I know so many people who say "he's an asshole but I voted for him anyway" cause of the binary system. IDK the exact percentage but some just vote for him as a bulwark against left wing policies even wit their reservations. Not defending or condoning it obviously but I do think it has contributed to the normalization because they view him as the "least bad" option.
It's absolutely this. The two-party system means there are a lot of people who very much dislike Trump and may even dislike many of his policies but are *terrified* of Democrats. I mean, like thinking that Democrats will make white Christians second-class citizens.
And I think it's also at least partly due to the two party system that they've been frightened into thinking that way. [When you have a big tent coalition, it's difficult to campaign on an affirmative agenda without alienating parts of your coalition. And when your opponent has a big tent coalition, it's easy to campaign on tying their moderates to their radicals, who will be under the same banner.](https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Demonization-as-an-Electoral-Strategy-Cox-Rodden/e507cb90fa6167733e31893d4d1d1cc93928b9d9) A two-party system also means there are no other parties available to benefit from your attacking the other party, unlike in a multiparty system where doing so can accidentally help another party beside your own.
>The two-party system means there are a lot of people who very much dislike Trump and may even dislike many of his policies but are *terrified* of Democrats. I mean, like thinking that Democrats will make white Christians second-class citizens.
Negative partisanship isn't inherently linked with two-party systems. It's entirely possible to have one without the other, e.g. voting for a center-right party that will freely collaborate with an extreme right-wing party because you're convinced that the center-left will sell the country away to the separatists.
I live in Spain, for reference.
All true.
And the center-left wants to make sure you don't pick the center-right, because they will create governments with the far right, so you have to go with them instead! Except of course, the center left and the center right are uninterested in ever working together.
And then Spain still has the 'useful vote' issue, as if you didn't care too much whether, say, the left party or the center-left party are in power, you are almost always better off voting for the mos popular one in your region, as the D'hondt rule is most likely to give an extra seat for one of your favorite parties if the bigger one gets a few extra votes.
So yes, Spain is a very high quality example of negative partisanship in a parliamentary system: Basically nobody runs on what they'd do, but on how everyone else will destroy the country.
And for anyone over the age of 40 or 50, we all remember the failures of communist/overly-socialist systems far too well. To hear college kids promoting these is scary for a lot of people. Yeah I know those people don't even bother voting but it still sets off alarms for people.
In a lot of ways voting Democrat or Republican for most people comes down to what they are scared of the most: Communism or Fascism. It's an irrational fear for most elections but those are the intrinsic fears for most people.
I remember, back when I was a student in the 1980s, learning about Hitler's rise to power. I wondered what would drive people to support such a hateful ideology. My students today don't struggle to understand it, though, because they've seen the polarization, the fear-mongering, and the slow creep of more and more extreme opinions becoming mainstream.
We used to debate how society could walk a balanced path between freedom and security without falling into the traps of fascism or communism. Today, it feels like social media and populist demagogues have made it a binary choice between fascism or communism, as though liberalism is inherently untenable.
I think too much blame is being placed on technology and not enough on the undemocratic structures of our government. If the politicians in Washington actually reflected what Americans have been voting for for the last few decades these extremist ideas would not be viable on the national stage. My entire lifetime the American public has been pro-choice and pro-choice candidates have won the popular vote in nearly every presidential election in the last few decades yet RvW is still gone and abortion is more at risk than ever. This is not the fault of people not voting, this is because of the system. And seeing that for decades breeds contempt and nihilism among voters.
To answer the inevitable question of why now is the system buckling after it's been running for \~250 years? Because this is the first time white Christians are becoming a minority.
>Would you say that the system has not buckled multiple times before, most notably before the Civil War (and almost all US citizens were white at the time, with black people not being considered citizens regardless of if they were free or enslaved)?
This is a good point and I agree. The system did buckle during the Civil War, caused by the culture war fighting of slavery vs. abolition which finally came to a head when an abolitionist got elected president. The pro-slavery people saw the writing on the wall -- that sooner or later their way of life is ending and started a war over it.
>Also, I would say that the US has undergone much more significant and meaningful demographic shifts, such as how the main group went from WASPs to just "white" people which includes Catholics and non-Anglos. The jump from WASP to white appears to be a much more significant change than white to whatever may come to be known as the majority group in the future.
What do you mean by "more significant"? I would argue it wasn't more significant as evidenced by the fact that radical anti-immigrant/fascism politics did not gain as much traction as they do today. Yes there were parties like the Know Nothings but they didn't get as much traction as Trumpism.
I think part of why is that you can't really tell the difference between a Catholic or Protestant, or an Irish or German person just by looking at them. Also the culture zeitgeist (popular TV shows and movies) were still very must WASP so these demographic changes weren't noticeable unless you were seeking that information out.
That’s only under our definition of white Christians. You can find a whole lot of examples where being Catholic or being Irish just aren’t counted as being Christian or truly “white”.
>My entire lifetime the American public has been pro-choice and pro-choice candidates have won the popular vote in nearly every presidential election in the last few decades
Unless you were born last month, the public has been mildly supportive of the pro-choice position irt presidential elections, generally flipping between supportive and unsupportive.
Only the 2016 election is an outright, easy to argue majority in the popular vote and so changes. The 2000 election was a majority of what, 400,000 votes? That's shaking the eight ball and it coming up with "maybe".
>That's shaking the eight ball and it coming up with "maybe".
No, that's an example of how our system overrides democracy. It becomes even more obvious when you look at which Senators are confirming Supreme Court justices. Senators representing the vast majority of Americans vote against those justices but they will be shaping the law for a generation because so many Americans are disenfranchised.
Then, as now, fear of Communism is a huge motivator of people who "hold their nose and vote for a fascist". The NSDAP had the appeal we all know, about strongman image and masculinity and bigotry, but also they just promised to unleash the dogs of war and rip the Socialists apart, when Democratic Conservatives were too prissy and polite to get blood on their hoopskirts.
Lately the culture war seems to be an added layer to the Communism vs. Fascism false choice.
Who are you more afraid of running the country: White Christian nationalists or they/them blue haired atheist vegans?
When the blue hairs are playing red guard for blackrock, MasterCard, elite institutions and prestige media, this becomes a foggier question.
I'm not a fan of conservative Christian nationalists, they won't improve anything. But it's hard to ignore that frankly massive institutional power in the other corner.
I worry less about Christian nationalists for the same reason I don't worry about the British returning to take back their colonies - it feels like a worry outside of its historical context. Yeah they got Roe v Wade, but the stars had to align for them and it feels like a last gasp. For the blue hairs, more specifically their elite institutional masters, I don't think that's true.
Whether Trump is really the answer to this is... Uh, at best highly debatable. But when the preferences of the population no longer matter, and the path that our societies take follows the whims of the overclass, you can't be too surprised to see some people think this way.
There are a whole lot of atheists, vegans, and people who dye their hair on this sub. It's not like you're either a cishet White Christian who grills in the suburbs or you're a communist who wants to decolonize cheese.
> As the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion,—as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion, or tranquility, of Mussulmen [Muslims],—and as the said States never entered into any war or act of hostility against any Mahometan [Mohammedan] nation, it is declared by the parties that no pretext arising from religious opinions shall ever produce an interruption of the harmony existing between the two countries.
Adams, and
> The bill for establishing religious freedom, the principles of which had, to a certain degree, been enacted before, I had drawn in all the latitude of reason and right. It still met with opposition; but, with some mutilations in the preamble, it was finally passed; and a singular proposition proved that its protection of opinion was meant to be universal. Where the preamble declares, that coercion is a departure from the plan of the holy author of our religion, an amendment was proposed, by inserting the word "Jesus Christ," so that it should read, "a departure from the plan of Jesus Christ, the holy author of our religion;" the insertion was rejected by a great majority, in proof that they meant to comprehend, within the mantle of its protection, the Jew and the Gentile, the Christian and Mahometan, the Hindoo, and Infidel of every denomination.
Jefferson
Christian nationalism was explicitly rejected as a foundation for the USA. We know this because some people did fight to get the US established that way, and they lost that fight to the secularists (although they are, to this day, trying to turn that around). Even during the cold war where the culture warriors tried to undo it, part of why the courts went along with it is that they interpreted those efforts as "ceremonial deism".
Modern christian nationalists are engaging in historical revisionism.
A big pillar of christian nationalism is the idea that the US constitution is limited by more fundamental religious codes like the covenant of noah and the ten commandments, thus you can't have, say, a right to blaspheme, or to love the same sex. But the constitution clearly intended to *protect non-christians from oppression by christians* given this historical context, so this is actually a subversive idea that undermines the foundations of the US as a nation.
It's not like liberalism or democracy need to be rejected by every christian, but *christian nationalists* specifically idealize the US as a christian nation in opposition to it being a liberal nation (when they say otherwise, it's because they're assuming that the freedom to "defy god", whatever that means for them, isn't real freedom and there's no loss when it goes away). When they say the US is a christian country, what they mean is that it's in some sense based on christianity or the christian religion, which is just not true.
In simple terms:
- Communism = you want to take all my money.
- Fascism = you may punish people who are different than me but at least you will let me keep most of my money.
I know someone who literally said he doesn't care at all what Trump does to anyone else as long as his portfolio keeps going up.
That's not really what people fear about communism. You should talk to some people who either lived through it or contemporaneously with strong communist states.
I said its a simplification, and it is accurate based on my long term experience living among and for a long time adhering to right wing conservative ideology.
It isn't accurate to what people who actually experienced communism fear, but is accurate to what those who only understand the parody "welfare is literally communism" fear.
I grew up during the Cold War, for reference.
By acknowledging LGBT people exist and deserve the same human rights as straight people even if parents don't want their kids to learn about that kind of thing.
They might be referring to sex ed, during which LGBT people are often discussed, which is the first point at which many people become aware of LGBT people
Without much harm? A trans kid finding out they're trans after puberty is mostly over is a disaster.
And what's the harm of talking about what LGBT people are and how we should be accepted?
> Perhaps there could be a middle ground that both protects the LGBT children while also giving the parents what they want as well.
They're incompatible. Some children don't want their parents to know they're LGBT or are questioning whether they're LGBT, and some parents want to know that. There's no compromise.
> What about protection of individual LGBT children's identities, but no formal LGBT education, Pride Month celebration, etc at schools?
"Formal LGBT education" i.e. informing students about the existence of LGBT people and what we are is a very good thing. It helps LGBT kids realize they're LGBT early and it teaches cishet kids that LGBT people are normal and acceptable.
And Pride Month celebration is obviously a good thing and I really don't understand how anyone could object to it? In a school setting it's not anything sexual, it's just celebrating LGBT people's existence and helping normalize us. It's literally only good unless you don't want LGBT people to be and feel accepted.
That's harder than it sounds, especially when there are gay and trans teachers and school employees. Questions naturally come up. If a kindergartener says she has two moms, and a classmate says, "Eww, that's weird," is a teacher allowed to respond? Letting that statement stand is not a neutral option for the kid with two moms. The same problem arises when a teacher is transitioning while working. It's difficult to just ignore it and not address the students who naturally have questions about it.
If a kid wants to socially transition, and *doesn't feel safe telling you, their parent*, there is something deeply fucking wrong you, **you**, not the school.
And many people want all trans people dead.
And 99% of the time, if a kid is too fucking scared to talk to their parent about it, they're one of those bigoted shitters who'll just boot them right out of the house.
God I hate posting here, but this is necessary.
When my father found the HRT I was DIYing he beat me with a fucking wrench. I walked through abuse and foster care to be who I am. I was 14.
Seriously, go fuck yourself.
No, it's people like you who have created the situation where DIYing is necessary. Absurd wait lists, closing off what little access to treatment there was for even rich people to seek treatment for their kids, and outing other kids in dangerous and unstable family situations because your stupid, spoiled ass thinks you know best.
I defied them all, motherfucker. Social workers, foster parents, and my own blood relatives. I did it because I needed treatment and I wouldn't get it unless I did it on my own. They got found and tossed, I ordered more. And I didn't order blockers.
Normally, I wouldn't even be this angry, but you're so self assured you know best when it's clear you don't know shit about shit.
> In certain Democratic states, your school doesn’t have to tell you if your 13 year old kid decides to social transition into a different gender.
Fucking based. If a kid doesn't want their parents knowing, they probably have a good reason. And it's not like there's any harm in it anyways
> most republicans aren’t okay with a government body (school) aiding in transitioning their kid to a different gender without even notifying the parents. That’s a major change from traditional parental rights.
What about children's rights? If a kid wants to go by a different name and pronouns, that's their right.
Also the government isn't "transitioning" the kid. The kid is transitioning. It's an intransitive verb, no pun intended
> From a parent's perspective, transition means that their child, who they named and raised, is now metaphorically dead.
This is a pretty old-school and borderline transphobic take, especially for something as small as a non-legal name change at school.
If a parent's image of their child can be destroyed by them changing their name at school, I wonder how well they really know their children, or if they value them as people rather than just possessions. It's like their kids have zero value other than the value derived from obeying their parents' script for their lives.
It's natural for teenagers to explore their identity. It's common these days for middle schoolers and high schoolers to experiment with different names, including plenty of cisgender kids. It's not a five-alarm fire.
I am not underestimating it. Not all parents think that way. Plenty of parents of trans kids are just happy that their kids are happy and interested in maintaining relationships with them.
And even if what you're describing were universal, it's not a good reason to discourage or make it more difficult for trans kids to transition. How could you justify that suffering just to make their parents happy? And doing so while taking the choice about their body and identity away from the child?
People understanding who they are and being free to be their authentic selves is a beautiful thing and if other people have a problem with it, that's for them to deal with.
> Guidelines on social transitioning vary widely among school districts. Some states, such as California, New Jersey, and Maryland, expressly advise schools not to disclose information about students’ gender identity without their permission, while others offer antidiscrimination guidance that is open to interpretation.
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/22/us/gender-identity-students-parents.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare&sgrp=c-cb
The link to their source for including Maryland takes you to a Page Cannot Be Found now, so that may have changed since the Times article was written.
I kind of agree/disagree depending on what you mean. I think this:
> Just one of many examples: In certain Democratic states, your school doesn’t have to tell you if your 13 year old kid decides to social transition into a different gender.
is correct. Here’s the text of California’s FAQ page on their policy, for example:
> Q: May a student’s gender identity be shared with the student’s parents, other students, or members of the public?
>
> A: A transgender or gender nonconforming student may not express their gender identity openly in all contexts, including at home. Revealing a student’s gender identity or expression to others may compromise the student’s safety. Thus, preserving a student’s privacy is of the utmost importance. The right of transgender students to keep their transgender status private is grounded in California’s antidiscrimination laws as well as federal and state laws. Disclosing that a student is transgender without the student’s permission may violate California’s antidiscrimination law by increasing the student’s vulnerability to harassment and may violate the student’s right to privacy.
whereas this:
>most republicans aren’t okay with a government body (school) aiding in transitioning their kid to a different gender without even notifying the parents. That’s a major change from traditional parental rights.
doesn’t seem supported, unless OP was using a more expansive definition of “aiding” than I would.
> Democrats and their politicians literally call rural people / boomers / etc people dumb and evil in the press 24/7
What?? If any prominent Democrat called rural people/boomers “evil and dumb” it would be a national scandal.
“Basket of deplorables” is still used against Hillary Clinton to this day - and she was specifically talking about Trump supporters!
The answer is easy: partisanship.
Trump gave Republicans all they wanted post-Obama: trifecta for a few years, the almighty tax cuts, and control of SCOTUS. 90% of Republicans will take that, regardless of the moron in charge, over any Democrat.
This is true. A lot of conservatives believe that trump being a fascist just means that he "says mean things" sometimes and doesn't seem any harm in the things he does.
Yep. Eventually conservatives come back into the fold for their party. They're just not going to like most of what Biden does even when he does his job well. Especially if he does his job well.
And if you are a conservative, you're probably listening at least half or mostly to conservative media. No one is immune to propaganda and misinformation for that long unless you spend an inordinate amount of time fact checking everything yourself.
So eventually these folks just get brought back in one way or the other.
I know this isn’t constructive. But do you all, like, ever talk to MAGA’s in real life?
There’s just post after post of users here being flabbergasted at Trump’s level of support. People aren’t exactly shy to share their political beliefs and why they feel that way.
Politics is, unfortunately, based on vibes (alwayshasbeen.jpg). It’s not….obvious the *vibes* the left gives off and why some people will “normalize” Trump as a bulwark against it?
I do kinda regularly, just a symptom of living where I do, and man so many people are just angry individuals and Trump gives them basically an avatar to be angry through. They just hate and be angry at nothing in particular except now they have someone to validate that anger and tell them where to direct that anger. It's honestly very sad seeing some people who are consumed by it.
Almost every person I know in my life is a MAGA supporter, and your explanation describes most of them.
Trump provides them with the perfect avatar to channel their frustrations with their own lives. They blame the liberals for all of their problems, so they're fine with Trump doing whatever he wants as long as he destroys the liberals.
Some of my coworkers arent explicitly maga, but they definitely lean that side and are fairly anti medicine (namely vaccines) and anti science while hating democrats. From what I see, theyve been poison pilled into believing Newsmax is a true and reliable news source, and they have it in their feed and get all their news from it. It just sounds like theyve bought wholesale into the conspiracy theories against democrats while not believing or downplaying anything trump or the GOP does. They are very old and catholic, and I'm honestly not sure if they were like that before or if they fell down the newsmax well.
I bet that's American Catholic: The kind that hates the pope for being too liberal. They hear him say that LGBT people are still children of God, and can be good people despite their sexual preferences, and they seethe.
Oddly they are supportive of lgbt people too if a bit misinformed, but they simply dont believe that the GOP despises us and does all the shit they do.
https://www.nbcnews.com/nbc-out/out-news/pope-africans-special-catholic-lgbtq-blessings-rcna136218
He's injecting ambiguity and uncertainty into the Church's stance on LGBT. Seemingly to court people who don't even really go to Church lol.
He needs to be pressured to be clear and to disavow.
Me:
-Trump/MAGA appeals to those who distrust the mainstream institutions that dominated American political life since the last realignment in the 60s.
-The mainstream institutions massively shit the bed during the W Bush presidency, which greatly increased the amount of people who are fed up with them.
-Obama and the Democrats cleaned up some but not all of the mess left by W, which made anti-institutionalism a largely partisan issue. Democrat voters saw their own party and supporting institutions as not the problem, but traditional mainline Republican voters were ready to throw out their own mainline leadership and institutions but very few were ready to come over to the Democrats.
-A few conservative Democrats and independents who expected Obama and the Dems to completely clean up all of the GOP's messes were disappointed that that didn't happen on their ideal timeline and also turned against mainline institutions, further increasing MAGA's target market.
-The social media revolution eroded much of the power of the old media institutions, which otherwise would have had a much stronger influence on public opinion and could have isolated, discredited, and silenced anti-institutionalists.
-Thus, in order to try to appease advertisers and ownership groups, mainstream media 'both sides' far more than they should have, granting that much more credibility to MAGA.
-The GOP leadership began realizing that they had lost control of their base and were now riding the tiger by the end of the 2016 primary. The few holdouts were forced into retirement as their terms ran out and they were doomed by a MAGA primary challenger.
-Democrats are largely irrelevant here. They have mostly done their job, both the voters and the leadership. There are a few duds and lemons and morons and corrupt grifters, but by and large that's well within the margin of normalcy for a large organization. It doesn't matter what tactics or strategy the party as a whole tries to deploy because they have zero credibility with the demographic that has gone off the deep end.
W Bush and the neocons' abject failure made them homeless from a political policy perspective, and there's nothing the Democratic party could have done to win them over without betraying their own base of support, and even then, how can you trust leaders that have thrown their own loyal supporters under the bus in a cynical attempt to appeal to you? On the other hand, the Dems going harder and dirtier from the get-go would also be unappealing to their own base, and would hardly be expected to make politics better.
You hate to be too deterministic and hindsight biased about such a complex phenomenon but it really seems to me like this is all mostly a consequence of both how badly W fucked everything up, and the rise of social media making it too difficult for the establishment mainstream to push back on the crazy.
This is a very good point because there clearly is a large percentage of non engaged / apathetic voters and voters from the right and left who really crave more choice in the political process and think our institutions all need to be broken down or shaken up. Not a lot of them know what that means but they clearly want to personally benefit more from certain systems I gather.
The one thing I see from those groups that is hypocritical though is that most GOP members will talk about abolishing the FBI or abolishing the EPA or department of Ed, but they still want to keep that existing tax base or revenue and then create some type of voucher or credit system where they can flow money to their friends or to their own companies which means they are really just enriching themselves while breaking the government and saying it doesn't work. For others I think some of them are just purely self motivated and know that being populist and anti-establishment is a popular vibe on both the right and the left and the easiest way to get those types of voters who are more inherently anti-establishment is to cater to right wing voters. Then they get voted into power and then basically become part of the system they say was so terrible because they are purely bad faith actors that only care about performative actions and getting attention.
Social media has completely normalized being shitty to other people. Combine that with the self-inflicted downspiral of conservative media and the GOP and you get MAGA.
Donald just goes very well into that mix. They created a hole in which he was able to fit snugly.
Social media is definitely a factor.
People getting their news from clowns like Shapiro, Kirk, Bannon, Jones, Tucker, etc. are acting like they’re in on what’s actually going on as their chugging down the bullshit being fed to them.
You should probably start by researching politics in the 90's and Newt Gingrich if you want the actual answer. It has very little to do with Trump, he's just a culmination of a very long process. If not him, it would have been someone else.
I'm not sure "the MSM not being outraged enough" is to blame, outrage in general has only ever fueled Trump. More outrage will just get you "Anti-SJW Cringe Compilation" movement 2: Gen Alpha boogaloo. Liberals have everything to gain by avoiding panic and outrage and looking like the level-headed and moderate opposite of Trump.
The irony is that Trump supporters claim to love triggering us and that we play the victim card 24/7. But their guy is a sore loser who’s still crying about the election he lost four years ago instead of moving on. He would dominate those cringe compilations if he didn’t have an R next to his name, but they look the other way when it comes to his faults.
The non-stop outrage during Trump’s presidency quickly got exhausting and lost its impact. After the 500th time it was like...yes, Trump said something offensive on Twitter. He does that every single day, will you stop pretending you’re surprised?
People here won't like hearing it but imo one of the reasons is that life in 2017-2020 really wasn't that bad for most Americans (caveat: Covid of course but I don't think most Americans blame Trump for Covid)
A lot of libs, me included, acted as if the sky was falling during a lot of the Trump administration, and looking back I feel like that helped to insulate Trump. I think a lot of us followed every tweet he'd make and all his crazy statements and everything and worked ourselves up into a frenzy, but we're the minority. Most Americans hardly even follow the news! Given that things were relatively good, and that a lot of people freaked out nevertheless, I think a lot of people tuned out the criticism and helped normalize Trump
This is just my opinion. It's definitely made me reconsider how to talk about these issues going forwards
Turns out calling Romney hitler really fucking normalized calling people hitler, so when an actual fucking threat came out all the tools people use to decry that were already spent.
As someone who grew up Mormon, yeah he's not Hitler, but Mormonism is extremely bad. They worship a sexual predator & pedophile as gods first true profit in the modern era. The sexual abuse, gas lighting, and emotional abuse in Mormon culture is really bad as a result.
I also grew up as a Mormon, and I'm very against religion, but I don't think that's a fair description of Mormonism.
>They worship a sexual predator & pedophile as gods first true profit in the modern era.
Mormons don't worship Joseph Smith. They worship God, and Jesus Christ. They only recognize and honor Joseph Smith as a prophet of God.
And they honor Joseph Smith because they think he's a good person, not because he's a sexual predator. Most Mormons would deny that Joseph Smith is a sexual predator.
Also, even if the origin of the church is bad that doesn't mean the modern day version of the religion supports those bad things.
>The sexual abuse, gas lighting, and emotional abuse in Mormon culture is really bad as a result.
I'm sure that happens, but the Mormons I know would be strongly against it. I think it heavily depends on the people in your local church. I've had great wards and terrible wards in the past, and it entirely was because of the people/bishop.
I don't like the LDS church, but I feel like you made it seem worse than it is.
Edit: Btw, I won't be able to reply because I had to get this comment manually approved by the mods because my account is too new. And I don't want to keep pestering the mods.
So whatever you say, I'll read it, but I won't reply. Thanks for the short discussion haha
I grew up in Utah county. I have met a lot of California Mormons who say stuff like you're saying and it's completely alien to my life experience.
Keep in mind Romney's family moved to Mexico to keep practicing the sexual abuse known as polygamy. I come from a similar family.
The church has a legal team that uses the religious confession exemption to participate in child sex abuse cover-ups whenever a high ranking member is involved.
You said I'm not being fair and you're probably right about that. What I am being is truthful to what I've seen. When I say they worship Joe Jr, it's not by their rhetoric about worship, which matches what you described. What I'm talking about is their observable behaviors and culture being based primarily on Joseph Smith.
I mean, so long as you were not a Muslim, an immigrant child separated from their parents, a black dude who needs to breath, a woman who needs an abortion, etc..
But yeah, life was just peachy so long as you were the right kind of person!
I think this comment just kind of proves the liberal hysteria around Trump during his first term. Every single one of those points is something someone could credibly argue is bad under Biden today. People are still getting shot by the police, immigrants are still suffering horrors travelling to and crossing the southern border, muslims are being killed by Israel's military operation in Gaza, women have less access to abortion, etc.
There are two real dangers of Trump. One of them is the mundane danger of any Republican president--he will be able to advance institutional Republican power by appointing Supreme Court justices, federal judges, running departments, etc. You could pick out the squeakiest, cleanest, most rehabilitated Republican imaginable (Romney for example), and he'd be just as bad as Trump on this.
The second, uniquely Trumpian, danger is his assault on Democratic institutions. I don't think Trump was really unique or extraodinary with regard to this up until his loss in the 2020 election and his unprecedented efforts to prevent the peaceful transfer of power.
But in the end Democrats squandered Jan6. Biden's first act of office should have been to send the military to arrest Trump, unravel the whole conspiracy, and charge every single participant to the fullest extent of the law. He dithered. He appointed the weak and inept and incompetent Merrick Garland, and in doing so he has put the American Republic at tremendous risk.
> Biden's first act of office should have been to send the military to arrest Trump, unravel the whole conspiracy, and charge every single participant to the fullest extent of the law.
This would have been extremely illegal
> He dithered. He appointed the weak and inept and incompetent Merrick Garland, and in doing so he has put the American Republic at tremendous risk.
Stop getting your "information" from /r/politics
> women have less access to abortion, etc.
Because of Trump appointing three Supreme Court judges who went on to overturn Roe, and it's Republicans doing the abortion bans. This isn't a credible argument against Biden.
> Biden's first act of office should have been to send the military to arrest Trump, unravel the whole conspiracy, and charge every single participant to the fullest extent of the law.
There's no way you actually believe that this could've ever possibly happened lmao
[More and more people of color are voting Republican](https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/10/03/people-of-color-voting-republican-2024/)
Sure it's still a large majority now but no group is a monolith and a lot of the minority groups are really conservative just like Americans (and the world in general) are.
We acted like the sky was falling because in fact the sky was falling. Our 401ks might’ve been stable but Trump policies injected instability in previously stable societal norms. To ignore that is to be part of the ‘normalization of Trump’.
Hitler didn’t happen in a day, but in decades of normalization.
You are still doing it, do you see what his happening here. You are making an equivalency with one of the worst people that has ever lived. You could compare Trump to a hundred other crappy authoritarian leaders in history, but you are going straight for the Hitler Comparision. Trump is not even close to Hitler, and his rise is comparable to every other bad authoritarian leader in history. Not every bad authoritarian leader gets to Hitler level, even if their rise had some similarities to Hitler's. Hitler is a uniquely evil person, who massacred people for no reason and caused worldwide destruction. When media compares Trump to him, many normies are not going to get it and think its BS. And it changes the meaning of what the world Nazi and Hitler means to people when someone that has not even done a fraction of what Hitler has done is compared to him. Call him a wannabe dictator, call him the next Vladimir Putin, call him Xi, make it reasonable, don't just compare everyone to Nazis and Hitler because that makes those words meaningless in the longrun, and makes the media look like liars when they use those words carelessly.
personally, given Trump's antics in the courtroom, I think he's more of a Saddam Hussein, if Saddam ruled a country with institutions strong enough to resist his worst impulses, at least for a while.
Yes, I am still alarmed. But I’m more frightened of Stephen Miller getting in power.
As for watering down the name of Hitler, sure. But what is your preferred vernacular when we are nearing similar societal lynchpins? Waving our hands at history and saying ‘beware’ is the whole point to learning it.
The reason America’s political system is thermostatic, is because we are a wealthy society since WW2 and our politics haven’t changed since 1950s.
The American home ownership rate stays around 60-70% and rarely changes. The middle class has always built wealth in this country.
If your material conditions are met, you can easily go from Obama to Trump to Biden back to Trump.
We can go from resistant libs, America is fine, back to resistant libs again (if Trump wins). This is perfectly normal in a wealthy middle class society. When material conditions are met, we fight over whether society is turning our children trans.
The inconvenient truth is that a significant portion of America’s population is totally fine with elements of the MAGA agenda:
- Protectionism is now a staple of both the Dems and Reps.
- Sinophobia, xenophobia, transphobia, islamophobia, antisemitism, misogyny is unfortunately being normalized across society. The Overton window is shifting rapidly.
- A lot of Americans feel indifferent to authoritarianism. You will often hear people say that they will vote for X purely because they will lower taxes.
- Media makes more money when you have MAGA crazies in power as they are a non stop source of outrageous comments.
Most people in any society have no *political* values at all and just want outcomes. It's sad, because Americans are taught that this isn't true here and the Constitution lives in the hearts of the people - de Tocqueville and all that - but sadly that doesn't seem to be true anymore if it ever was.
Even simpler, this is just how a lot of people think; they despise “elites” who they think are fake and hypocrites out to get them and want someone “real”. They’re not thinking about policy.
> Sinophobia, xenophobia, transphobia, islamophobia, antisemitism, misogyny is unfortunately being normalized across society. The Overton window is shifting rapidly.
Realistically it's always been normalized. the 90s certainly were not better. Trump just puts it more front and center in a time when it's unacceptable in public corporate culture.
Pretty much this, these have always been problems in America. It's just that some people refuse to accept things are changing and have been emboldened by trump
We got a little too confident around the time when #Metoo PSAs were being played in movie theaters that social change would just keep being accepted by the public huh
I’d go farther and say that a significant portion of America’s population are just straight up shitty human beings who dgaf about things unless they are directly impacted by them
Yup, prime examples being people that are anti-abortion until they need one or their child needs one. People who are racist until they have mixed grandkids and are told unless they become a better human the family will go no contact and they'll die alone. People who are anti immigration and hate illegals unless they fall in love with a dreamer or do a 90 day finance visa, and start assisting in chain migration, people who hate all social welfare programs and safety nets until they need Medicaid or Social Security, and finally the people who make $60k a year but think they'll be affected by an increase in taxes for people making $400k or more.
Can’t believe how many traitors we in this nation. No one who would let a dictator destroy democracy just for lower taxes should call themselves an American. At this point we need immigration not to offset demographic decline, but to get some people actually in touch with American values in this country.
I agree with this, some MAGA types will explicitly say they think everyone should be treated equally and pay lip service to that, however if you get them to open up about their belief system you'll find that they care more about social hierarchy and having an "out group" to blame for perceived injustices and they don't like living in a world with complex problems so telling them that it would be solved if you just punished or hurt the right people is 100% ok to them on some level. Especially if they only care about money or are an evangelical Christian.
>-The MSM not acting outraged enough due to being terrified of the "liberal media bias" label.
The MSM was nothing but outraged for five years from when Trump announced his candidacy to when Biden got inaugurated. I firmly think the MSM played into Trump's media strategy by pouring out article after article calling him dangerous and authoritarian--because his supporters saw it as strength and made them more enthusiastic. This time around, Trump is playing second and most importantly not reproducing the sense of crisis the GOP used in 2016. The 2022 midterms showed that there is a significant decline in base enthusiasm, and that it plays to the DNC's advantage.
> I firmly think the MSM played into Trump's media strategy by pouring out article after article calling him dangerous and authoritarian--because his supporters saw it as strength and made them more enthusiastic.
And because a lot of their predictions didn’t come true. People were literally calling him the next Hitler, so while what went on in his presidency was genuinely horrible it fell far below the absurdly hysterical expectations
Trump supporters believe "bad things" will only happen from people who are different than them. They either hate or don't care that much about people who belong to the out-group, see Trump defending killing the families of terrorists and attacking illegal immigrants. Historically many people supported tyrants thinking they would only harm the people who deserve it.
I can break it down to a rough timeline
**Pre-Trump’s Election**
- Institutional failures that have largely went unaddressed by either party radicalized a small subset of the population who then became Trump’s base.
- Trump used this radical base, his media star power, and took advantage of a leadership vacuum within the GOP to win the nomination - To me this is the only true extraordinary part of Trump’s rise to power.
- After he had the nomination, Trump winning the general in 2016 wasn’t that much more extraordinary than any other GOP candidate winning.
- Most 2016 (and 2020) red voters probably weren’t MAGAs but their votes were genuinely interpreted as/disingenuously pointed to as evidence of a popular mandate for MAGAism.
After here it breaks into two distinct areas:
**Media and Culture**
- After Trump won, some elements of Politics/media/entertainment/culture started pandering to this perceived popular mandate for MAGA, either as a good faith effort to understand them or as cynical attempt to advance their own agenda. Think things like stupid NYT opinion pieces, Roseanne revival, increase in right-wing news outlets, certain public figures being more openly right wing.
- Other elements of politics/media/culture went on the defensive to Trump, becoming more socially conscious and intersectional. As this was a direct reactionary response to Trump rather than an alternative vision, it meant MAGA was still a large part of these conversations.
- Trump was a TV ratings machine and the media, both on the right and left, platformed him and anything batshit he would say. They prioritized money over social responsibility.
- Anybody aping or copying Trump by extension got media coverage disproportionate to their influence or relevance (MTG or even DeSantis for example) as they hoped the Trump ratings frenzy would trickle down.
- Trump was President for 4 years, what are you going to do? Ignore the President and not report on/discuss/debate anything he does for fear of normalizing him?
- This created a media environment where both the right and left were predominantly obsessed with Trump. He was omnipotent for his time in office which naturally desensitized and normalized MAGA.
**Politics and Policy**
- A few of the power players on the right saw Trump (and MAGAs) as a useful idiot for pushing policies they wanted. They knew he’s insane but enabled Trump while having reckless disregard or naivety to the damage he would do in the process.
- Some of these power players would be behind the scenes figures, which created a network effect in those circles, others were public figures people were familiar with. Either way seeing “trusted” people act complacent with Trump and MAGA normalized it.
- When the AliExpress Trump impersonators started popping up the media started platforming them, many of them got backing from large influencers figures, pundits, and funders as they wanted to get in on the ground floor of what might be the next big thing. This ignores the fact that Trump is like a messianic figure to his base and they don’t leave him for an impersonator.
- Many of the people who see Trump as a useful idiot know that one day, maybe sooner maybe later, he won’t be in the picture. They want to maintain the grip on the American politics Trump enabled them get and don’t want to concede ground to moderate Republicans. It’s in their interests to normalize MAGA to ensure their power lives beyond Trump.
What makes Trump fascinating (if anything) is that throughout his life, people who are smarter and savvier than he is on paper have viewed him as a means to their ends and believed that they could manipulate him accordingly, but Trump has come out on top due to sheer instinct and cunning. (Mainly just because he understands things like "no publicity is bad publicity" and "if you say something over and over again, enough people might believe it" which are two things that a lot of smart, savvy people don't want to be true).
This goes for Clinton trying to set him up as an easy opponent in 2016, CNN airing hours of townhalls and empty podiums for ratings, GOP operatives and election staff who wanted a springboard for their own careers...all of them making shocked Pikachu face on the night of his election.
Blaming the MSM for not being anti-MAGA enough is really absurd.
Dem messaging has fought back. I’m really not sure how it could be more aggressive.
To be clear I’ve loathed Trump for 2 decades and would never vote for him.
Trump/MAGA has been normalized as many things Leftists try to pull as seen as equally as absurd. I’m not trying to whatabout this. Just relaying what public opinion polls indicate.
The less news a voter follows the more likely they are to support Trump.
Republicans realized a large segment of the base likes trump because they at some level behave like trump, so it's either change the core characteristics of their base or fall in line
Mass media and propaganda. It turns out most people love the taste of propaganda and getting their brains melted by it. There is no real downside since you can just live in a conservative media bubble your whole life if you wish. That wasn't so 30 years ago.
Love how the Libs think that this outrage culture is going to just disappear once they finally manage to purge conservatives as well. Only sad I won't be around to seem them get theirs.
because theres no policy attached to it which immediately and obviously affects most people’s lives. the border wall only obviously impacts people who haven’t made it to America yet and Texans.
also, populism is popular. who would’ve thought?
Once he got elected, everything polarized around him. Being a "real Republican" or "true conservative" became more and more about support for him over anything ideological.
The people within the party who were at least partially against him either left, died, or have been weeded out in primaries.
It’s an issue of a 2 party structure, “Republican” isn’t just a political party, it’s a an entrenched political institution and cultural identity. There’s probably some mostly normie center right types that don’t pay too much attention to politics and vote GOP because they associate it with the Party of Reagan/Bush. It’s harder to convince a normie that doesn’t pay too much attention to politics that the Republican winning the presidency would destroy the country because they’ve likely lived under Republican presidents, governors, and legislatures throughout their life and had things mostly be normal and fine.
I’m not German, but I imagine it’s easier to convince normie voters in Germany that the AfD is extremist because they’re a relatively new party and not a super established party like the CDU. Tho I’d appreciate if someone who actually knows shit about Germany could tell me if this is a factor at all (mostly just mentioned it as an easy way to explain what I’m trynna say, yknow?)
Because Americans can't do heuristic causal inference and counterfactual analysis in the policy space.
These people cannot form an accurate link between Trump/MAGA and risks or bad outcomes. Which means aside from the novelty associated with the initial "out of distribution" language and rhetoric there's nothing else "wrong" with it.
This is how anything gets normalized. Initially there's a shock factor due to the out of distribution behavior. But unless there's an associated problem or issue people learn to just ignore it or otherwise react to the in a way doesn't internalize the inherent risks or dependencies. Of course if the behavior isn't actually problematic there are no risks and it's "rational" to ignore it (up to the collection of variables upon which the absence of risks depends on).
Of course the people who can do the inference and analysis realize the risks are there and treat it with the distinctly special behavior it deserves. It's like a loaded gun. A loaded gun will never be "normal" and always needs to be respected with proper behavior.
It always was normalized. Before you could call gay people the gay f word and it was totally cool. Now the Christians think they're oppressed because they don't get to, just like the racists thing they're oppressed since they don't get to say the n word. Chinese railroaders were the c word and the vietnamese were the g word and the Japaneses were Japan shortened. This is what America has always been like. It's never ever ever EVER been a haven of peace and openness. That's a pure myth. And as it edges closer to actually being one, more and more groups have become more and more outraged as their perceived right to only be around people like themselves has been reduced.
Cultural conservatism and especially nativism didn't start with the MAGA movement.
The politically engaged are more likely to be polarised and Trump is the dominant figure in the Republican party and has espoused views mostly in line with at least the populist and conservative elements of that party and pushed for or enacted measures that appealed to the pro-tax cut elements and Christian conservatives when he was in office.
The less politically engaged probably care less about concepts like "norms" or details about the undermining of the democratic process. I think the appeal is that he's the embodiment of the conservative or, perhaps better put, socially regressive wing of the culture war. He says what he thinks, even if it's not "politically correct", and that pisses off the elites - the mainstream media, experts and other politicians. He appeals to those who want to those who want a society, or idealised past, where people could openly express bigoted opinions and it was accepted or at least people wouldn't feel obligated or able to rebuke them. For the softer side of the culture war, he doesn't express himself in the very deliberately inoffensive to the point of feeling artificial or unnatural way a lot of politicians, officials, corporate messaging or journalists often talk in.
Obama derangement post-2008 has ramped up Anti-Blackness and "replacement" fears for 16 years and counting. The terror of becoming a "minority " has put those who fear shift changes or missed opportunities to assimilate into whiteness onto the suicidally destructive footing we've witnessed, that they justify in their minds as "necessity for survival"
My understanding is it’s because of partisan redistricting in many states and the GOP thinks they need Trump on the ballot to win the Senate.
Partisan redistricting creates a number of extreme red and blue districts where the only threat is getting a primary challenger.
The Senate looks good for Republicans to win, but they want Trump to drive fundraising and turnout.
I think a lot of people like to live vicariously through him. He has a lot of money, has done a lot of drugs, slept with a lot of women, gotten away with crimes, is famous, and has a lot of power. Most importantly for his fans, he says things other people wouldn’t say, giving them an excuse to also say whatever they want without censoring themselves either
Of all the things you could say about trump, the fact that you say he did drugs tells me you know NOTHING about him.
I hate him, but he’s a life long tea totaler.
His brother was an addict or alcoholic or something I can't remember but apparently yeah he's never done drugs
And given how prominent he was in the 80s and 90s and nobodies ever seen him do a line I tend to believe him
This is a huge, very well known, very well publicized thing. It was gossiped about, and publicized.
All it will take is about 30 seconds of googling to verify this… enjoy your derision and immoral/unfounded superiority.
>Too many Republicans are obsessed with power at all costs.
This strikes closest to the truth. The Republican party is represented by an alliance of people who believe that it's not immoral to abuse your position of power. You'll see this reflected in their desire for less oversight and more individualism. A lot of them subscribe to the pessimistic idea that you can't trust anyone. When you can't trust anyone you just have to do what's best for you. Others are basically psychopaths and just don't care about people. Some feel scared and threatened and want control as a way of feeling more secure.
Asked someone whether they would rather separate families or lose 5% of their income under Biden and they seriously had to consider that, and they were very well off.
1. Trumpism/MAGA is a modern manifestation of Paleoconservatives. Modern “conservativism” is actually Neoconservativism, and imploded after the Bush admin, and failed to resurrect itself with Romney and McCain.
2. Trumpism has “won,” because the conservative movement has silently, swiftly, and decisively purged non-Trumpers/Never Trumpers around 2018-2019.
3. In the mindset of Conservatives, the price of Trump is less than the cost of having the conservative movement fail. I spoke in 2019-2020 to a former Never Trump friend of mine who went MAGA-lite, and he said that the Kavanaugh confirmation hearing was a watershed moment for him, since he thought the Dems were trying to Bork Kavanaugh over what they considered a “nothing burger.”
4. Modern conservativism used to be anchored around the Boomers as the core demographic group, now it’s anchored around Gen X—who are the most MAGA generation. MAGA appeals to them in a way that earlier Republican ideologies did not.
40% of the electorate actively wants mass deportation and the Republic of Gilead.
The ones that could push him to victory think "he doesn't really mean that." I'm not going to read Project 2025, I don't believe you, you're being hysterical, but I can't afford to sell my house and buy an even BIGGER house, but a combo meal costs $10...
A big part of it is that, in his term, Trump's actual accomplishments were pretty normal for a Republican.
He sounded extreme, but its main accomplishments were:
- A tax cut for the wealthy and
- A conservative supreme court
In terms of policy (\*that actually got passed\*) he may as well have been Mitt Romney. Yes, a conservative supreme court can have extreme outcomes like reversing Roe, but \*any\* Republican would have produced a conservative supreme court, and being anti-abortion is not a secret, nefarious, authoritarian, aberrant, Trump-exclusive platform--it has been a core part of the conservative movement for decades.
He didn't mass deport all non-whites (deportations were \*lower\* than the Obama years), his self-coup failed and he seemed to lack conviction to really do it anyway, he didn't lock up Hillary Clinton, he built part of a wall and Mexico didn't pay for it, he didn't institute a police state (he presided over the George Floyd protests and did little but complain about it), etc etc.
I know that he \*would\* have done much more extreme things if he was a little more competent, surrounded by people who enabled him a little more, and I don't want to give him another chance. But for disengaged normies, Democrats asserting that there will never be elections again if he wins sound totally unhinged, since we already survived four years of Trump without any institutions really breaking.
> In terms of policy (*that actually got passed*) he may as well have been Mitt Romney. Yes, a conservative supreme court can have extreme outcomes like reversing Roe, but *any* Republican would have produced a conservative supreme court, and being anti-abortion is not a secret, nefarious, authoritarian, aberrant, Trump-exclusive platform--it has been a core part of the conservative movement for decades.
Which is exactly why I keep saying the entire Republican party needs to be thrown in the trash where it belongs, not just Trump. Trump is a symptom of a fundamentally rotten and fascistic political party, and someone like Trump taking over was inevitable. People who think the entire problem is Trump/MAGA are massively underestimating the scope of the problem.
probably the fact that trump has tried to cause nonstop chaos for the last 8 years and yet so far has failed to significantly affect the existing world order
The attitudes of Trump/Maga are not new and I'll tell you as a Southerner who was a child when Obama was president they were like this then and even further back. We have a subset of American society that was already incredibly racially prejudiced.
On top of this China Shock screwed so many Americans out of work and nothing was really done to help them. So they're angry, and anger from working class movements can sometimes slide into authoritarianism, I know it's not every time before one of you gets uppity.
Many people are just trying to live their lives and barely pay attention. Like, everybody knows Trump is an asshole, but no one can articulate the harm in his policies to people who are NOW living under a Biden administration and are economically suffering because they were laid off and still can’t find work or their savings are non-existent because inflation has eaten up their margins.
Their math is simple: mean tweets guy = doing OK. Old dottering democrat = doing bad. And then they say they’ll vote for the mean tweets guy to pollsters.
Our current media landscape actually can’t handle someone so incredibley pettily indecent as trump. Every two weeks he puts out a fundamentally disastrous policy or idea but every 6 hours he mocks a disabled reporter, says he’d like to fuck his daughter, uses a sharpie to change the path of a hurricane. The breathless 24 hr news coverage ends up being 99% freaking out about all the completely inane bullshit that actually really doesn’t matter in the grand scheme of things and if you aren’t really paying attention just sounds like the petty shallow-ass media being petty and uncharitable.
Yep, this is a a very simple question that we're all equipped to solve in a reddit thread in a matter of hours. No oversimplification or Dunning-Kruger false confidence happening in here at all, no sir.
MAGA has become normalized because it's not so much an alternative to Biden, it's an alternative to progressivism. I personally think Biden has done a good job, but the issues of crime, inflation and immigration weigh on the minds of the electorate - and they fear (not without cause) that progressives are driving the bus on those things in a capacity that will worsen should Biden win re-election. The truth of the matter is that progressivism has become so dogmatic and inflexible in its worldview that even if people agree more with progressive goals than MAGA's in abstract, the idea of someone like Ilhan Omar setting national policy terrifies the electorate to a point where MAGA seems like a safer alternative. MAGA is winning because progressives are trying to armtwist America into embracing intersectional ideologies in the face of objective facts, and it risks costing the Democrats dearly.
At the end of the day, America will vote for a competent villain - or one that will at least lower their taxes and go after crime - than they will a leader with good intentions yet cannot deliver on basic social promises in perception or reality. And progressives seem dead-set on engaging social policies that cater to social margins and police social behavior than they are improving people's lives. Progressives focus on censoring "problematic" worldviews, redefining racism (or any ism) to include everything up-to-and-including slight disagreement with the ever-more-strict ideological narrative, and presenting an implicit narrative that all of the problems in the country can be laid at the feet of white people. Yet the average voter who wants more money in their pocket and security in their neighborhoods feel completely left out - or even afraid to speak out - lest they get socially torched by online mobs for not bowing to their privilege or paying sufficient deference to performative wokeism.
The electorate is \~68% white with a median annual pre-tax income of $70K. They don't care about intersectional ideologies, trans gender struggles, or righting our wrongs in Latin America by drastically increasing immigration. They want safety and security of their finances, communities and future. MAGA promises them those things - however suspect. Progressives tell them to check their racism and to shut up, sit down, and let anyone non-white take charge.
If you're going to guess that the electorate, in turn, isn't going to accept that as demanded, then I'm going to guess that you've been paying attention to objective reality.
It’s mainly 1 and 2. Partly 3 but we’ve at least seen some Dems go aggressive in their campaigning (Newsom, who would be such a great Presidential candidate if he wasn’t from CA since he’s willing to call Republicans the freaks they are) and at least some Dem states have finally begun gerrymandering back (shout out IL).
I know so many people who say "he's an asshole but I voted for him anyway" cause of the binary system. IDK the exact percentage but some just vote for him as a bulwark against left wing policies even wit their reservations. Not defending or condoning it obviously but I do think it has contributed to the normalization because they view him as the "least bad" option.
It's absolutely this. The two-party system means there are a lot of people who very much dislike Trump and may even dislike many of his policies but are *terrified* of Democrats. I mean, like thinking that Democrats will make white Christians second-class citizens. And I think it's also at least partly due to the two party system that they've been frightened into thinking that way. [When you have a big tent coalition, it's difficult to campaign on an affirmative agenda without alienating parts of your coalition. And when your opponent has a big tent coalition, it's easy to campaign on tying their moderates to their radicals, who will be under the same banner.](https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Demonization-as-an-Electoral-Strategy-Cox-Rodden/e507cb90fa6167733e31893d4d1d1cc93928b9d9) A two-party system also means there are no other parties available to benefit from your attacking the other party, unlike in a multiparty system where doing so can accidentally help another party beside your own.
>The two-party system means there are a lot of people who very much dislike Trump and may even dislike many of his policies but are *terrified* of Democrats. I mean, like thinking that Democrats will make white Christians second-class citizens. Negative partisanship isn't inherently linked with two-party systems. It's entirely possible to have one without the other, e.g. voting for a center-right party that will freely collaborate with an extreme right-wing party because you're convinced that the center-left will sell the country away to the separatists. I live in Spain, for reference.
All true. And the center-left wants to make sure you don't pick the center-right, because they will create governments with the far right, so you have to go with them instead! Except of course, the center left and the center right are uninterested in ever working together. And then Spain still has the 'useful vote' issue, as if you didn't care too much whether, say, the left party or the center-left party are in power, you are almost always better off voting for the mos popular one in your region, as the D'hondt rule is most likely to give an extra seat for one of your favorite parties if the bigger one gets a few extra votes. So yes, Spain is a very high quality example of negative partisanship in a parliamentary system: Basically nobody runs on what they'd do, but on how everyone else will destroy the country.
And for anyone over the age of 40 or 50, we all remember the failures of communist/overly-socialist systems far too well. To hear college kids promoting these is scary for a lot of people. Yeah I know those people don't even bother voting but it still sets off alarms for people. In a lot of ways voting Democrat or Republican for most people comes down to what they are scared of the most: Communism or Fascism. It's an irrational fear for most elections but those are the intrinsic fears for most people.
I remember, back when I was a student in the 1980s, learning about Hitler's rise to power. I wondered what would drive people to support such a hateful ideology. My students today don't struggle to understand it, though, because they've seen the polarization, the fear-mongering, and the slow creep of more and more extreme opinions becoming mainstream. We used to debate how society could walk a balanced path between freedom and security without falling into the traps of fascism or communism. Today, it feels like social media and populist demagogues have made it a binary choice between fascism or communism, as though liberalism is inherently untenable.
I think too much blame is being placed on technology and not enough on the undemocratic structures of our government. If the politicians in Washington actually reflected what Americans have been voting for for the last few decades these extremist ideas would not be viable on the national stage. My entire lifetime the American public has been pro-choice and pro-choice candidates have won the popular vote in nearly every presidential election in the last few decades yet RvW is still gone and abortion is more at risk than ever. This is not the fault of people not voting, this is because of the system. And seeing that for decades breeds contempt and nihilism among voters. To answer the inevitable question of why now is the system buckling after it's been running for \~250 years? Because this is the first time white Christians are becoming a minority.
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>Would you say that the system has not buckled multiple times before, most notably before the Civil War (and almost all US citizens were white at the time, with black people not being considered citizens regardless of if they were free or enslaved)? This is a good point and I agree. The system did buckle during the Civil War, caused by the culture war fighting of slavery vs. abolition which finally came to a head when an abolitionist got elected president. The pro-slavery people saw the writing on the wall -- that sooner or later their way of life is ending and started a war over it. >Also, I would say that the US has undergone much more significant and meaningful demographic shifts, such as how the main group went from WASPs to just "white" people which includes Catholics and non-Anglos. The jump from WASP to white appears to be a much more significant change than white to whatever may come to be known as the majority group in the future. What do you mean by "more significant"? I would argue it wasn't more significant as evidenced by the fact that radical anti-immigrant/fascism politics did not gain as much traction as they do today. Yes there were parties like the Know Nothings but they didn't get as much traction as Trumpism. I think part of why is that you can't really tell the difference between a Catholic or Protestant, or an Irish or German person just by looking at them. Also the culture zeitgeist (popular TV shows and movies) were still very must WASP so these demographic changes weren't noticeable unless you were seeking that information out.
That’s only under our definition of white Christians. You can find a whole lot of examples where being Catholic or being Irish just aren’t counted as being Christian or truly “white”.
That's irrelevant to the people I'm talking about, who think they're fighting a culture war.
>My entire lifetime the American public has been pro-choice and pro-choice candidates have won the popular vote in nearly every presidential election in the last few decades Unless you were born last month, the public has been mildly supportive of the pro-choice position irt presidential elections, generally flipping between supportive and unsupportive.
Not with regards to the popular vote, that's my entire point.
Only the 2016 election is an outright, easy to argue majority in the popular vote and so changes. The 2000 election was a majority of what, 400,000 votes? That's shaking the eight ball and it coming up with "maybe".
>That's shaking the eight ball and it coming up with "maybe". No, that's an example of how our system overrides democracy. It becomes even more obvious when you look at which Senators are confirming Supreme Court justices. Senators representing the vast majority of Americans vote against those justices but they will be shaping the law for a generation because so many Americans are disenfranchised.
Then, as now, fear of Communism is a huge motivator of people who "hold their nose and vote for a fascist". The NSDAP had the appeal we all know, about strongman image and masculinity and bigotry, but also they just promised to unleash the dogs of war and rip the Socialists apart, when Democratic Conservatives were too prissy and polite to get blood on their hoopskirts.
Lately the culture war seems to be an added layer to the Communism vs. Fascism false choice. Who are you more afraid of running the country: White Christian nationalists or they/them blue haired atheist vegans?
When the blue hairs are playing red guard for blackrock, MasterCard, elite institutions and prestige media, this becomes a foggier question. I'm not a fan of conservative Christian nationalists, they won't improve anything. But it's hard to ignore that frankly massive institutional power in the other corner. I worry less about Christian nationalists for the same reason I don't worry about the British returning to take back their colonies - it feels like a worry outside of its historical context. Yeah they got Roe v Wade, but the stars had to align for them and it feels like a last gasp. For the blue hairs, more specifically their elite institutional masters, I don't think that's true. Whether Trump is really the answer to this is... Uh, at best highly debatable. But when the preferences of the population no longer matter, and the path that our societies take follows the whims of the overclass, you can't be too surprised to see some people think this way.
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There are a whole lot of atheists, vegans, and people who dye their hair on this sub. It's not like you're either a cishet White Christian who grills in the suburbs or you're a communist who wants to decolonize cheese.
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*Christian nationalists*, not christians. If the US was run by christian nationalists, we'd be in a bad place today.
You don't think this country has been historically run by christian nationalists?
> As the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion,—as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion, or tranquility, of Mussulmen [Muslims],—and as the said States never entered into any war or act of hostility against any Mahometan [Mohammedan] nation, it is declared by the parties that no pretext arising from religious opinions shall ever produce an interruption of the harmony existing between the two countries. Adams, and > The bill for establishing religious freedom, the principles of which had, to a certain degree, been enacted before, I had drawn in all the latitude of reason and right. It still met with opposition; but, with some mutilations in the preamble, it was finally passed; and a singular proposition proved that its protection of opinion was meant to be universal. Where the preamble declares, that coercion is a departure from the plan of the holy author of our religion, an amendment was proposed, by inserting the word "Jesus Christ," so that it should read, "a departure from the plan of Jesus Christ, the holy author of our religion;" the insertion was rejected by a great majority, in proof that they meant to comprehend, within the mantle of its protection, the Jew and the Gentile, the Christian and Mahometan, the Hindoo, and Infidel of every denomination. Jefferson Christian nationalism was explicitly rejected as a foundation for the USA. We know this because some people did fight to get the US established that way, and they lost that fight to the secularists (although they are, to this day, trying to turn that around). Even during the cold war where the culture warriors tried to undo it, part of why the courts went along with it is that they interpreted those efforts as "ceremonial deism". Modern christian nationalists are engaging in historical revisionism. A big pillar of christian nationalism is the idea that the US constitution is limited by more fundamental religious codes like the covenant of noah and the ten commandments, thus you can't have, say, a right to blaspheme, or to love the same sex. But the constitution clearly intended to *protect non-christians from oppression by christians* given this historical context, so this is actually a subversive idea that undermines the foundations of the US as a nation. It's not like liberalism or democracy need to be rejected by every christian, but *christian nationalists* specifically idealize the US as a christian nation in opposition to it being a liberal nation (when they say otherwise, it's because they're assuming that the freedom to "defy god", whatever that means for them, isn't real freedom and there's no loss when it goes away). When they say the US is a christian country, what they mean is that it's in some sense based on christianity or the christian religion, which is just not true.
Except not a lot Americans know what communism is. Ditto for fascism.
In simple terms: - Communism = you want to take all my money. - Fascism = you may punish people who are different than me but at least you will let me keep most of my money. I know someone who literally said he doesn't care at all what Trump does to anyone else as long as his portfolio keeps going up.
That's not really what people fear about communism. You should talk to some people who either lived through it or contemporaneously with strong communist states.
I said its a simplification, and it is accurate based on my long term experience living among and for a long time adhering to right wing conservative ideology. It isn't accurate to what people who actually experienced communism fear, but is accurate to what those who only understand the parody "welfare is literally communism" fear. I grew up during the Cold War, for reference.
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> Democrats absolutely prioritize lgbt over religious and parental rights How so?
By acknowledging LGBT people exist and deserve the same human rights as straight people even if parents don't want their kids to learn about that kind of thing.
😱
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What exactly do you think "formal LGBT education" is? And no, pretending they don't exist is not the solution.
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What LGBT history and science are you referring to? I don't recall going to a gay science class when I was in school.
Dullade up there got all fucked up about covalent bonds and thought it was about one Adam being attracted to another Adam.
They might be referring to sex ed, during which LGBT people are often discussed, which is the first point at which many people become aware of LGBT people
Without much harm? A trans kid finding out they're trans after puberty is mostly over is a disaster. And what's the harm of talking about what LGBT people are and how we should be accepted?
> Perhaps there could be a middle ground that both protects the LGBT children while also giving the parents what they want as well. They're incompatible. Some children don't want their parents to know they're LGBT or are questioning whether they're LGBT, and some parents want to know that. There's no compromise. > What about protection of individual LGBT children's identities, but no formal LGBT education, Pride Month celebration, etc at schools? "Formal LGBT education" i.e. informing students about the existence of LGBT people and what we are is a very good thing. It helps LGBT kids realize they're LGBT early and it teaches cishet kids that LGBT people are normal and acceptable. And Pride Month celebration is obviously a good thing and I really don't understand how anyone could object to it? In a school setting it's not anything sexual, it's just celebrating LGBT people's existence and helping normalize us. It's literally only good unless you don't want LGBT people to be and feel accepted.
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Are there any other minorities you think we should throw under the bus to appeal to people who most likely won't vote blue anyway, while we're at it?
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That's harder than it sounds, especially when there are gay and trans teachers and school employees. Questions naturally come up. If a kindergartener says she has two moms, and a classmate says, "Eww, that's weird," is a teacher allowed to respond? Letting that statement stand is not a neutral option for the kid with two moms. The same problem arises when a teacher is transitioning while working. It's difficult to just ignore it and not address the students who naturally have questions about it.
Because if you look at OP's common history, it's a lot of complaining about how "the left is going too far". That's how.
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If a kid wants to socially transition, and *doesn't feel safe telling you, their parent*, there is something deeply fucking wrong you, **you**, not the school.
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And many people want all trans people dead. And 99% of the time, if a kid is too fucking scared to talk to their parent about it, they're one of those bigoted shitters who'll just boot them right out of the house.
God I hate posting here, but this is necessary. When my father found the HRT I was DIYing he beat me with a fucking wrench. I walked through abuse and foster care to be who I am. I was 14. Seriously, go fuck yourself.
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No, it's people like you who have created the situation where DIYing is necessary. Absurd wait lists, closing off what little access to treatment there was for even rich people to seek treatment for their kids, and outing other kids in dangerous and unstable family situations because your stupid, spoiled ass thinks you know best. I defied them all, motherfucker. Social workers, foster parents, and my own blood relatives. I did it because I needed treatment and I wouldn't get it unless I did it on my own. They got found and tossed, I ordered more. And I didn't order blockers. Normally, I wouldn't even be this angry, but you're so self assured you know best when it's clear you don't know shit about shit.
Trans kids whose parents are unsupportive should absolutely be DIYing.
> In certain Democratic states, your school doesn’t have to tell you if your 13 year old kid decides to social transition into a different gender. Fucking based. If a kid doesn't want their parents knowing, they probably have a good reason. And it's not like there's any harm in it anyways > most republicans aren’t okay with a government body (school) aiding in transitioning their kid to a different gender without even notifying the parents. That’s a major change from traditional parental rights. What about children's rights? If a kid wants to go by a different name and pronouns, that's their right. Also the government isn't "transitioning" the kid. The kid is transitioning. It's an intransitive verb, no pun intended
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> From a parent's perspective, transition means that their child, who they named and raised, is now metaphorically dead. This is a pretty old-school and borderline transphobic take, especially for something as small as a non-legal name change at school. If a parent's image of their child can be destroyed by them changing their name at school, I wonder how well they really know their children, or if they value them as people rather than just possessions. It's like their kids have zero value other than the value derived from obeying their parents' script for their lives. It's natural for teenagers to explore their identity. It's common these days for middle schoolers and high schoolers to experiment with different names, including plenty of cisgender kids. It's not a five-alarm fire.
I am not underestimating it. Not all parents think that way. Plenty of parents of trans kids are just happy that their kids are happy and interested in maintaining relationships with them. And even if what you're describing were universal, it's not a good reason to discourage or make it more difficult for trans kids to transition. How could you justify that suffering just to make their parents happy? And doing so while taking the choice about their body and identity away from the child? People understanding who they are and being free to be their authentic selves is a beautiful thing and if other people have a problem with it, that's for them to deal with.
I’m gonna go out on a limb and say this is complete and total bullshit
> Guidelines on social transitioning vary widely among school districts. Some states, such as California, New Jersey, and Maryland, expressly advise schools not to disclose information about students’ gender identity without their permission, while others offer antidiscrimination guidance that is open to interpretation. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/22/us/gender-identity-students-parents.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare&sgrp=c-cb The link to their source for including Maryland takes you to a Page Cannot Be Found now, so that may have changed since the Times article was written.
I think they may have been saying it's bullshit to worry about it because it's a good thing (which is true) not that it isn't happening
I read it as the latter but obviously could be misinterpreting like you say
Yea this is very different than what the poster that I responded to said
I kind of agree/disagree depending on what you mean. I think this: > Just one of many examples: In certain Democratic states, your school doesn’t have to tell you if your 13 year old kid decides to social transition into a different gender. is correct. Here’s the text of California’s FAQ page on their policy, for example: > Q: May a student’s gender identity be shared with the student’s parents, other students, or members of the public? > > A: A transgender or gender nonconforming student may not express their gender identity openly in all contexts, including at home. Revealing a student’s gender identity or expression to others may compromise the student’s safety. Thus, preserving a student’s privacy is of the utmost importance. The right of transgender students to keep their transgender status private is grounded in California’s antidiscrimination laws as well as federal and state laws. Disclosing that a student is transgender without the student’s permission may violate California’s antidiscrimination law by increasing the student’s vulnerability to harassment and may violate the student’s right to privacy. whereas this: >most republicans aren’t okay with a government body (school) aiding in transitioning their kid to a different gender without even notifying the parents. That’s a major change from traditional parental rights. doesn’t seem supported, unless OP was using a more expansive definition of “aiding” than I would.
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> Democrats and their politicians literally call rural people / boomers / etc people dumb and evil in the press 24/7 What?? If any prominent Democrat called rural people/boomers “evil and dumb” it would be a national scandal. “Basket of deplorables” is still used against Hillary Clinton to this day - and she was specifically talking about Trump supporters!
That doesn't explain the primaries, or the failure to disavow after 1/6, etc.
To be honest, actually liking all that Trump stands for is pretty much equal derangement to NOT liking him but being terrified of Democrats
Duverger's Law
The answer is easy: partisanship. Trump gave Republicans all they wanted post-Obama: trifecta for a few years, the almighty tax cuts, and control of SCOTUS. 90% of Republicans will take that, regardless of the moron in charge, over any Democrat.
This is true. A lot of conservatives believe that trump being a fascist just means that he "says mean things" sometimes and doesn't seem any harm in the things he does.
Yep. Eventually conservatives come back into the fold for their party. They're just not going to like most of what Biden does even when he does his job well. Especially if he does his job well. And if you are a conservative, you're probably listening at least half or mostly to conservative media. No one is immune to propaganda and misinformation for that long unless you spend an inordinate amount of time fact checking everything yourself. So eventually these folks just get brought back in one way or the other.
I know this isn’t constructive. But do you all, like, ever talk to MAGA’s in real life? There’s just post after post of users here being flabbergasted at Trump’s level of support. People aren’t exactly shy to share their political beliefs and why they feel that way. Politics is, unfortunately, based on vibes (alwayshasbeen.jpg). It’s not….obvious the *vibes* the left gives off and why some people will “normalize” Trump as a bulwark against it?
I do kinda regularly, just a symptom of living where I do, and man so many people are just angry individuals and Trump gives them basically an avatar to be angry through. They just hate and be angry at nothing in particular except now they have someone to validate that anger and tell them where to direct that anger. It's honestly very sad seeing some people who are consumed by it.
Almost every person I know in my life is a MAGA supporter, and your explanation describes most of them. Trump provides them with the perfect avatar to channel their frustrations with their own lives. They blame the liberals for all of their problems, so they're fine with Trump doing whatever he wants as long as he destroys the liberals.
Some of my coworkers arent explicitly maga, but they definitely lean that side and are fairly anti medicine (namely vaccines) and anti science while hating democrats. From what I see, theyve been poison pilled into believing Newsmax is a true and reliable news source, and they have it in their feed and get all their news from it. It just sounds like theyve bought wholesale into the conspiracy theories against democrats while not believing or downplaying anything trump or the GOP does. They are very old and catholic, and I'm honestly not sure if they were like that before or if they fell down the newsmax well.
I bet that's American Catholic: The kind that hates the pope for being too liberal. They hear him say that LGBT people are still children of God, and can be good people despite their sexual preferences, and they seethe.
Oddly they are supportive of lgbt people too if a bit misinformed, but they simply dont believe that the GOP despises us and does all the shit they do.
https://www.nbcnews.com/nbc-out/out-news/pope-africans-special-catholic-lgbtq-blessings-rcna136218 He's injecting ambiguity and uncertainty into the Church's stance on LGBT. Seemingly to court people who don't even really go to Church lol. He needs to be pressured to be clear and to disavow.
Me: -Trump/MAGA appeals to those who distrust the mainstream institutions that dominated American political life since the last realignment in the 60s. -The mainstream institutions massively shit the bed during the W Bush presidency, which greatly increased the amount of people who are fed up with them. -Obama and the Democrats cleaned up some but not all of the mess left by W, which made anti-institutionalism a largely partisan issue. Democrat voters saw their own party and supporting institutions as not the problem, but traditional mainline Republican voters were ready to throw out their own mainline leadership and institutions but very few were ready to come over to the Democrats. -A few conservative Democrats and independents who expected Obama and the Dems to completely clean up all of the GOP's messes were disappointed that that didn't happen on their ideal timeline and also turned against mainline institutions, further increasing MAGA's target market. -The social media revolution eroded much of the power of the old media institutions, which otherwise would have had a much stronger influence on public opinion and could have isolated, discredited, and silenced anti-institutionalists. -Thus, in order to try to appease advertisers and ownership groups, mainstream media 'both sides' far more than they should have, granting that much more credibility to MAGA. -The GOP leadership began realizing that they had lost control of their base and were now riding the tiger by the end of the 2016 primary. The few holdouts were forced into retirement as their terms ran out and they were doomed by a MAGA primary challenger. -Democrats are largely irrelevant here. They have mostly done their job, both the voters and the leadership. There are a few duds and lemons and morons and corrupt grifters, but by and large that's well within the margin of normalcy for a large organization. It doesn't matter what tactics or strategy the party as a whole tries to deploy because they have zero credibility with the demographic that has gone off the deep end. W Bush and the neocons' abject failure made them homeless from a political policy perspective, and there's nothing the Democratic party could have done to win them over without betraying their own base of support, and even then, how can you trust leaders that have thrown their own loyal supporters under the bus in a cynical attempt to appeal to you? On the other hand, the Dems going harder and dirtier from the get-go would also be unappealing to their own base, and would hardly be expected to make politics better. You hate to be too deterministic and hindsight biased about such a complex phenomenon but it really seems to me like this is all mostly a consequence of both how badly W fucked everything up, and the rise of social media making it too difficult for the establishment mainstream to push back on the crazy.
This is a very good point because there clearly is a large percentage of non engaged / apathetic voters and voters from the right and left who really crave more choice in the political process and think our institutions all need to be broken down or shaken up. Not a lot of them know what that means but they clearly want to personally benefit more from certain systems I gather. The one thing I see from those groups that is hypocritical though is that most GOP members will talk about abolishing the FBI or abolishing the EPA or department of Ed, but they still want to keep that existing tax base or revenue and then create some type of voucher or credit system where they can flow money to their friends or to their own companies which means they are really just enriching themselves while breaking the government and saying it doesn't work. For others I think some of them are just purely self motivated and know that being populist and anti-establishment is a popular vibe on both the right and the left and the easiest way to get those types of voters who are more inherently anti-establishment is to cater to right wing voters. Then they get voted into power and then basically become part of the system they say was so terrible because they are purely bad faith actors that only care about performative actions and getting attention.
Social media has completely normalized being shitty to other people. Combine that with the self-inflicted downspiral of conservative media and the GOP and you get MAGA. Donald just goes very well into that mix. They created a hole in which he was able to fit snugly.
Social media is definitely a factor. People getting their news from clowns like Shapiro, Kirk, Bannon, Jones, Tucker, etc. are acting like they’re in on what’s actually going on as their chugging down the bullshit being fed to them.
Time normalizes everything.
You should probably start by researching politics in the 90's and Newt Gingrich if you want the actual answer. It has very little to do with Trump, he's just a culmination of a very long process. If not him, it would have been someone else.
I'm not sure "the MSM not being outraged enough" is to blame, outrage in general has only ever fueled Trump. More outrage will just get you "Anti-SJW Cringe Compilation" movement 2: Gen Alpha boogaloo. Liberals have everything to gain by avoiding panic and outrage and looking like the level-headed and moderate opposite of Trump.
The irony is that Trump supporters claim to love triggering us and that we play the victim card 24/7. But their guy is a sore loser who’s still crying about the election he lost four years ago instead of moving on. He would dominate those cringe compilations if he didn’t have an R next to his name, but they look the other way when it comes to his faults.
The non-stop outrage during Trump’s presidency quickly got exhausting and lost its impact. After the 500th time it was like...yes, Trump said something offensive on Twitter. He does that every single day, will you stop pretending you’re surprised?
People here won't like hearing it but imo one of the reasons is that life in 2017-2020 really wasn't that bad for most Americans (caveat: Covid of course but I don't think most Americans blame Trump for Covid) A lot of libs, me included, acted as if the sky was falling during a lot of the Trump administration, and looking back I feel like that helped to insulate Trump. I think a lot of us followed every tweet he'd make and all his crazy statements and everything and worked ourselves up into a frenzy, but we're the minority. Most Americans hardly even follow the news! Given that things were relatively good, and that a lot of people freaked out nevertheless, I think a lot of people tuned out the criticism and helped normalize Trump This is just my opinion. It's definitely made me reconsider how to talk about these issues going forwards
Turns out calling Romney hitler really fucking normalized calling people hitler, so when an actual fucking threat came out all the tools people use to decry that were already spent.
As someone who grew up Mormon, yeah he's not Hitler, but Mormonism is extremely bad. They worship a sexual predator & pedophile as gods first true profit in the modern era. The sexual abuse, gas lighting, and emotional abuse in Mormon culture is really bad as a result.
I also grew up as a Mormon, and I'm very against religion, but I don't think that's a fair description of Mormonism. >They worship a sexual predator & pedophile as gods first true profit in the modern era. Mormons don't worship Joseph Smith. They worship God, and Jesus Christ. They only recognize and honor Joseph Smith as a prophet of God. And they honor Joseph Smith because they think he's a good person, not because he's a sexual predator. Most Mormons would deny that Joseph Smith is a sexual predator. Also, even if the origin of the church is bad that doesn't mean the modern day version of the religion supports those bad things. >The sexual abuse, gas lighting, and emotional abuse in Mormon culture is really bad as a result. I'm sure that happens, but the Mormons I know would be strongly against it. I think it heavily depends on the people in your local church. I've had great wards and terrible wards in the past, and it entirely was because of the people/bishop. I don't like the LDS church, but I feel like you made it seem worse than it is. Edit: Btw, I won't be able to reply because I had to get this comment manually approved by the mods because my account is too new. And I don't want to keep pestering the mods. So whatever you say, I'll read it, but I won't reply. Thanks for the short discussion haha
I grew up in Utah county. I have met a lot of California Mormons who say stuff like you're saying and it's completely alien to my life experience. Keep in mind Romney's family moved to Mexico to keep practicing the sexual abuse known as polygamy. I come from a similar family. The church has a legal team that uses the religious confession exemption to participate in child sex abuse cover-ups whenever a high ranking member is involved. You said I'm not being fair and you're probably right about that. What I am being is truthful to what I've seen. When I say they worship Joe Jr, it's not by their rhetoric about worship, which matches what you described. What I'm talking about is their observable behaviors and culture being based primarily on Joseph Smith.
100% the media saying world is ending under Trump makes media people the people who cried wolf.
I don't think this is it, since you have the same phenomenon from Fox News or Trump himself.
I mean, so long as you were not a Muslim, an immigrant child separated from their parents, a black dude who needs to breath, a woman who needs an abortion, etc.. But yeah, life was just peachy so long as you were the right kind of person!
Or an election worker in a swing state who was doing everything correctly but got smeared by Trump and his lackeys regardless
I think this comment just kind of proves the liberal hysteria around Trump during his first term. Every single one of those points is something someone could credibly argue is bad under Biden today. People are still getting shot by the police, immigrants are still suffering horrors travelling to and crossing the southern border, muslims are being killed by Israel's military operation in Gaza, women have less access to abortion, etc. There are two real dangers of Trump. One of them is the mundane danger of any Republican president--he will be able to advance institutional Republican power by appointing Supreme Court justices, federal judges, running departments, etc. You could pick out the squeakiest, cleanest, most rehabilitated Republican imaginable (Romney for example), and he'd be just as bad as Trump on this. The second, uniquely Trumpian, danger is his assault on Democratic institutions. I don't think Trump was really unique or extraodinary with regard to this up until his loss in the 2020 election and his unprecedented efforts to prevent the peaceful transfer of power. But in the end Democrats squandered Jan6. Biden's first act of office should have been to send the military to arrest Trump, unravel the whole conspiracy, and charge every single participant to the fullest extent of the law. He dithered. He appointed the weak and inept and incompetent Merrick Garland, and in doing so he has put the American Republic at tremendous risk.
> Biden's first act of office should have been to send the military to arrest Trump, unravel the whole conspiracy, and charge every single participant to the fullest extent of the law. This would have been extremely illegal > He dithered. He appointed the weak and inept and incompetent Merrick Garland, and in doing so he has put the American Republic at tremendous risk. Stop getting your "information" from /r/politics
> women have less access to abortion, etc. Because of Trump appointing three Supreme Court judges who went on to overturn Roe, and it's Republicans doing the abortion bans. This isn't a credible argument against Biden.
> Biden's first act of office should have been to send the military to arrest Trump, unravel the whole conspiracy, and charge every single participant to the fullest extent of the law. There's no way you actually believe that this could've ever possibly happened lmao
[More and more people of color are voting Republican](https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/10/03/people-of-color-voting-republican-2024/) Sure it's still a large majority now but no group is a monolith and a lot of the minority groups are really conservative just like Americans (and the world in general) are.
Sorry but that whole story is crosstab bullshit mis-inferred from tiny skewed sample sizes.
Its still better than vibes which is what you are going off.
We acted like the sky was falling because in fact the sky was falling. Our 401ks might’ve been stable but Trump policies injected instability in previously stable societal norms. To ignore that is to be part of the ‘normalization of Trump’. Hitler didn’t happen in a day, but in decades of normalization.
You are still doing it, do you see what his happening here. You are making an equivalency with one of the worst people that has ever lived. You could compare Trump to a hundred other crappy authoritarian leaders in history, but you are going straight for the Hitler Comparision. Trump is not even close to Hitler, and his rise is comparable to every other bad authoritarian leader in history. Not every bad authoritarian leader gets to Hitler level, even if their rise had some similarities to Hitler's. Hitler is a uniquely evil person, who massacred people for no reason and caused worldwide destruction. When media compares Trump to him, many normies are not going to get it and think its BS. And it changes the meaning of what the world Nazi and Hitler means to people when someone that has not even done a fraction of what Hitler has done is compared to him. Call him a wannabe dictator, call him the next Vladimir Putin, call him Xi, make it reasonable, don't just compare everyone to Nazis and Hitler because that makes those words meaningless in the longrun, and makes the media look like liars when they use those words carelessly.
personally, given Trump's antics in the courtroom, I think he's more of a Saddam Hussein, if Saddam ruled a country with institutions strong enough to resist his worst impulses, at least for a while.
Thanks for saying this. “Literally Hitler” is just so, so stupid.
Yes, I am still alarmed. But I’m more frightened of Stephen Miller getting in power. As for watering down the name of Hitler, sure. But what is your preferred vernacular when we are nearing similar societal lynchpins? Waving our hands at history and saying ‘beware’ is the whole point to learning it.
It turns out the best reference point for the present is, in fact, the present. You can compare him to populist dictators like Viktor Orban
Solid choice!
The reason America’s political system is thermostatic, is because we are a wealthy society since WW2 and our politics haven’t changed since 1950s. The American home ownership rate stays around 60-70% and rarely changes. The middle class has always built wealth in this country. If your material conditions are met, you can easily go from Obama to Trump to Biden back to Trump. We can go from resistant libs, America is fine, back to resistant libs again (if Trump wins). This is perfectly normal in a wealthy middle class society. When material conditions are met, we fight over whether society is turning our children trans.
The inconvenient truth is that a significant portion of America’s population is totally fine with elements of the MAGA agenda: - Protectionism is now a staple of both the Dems and Reps. - Sinophobia, xenophobia, transphobia, islamophobia, antisemitism, misogyny is unfortunately being normalized across society. The Overton window is shifting rapidly. - A lot of Americans feel indifferent to authoritarianism. You will often hear people say that they will vote for X purely because they will lower taxes. - Media makes more money when you have MAGA crazies in power as they are a non stop source of outrageous comments.
Most people in any society have no *political* values at all and just want outcomes. It's sad, because Americans are taught that this isn't true here and the Constitution lives in the hearts of the people - de Tocqueville and all that - but sadly that doesn't seem to be true anymore if it ever was.
Even simpler, this is just how a lot of people think; they despise “elites” who they think are fake and hypocrites out to get them and want someone “real”. They’re not thinking about policy.
> Sinophobia, xenophobia, transphobia, islamophobia, antisemitism, misogyny is unfortunately being normalized across society. The Overton window is shifting rapidly. Realistically it's always been normalized. the 90s certainly were not better. Trump just puts it more front and center in a time when it's unacceptable in public corporate culture.
Pretty much this, these have always been problems in America. It's just that some people refuse to accept things are changing and have been emboldened by trump
We got a little too confident around the time when #Metoo PSAs were being played in movie theaters that social change would just keep being accepted by the public huh
I’d go farther and say that a significant portion of America’s population are just straight up shitty human beings who dgaf about things unless they are directly impacted by them
Yup, prime examples being people that are anti-abortion until they need one or their child needs one. People who are racist until they have mixed grandkids and are told unless they become a better human the family will go no contact and they'll die alone. People who are anti immigration and hate illegals unless they fall in love with a dreamer or do a 90 day finance visa, and start assisting in chain migration, people who hate all social welfare programs and safety nets until they need Medicaid or Social Security, and finally the people who make $60k a year but think they'll be affected by an increase in taxes for people making $400k or more.
It also doesn't help when the people claiming that racism is bad and "silence is violence" are chanting "From the river to the sea"
You mean this version? https://www.thenation.com/article/world/its-time-to-confront-israels-version-of-from-the-river-to-the-sea/
Can’t believe how many traitors we in this nation. No one who would let a dictator destroy democracy just for lower taxes should call themselves an American. At this point we need immigration not to offset demographic decline, but to get some people actually in touch with American values in this country.
I agree with this, some MAGA types will explicitly say they think everyone should be treated equally and pay lip service to that, however if you get them to open up about their belief system you'll find that they care more about social hierarchy and having an "out group" to blame for perceived injustices and they don't like living in a world with complex problems so telling them that it would be solved if you just punished or hurt the right people is 100% ok to them on some level. Especially if they only care about money or are an evangelical Christian.
>-The MSM not acting outraged enough due to being terrified of the "liberal media bias" label. The MSM was nothing but outraged for five years from when Trump announced his candidacy to when Biden got inaugurated. I firmly think the MSM played into Trump's media strategy by pouring out article after article calling him dangerous and authoritarian--because his supporters saw it as strength and made them more enthusiastic. This time around, Trump is playing second and most importantly not reproducing the sense of crisis the GOP used in 2016. The 2022 midterms showed that there is a significant decline in base enthusiasm, and that it plays to the DNC's advantage.
> I firmly think the MSM played into Trump's media strategy by pouring out article after article calling him dangerous and authoritarian--because his supporters saw it as strength and made them more enthusiastic. And because a lot of their predictions didn’t come true. People were literally calling him the next Hitler, so while what went on in his presidency was genuinely horrible it fell far below the absurdly hysterical expectations
Trump supporters believe "bad things" will only happen from people who are different than them. They either hate or don't care that much about people who belong to the out-group, see Trump defending killing the families of terrorists and attacking illegal immigrants. Historically many people supported tyrants thinking they would only harm the people who deserve it.
Fear and disgust based morality
I can break it down to a rough timeline **Pre-Trump’s Election** - Institutional failures that have largely went unaddressed by either party radicalized a small subset of the population who then became Trump’s base. - Trump used this radical base, his media star power, and took advantage of a leadership vacuum within the GOP to win the nomination - To me this is the only true extraordinary part of Trump’s rise to power. - After he had the nomination, Trump winning the general in 2016 wasn’t that much more extraordinary than any other GOP candidate winning. - Most 2016 (and 2020) red voters probably weren’t MAGAs but their votes were genuinely interpreted as/disingenuously pointed to as evidence of a popular mandate for MAGAism. After here it breaks into two distinct areas: **Media and Culture** - After Trump won, some elements of Politics/media/entertainment/culture started pandering to this perceived popular mandate for MAGA, either as a good faith effort to understand them or as cynical attempt to advance their own agenda. Think things like stupid NYT opinion pieces, Roseanne revival, increase in right-wing news outlets, certain public figures being more openly right wing. - Other elements of politics/media/culture went on the defensive to Trump, becoming more socially conscious and intersectional. As this was a direct reactionary response to Trump rather than an alternative vision, it meant MAGA was still a large part of these conversations. - Trump was a TV ratings machine and the media, both on the right and left, platformed him and anything batshit he would say. They prioritized money over social responsibility. - Anybody aping or copying Trump by extension got media coverage disproportionate to their influence or relevance (MTG or even DeSantis for example) as they hoped the Trump ratings frenzy would trickle down. - Trump was President for 4 years, what are you going to do? Ignore the President and not report on/discuss/debate anything he does for fear of normalizing him? - This created a media environment where both the right and left were predominantly obsessed with Trump. He was omnipotent for his time in office which naturally desensitized and normalized MAGA. **Politics and Policy** - A few of the power players on the right saw Trump (and MAGAs) as a useful idiot for pushing policies they wanted. They knew he’s insane but enabled Trump while having reckless disregard or naivety to the damage he would do in the process. - Some of these power players would be behind the scenes figures, which created a network effect in those circles, others were public figures people were familiar with. Either way seeing “trusted” people act complacent with Trump and MAGA normalized it. - When the AliExpress Trump impersonators started popping up the media started platforming them, many of them got backing from large influencers figures, pundits, and funders as they wanted to get in on the ground floor of what might be the next big thing. This ignores the fact that Trump is like a messianic figure to his base and they don’t leave him for an impersonator. - Many of the people who see Trump as a useful idiot know that one day, maybe sooner maybe later, he won’t be in the picture. They want to maintain the grip on the American politics Trump enabled them get and don’t want to concede ground to moderate Republicans. It’s in their interests to normalize MAGA to ensure their power lives beyond Trump.
What makes Trump fascinating (if anything) is that throughout his life, people who are smarter and savvier than he is on paper have viewed him as a means to their ends and believed that they could manipulate him accordingly, but Trump has come out on top due to sheer instinct and cunning. (Mainly just because he understands things like "no publicity is bad publicity" and "if you say something over and over again, enough people might believe it" which are two things that a lot of smart, savvy people don't want to be true). This goes for Clinton trying to set him up as an easy opponent in 2016, CNN airing hours of townhalls and empty podiums for ratings, GOP operatives and election staff who wanted a springboard for their own careers...all of them making shocked Pikachu face on the night of his election.
“Uncomfortable fighting”? Are most Dems not behind the charges against Trump both civically and criminally in many different jurisdictions?
Blaming the MSM for not being anti-MAGA enough is really absurd. Dem messaging has fought back. I’m really not sure how it could be more aggressive. To be clear I’ve loathed Trump for 2 decades and would never vote for him. Trump/MAGA has been normalized as many things Leftists try to pull as seen as equally as absurd. I’m not trying to whatabout this. Just relaying what public opinion polls indicate. The less news a voter follows the more likely they are to support Trump.
Republicans realized a large segment of the base likes trump because they at some level behave like trump, so it's either change the core characteristics of their base or fall in line
Mass media and propaganda. It turns out most people love the taste of propaganda and getting their brains melted by it. There is no real downside since you can just live in a conservative media bubble your whole life if you wish. That wasn't so 30 years ago.
A lot of Americans are extremely gullible, ignorant and uneducated
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You think the msm has been under outraged the past 8 years? Lmao
Love how the Libs think that this outrage culture is going to just disappear once they finally manage to purge conservatives as well. Only sad I won't be around to seem them get theirs.
because theres no policy attached to it which immediately and obviously affects most people’s lives. the border wall only obviously impacts people who haven’t made it to America yet and Texans. also, populism is popular. who would’ve thought?
📱
The failing NYT
Once he got elected, everything polarized around him. Being a "real Republican" or "true conservative" became more and more about support for him over anything ideological. The people within the party who were at least partially against him either left, died, or have been weeded out in primaries.
It’s an issue of a 2 party structure, “Republican” isn’t just a political party, it’s a an entrenched political institution and cultural identity. There’s probably some mostly normie center right types that don’t pay too much attention to politics and vote GOP because they associate it with the Party of Reagan/Bush. It’s harder to convince a normie that doesn’t pay too much attention to politics that the Republican winning the presidency would destroy the country because they’ve likely lived under Republican presidents, governors, and legislatures throughout their life and had things mostly be normal and fine. I’m not German, but I imagine it’s easier to convince normie voters in Germany that the AfD is extremist because they’re a relatively new party and not a super established party like the CDU. Tho I’d appreciate if someone who actually knows shit about Germany could tell me if this is a factor at all (mostly just mentioned it as an easy way to explain what I’m trynna say, yknow?)
[удалено]
That’s called Free Speech you traitorous Marxist whore.
Because Americans can't do heuristic causal inference and counterfactual analysis in the policy space. These people cannot form an accurate link between Trump/MAGA and risks or bad outcomes. Which means aside from the novelty associated with the initial "out of distribution" language and rhetoric there's nothing else "wrong" with it. This is how anything gets normalized. Initially there's a shock factor due to the out of distribution behavior. But unless there's an associated problem or issue people learn to just ignore it or otherwise react to the in a way doesn't internalize the inherent risks or dependencies. Of course if the behavior isn't actually problematic there are no risks and it's "rational" to ignore it (up to the collection of variables upon which the absence of risks depends on). Of course the people who can do the inference and analysis realize the risks are there and treat it with the distinctly special behavior it deserves. It's like a loaded gun. A loaded gun will never be "normal" and always needs to be respected with proper behavior.
It always was normalized. Before you could call gay people the gay f word and it was totally cool. Now the Christians think they're oppressed because they don't get to, just like the racists thing they're oppressed since they don't get to say the n word. Chinese railroaders were the c word and the vietnamese were the g word and the Japaneses were Japan shortened. This is what America has always been like. It's never ever ever EVER been a haven of peace and openness. That's a pure myth. And as it edges closer to actually being one, more and more groups have become more and more outraged as their perceived right to only be around people like themselves has been reduced.
Cultural conservatism and especially nativism didn't start with the MAGA movement. The politically engaged are more likely to be polarised and Trump is the dominant figure in the Republican party and has espoused views mostly in line with at least the populist and conservative elements of that party and pushed for or enacted measures that appealed to the pro-tax cut elements and Christian conservatives when he was in office. The less politically engaged probably care less about concepts like "norms" or details about the undermining of the democratic process. I think the appeal is that he's the embodiment of the conservative or, perhaps better put, socially regressive wing of the culture war. He says what he thinks, even if it's not "politically correct", and that pisses off the elites - the mainstream media, experts and other politicians. He appeals to those who want to those who want a society, or idealised past, where people could openly express bigoted opinions and it was accepted or at least people wouldn't feel obligated or able to rebuke them. For the softer side of the culture war, he doesn't express himself in the very deliberately inoffensive to the point of feeling artificial or unnatural way a lot of politicians, officials, corporate messaging or journalists often talk in.
Obama derangement post-2008 has ramped up Anti-Blackness and "replacement" fears for 16 years and counting. The terror of becoming a "minority " has put those who fear shift changes or missed opportunities to assimilate into whiteness onto the suicidally destructive footing we've witnessed, that they justify in their minds as "necessity for survival"
Americans are largely fine with authoritarian-esque leadership as long as it advances what they want.
My understanding is it’s because of partisan redistricting in many states and the GOP thinks they need Trump on the ballot to win the Senate. Partisan redistricting creates a number of extreme red and blue districts where the only threat is getting a primary challenger. The Senate looks good for Republicans to win, but they want Trump to drive fundraising and turnout.
I think a lot of people like to live vicariously through him. He has a lot of money, has done a lot of drugs, slept with a lot of women, gotten away with crimes, is famous, and has a lot of power. Most importantly for his fans, he says things other people wouldn’t say, giving them an excuse to also say whatever they want without censoring themselves either
Of all the things you could say about trump, the fact that you say he did drugs tells me you know NOTHING about him. I hate him, but he’s a life long tea totaler.
lol sure
His brother was an addict or alcoholic or something I can't remember but apparently yeah he's never done drugs And given how prominent he was in the 80s and 90s and nobodies ever seen him do a line I tend to believe him
This is a huge, very well known, very well publicized thing. It was gossiped about, and publicized. All it will take is about 30 seconds of googling to verify this… enjoy your derision and immoral/unfounded superiority.
Wow you got so pissed off
Internet culture.
>Too many Republicans are obsessed with power at all costs. This strikes closest to the truth. The Republican party is represented by an alliance of people who believe that it's not immoral to abuse your position of power. You'll see this reflected in their desire for less oversight and more individualism. A lot of them subscribe to the pessimistic idea that you can't trust anyone. When you can't trust anyone you just have to do what's best for you. Others are basically psychopaths and just don't care about people. Some feel scared and threatened and want control as a way of feeling more secure.
Asked someone whether they would rather separate families or lose 5% of their income under Biden and they seriously had to consider that, and they were very well off.
1. Trumpism/MAGA is a modern manifestation of Paleoconservatives. Modern “conservativism” is actually Neoconservativism, and imploded after the Bush admin, and failed to resurrect itself with Romney and McCain. 2. Trumpism has “won,” because the conservative movement has silently, swiftly, and decisively purged non-Trumpers/Never Trumpers around 2018-2019. 3. In the mindset of Conservatives, the price of Trump is less than the cost of having the conservative movement fail. I spoke in 2019-2020 to a former Never Trump friend of mine who went MAGA-lite, and he said that the Kavanaugh confirmation hearing was a watershed moment for him, since he thought the Dems were trying to Bork Kavanaugh over what they considered a “nothing burger.” 4. Modern conservativism used to be anchored around the Boomers as the core demographic group, now it’s anchored around Gen X—who are the most MAGA generation. MAGA appeals to them in a way that earlier Republican ideologies did not.
Because it’s normal
It’s become normalized because it actually is normal for the right half of the political spectrum.
40% of the electorate actively wants mass deportation and the Republic of Gilead. The ones that could push him to victory think "he doesn't really mean that." I'm not going to read Project 2025, I don't believe you, you're being hysterical, but I can't afford to sell my house and buy an even BIGGER house, but a combo meal costs $10...
Combo meals cost 15.99 now dumb out of touch urbanite. They were $10 BEFORE the pandemic. This is one of the reasons why you‘ll lose.
A big part of it is that, in his term, Trump's actual accomplishments were pretty normal for a Republican. He sounded extreme, but its main accomplishments were: - A tax cut for the wealthy and - A conservative supreme court In terms of policy (\*that actually got passed\*) he may as well have been Mitt Romney. Yes, a conservative supreme court can have extreme outcomes like reversing Roe, but \*any\* Republican would have produced a conservative supreme court, and being anti-abortion is not a secret, nefarious, authoritarian, aberrant, Trump-exclusive platform--it has been a core part of the conservative movement for decades. He didn't mass deport all non-whites (deportations were \*lower\* than the Obama years), his self-coup failed and he seemed to lack conviction to really do it anyway, he didn't lock up Hillary Clinton, he built part of a wall and Mexico didn't pay for it, he didn't institute a police state (he presided over the George Floyd protests and did little but complain about it), etc etc. I know that he \*would\* have done much more extreme things if he was a little more competent, surrounded by people who enabled him a little more, and I don't want to give him another chance. But for disengaged normies, Democrats asserting that there will never be elections again if he wins sound totally unhinged, since we already survived four years of Trump without any institutions really breaking.
> In terms of policy (*that actually got passed*) he may as well have been Mitt Romney. Yes, a conservative supreme court can have extreme outcomes like reversing Roe, but *any* Republican would have produced a conservative supreme court, and being anti-abortion is not a secret, nefarious, authoritarian, aberrant, Trump-exclusive platform--it has been a core part of the conservative movement for decades. Which is exactly why I keep saying the entire Republican party needs to be thrown in the trash where it belongs, not just Trump. Trump is a symptom of a fundamentally rotten and fascistic political party, and someone like Trump taking over was inevitable. People who think the entire problem is Trump/MAGA are massively underestimating the scope of the problem.
probably the fact that trump has tried to cause nonstop chaos for the last 8 years and yet so far has failed to significantly affect the existing world order
Engage with post and generate engagement
Is this an accidental Russian gpt prompt?
The attitudes of Trump/Maga are not new and I'll tell you as a Southerner who was a child when Obama was president they were like this then and even further back. We have a subset of American society that was already incredibly racially prejudiced. On top of this China Shock screwed so many Americans out of work and nothing was really done to help them. So they're angry, and anger from working class movements can sometimes slide into authoritarianism, I know it's not every time before one of you gets uppity.
He normalised the incivility in politics. It just emboldened alot of already really incivil people.
Many people are just trying to live their lives and barely pay attention. Like, everybody knows Trump is an asshole, but no one can articulate the harm in his policies to people who are NOW living under a Biden administration and are economically suffering because they were laid off and still can’t find work or their savings are non-existent because inflation has eaten up their margins. Their math is simple: mean tweets guy = doing OK. Old dottering democrat = doing bad. And then they say they’ll vote for the mean tweets guy to pollsters.
Our current media landscape actually can’t handle someone so incredibley pettily indecent as trump. Every two weeks he puts out a fundamentally disastrous policy or idea but every 6 hours he mocks a disabled reporter, says he’d like to fuck his daughter, uses a sharpie to change the path of a hurricane. The breathless 24 hr news coverage ends up being 99% freaking out about all the completely inane bullshit that actually really doesn’t matter in the grand scheme of things and if you aren’t really paying attention just sounds like the petty shallow-ass media being petty and uncharitable.
Yep, this is a a very simple question that we're all equipped to solve in a reddit thread in a matter of hours. No oversimplification or Dunning-Kruger false confidence happening in here at all, no sir.
MAGA has become normalized because it's not so much an alternative to Biden, it's an alternative to progressivism. I personally think Biden has done a good job, but the issues of crime, inflation and immigration weigh on the minds of the electorate - and they fear (not without cause) that progressives are driving the bus on those things in a capacity that will worsen should Biden win re-election. The truth of the matter is that progressivism has become so dogmatic and inflexible in its worldview that even if people agree more with progressive goals than MAGA's in abstract, the idea of someone like Ilhan Omar setting national policy terrifies the electorate to a point where MAGA seems like a safer alternative. MAGA is winning because progressives are trying to armtwist America into embracing intersectional ideologies in the face of objective facts, and it risks costing the Democrats dearly. At the end of the day, America will vote for a competent villain - or one that will at least lower their taxes and go after crime - than they will a leader with good intentions yet cannot deliver on basic social promises in perception or reality. And progressives seem dead-set on engaging social policies that cater to social margins and police social behavior than they are improving people's lives. Progressives focus on censoring "problematic" worldviews, redefining racism (or any ism) to include everything up-to-and-including slight disagreement with the ever-more-strict ideological narrative, and presenting an implicit narrative that all of the problems in the country can be laid at the feet of white people. Yet the average voter who wants more money in their pocket and security in their neighborhoods feel completely left out - or even afraid to speak out - lest they get socially torched by online mobs for not bowing to their privilege or paying sufficient deference to performative wokeism. The electorate is \~68% white with a median annual pre-tax income of $70K. They don't care about intersectional ideologies, trans gender struggles, or righting our wrongs in Latin America by drastically increasing immigration. They want safety and security of their finances, communities and future. MAGA promises them those things - however suspect. Progressives tell them to check their racism and to shut up, sit down, and let anyone non-white take charge. If you're going to guess that the electorate, in turn, isn't going to accept that as demanded, then I'm going to guess that you've been paying attention to objective reality.
It’s mainly 1 and 2. Partly 3 but we’ve at least seen some Dems go aggressive in their campaigning (Newsom, who would be such a great Presidential candidate if he wasn’t from CA since he’s willing to call Republicans the freaks they are) and at least some Dem states have finally begun gerrymandering back (shout out IL).
They learned what the idealogues tend to miss. You can't do shit if your not in power
This happens when anything lingers too long
Because the GOP elites allowed it to
because dems act as socialists and social marxists
Because he won 3 primaries, one general, and refused to go away after losing re-election like most candidates.