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Even as polarization surges, Americans believe they live in a compassionate country
(theconversation.com)
this post was submitted on 20 Feb 2025
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They probably mostly are compassionate, just mislead and influenced by harmful ideologies. For instance, my father (though not an American) supports Trump and many of his policies as he's been mislead by the media he consumes to think it's actually helping people - because he cares about others. He thinks Trump is actually 'reducing inefficiencies' so the American public is better off. He thinks socialism 'doesn't work' because people 'don't want to work if they don't have to to survive', not because he's against the idea of helping people in general.
He supports the NHS as an institution, he just thinks the reason it's not doing well is because of a misuse of funds rather than a lack of funds. He supports immigrants. He thinks trans people are mentally ill, that them 'invading women's spaces' is harmful to religious people who have prohibitions against that.
He is wrong in many of the things that he thinks, but he thinks them from a place of kindness and empathy, hard as that can be to imagine.