Honestly I'm not even upset. Props for walking outside like that.
Id give this guy a thumbs up and hope he doesn't rage at me.
this post was submitted on 22 Aug 2024
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can someone give me a genuine reason why people are voting for the guy who is a convicted felon, has colluded with national governments, and engaged in corruption, as well as tried to literally overthrow the government. STILL refuses to accept the results of that election.
in good faith. No shitposting please, it's funny, but i don't fucking understand it, and i want answers.
Because it’s a cult
that's a possibility, and if trump doesn't win this race, it's extremely unlikely the RNC runs him again, so the question is how many of those voters are unwavering trump supporters that would kill any chance of an RNC candidate winning again.
but it also just, doesn't feel super likely to me either, like we're talking about heavens gate level shit, which is possible, i think it's more likely that these people are simply delusional, and just stupid and misinformed, as harsh as that is.
I mean, delusional and misinformed are requirements for cult membership. It’s a bunch of pathetic people worshiping his brand, image, and “tough guy” persona. He says the racist shit they want to say out loud and they love that. He’s “rich” and they love that too. He’s a poor man’s idea of a rich man. He “owns the libs”. He’s a bully. He’s a narcissist. They eat all that shit up and can’t believe there is someone out there that speaks to all they things they’re thinking but out loud. There’s also a big overlap of his base with flat earthers, klan members, conspiracy theorists/ qanon, and crooks.
Well from my understanding of what Trump supporters think let's answer those in order.
He's not a convicted felon, they were sham political trials by the Democrats so he's not really a felon. The collusion with foreign governments is fake news and also Biden has done it too with the whole Ukraine and Hunter Biden's laptop thing. He's not corrupt because he's rich and can't be owned by corporate interests unlike Democrats and other Republicans. And the overthrowing the government and election stuff is him fighting for the truth because it was the Democrats who stole the election.
That's about what they think from my understanding and the problem with fighting against that stuff is that in some cases it's just a fundamentally different reality then what's actually happening. They're just in too deep and won't ever think critically or realize they've been duped into believing all this crazy stuff.
that's a definite possibility. But i feel like a significant portion of these people would also be the kind of person where if i showed up with a shotgun, and told them it was unloaded, and then had them point it at themselves and pull the trigger they would end up blown to bits.
Like i feel like if you're this comprehensively mind fucked, you would be expected to be generally mind fucked as well, to recap, they believe the ENTIRE political apparatus is ENTIRELY corrupt and biased solely against trump.
And we do see some of this, jan 6th deniers like that google whistleblower buy just being general conspiracy theorists. But this would surely only account for like 10-20% of the vote at max. There has to be some universal reality between these people other than they're all literally fucking insane.
A thing that really bothers me, is that this isn't like vaccine shit where the data isn't super readily accessible, shit like jan 6th is heavily documented and just out there for you to watch and consume what actually happened. Which is why we see the "it was a psyop" people crop up, but these people are just legitimately insane.
I mean part of it comes from echo chambers and some media outlets leaning into it and pushing the misinformation more. Of course if you actively leave the echo chamber and look for data to back up your position the point of view falls apart. The problem is a lot of these people don't really care to do that, they get their news from their echo chambers that back up their beliefs and point of view, and anything that slips through that tries to go up against it is viewed as fake and not real. Of course there are a lot of insane people and horrible people who know the stuff isn't real and just don't care cause they want their side to beat the other side and go super authoritarian but like you said they're a vocal minority. The rest who go along with it just don't know any better and don't want their beliefs questioned.
the thing that scares me about this option, is that people like this are literally just zombies, they have no critical thinking, and they don't even want to do these things, they just do these things. This is the reason that the holocaust happened. This type of rhetoric and behavior is what causes fascism.
either, this is compartmentalized to politics specifically, giving them some amount of free will, or it's just. Not at all. If it's compartmentalized, who knows what the fuck else they compartmentalize.
I think the one thing that's given me some amount of hope is the videos I've seen of people talking to some Trump supporters that show they at least understand the same fundamental problems that everyone has. They understand corporations have too much power, it's just they attribute it to Silicon valley people like Bill Gates and Zuckerberg rather then all corporations. The Republican platform has done a good job at redirecting these actual fears and problems to point towards different causes such as Democrats, the government, and immigrants. That at least gives me some amount of hope that they could eventually realize Republicans are actively supporting a lot of the problems that affect them through deregulation of corporations and the crippling of the federal government.
i think a lot of them are either uninformed, or ignorant, there is certainly some amount of rhetoric capture in a lot of them, which is likely to be a significant barrier, but if you can break past that somehow, everything else becomes really easy.
The libs took the power and the control, they are evil. They abort babies, they change the gender of our children. Their system is what accused, judged and sentenced Trump. We have to vote for him to free this beloved country from this evil. Trump is our only guy that can do that. We have to vote for him. And hopefully after Trump is elected he will fix our broken system that brought the libs to power. And they wont be allowed to power ever again.
Not my opinion of course, but I have friends that say exactly this.
i have never once seen any evidence of this being the case, every statement about this has been pure schizophrenia in my experience. This is also like, a fucking massive claim.
who actually committed crimes, numerous times, and is demonstrably corrupt.
he was president for a single term and did basically fuck all. He passed like 5 things.
it takes like 12 seconds to fact check ANY of these things. Why don't they do it?
They dont do absolutely any fact checking. And dont forget they live a completely different reality than yours. They read and watch completely different news sources. You have your own echo chamber on lemmy and progressive forums and new sources. They have their own echo chamber of forums and ales johnses and media.
i intentionally try not to engage with echo chambers too much, that's why i focus more directly on individual and collective behaviors. The idea of being "ingrained" into an echo chamber spooks me too much, you can look through my post history if you're curious.
I think the best answer is it varies quite a bit.
Some people it is a sunk cost fallacy. They went all in on Trump in '16 as the outside, antiestablishment candidate. They alienated friends and family either emulating him or just repeating his insults. Then once alienated from friends family they found solace in other people who experienced similar outcomes. This only reinforced their ideas that they were right all along. Trump not only winning but being right about everything is the only way they think they will be vindicated. If Trump is right then sooner or later those that cut ties with them will come back. If Trump is/was wrong, then they are wrong and if they are wrong they have lost years with loved ones, maybe the rest of their lives with those people due to their actions. Trump is all they have now and they need him to win/be right.
Others I think are just good old conspiracy weirdos. They may or may not have voted for Trump in '16, but Q Anon or Covid conspiracies or Pizzagate got them wrapped up and Trump is their winning hand. He is their way to unraveling some deep seeded conspiracy where all the bad things in the world are the fault of a few people like Bill Gates or George Soros. Trump is also their retribution for all the bad things that have happened and Trump plays into this saying they are after you but he is in the way.
There are probably a few who are just grifters. They dont give a fuck about any MAGA stuff and only are in it to make a buck. They have now seen how MAGA will turn on you if you speak out like Rogan or Rittenhouse and their only choice is to keep on grifting.
Still others I think are people who are in the right wing news bubble. Decades of Fox news or Newsmaxx/OANN, combined with right wong talk radio of hearing how all Dems are evil or working with the literal Christian devil and Trump is the only person you can vote for. Third party candidates you probably never hear of and if all you see/hear is how good Trump is and any bad things happening to him is the fault of Dems then you have no choice but to vote for Trump. I mean would you vote for someone you thought was an avatar of evil?
Finally are probably the ones who I think literally want to be part of a dictator state. Trump is a means to an end. Project 2025 lays out their plans to usurp the entire government with sycophants. They would weild the levers of power to ensure they never have a serious opposition candidate again. The chants of "lock her up" will be replaced with actions. Anyone even remotely left of them would be in danger of being labeled a radical and in need of being arrested and likely never see the inside of a court room.
Most probably hit a few of these but I think these are the major reasons people are for Trump despite his negatives. I think if you ask people though one of these will likely be the main reason.
yeah this seems like one of the more probable options for a percentage of them.
i suspect this one has to be less than like 5% but it's definitely there.
i think this is probably the majority of it, but my fundamental problem here is that this has gone so far that these people MUST have a fundamental disconnection with reality. I.E. be delusional, because it literally takes 5 seconds of googling, catching a random clip of kamalas campaign, seeing some of the legislation that biden passed, seeing how trump just grenades everything at every chance he gets, jan 6th literally being an attempted coup? Like there are SO many possibilities for people to realize "hey something isn't right here" and they've either ignored ALL of them, or they simply don't believe any of them, making them delusional. So either these people literally don't interact with politics AT ALL outside of like three minutes a day. Or they're the type of person to go bomb a government building because someone on twitter said they rape babies in the basement. There's a fine line between "they just exist in the right wing sphere" and "the entire right wing sphere is a delusional cult" here. Fox news was also sued and lost the dominion voting machine case also, they SHOULD have heard about that, even as a fox news viewer. So either fox is twisting the truth and lying more (or the other outlets) or they literally do not see anything outside of these outlets.
i think this is probably a subset of the first two. More than anything else.
yeah i would generally agree, but i'm concerned that this is still apparently at least 40% of our voter base? Like to me, it has to be SO far out there that 40% of the population genuinely cannot in good faith believe this. So either the vast majority of our population has the political acuity of a rock in front of a television, or they're all bad faith. And if it's the former... we're fucked. Politics was never meant to be this surface level. It's a functional mechanism for governing one of the largest countries by most metrics in the world. There is no "yeah it's probably fine" here for me. Another problem that i have is that this is all behind the functioning of fascism, which means a significant portion of our population is directly susceptible to literal fascism. That as far as i am concerned, is a failure of the american project.
You see lots of people say that, "It's a cult." and leave it at that.
It absolutely has elements of a new religious movement. They have been brainwashed by YouTube, Facebook groups, telegram or whatever messaging app they're using now. Real big overlap between Qanon and hardcore MAGAts.
It plays into their bias and tells them they're special, that they see behind the curtain. Their life is miserable due to a conspiracy by the evil liberals, the 1%, and the Jews.
It short circuits logic by punching the fear and anger button. Most of them are angry and afraid.
Chump didn't plan this shit, it's like a perfect storm of bullshit.
Sucks real bad and I don't think there is any way to help most of them. They're bent for life even if Chump is gone. They'll latch on to the next thing. May fracture into a bunch of weird offshoots. Right wing grifters have made fortunes off them. I think it unlikely that many of them ever make it back to reality.
Ah, like Christianity.
Without even a mostly unified text to guide them. Best thing that could happen is they splinter into even more factions than Christianity and lose all power as a result.
so basically its just fascism, but america instead.
Yeah, it's like straight out of the fascist playbook. It just sucks and blows my mind that it's such transparent bullshit. The critical thinking skills are so poor in a large segment of our society.
yeah, unfortunately for a lot of them, it's not just critical thinking, but more so reasoning skills. People are too quick to just believe shit they see and then run all in on it.
"it makes the libs upset, so it must be good."
that's possible but then these people are potentially classified as election interference causing people, as they aren't voting to vote anymore. But then again maybe that's good enough for democracy.
A mix between it's a cult, sadism, and not getting theirs so wanting to watch the world burn.
They are voting for the anti-christ so the rapture can begin and they go to heaven.
hm. Maybe? But they also think that trump is a legitimately good candidate, this isn't some accelerationist bullshit or anything.