One thing you would hear from Trump supporters was “we’re tired of politics as usual”, but electing Trump hasn’t fixed that. Ultimately people who are tired of “politics as usual” don’t understand how politics work in a democracy, and really just want a dictator to do all the stuff they like, against the will of everyone else. This is why conservatives will scream about the constitution whenever a Democrat is in office, but are silent or defensive when Trump tries anything remotely unconstitutional.
I used to think that politics was like professional sports, and fans will hate another team and love their own team no matter what, but in sports you can’t really argue with the numbers. Red Sox fans hate the Yankees but still admire Mariano Rivera, you can’t deny how good he was. But in politics there are think tanks coming up with their own numbers, fudging statistics, creating talking points, even spreading rumors and lies, so there is no way for either side to come to a reasonable agreement on just about anything.
This, this, THIS. Voting is not the end, it is the beginning. After that is when the real hard work starts. Put your reps on speed-dial. Draft form letters that you can use for a variety of issues, so you can just fill in the blank and hit print. Get out to meetings if you can, and don’t skip lower level politics. It’s not someone else’s problem to deal with. It’s all of our problems. Don’t expect someone else to solve it.
The United States since its inception has been a country that has two major visions of it: one where freedom and justice belongs to all regardless of who they are, where they come from, or what they believe and one where the country was created by white men, for white men, and while others may be invited to stay, they’ll always be subservient to white men.
It’s the neuroticism you’d come to expect from a nation founded by slave holders who talked a great game about freedom and independence.
I feel like that’s a very vocal (but maybe influential?) minority. There’s no majority that’s quietly rich. “Moderates” and “centrists” seemed to get pinned as fiscally conservative and socially liberal, but when anyone tries to run on that platform it gets little to no traction. Liberal economic policies poll extremely well. It seems like a majority of Americans are fiscally liberal and socially conservative…each party got one of those. Except, we’ve made it impolite to be fiscally liberal, but it seems to be just fine to be “socially conservative” (even if means racist and oppressive of others). “Wedge issues” also allow parties to lean into social issues at the expense of fiscal issues…also a minority of monied interests help push fiscal issues their way–which might be what you’re talking about. I just don’t see this group as ripped jeaned coffee shop owners.
That fudging, obsfucating, fake newsing, poisioning of the well has been slowly but surely under way for the past 40 years… reversing that needs to be job one with whatever progressive, or milquetoast or other candidate defeats Trump in 2020.
Yes and we really need to worry about the existence of half of the people who don’t think he’s a criminal. The other half is what I think of as the crazy share and they can be safely ignored on most issues. On most surveys there is a roughly 20% group that says whatever the crazy option is. Some are lying to mess with the survey. Some genuinely believe in the answer, but it is a pretty consistent share. The fact that almost 40% don’t think Trump is a criminal means that the right wing propaganda fountain is working exceptionally well. They’ve moved the idea from the fringes to political viability.
I have stared and laughed at the National Enquirer in my face in the grocery checkout for 45 years now, and always thought it was odd such a piece of trash was in such a prime shelf space. Now I know 40% of us have been looking at that thing as a bonafide news source.
When they talk about a revolution if Trump loses - they don’t get that there would be Obama Inauguration size crowds gathering to storm the White Hose and run Trump out of town on a rail.
One thought in my experience: most Trump supporters don’t actually care is Trump is an asshole, a liar, even a racist, and even a criminal. In their opinion none of that matters if he does his job well. And in their eyes he’s doing his job very very well. And furthermore they commonly say that it’s precisely because he’s such an asshole criminal that he does his job well, that that’s what it takes to make change among all these entrenched politicians.
Given that, the way to defeat Trump is probably to point out that he isn’t doing a very good job. Not that he’s an asshole or criminal or whatever, because they simply don’t care.
At this point, we have to hope that the Mueller investigation results will take him down before the next election–that it will provide the grounds for impeachment and that congress will take advantage of that opportunity. The Trump supporters believe that he is going to provide them with more money somehow. Their minds are so simple that they will never see the truth.
We’ve got a pretty deep and entrenched literary history of outlaw heroes/trickesters with a heart of gold who are only outlaws because the law is unjust. @Mindysan33 posted a book about this recently, I think. It’s yet another narrative framework that can be used for good or ill depending on your perspective. It all has to come down to who you are hurting and who you are helping. I mean, Robin Hood can be as easily mapped to either an anti-tax/anti-regulation allegory OR an anti-corruption/corporate greed tale. The guy’s lodestone was a fucking king fighting in the crusades after all…
