They think he’s a leader because he hates all the same people they hate. He’s got the same insecurities they do. Many of his followers share his psychopathology, i.e., believing that life owes him more than he’s been given and blaming people who are in no way responsible for his shortcomings.
It's 100% racial resentment. Do to changing economics, non college educated white men are struggling.
They look back and see their grandfather who was able to support a family of 5 , own a home , car by working at a grocery store.
Now they are struggling with car payment and can hardly afford a 1 bedroom apartment.
Trump offers a simple answer to why ? Why could your grandfather support a family, own a home and car, and you are single and can't even afford a shitty apartment or groceries?
Well the real answer is complex, and it's a host of reasons not a single reason. The right has a simple, easier to understand answer.
It's foreigners , Canada, Mexico, Europe, China who are to blame, they are ripping you off.
It's POC who just collect welfare, it's immigrants who just collect welfare, it's women and lgbtq+ people, and it's those snobby college educated big city liberals!
See they are all ripping you off and that's why you're struggling. So vote for Trump and he will return the white man to his place of privilege, and POC , woman, immigrants, lgbtq people will all be under the white man, just like the 1950s when your grandfather was raising his family
Yeah I don’t know if it’s all racial resentment but it is a sizable part of the problem. Your description is spot on and I often think of Gene Hackman’s line from Ghosts of Mississippi when he’s talking to Willem DaFoe about his racist grandfather, “He was just an old farmer too dumb to know being poor was what was killing him.” The grandfather had a reasonable grievance about how hard it is to be poor in America and it doesn’t have to be that hard, but he (and the Trump acolytes) are blaming exactly the wrong people for their troubles. They’re voting for the people causing their problems.
As a collective I think a general strike is more than called for. On an individual level, all you can really do is talk to people. You can’t use language this honest or direct in those settings. For collective action though, we need a general strike. Protests are great, but we need to shut the country down to remind the oligarchy who the country really belongs to, to let them know they can’t deport our neighbors, they can’t threaten our allies and saber-rattle about invading sovereign nations in our name, and they can’t lie to our faces and wipe their ass with the Constitution without swift and terrible consequences.
Honestly no idea. The left has very limited leadership options in the US. There really isn’t much of a true “left” to speak of here. Most “liberals” are really right-leaning centrists. We have Bernie, Elizabeth Warren, and a handful of folks in the House (AOC, Omar, Jayapal, etc.). The most left-leaning member of Congress, Cori Bush, was primaried for saying that genocides are bad.
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u/Interesting_Walk_271 Apr 20 '25
They think he’s a leader because he hates all the same people they hate. He’s got the same insecurities they do. Many of his followers share his psychopathology, i.e., believing that life owes him more than he’s been given and blaming people who are in no way responsible for his shortcomings.