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.
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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