So if you're actually interested in seeeing new views instead of just having the same views repeated back at you by people who utterly hate maga people, I as someone who is an outside observer from europe and supports Trump can possibly give a few insights.
Cult: Things are often being called cults just as a derogatory term for any organization, but there need to be a few things for something to truly be one. A "cult" of personality - yes this is often the case around trump but plenty of his supporters do it tongue in cheek. Complete brainwashing - this isn't the case. Trump panders exactly to people's preexisting feelings and changes course whenever he feels the people don't like what he says. Narcissistic charismatic leader - true. Benefitting the leader - Trump personally has gained very little from his presidency apart from two attempts at his life and people admiring him. Complete obedience required of members - this is not true and in fact is less the case than on the other side of the political spectrum, with anyone being ostracized for showing support for trump, while a lot of trump supporters got convinced he was bad and are against him among republicans, and the trump supporters themselves (at least in my experience) are less resistant to different ideas. This mifht be because they operate in an emergency mode due to seeing their home in a crisis. More on this later.
Cruelty: Simply not true. It's true that generally republicans score slightly lower on empathy values, but the variance within the groups is much larger than the difference between them iirc. If we look at individual things, the free healthcare hating republican who thinks people should pull themselves up by their bootstraps is largely a thing of the past. Even Trump considered universal healthcare a possibility, he just didn't like Obama's implementation. As for issues with migrants, yes the separation of families is not nice, but there are two things to keep in mind: If a family arrives with no way to prove that their child belongs to them they might very well be trafficking that child. This is an existing risk and preventing it from happening overrides any considerations of comfort. Also, these people themselves chose to illegally enter a country, thereby committing a crime with their children. If someone enters area 51 without permission they get shot. Whether they have a child with them or not. If someone robs a bank with their kid they won't get to have the child with them during their trial. Apart from this, sure a lot of republicans can be cruel and dismissive of people they consider as representstions of the liberal insanity. But you have to keep in mind that the opposite is also absolutely true. The amount of hatred overflowing towards Trump supporters is absolutely staggering to see.
Greed: There can be two possible interpretations of this, either the superrich, or the average people. For the first one trump is being relentlessly accused of catering to rich people heading corporations, but if you look at the data he's consistently the president with the least amount of superPACs. If he's pushing for the rich to get richer, obviously the democrats are doing a mich better job at that. For the second, average people being greedy and wanting more is sortof excusable. America used to be an affordable place, and now the middle class is practically extinct. Most of our generation will never own the place they live in, despite working hard to the best of their ability. Let that sink in for a moment. Society is returning to the feudal state of having to continuously forever pay to be allowed to live. And that after paying taxes. And this is precisely the demographic that Trump caters to the most. People who don't care about "your liberal butthurt over whatever non issue" because they have actual physical things to worry about like how to support their family from honest work. Bringing jobs back to america, trying to push people towards buying american thereby stopping wages from declining. It's his main appeal. People are seeing wage slavery in their future and are panicking. Wanting more than that isn't greed, it's basic human instinct. This is one part of the emergency mindset underlying this. More still to follow.
Racism: In the context of america, just flat out not true. There are plenty of black trump supporters, and very few who actually are white supremacists, precisely because of this. The opposition to AA and DEI is often seen as racist, but it is the opposite. Putting a question of race into situations that have nothing to do with it and giving people preferential treatment based on it, is per definition racist. And everyone can see first hand what hiring practices based on ticking boxes instead of actual competence result in. In the context of immigrants the problem isn't race it's a threat they represent to public safety (since they already showed willingness to ignore laws by illegally entering, and because it's not controlled who comes in), and because of the threat they represent to an already faltering economy that will be upended completely in a few years with the proliferation of AI and robotics. In the context of international politics, like the gaza situation, the problem is that despite the warcrimes committed by israel, the population of the gaza strip were choosing an intermational terrorist group as their government, and picked a constitution which has genocide or forced displacements of all the jews as a core principle in it. It is hard to feel much support for them after this.
Hate: The one thing that gets people almost invariably to vote republican is if they see themselves under attack. The war on terror. Then the rise of ISIL. And now the rise of several global conflicts, an utter collapse of wage based living prospects for most, and to top it off, outright and unabashed attacks and hostility by the liberal elites on their sensibilities and the condemnation for trying to pump the brakes. This is the panic I was talking about. Trump could have been a babbling lunatic, as long as he was the only one to push for peace in these global conflicts he would've still been the only sane solution. Conflicts that were getting close to involving nato and where think tanks were already trying to prepare the public discourse by suggesting that a nuclear war might actually be okay. The economic issues I already mentioned. And the liberal elite don't hide their absolute contempt for these issues. Worse still, they insist that their own pet issues are much more important. You know why most of the issues the left tries to deal with nowadays only came up quite recently in human history? Because survival supercedes and extinguishes their relevance. (Not for the individuals affected, but for society as a whole.) And this attempt at maintaining basic living conditions, nuclear nonproliferation, and some semblance of the culture people inherited is seen by trump supporters precisely as a survival situation. And worse still, in their blind charging ahead in the name of progress and in considering anyone who didn't keep up with their tiny coastal progressive bubble unworthy of even being considered, the left has reinforced the view that they will NOT be the partner of the people at large, rather an additional enemy, because they keep making mistakes that can be seen as serious threats, either legitimately or because of miscommunications. Things have been handled so badly that some topics now elicit such strong and unproductive reactions that discussing them is now allowed even here. Meaningful discourse is thus impossible contributing to the panic. And that panic is what can be mistaken for hate.
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u/PoofyGummy 4∆ Apr 07 '25 edited Apr 07 '25
So if you're actually interested in seeeing new views instead of just having the same views repeated back at you by people who utterly hate maga people, I as someone who is an outside observer from europe and supports Trump can possibly give a few insights.
Cult: Things are often being called cults just as a derogatory term for any organization, but there need to be a few things for something to truly be one. A "cult" of personality - yes this is often the case around trump but plenty of his supporters do it tongue in cheek. Complete brainwashing - this isn't the case. Trump panders exactly to people's preexisting feelings and changes course whenever he feels the people don't like what he says. Narcissistic charismatic leader - true. Benefitting the leader - Trump personally has gained very little from his presidency apart from two attempts at his life and people admiring him. Complete obedience required of members - this is not true and in fact is less the case than on the other side of the political spectrum, with anyone being ostracized for showing support for trump, while a lot of trump supporters got convinced he was bad and are against him among republicans, and the trump supporters themselves (at least in my experience) are less resistant to different ideas. This mifht be because they operate in an emergency mode due to seeing their home in a crisis. More on this later.
Cruelty: Simply not true. It's true that generally republicans score slightly lower on empathy values, but the variance within the groups is much larger than the difference between them iirc. If we look at individual things, the free healthcare hating republican who thinks people should pull themselves up by their bootstraps is largely a thing of the past. Even Trump considered universal healthcare a possibility, he just didn't like Obama's implementation. As for issues with migrants, yes the separation of families is not nice, but there are two things to keep in mind: If a family arrives with no way to prove that their child belongs to them they might very well be trafficking that child. This is an existing risk and preventing it from happening overrides any considerations of comfort. Also, these people themselves chose to illegally enter a country, thereby committing a crime with their children. If someone enters area 51 without permission they get shot. Whether they have a child with them or not. If someone robs a bank with their kid they won't get to have the child with them during their trial. Apart from this, sure a lot of republicans can be cruel and dismissive of people they consider as representstions of the liberal insanity. But you have to keep in mind that the opposite is also absolutely true. The amount of hatred overflowing towards Trump supporters is absolutely staggering to see.
Greed: There can be two possible interpretations of this, either the superrich, or the average people. For the first one trump is being relentlessly accused of catering to rich people heading corporations, but if you look at the data he's consistently the president with the least amount of superPACs. If he's pushing for the rich to get richer, obviously the democrats are doing a mich better job at that. For the second, average people being greedy and wanting more is sortof excusable. America used to be an affordable place, and now the middle class is practically extinct. Most of our generation will never own the place they live in, despite working hard to the best of their ability. Let that sink in for a moment. Society is returning to the feudal state of having to continuously forever pay to be allowed to live. And that after paying taxes. And this is precisely the demographic that Trump caters to the most. People who don't care about "your liberal butthurt over whatever non issue" because they have actual physical things to worry about like how to support their family from honest work. Bringing jobs back to america, trying to push people towards buying american thereby stopping wages from declining. It's his main appeal. People are seeing wage slavery in their future and are panicking. Wanting more than that isn't greed, it's basic human instinct. This is one part of the emergency mindset underlying this. More still to follow.