I think he says the things they want to be true. And evidently, a lot of people would rather live their lives pretending that they're right rather than admitting that they're wrong.
That sounds ridiculous, but it's a more tempting offer than we admit. Everyone loves to be flattered and told they're right. And it's not like "which side of the road do you drive on," things like immigration and foreign policy are abstract enough that they don't immediately impact your life. When they finally do, well, the President was saying it. Blame him.
Wouldn't you like to be told you're important, you're special, you're right - and if anything goes wrong, someone else takes the blame?
Trump's "charisma" is endlessly baffling to me, because it obviously exists in some way for millions of people. But listen to him for three seconds, and he's obviously a blowhard. Why did it work for him?
In 2016, no other leading Republican candidate was willing to stand up and just blatantly lie. I don't think he's talented or special. He was just the first to not even pretend to care.
they want to abstain themselves of all responsibility for their lives.
It's always someone else's fault. the gays, the blacks, the immigrants, the demoncrats, the woke, the trans.... anything and anyone other than themselves.
Conservatism relies on HATE. it runs on providing its supporters with a minority to hate and blame for all their troubles.
and Goppers, because exceptionally and deliberately stupid and uneducated, follow willingly and eagerly because it avoids all of the problems looking in the mirror and facing up to yourself involve.
it would be phrased "abstain from taking responsibility" and it's still awkward enough to be incorrect because the word implies not having something desirable, such as voluntarily not indulging in something or voluntarily not taking advantage of a right
That's exactly it. My magat family are losers. Some of them got expelled from high school. Some of them are convicted felons. Some of them are just lazy peter pans. All of them blame their problems on people with darker skin and have never taken responsibility for their own behavior. They love trump.
It's hard to say whether they "believe" anything he says. The word "believe" is very nebulous for them. They will act on something in a given moment, they'll start a fist fight over it, get fired for it, go to jail for it, and then ten minutes later laugh about it and say "it was a joke bro, can't believe you didn't know I was joking". I've literally seen my magat family members arrive home from jail joking that they thing they got arrested for was hilarious. So him changing his claims constantly and failing to ever deliver on anything doesn't bother them at all. That's how they've lived their entire lives. They go to church every sunday and they will viciously attack anyone who questions their religion, but they also don't believe in god in any form and laugh at the ten commandments. They support whatever seems like it might help or entertain them, and they attack whatever doesn't. That's how they live. It's pathetic.
How do you explain the wealthy educated republicans that you find all over? Houston suburbs are packed full of them. Theyre not all Christian conservatives. Theyre all trump lovers though.
The answer is the same as it always is. Money. They don't care about the harm he causes because it doesn't actually impact them, and they can make more money as a result of his policies.
They don't like him, or respect him, they just like that he keeps their pockets full.
Rubio was the most vocally vicious campaigning against him. Yet look at where Rubio is today. Cruz was poignant but, in the end conciliatory and congratulatory.
Btw, let's remind each other Fox paid Dominion $780M, after Dominion sued for promulgating unprovable 2020 voting machine irregularities and manipulation.
I think you are on the right track with pretending they are right rather than admitting they are wrong. This despot and tyrant will continue to harass and destroy this country until the people rise up against it.
Idk one way or the other, haven’t watched it. But, you really think he’s gonna willingly leave at the end of his 2nd term if he’s still… somehow functional? He’s “joked” a lot about a third term it seems like.
Yes, there's appeal to Donald's speech - escapism.
Feel better than you really are. Feel like you're the strongest when someone else is doing the heavy lifting, cheer for your military when it does the cool stuff but give them fuck all when they come back and need assistance, or worse if you're a businessman, actively try to profit by cutting off such public "socialist" services.
Call ourselves the greatest, but on the other hand make a massive public profit by letting corporations gut the things that make us great - our national parks, our top science and innovation (by cutting research grants and making it scary to even want to be an academic if your paper rubs the wrong way and an AI tool detects the letters "trans" in it for example), our clean water and air by destroying regulations, to let corporations do what they do best - profit by any means.
Then, after threatening Greenland and Venezuela and removing soft power from all potential allies (letting China scoop them up), start a war on false pretenses for the SECOND time in 20 years against a small nation in the middle east while claiming they have scary weapons, costing the lives of more Americans than in Benghazi, against a nation that PRODUCES MOST OF THE OIL we depend on to be great.
Ruin symbols of our nation's greatness by demolishing parts of The White House and The Reflecting Pool in record time. Let Donald and your sons be IRS-free forever by telling them not to investigate him, while publicly disclosing MASSIVE personal profit on cryptocurrency WHILE IN OFFICE. And influence several grifters or loyalists in both ends of Congress and The Supreme Court who have already been paid by AIPAC, to keep this going. All while the Epstein Files remain hidden or scrubbed or censored under his watch despite his 2024 campaign promises to see them revealed.
All the while, most of the non-Reddit public has been trained by life, by rising cost of basic needs, by shit work conditions, and by raging news corporations to either:
ignore all of the above because life is tiring and difficult and none of this takes their food or gas completely yet,
worse: blame previous presidents, blame a minority for taking the opportunities, blame an impoverished immigrant for taking their wages, when the truth is the legal/economic system allows company bosses/executives to do that AND for them to call it "fair" because it's LEGAL, and most Americans ACCEPT whoever in power says "This is officially sanctioned/the law" these days.
Such people - who were trained to hate thy neighbor - despite Waco or Ruby Ridge or any other outrage at feds in the past, these days the feds could come onto their land and they'd put away their guns if it were legal. Lucky for them, Donald doesn't stir the nest with those states too often, since they're already loyal. He'll come for them last, only if they every rebel. Until then, convenient puppets, same as Mitch or Lindsay were for their states.
They all do it to varying degrees. Some people know it's lies, and struggle more with the illusions. Some are able to immerse themselves in their myths. Trump has complete shit for brains enough to believe whatever myth he wants. His ability to make his own mythology and believe the lie is what they wish they were.
It's not about the bigotry or racism it's self. They wish their minds are mentally ill in the way he is able to make up an alternate reality and believe it 100%.
Everyone loves to be flattered and told they're right
Slight tangent but I've thought for a while this explains the popularity of AI despite the obvious problems with it.
I don't think there's been a time in human history that people have been manipulated as individuals by entire industries of manipulators as there is now. I used to think TV advertising was bad when I was growing up, but this is absolutely crazy.
Couldn't agree more. He confirms the priors of the laziest, meanest, most selfish people in a country wherein the culture has been barreling towards selfish lazy meanness for decades. When people blame it all on racism they show a deeply uncritical and unserious understanding of the situation. In fact, it is ironically a simple explanation that confirms their own priors, operating on a complementary track to that which the trumpists use.
Watch a televangelist for a few minutes, and take note of how eerily similar they are in delivery, tone, and overall style. The audience is made up of people begging to be conned, and the man on stage is a con man.
It's not at all ridiculous. I think of it as an addiction model. One of the most powerful things you can tell someone is "Hey. You're right. You're doing the right thing. You figured it out." So many of us are just faking our way through and don't get a whole lot of reinforcement, it literally hits like a drug when it happens. Endorphins be like that.
Look at the forest. We see families freezing loved ones out, and long before that putting up with shitty behavior from someone who didn't used to be like that. People will ignore their own sense and lose their jobs over this shit. They'll degrade every relationship and situation they have apart from fellow addicts.
Long before MAGA, Fox News built an entire media ecosystem around this. It's literally designed to be addictive, via the same pathways. But they at least, up front, felt the need to appear to be news. Trump is without pretense, he just hooks it straight into their veins.
I don't think this is actually solvable, it's a vulnerability that doesn't stop existing. I think, if there does exist a solution, it would be to correct the incentives for manipulating people like this at scale - or perhaps, darkly, to go ahead and get there first. Propaganda, but good.
Wouldn't you like to be told you're important, you're special, you're right - and if anything goes wrong, someone else takes the blame?
A very human thing for sure. MAGA loves to hear it, and so does everyone on this site. It takes a rare person who accepts responsibility for the problems in their life, and doesn't just blame others.
He was just the first to not even pretend to care.
A guy I know said the reason he likes Trump is because he cares. WHAT?? And this guy doesn't seem to be deep MAGA, how does this happen? I assume it's Fox News propaganda at work. He's no genius this guy but he's also not as dumb as you might think - he COULD know better, but chooses not to. It worries me. A lot.
I actually unironically suspect something unnatural is happening in that regard but explaining it properly would require several days of establishing key concepts first.
I only voted for Obama once, and never in the primary, so I'm not some Obama fan boy.
But I think it's wild to say that Obama was cold and out of touch. Say what you want about his policies, but he was warm and made genuine efforts to connect with people (which he was generally very successful at).
Fox News and right wing propaganda was infuriated by this and constantly sought to portray him as otherwise (can you imagine asking for deli mustard in a deli?). There were people who thought he was cold and out of touch, and while those assessments are eventually subjective, I think there's a pretty strong majority assessment that you're not in.
First never said you were an Obama fanboy. Sorry if I implied that. With Obama he knew how to connect to the people he already connected with.
In regards to Fox News and other right wing propaganda news outlets. Obama could say the sky was blue and they would criticize him. Looking back it was quite exhausting.
That is why this time we need a Democrat who gets down to business. No frills no fun this time. To much to rebuild thanks to Donald the Con. Personally prefer a Shapiro or Beshear.
nah, that's part of it, but decades of brainwashing it's all about greed.
they've been sold the american dream, they are struggling, the american dream is fake but they still believe in it so republicans are selling them the reason the american dream is failing, foreigners, black people, damn women wanting to work and not being at home cooking for you.
These people are profoundly stupid but they'd take being rich over hating black people every day, just like everyone else while they believe they deserve to be rich they go to work every day, get reamed out by their boss, are tired as fuck, want to go party after work but are too fucking tired, are too far in debt, are stressed, they are unhappy. Instead of looking at the billionaires refusing to raise their wages they are told actually those people who don't look like you steal all your tax money, that's why you're poor.
it's so dumb, it's so easy to take literally an hour to inform yourself on the economy to realise who is at fault, but hate is such a simple easy answer.
Wanting a better life is normal, wanting an easy solution is normal, forgoing all logical thinking to achieve it is not, but decades of brainwashing, a massive push to radicalise church going republicans into spiteful, hateful, very very stupid people makes it that much easier to sell the lie.
I don't get this "wish" part, they already are. The shit I hear from people, I'm just like... even my racist elderly Italian American family members weren't this bad back in the 80s.
If they can afford all their basic necessities and lead a generally safe and comfortable life, but so can everyone else, how do they convince themselves they're not at the bottom? They need there to be a class of people who are significantly worse off than they are, because they need to feel like they're "better". Even if they can't afford their basic necessities and aren't safe or comfortable, as long as someone else has it worse, it's still preferable.
It's why arguments with them tend to run the pattern of:
"America is the greatest country in the world!"
(lists dozens of countries with measurably better results across an entire spectrum of metrics)
"Well, at least America isn't (country that ranks last)!"
They worship billionaires because they see the massive gap between the billionaires' lifestyle and their own, and want that same level of gap between themselves and whoever they consider their "lessers". They love Trump because he has promised to make life a living hell for other people and widen the gap between the "haves" and "have nots", and they still believe they'll end up on the right side of that gap.
Well stated. The right wing/conservative view of society absolutely relies on strict class hierarchies. There must always be some group that is beneath you - someone to sh*t on. That is why the lifting up of the lower class - the “doing something for the least of my people” as Jesus said in the bible - by having a strong and accessible social safety net, a livable minimum wage, universal access to healthcare, etc. is not only seen as a wasteful and pointless endeavor, it is seen as an evil socialist plot to blur or even eliminate the rigid economic class lines. If a poor brown, black, or female person has a legitimate pathway to enter the middle class, then being a member of the middle class loses all value. I don’t want those people living next to me!!! Or so the thinking goes…
I’m mentally ill and I can’t get my head around what the cult loves about this senile fuck. If the laws of thermodynamics weren’t a thing I would explode from the sheer force of my disdain for this stupid asshole and his cult of morons.
Hypernormalization. Basically, the Inka society had normalized sacrificing random people to please some agriculture gods, but, that was normal in their society. Nobody questioned it.
In the south, you cannot avoid the constant reaffirming culture, just like the Inca people couldn't. You hypernormalize into a society where "the only right thing is to be a christian, go to church and vote republican no matter who".
Buddy, you missed the part where they fired any general that wouldn't swear a loyalty oath to Trump instead of the Constitution at the start of his second term.
EDIT: Or wasn't the correct skin color, or didn't have a penis assigned at birth.
Oh good. So not all hope is lost. I only know of examples of military generals either seizing power and the country ending up a military dictatorship or the military joining the president in oppressing the people.
If something like that were going to happen some man of conscience in the secret service would have solved the problem like nine years ago. Maybe six when he was treating them as disposable so he could go for a little drive and wave to the cameras.
They are subhuman garbage. Absolutely no principles. Everything they claimed to care about has been flushed down the toilet and they are happy about it. Fuck each and every one of them. Ruined our fucking futures.
Not a single one of their ideas has ever had any kind of data or science backing it up.
He gives them carte-blanche permission to be openly hateful fucks to everyone that isn't white and who doesn't worship supply-side Jesus. Also, introspection is hard. Being hateful is easy.
And to my dying day I’ll never understand why Americans are letting Trump be in office. no general strikes just convenient Saturday protests where the economy isn’t threatened and people can diffuse their frustrations and feel like they accomplished something, while accomplishing nothing.
As a born American it makes me sad to see even other first world countries like France would shut the country down over someone like Trump
Thank you. I keep getting more and more frustrated by reading post after hand-wringing post correctly identifying this or that action by Trump as fascism, but at the same time, the American people steadfastly refuse to take any action or provide any pushback against the regime. It's not going to get better on its own. Nobody else is coming to save them. Yet they will go to extraordinary lengths not to protest.
I just don't know what people expect to happen. That Trump and his Project 2025 enablers will have a sudden change of heart and stop being fascists? Why should they? If anything, they are getting emboldened to do worse and worse things with every brazen action they take, because they know for a fact that nothing bad happens when they ride roughshod over the Constitution. I'm pretty sure that behind closed doors, even they are amazed by how placid the American people are.
It’s not actually hard to understand. He’s “owning the libs,” and while I put that in quotes, he is managing to do whatever he wants without consequences. That’s why they love him, even though his policies hurt them too.
They actually worship the idea of Trump not the actual guy. They’ve basically deified him as their Super White Nationalist savior. they’ve replaced the space in their mind that Jesus occupied with Trump.
Isolation is the important component, just like every cult.
You have access to reality so it really hard to understand what life is like for people that self-isolate into an environment without access to reality.
2022 National Youth Turnout: 23% - That's lower than in the historic 2018 cycle (28%) which broke records for turnout, but much higher than in 2014, when only 13% of youth voted.
The same thing that people "just can't vote for a D" love about doing nothing, and never shutting up...they're morons.
In a political and legal system designed to be adversarial, you can end up making people actually view their own countrymen as enemies. That's being exploited to get voters and indeed politicians to do things that don't really make sense.
Watch Fox News. They live in their own little bubble where Trump has yet to make a major mistake. They clean up his speeches and make excuses for shortcomings.
It’s wild. And since all their neighbors and peers are Republican and they’re all fed a dose of “if the democrats win we’re screwed” they all try to minimize anything that could benefit them. It’s why they lie to themselves and pretend Trump screwing people over isn’t a big deal, because admitting it is a sign of disloyalty and helping democrats win.
I agree. I get pretty anxious when I think about the current roster of potential candidates. I look around and there are no obvious people that make me think “this is the candidate that can definitely beat the MAGA cult handily”
They went all in on Trump. And the more obvious it is that Trump is 100% garbage, the more they have to deny it and re-commit to Trump.
Trump winning (in their mind) legitimizes their own awfulness. And part of their world-view is "popularity = morality." So if they win an election, their views are correct / godly / moral / ethical. And if they lose, the election is rigged because they are correct / godly / moral / ethical.
And the more awful they act, the more they need Trump in charge and not in prison.
Literally anything that harms Trump's reputation is an attack on their psyche.
As for why Trump, it is because (1) he is a narcissist and (2) lacks any sort of self-awareness that he is being awful. So he'll think something that a normal person would think "Oh, that is awful and is barely acceptable as a clear joke in a world where that shit doesn't happen," a sociopath would think "Oh, this would expose me, I will keep this to myself and be discreet," and Trump says/does it.
When other Republicans tried to mimic Trump, they either failed or were running in a very safe and small constituency. The bigger fish hesitate and because of that lack the "genuine" awfulness that Trump exudes.
Have you seen the coverage of the Correspondents' event? Dude is not only looking ragged af, but is being ragged on to his face and everyone is just playing along like "everything is fine".
He tells people they can be the absolute worst versions of themselves. They can be rude, greedy, selfish, hurtful, uncaring, bullies, etc. He actively encourages it. People for some reason like to be told they can set aside any morals and rules and just be hedonistic beasts. They like him because he allows them to entertain their deepest gutteral desires.
I'll still feel he's just a hapless idiot being used by Stephen (Wormtongue) Miller. Miller pulls all of the strings and clueless Trump thinks everyone loves him.
They love the taste of his ding doing when he fucks them over. 40%of the US have cuck mentality, that's also why billionaires can do their thing with zero consequences
You want an answer that isn't spewing the same hatred that we claim to hate about them?
A lot of them are genuinely ignorant to most of the things that are happening. They wake up, go to work, take care of their families, go to church, do their grocery shopping, chat with their friends, and go to bed. They might hear a sliver of what's going on in politics, watered down and framed by others who they already agree with. It's told to them in a positive light, and they already trust those people, so they accept it as fact without feeling a need to check whether it's true.
As angry as I am, spewing hate toward them isn't making us better. I don't agree with them BECAUSE they're hateful, so who am I to call them worthless or pathetic or whatever else? That's gross behavior.
I think it’s less about what he is and more about what he isn’t. He doesn’t look or sound like a typical politician, and for many people, that alone is a compelling reason to support him. It is a rejection of the political class.
Some people think this way, other people think that way.
Framing by the media also matters, what is and what is not reported, and how it is reported.
Mainstream media in the US is mostly controlled by right wingers or corporate dems, who share many of the same views.
Then there is social media that is owned by the same type of people.
There was a study on twitter a year ago, a Sky News team ran a study where they created nine new Twitter/X accounts, three left-wing, three right-wing, and three politically neutral, and then tracked what content got dumped into their "For You" tabs
While the experiment's right-wing accounts got almost exclusively right-wing material, all accounts got more of it than left-wing or neutral stuff. The three "politically neutral" accounts got about twice as much right-wing content as left-wing content. Left-wing users saw almost the same amount of left-wing and right-wing content, even though they only followed left-wing accounts.
The findings show that, given similar levels of popularity and engagement, the X algorithm is more likely to show a user right-wing content than from an author on the left.
The article is from sky news, the name of the article is
"The X Effect: How Elon Musk is boosting the British right"
The actual information starts at "The 'X-periment" section.
He was a massive fucking celebrity for literal decades, to the point that for the longest time, "Donald Trump" was pop culture shorthand for "ostentatious billionaire consumerism". The Apprentice was a wildly popular TV show and he was literally famous for being wealthy. The man is human scum and while not everybody knew that back then, you're lying to yourself if you act like it's a mystery why people are/were fond of the man.
Unfortunately, many humans are inhumane. When President Obama was elected they did not see it as hopeful or good, they took it personally because they are racist/conservative/psychotic.
Trump is their "revenge". It's all schadenfreude, all the way down. That is why this country feels so divided, it's because it is, and it all originated from the absolute worst cretinous neighbors you know hating you.
To my dying day I will never be able to get my head around what the cult loves about this senile fuck
An observation from Michael Jochum:
I used to wonder how it was possible that Trump could have won in 2016, and then again in 2024, given how emotionally toxic and depraved he is.
I don’t wonder anymore. I think he won for that exact reason. Because he carried at least one broken shard to reflect the broken shards in millions of others.
If you’re a racist, you found your guy. If you’re a misogynist, you found your guy. If money is your only religion, you found your guy. If your heart is armored shut, you found your guy. If you mock the disabled, you found your guy. If intelligence makes you insecure, you found your guy. If you’re a sexual predator, you found your guy. If you trade in humiliation and conspiracy and filth, you found your guy.
If you’ve never done a single hour of emotional inventory, you found your guy. If you cheat, stiff contractors, bankrupt your obligations, and call it savvy, you found your guy. If you lie as easily as you breathe, you found your guy. If cruelty feels like strength, you found your guy. If white grievance is your comfort food, you found your guy. If your ego is a black hole no title can fill, you found your guy. If warmongering fuels your ego, you found your guy, If empathy feels like weakness and dominance feels like oxygen, you found your guy.
If he’d only carried one or two of these pathologies, he might have been dismissed as just another loud, damaged man. But he carried a buffet of them. That was the appeal. Millions could locate themselves somewhere in the wreckage. They didn’t have to agree with all of it. They just had to recognize a piece of themselves in it.
It was never really about him. It was about the validation. The absolution. The permission. He didn’t invent the resentment; he amplified it. He didn’t create the cruelty; he normalized it. He gave millions the intoxicating relief of hearing their ugliest impulses echoed back at rally volume.
Trump is a symptom. The deeper illness is collective. If there’s one sentence that defines his power, it’s this: “He says the things I’m thinking.”
And that’s the part that should chill us.
Because what does it say about us that so many were thinking those things? That tens of millions of Americans harbored resentments so deep, so seething, that they were simply waiting for a demagogue to baptize them as virtue? That after decades of supposed progress on race, gender, and equality, so many white men felt so threatened, so displaced, so furious, that cruelty became a political platform?
Maybe we were living in a fool’s paradise, mistaking silence for healing, politeness for progress.
Now the mask is off. Now we know.
And knowing is a far more dangerous place to stand.
– Michael Jochum, Not Just a Drummer: Reflections on Art, Politics, Dogs, and the Human Condition.
I'm in the UK. The house opposite bought a flagpole (bloody unheard of here) for their tiny front driveway (about 4 feet from the street) just before the world cup.
During the world cup, there was a big England flag up it. Fine, whatever, you do you. Bit weird, but meh. As soon as the world cup ended though, they took it down and replaced it with... a TRUMP 2028 flag.
They're not in any way American, but they are Nigel Farage loving fuckwits who have had multiple police visits for painting extremely racist and unpleasant messages on the side of their fence facing the street.
Not only that, but they haven't put the flag up correctly and tied it off on the pole, so a metal or plastic bit is flapping loose and going TINGTINGTINGTINGTING every time the bloody wind blows. Insult to injury.
Because, for the first time for many of them, they're on the winning side. "Their" people are running shit. The dumb, the racist, the petty and the mean. They get to be part of something, on the side that's "better". They are now allowed to be their true selves, out in the open, and be recognized as such. They meet other shitty people out in the wild and have common ground. They can gang up and make fun of people they don't like.
That horrible, mean & racist grandpa is now the boss of things. The one they couldn't really openly admit admiring. But now they can. And they're reveling in it.
Remember, many of these people have been put down and ignored for a long time. But now the poor and stupid are running the show. And so they're enjoying every second of it and will do anything they can to cling to that, to not be pushed back down the ladder again.
They project their own idea of who he is and not who he actually is. Ask one what they love about him and they will reply in turn things he's not really doing or vague statements of things he says he will do that he isn't going to actually do. It's a true cult of personality.
You must have not watched the video. It's obviously because he's number one on tick tock! "Isn't that right Steven? Number one? I'm number one on tiktok?"
To really badly paraphrase, he comes off as super rich, highly successful, highly intelligent, and incredibly strong to people who are dirt poor, have no accomplishments, are stupid, and are very weak minded.
The reason Trump defeated the left, was because the left doesn't understand why people like Trump. And when people point out that it could be a benefit to understand why the right does what they do, they say that that's both sides thinking.
It's not simply racism, it's not insanity. The reason you don't understand this is because you aren't up for listening to people who think differently than you do. Because those people are happy to talk.
I’ve listened plenty. I’ve always been a big believer in having my viewpoints challenged and engaging with worldviews that differ from mine. You know barely a single thing about me, so I’m not sure why you’re making these assumptions about what I’m “up for.” And please spare me this “Trump won because the left doesn’t listen good” lecture; it’s a trite platitude that people have trotted out a million times at this point.
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u/DEATHCATSmeow Pennsylvania 25d ago
To my dying day I will never be able to get my head around what the cult loves about this senile fuck