This is yet another topic on Trump’s campaign, how he garnered so much support and what his winning the presidency of the United States of America means for the US and the rest of the world.
Except there’s one important rule:
Americans can only observe.
If you are American who was eligible to vote in these past elections, please refrain from posting in this thread. You were likely wrong (as was I) about the support Trump managed to raise for his campaign, and the media failed us in reporting reality, which is to say we failed ourselves.
I don’t believe this topic will offer any definitive answers about what just happened or what to do now, it’s only meant to offer a brief respite from furiously typing out your frustration and hopefully offer some perspective and a safe distance from which to observe yourselves, through the eyes of the world. If you can stomach it of course.
Expect a lot of inaccuracies, expect some tough love, this is not a place for gloating, if you’re looking for schadenfreude, this isn’t the place for it, you will be flagged.
I’ve read a few different explanations on how Trump got elected, but they’re all from the “losing” side, the same side that was so confident that Trump couldn’t possibly win that there’s no way I can trust those explanations, no matter how good they sound. For the moment, attempting to make sense of why things are as they are is simply attempting to cope.
Its pretty clear why he won, he said he’d make build a wall, and people cheered. Nevermind that drugs and people get in through tunnels, they still cheered.
H said he was going to withdraw from NAFTA, people applauded. NAFTA does not have much popular support in Mexico either, when it was enacted most people felt it was one sided and locked us into trading mainly with the US so that a Latin american block could not form and make sure we traded oil in dollars, otherwise that could have had a negative effect on the US economy. I can’t help but note that many people in the US are so removed from the reality of what their government does to maintain its dominance that nobody really has any basis for understanding foreign policy outside of major shows of force.
He said he would make America great again, and nobody asked what that meant. They didn’t need to. They know what needs to be done to MAGA: Deport the furriners, bring back the jerbs and put the wimminz in their place.
I don’t think neoconservative policies have made people lose faith in people like Clinton, as much as she’s in bed with wall street, so is Trump. No, Trump IS wall street.
People don’t understand politics and politicians are fine with that. Trump won, not because people believed him, he won because he’s the aspirational candidate. He actually wants to make things “better” (for certain values of better")
Clinton could only try to make things less worse.
This isn’t exclusive to the US of course, Brexit was the same thing to some extent, Mexico went through something similar in our last elections, three candidates elected by their respective parties who never once represented anything other than the ruling elite asking us to choose between the lesser of three evils. (The man who married a major telenovela actress won)
Truth is, a big part of America don’t understand politics but they do understand power and a large part of America, wishes they could be Trump.
I think people have a strong sense of fairness, but not an accurate one. It’s closely tied to changes in the way they’re used to living, so accommodating people with other views is going to seem like a war on their way of life. And since people generally only see a very small part of the big picture, simplified narratives are a big way for them to view it. This isn’t just on the right, but the experience I have of right wing media suggests that they are in a league of their own when it comes to spreading misinformation. I like to be balanced and understand other people’s perspectives, but… nope. So much of it is complete bullshit intended to reinforce bias. I don’t think it would have mattered how successful the ACA was; the criticism wasn’t about that.
So when people see their income stagnate or fall while they see programs set up to help other groups advance, they feel threatened. It doesn’t matter whether that’s what’s really happening or not (or whose fault it is), and it doesn’t matter if this is making a fairer society overall. A conservative monopoly on values is being attacked, but people see this as if they themselves are being discriminated against. A lot of the freedoms that are being attacked aren’t really personal freedoms at all, they’re examples of privilege that they would not give to others. Marriage only being one man and one woman (yes, you are still free to may one person of the opposite sex). Public prayer in schools (are you willing to have regular Muslim prayer in schools, that your children are expected to attend and sit through without complaining?). Transgender use of bathrooms (you are still entitled to use the bathroom of your own gender).
At the end of the day though, there is this issue of fairness, inaccurate as it may be. People aren’t going to vote for a party that they don’t think will offer them anything (and since whites are the majority, their opinion here has a major impact). If people thought that America was doing well and that Obama had fulfilled his promise of hope, they would be eager for more of the same. For whatever reason, apparently many people don’t. When the left often has such a strong focus on ideological purity and Clinton has done so many things to alienate progressive voters, #NeverTrump and the fact that she is a woman just aren’t strong enough reasons to get out and vote. Which is a shame, since voting for the lesser evil and depicting the republican candidate and his followers as basically Nazis actually had some validity this time.
Whatever the reasons though, I don’t think this should be seen as a vindication of anyone’s politics. And I do overwhelmingly blame the republicans and the Alt-right for making this so toxic and polarised. It says bad things about the system that they were able to pull this off.
