pushing “comparative advantage” and how the US losing all those manufacturing jobs was a good thing.
So it’s not surprising then that they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.
– Barack Obama, 2008
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See, all the really open minded citizens in America were just so happy when the country elected a black guy as president that they just had to go out and share that joy with the rest of the world!
He basically told all the racists, homophobes, transphobes, xenophobes, and anyone else who feels they’re entitled to more than anyone else that they were right and they don’t need to maintain any air of dignity or even basic human compassion about it anymore.
Look at that list and you’ll see it’s all people who base their whole identity around hatred of things they’re afraid of or don’t understand. That’s what he tapped into, ignorance and fear.
Fear and lies.
Half the population is below average IQ and will listen to whoever screams the loudest. That’s a gross simplification but basically what’s going on. People with low IQ do not have logical reasoning.
My thinking is this:
- 1/3 of people are actually stupid
- 1/3 of people are good
- 1/3 of people are evil
Trump taps into dumb and evil.
Besides coming across as iamverysmart, that doesn’t match the actual demographics. Somehow, low-IQ people are all born poor, white, male and decades ago? You could make the argument for the tendency to be uneducated, but even that’s not a perfect correlation with raw intelligence.
I’m not sure what your argument is. I’m not saying all dumb people are poor. Absolutely not the case. There are plenty of absolute morons who are rich that support Trump. I literally never made any correlation claims about wealth?
Also I’m not talking about myself at all so idk why you took this as me saying i am very smart? Weird take…
Most Trump supporters are white, old, uneducated, male and/or poor. If Trump supporters are all dumb, there must be a strong correlation between these things and being dumb, statistically speaking.
In fact, Trump supporters may skew a little less intelligent, but there’s also plenty that are smart. (And I won’t even get into the validity of IQ as a valid measure of intelligence)
If you read my original comment, I said it was a gross simplification. I know how nuanced this is.
A simplification has to resemble the whole truth, don’t try to play like you didn’t mean it.
I didn’t say I didn’t mean it. Dang you’re really on some laser focused griefing today aren’t you
As long as you only get the opinions of people who don’t support Trump, you’ll never understand this.
How do you mean?
I get that you’re implying that people who don’t support Trump can’t know what goes on in a Trump supporters head or understand the movement (not true).
But if you can’t explain it yourself then you simply can’t know what you’re talking about, you don’t even understand what it is that they’ll never understand! How would you be able to know if they are able to understand or not!?
No, people who don’t support Trump are perfectly capable of understanding Trump supporters’ reasons.
It’s just that they don’t, and don’t try to either.
Yeah, but you haven’t explained it either in two posts now which says to me that you don’t know and you’re just being contrarian.
I’m not a Trump supporter
Right, so all that means is you don’t know what trump tapped into and think that means no one else can.
There’s always been a sort of background radiation of this. Decades ago Rush Limbaugh was prolific in inspiring a weird new direction of fashy talk radio shows and Fox capitalized on it like no other. Trump didn’t do it, he just rode the surf.
Among other factors, I think humans have a certain instinctive drive: when there’s a broad sense of social malaise—when lots of people feel there’s something wrong with their social institutions, but there’s no consensus on how to remedy it—they gravitate toward whatever thing the social establishment seems most afraid of, because in our deep history that’s been an effective way to break out of dangerous institutional stasis.
Depending on the social establishment at the time, that anti-establishment movement could take many forms—religious, ideological, nationalistic, etc. So I think Trumpism is an inevitable reaction to the rise of the neoliberal establishment under Clinton and the Bushes: the underlying cause of the neoliberal malaise is economic, but the most visible social anxieties are over racism, sexism, and other social factors. So that creates a feedback loop of growing fear that attracts those feeling a general sense of discontent.
Vast inequality in a society built upon a white supremacist/patriarchal power structure.
any way to destroy the structure?
I’m stuck on the convincing people it exists step—too much of an asshole to be an ambassador I guess. Fight for public schools, and access to healthcare, and the arts. No better tools than health, knowledge, and a shared language of empathy. Embrace every opportunity to put self-sufficiency back in the hands normal people instead of further consolidating under the control of rich white fucks. Even if it costs you something, or if you won’t see the benefits right now. Buy local. Try and keep those profiting from your labor within metaphorical punching distance, should they ever need a metaphorical pop. Show up for local elections, run in local elections if you have a soul. If you care and are willing to learn you will be a godsend to some of your local boards.
The more the ruling elite have, the more they rig the system for themselves, the more the way to squeak up or cling to a rung on the ladder of prosperity is to emulate them, the more a narrative of superiority calcifies, the more stratified and shit people become. Trump tells them that’s fine, the truth is what feels the most comfortable. Not to think critically about how we got here because for his ilk the system is lining the pockets intended. Tells them to stop doing the painful work of looking within and pulling up any pernicious roots they might have grown out of; that it is okay to close their eyes to any consequences and causation if it makes them uneasy. Rural places more vulnerable to Trump’s rhetoric are more than capital poor. There’s nothing there to shake up these narratives before they harden and he’s telling them that’s not a tragedy, but cause for celebration.
LOL not laughing at you but you remind me of one of my brothers who currently sits on the city council in our home town. And he uses there own speech/weapons against them since they are all pro douchebag except my brother. When they wanted to ban books he showed up reading one while they talked and when they came to him to place his vote he said oh I am sorry I was reading a banned book and then read it allowed until his time passed and since it required all of them to vote he abstained by just reading outloud from a book that would get banned. He read the whole thing whitch took an hour until the rest got pissed off and gave up. We don’t know where he gets it from or how the hell he was elected but he is a huge smartass. So in our county no books got banned because of him. He still pisses them off by putting is feet up on the table so much they had to do a ruling about it. I think at some point in his life he read a handbook of polotics or something and uses the grey area pretty much to his own free will. Thats enough for now…I appreciate you writing all that out and it was very inciteful…no sarcasm.
It’s hard to influence anyone to “destroy the structure”, they think they need it. However the “vast inequality” gets support from at least half the population
- Everyone wants better schools, even those misguided enough to micromanage schools in their own image.
- Everyone wants the workers they know to be treated fairly, even if they can’t apply that to the general Population and believe unions are wrong
Tldr: The media attacked him, turned him into a symbol of unhappiness.
America isn’t doing so great. Unemployment is high, inflation is spiraling out of control, wild habitats are being bulldozed, hell it’s getting hard to put food on the table.
I think even lemmy can agree that the economy isn’t doing so well.
Back in the 80s, we had factories, with unions. NAFTA decided that America should send most of our factories to Mexico and beyond. Immigration went up, importing cheap labor, basically scabs.
The Democrats, who claimed to be for the common worker, made a farce of it, saying “they took our jobs” was racist. And you know what, those jobs weren’t stolen, there were given away.
Every year, year after year, it gets worse. Politicians on both sides are lying to our faces and won’t do jack shit to bring in tariffs or lower immigration.
Then comes Trump. He’s a fucking scumbag just like every other politician, but at least he attempts to pander to the millions affected. And then the media started attacking him.
This just made him look like someone who might actually be on our side. Sure, he might fuck over every other country, but God damn it, America comes first, not Mexico, not China, not the EU, America comes first.
I am going out on a limb and say you would vote for Trump?
In 2016 I did. In 2020, I abstained, both candidates were shit
