Simplifying Complexity, One Answer at a Time!
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Racism. Christian extremism. Both not exclusive to themselves. Both have felt ignored and feed on the the thoughts of being victims due to their "unpopular" beliefs. There is much more to this subject but this is the best I can simplify it.
It's essentially these two things. And it's easy to see from any political map that these divides line up really well along rural vs urban areas. People who live in cities have learned how to live together and tolerate each other (even if they don't necessarily like each other). People in rural areas think of themselves as the 'backbone' of the country because or our early agrarian and later industrial development as a country. And in many ways, they really were. Farmers, miners, factory workers, etc.
But time has left them behind with factory farms, overseas production, robot factories, renewable energy, etc. They blame "the other" for their problems. The "other" or "the enemy" in their minds is often "big city" people with darker skin, or "academic pinheads" or "government bureaucrats" or basically anyone but themselves. To them, hearing news about something like climate change or same sex marriage is an "attack on their way of life and traditional values". They haven't learned how to adapt or take proper stock of their situation. They only know how to lash out at "the other".
If rural people would calm the fuck down and gain some perspective, they could see that they have a lot in common with working people in urban areas. For example, we're all being fucked over by greedy corporations and a tiny number of people with way too much money and power. But those same powerful elites do a masterful job of pitting all of us working class slobs against each other. This both amuses them and keeps us divided so we don't build the guillotines. The country being ever on the brink of civil war is very much intentional.
And of course there are guys like Steve Bannon, who is like a comic book villain. Guys like that really do want to see it all burn to the ground so it can be rebooted in some fantasy world where "bitter old white males like me rule again".
I'm interested to see if this rural/urban divide is going to shift in the future. With the ballooning cost of real estate and the rise of remote work, a lot of urban liberals are moving to more rural areas.
There's certainly a group of people that enjoy city life, but a lot of people (myself included) just want some peace and quiet and only lived in or near cities to be close to work.
People are interesting. People produce culture. Cities are where people are. Cities are always going to be more interesting and more cultural.
You want to start a band in nowhere, Utah? Ok, well, you're going to have a lot fewer people interested in joining or watching than a city of any size.
Some stuff might move online. But I'm reminded of an interview I read during the pandemic. Someone was asked "what can I do at an in person party I can't do online?". The other person replied, "fuck people." So there's that. In-person social stuff matters.
So like yeah I guess it might be cheaper but it's probably going to be less interesting just because there's fewer people around.
Small towns, small minds.
Don't underestimate the sexism (particularly gamergate 4chan incels).
Gamergate essentially created and unified the modern alt-right as we see it today, it should absolutely be in consideration towards modern political discourse.
They're terrified of being treated the same way they treat minorities and women
A large amount of angry, angry disillusioned people. I'm culturally close enough to understand a bit, if not 100% of it. There's been a lot of cultural change really fast in the West, and increasingly bad economic conditions for the poor, rural and/or uneducated at the same time. As a result, a bubble of people who are completely reactionary and want to tear down the establishment has formed. Trump just managed to mobilize them.
The part I don't really get is the appeal of the guy himself. It's like they want to inflict him on the people they're angry at, as if he's a weapon and not a leader who will be in charge of them.
It’s like they want to inflict him on the people they’re angry at, as if he’s a weapon
This completely nails it. Trump's lack of a filter and eagerness to pick fights makes him look like a fearless champion for his followers. He isn't going to pull punches or compromise with anyone.
A very conservative relative of mine likened supporting Trump to hiring a sleazy but effective lawyer: his personality and methods are irrelevant; you hired him to achieve specific results and the only thing that matters is his ability to achieve those results. If it makes the opposition scream then that's just added entertainment.
What I don't get is he had four years already to achieve results and all he did was make the country worse off, but somehow everyone seems to have forgotten that 😭
Yes, but he hurt the right people. Or at least put on a show of doing it, somehow Mexico got out of USMCA just fine.
Yeah, lot of bitterness from perceived left wing elitism that they feel derided them and marginalized them, Trump is not a political platform, it's just resentment.
As fascism always is.
They could have picked someone who's not transparently a crayon-eating moron, though...
Considering that both Mussolini and Hitler were also incompetent fucking morons, it's no surprise that modern fascists also pick leaders like them.
They're sending their best.
Trump represents modern conservatism, but he himself? I'm not sure he actually stands for a whole lot beyond his own orange bubble.
He's mostly a blank slate (philosophically and intellectually) that the people around him can use to get their agendas enacted. He surrounds himself with sycophants and bootlickers, so as long as they promise him wealth and power, he is content to parrot the talking points he's given.
Steven Miller, Steve Bannon, Alex Jones, and all the others...those are the real evil motherfuckers. When Trump is out of the picture, they'll find some other half-wit to puppet. The fight won't end when one figurehead fades in to history.
idk, just one dude's thoughts.
(Just to be clear, none of that absolves him of the real damage he's done. Malicious indifference is still malicious.)
I suspect one of them would directly take his place, actually. Trump is kind of an anomaly in not having redeeming qualities himself, if you look around the world and through history.
They were absolute geniuses compared to Trump, and put on a far more convincing show of honesty - particularly Hitler, with his faux-compassionate warmups and vegetarianism. Mussolini had an actual career as an intellectual before he was famous. Hitler sounds kind of intellectually average.
I don't think fascism is capable of producing competent longterm leadership. Like the ideology preselects for loyalty above all, it's rabidly anti-intellectual and scorns anyone perceived as being an intellectual elitist. It's purely emotion driven and requires ever escalating emotional rhetoric to keep the based angry at external all-powerfully weak enemies (lazy mexicans stealing your jobs, sneaky jewish bankers crashed the entire economy, thuggish high school dropout gangbangers in the inner city are criminal masterminds responsible for all the drugs flowing through rural communities who would overrun everything if they were smart enough to unify, take your pick of contradictory scapegoat.)
That's not to say incompetence means harmlessness, there's a lot of blood that has been spilled throughout history due to incompetence.
Hooooooooooooooooooboy. Mainly, he got lucky in time. WARNING, WALL OF TEXT
This is a continuation of the build up to the original civil war in America, when post reconstruction under a President who was sympathetic to the confederates after Lincoln was assassinated. You've had generations still calling for civil war (spend 30 minutes around a group of Texans and see if you can get out without hearing them declaring Texas never signed to become part of the union again). With the "war of northern aggression" myths that are pervasive you've got people believing that it was DC that invaded the south instead of the south attacking first, as well as "states rights" making it seem like big government is picking on the states.
Into the racism territory, the original civil war was about slavery. Full stop. If you have questions, please refer to declarations of causes of secession from Georgia, Mississippi, South Carolina, Texas (which its formation was specifically stealing it from Mexico to become a slaveholding state), Virginia, then look at the Constitution of the CSA Article I, Sec. 9(4), Article IV, Sec 2(1)(3), Sec 3(3). States rights indeed.
This may seem odd to dredge up all of that but living in the South this has been the drum I grew up around my entire life and spoken of as gospel. Am a descendant of a Confederate officer and people tell my family that we should be proud... I'm proud of my parents for responding that he's a traitorous piece of shit and deserved to be hung. This offends the locals in modern era. Now with jobs that had me traveling, you find the Virginia battle standard (that's not the Confederate flag, the actual Confederate flag is mostly white, then they changed it to the "blood dipped banner" with a red strip at the end because the actual flag looked too much like a flag of surrender... ironically changed the month they surrendered. Whoops) all over the country in small communities. It's weird to see "It's heritage, not hate" in Ohio. So the ghosts of the Civil War are not yet gone.
But lets get out of the Civil War and move to more modern wounds the country still has festering. The Civil Rights act when taught in schools is almost treated like it was ancient history... my dad's high school cancelled prom because the principal would not have the first integrated prom in the state, people are still alive from that era and anyone thinks hatred was overblown, Eisenhower had to send the 101st Airborne and federalize the Arkansas National Guard to protect 9 students because the Governor mobilized the National Guard to bar their way into the school. Following Ike, you had JFK a Democrat who ran with LBJ, the running mate was chosen because LBJ was your old school southern Democrat, wildly racist, which spoke the language of the very angry South. JFK was pushing integration, but as VP, LBJ actually seemed to spearhead it harder than JFK, and when he became President after JFKs assassination made it a point to continue integration full steam ahead (not a saint, his words to people still racist... he was a complicated figure in history). He signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and 1968, and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and changed politics in the country for the foreseeable future, the Southern "Dixiecrats" felt betrayed by the Democratic party. This was added on by the Southern Strategy pushed by Nixon and his political strategist Kevin Philips.
The words of Phillips himself in 1970, warning: language of the era
From now on, the Republicans are never going to get more than 10 to 20 percent of the Negro vote and they don't need any more than that... but Republicans would be shortsighted if they weakened enforcement of the Voting Rights Act. The more Negroes who register as Democrats in the South, the sooner the Negrophobe whites will quit the Democrats and become Republicans. That's where the votes are. Without that prodding from the blacks, the whites will backslide into their old comfortable arrangement with the local Democrats.
During the Nixon era, the War on Drugs started up. Former Nixon Domestic Policy Chief John Ehrlichman told outright the war on drugs was made because you couldn't arrest people for being against the war or black, so tie weed with hippies and blacks with heroin and now they had a ready made excuse to disrupt communities, arrest leaders, raid homes, and vilify them on the news. Another one of those talking points of the Republicans you hear about today was a Nixon favorite "the Silent Majority". We all know about the Watergate Scandal, and if you don't good lord a writeup of it would take up more than I've written now, but an overreach of Nixons power and lead to his impeachment trials. So Nixon is a shamed president, we don't need to look at him anymore... Except many of his policies are quietly still used by the Republicans, which shouldn't be a surprise, one of President Trump's political consultants, Roger Stone, has a tattoo of Nixon on his back.
Against the war... RIGHT, another boogeyman of the US: Communism. Understand Fascism, Socialism (often attributed to Communism, since we're talking US politics, the words are interchangeable even though in reality they are not), and Anarchy were political theories that butted heads about the same time. During WWII it was even in the US "we gotta stop the communists" and of course the Cold War made it worse. Containment, the US doctrine to prevent the spread of Communism started roughly with Truman, as put in by Nixon on the trying to go against hippies, the attitude continued and still Communism is a bad word today. Good lord that discussion is its own article, but good to remember that we have situations like McArthyism, a second Hooverism where persecution against left wing individuals under the guise of "weeding out communists" has happened and getting called for now where people were encouraged to turn in people suspected of communist sympathies, happened a lot in Hollywood, so a distrust of the conservative crowd of the liberals and such like the "Hollywood Elite" is ingrained in our society for nearly a century.
THE MODERN REPUBLICAN PARTY, good lord we finally got here. It can really be chalked up to their patron saint Ronald Reagan. Old Ronald pushed a lot of the economics that are still worshiped by the right wing today, as well as much of the political control. He was an odd duck, not a politician, but an actor who got a cult of personality going and a massive following that felt he could do no wrong. Wonder who that sounds like? No idea. Again, another point where I could go a long time how his administration shaped the country but there's a really important one that explains how we got here. The 11th commandment
Thou shalt not speak ill of any fellow Republican.
Look at the Republicans for decades after that. They softballed each other while holding Democrats to a higher standard. Republican does something distatetful the Republicans would protect, but a Democrat do something and hang them out to dry. This became the main doctrine of the Republicans, lockstep together and do not faulter. Clinton sleeps with someone, Impeachment trial, W starts wars with countries not involved in 9/11 nada, Obama and Biden impeachment inquiries for.... reasons? The republicans started their "win at all costs" move, a lot spearheaded by Mitch McConnell (yet another... good lord long article)
This is going to seem like an aside, but is important, during this, 9/11 happened and the real advent of 24/7 news cycles showed up. This will be important because this beast lives on advertising, it's a for profit business, and so keeping butts in chairs and eyes glued to the screen is very important.
So in comes the turd in the punchbowl, Donald Trump. He doesn't believe in rules. He is more intimate with guys in drag than the truth. He's ran as a democrat to get president, failed miserably. Ran as republican, failed miserably. But the perfect storm happened. A black guy is in the White House! 24/7 news is blasting anything they can. Trump has been able to stay in media and keep crowds entertained, honestly his true talent is working crowds. So he finds that "birther" conspiracy and ran with it, all the major news networks were happy to parade Trump on and give him free publicity, Fox because he's helping spread hate against the Democrats, CNN and MSNBC happy to show him off because "haha, look at the dumb conspiracy nut" and gave him ALL of the press. Then the primaries came after Obama, and a pile of Republicans, all following the 11th commandment are together, being nice, cordial, while jockying for who's in charge. And Trump ignored the rules, tore each and every one of them apart, so the divisions of a pile of candidates who softballed and he threw elbows landed him the nomination.
I want this understood, this is still VERY MUCH an ELI5, truncated and painted with the broadest brush explanation of what's going on. I could go into fuckups of the Democrats, that Bill was the beginning of the end of the actual left wing to corporatism or the running of Hillary being a dumb move, but you asked about what did Trump tap into. The TLDR is "We're still dealing with shit that came up before Lincoln was elected."
Holy hell! This was the most succinct, concise, and "yeah, your high school history textbooks whitewashed all this shit" summary of the modern Conservative political machine. It's like Robert Evans, Matt Taibbi, Jake Hanrahan, and Kurt Andersen had a love child that came out as a summary text.
If anyone got to my comment here, but only skimmed parent comment, please do yourself a favor and bask in that bit.
Damn, that's high praise, thank you! It makes me feel better because I woke up fighting myself on "Oh man I wrote way too long a rant" and "DAMMIT! I didn't even mention the Evangelicals worming their way into politics!"
To everyone else, reading this... read about history folks! I, like everyone else, thought history was boring in school. If I were to put on my tin foil hat, I worry it's done on purpose as it helps realize nothing happening is actually all that new. And it's rather easy to do, put a coach as the history teacher who just hands you a textbook and makes you regurgitate names and numbers that don't mean anything but meets criteria (No Child Left Behind, Bush Era for me) just makes everyone hate history.
Yes, I did drop names, policies, and a few dates, but those are examples to point to and you better believe I don't remember a single one of those by heart, I have to look them up when I reference them. The theory is there, and once you get into devouring the actual meat of history it is absolutely bloody fascinating.
Fascism.
The far right have been stoking hate and resentment for decades. But before Trump they always tried to maintain an air of respectability as well as plausible deniability. Then came Trump and threw all that out of the window. Also he has a talent to spout any nonsense with utter conviction. That is perceived as authenticity by the people who feel left out by the political process and that are simply too dumb to understand any nuanced discussion.
After reading of what you wrote reminds me of Hitler when we learned in grade school. So if he gets elected American's a pretty fucked.?
Have a gander at project 2025 if you want to know what that future looks like.
Yep, he's literally Hitler, just without the mass genocide (yet).
We've always wondered how so many people followed Hitler, now we know
A lot of old-fashioned "good old homegrown" folks who feel that the world is changing and the economy is leaving them behind. Think of coal towns, mid-west mining towns, etc...
Insert a republican who tells them enough times that it's not the fault of big business screwing literally everyone over, it's actually the fault of the immigrants/LGBTQ+/Mulsims/Blacks (insert marginalised group of choice here) coming and taking what should rightfully go to Good Honest Working Folk/Christian Evangelicals (Insert the group you're trying to court here) and then promise to change that.
The low-key greatest quote came from LBJ in an off-hand remark to an aide. Not even from a speech.
"If you can convince the lowest white man he's better than the best colored man, he won't notice you're picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he'll empty his pockets for you."
True then. True now. And true internationally. There is no country where the Conservative Right Wing doesn't play by that exact rulebook.
people are realizing that the American dream was a lie and they don't want to believe that the people they voted for all along are the ones who caused it
It's called the American dream, because you'd have to be asleep to believe it.
no, if you were a white middle class boomer born between 1945 & 1970ish who managed not to go to vietnam, you got to live the American dream. then we methodically voted for the people who stripped away all of the policies that made it possible
Hello, fellow Carlin-ist.
It's a big club, and you ain't in it.....or, you are in it if we're talking about carlinists as a club.
The funny thing is it used to kind of work for a lot of small businesses and poor people in general. It sucked but you could do it. Only true visionaries like hunter s Thompson and Carlin really understood that the system was rotten before it all started to fall apart.
Anti-federalism -- Deep rooted distrust of the Federal Government has been around since the dawn of the USA, though its often been part of the minority.
Know Nothing / Native American Party -- 1850s era movement. Protectionist, isolationist, nativist. Originally they popped up as anti-Irish and anti-Catholic, but overall the concept is that immigrants suck. The modern concept is: "I know nothing", about the movement. The overall idea is that even in the 1800s, it was bad to look like a racist bigot, so you'd keep your support for these causes secret. Everyone in the party knows that "the Know Nothings are larger than everyone expects", but no one really knows how big the movement is. And that's the point.
America First -- 1930s saw the rise of Fascism vs Communism in Europe with the dawn of the Spanish civil war. The "America First" movement focused on isolationism and even pro-German / Nazi slant mixed with religious fervor. This was pushed by tech-gurus of the time: Charles Lindberg (airplane entrepreneur, first Trans-atlantic flight, etc. etc.), and the Christian Front. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1939_Nazi_rally_at_Madison_Square_Garden).
NAFTA -- 1990s free-trade by Bill Clinton opened up Mexico and Canada as incredible trading partners. However, local industry / local steel lost out as companies started to shop in Mexico for material. As Bill Clinton was a huge pusher of NAFTA, the anti-NAFTA political group consolidated under Republicans. This is likely where the bulk of blue-collar workers is coming from, especially because Trump started adding Tariffs / anti-globalism concepts back to the forefront of American Politics.
Some more recent context:
Trump has been building his brand for decades as a very rich, very macho straight-talker. Even in the 80s and earlier, there's a large number of Hotels, Casinos, Resorts, Golf Courses (etc. etc.) that have relatively high reputation among Americans in general with Trump's name.
Trump reads from the teleprompter in "another voice", openly showing his disdain for public speaking and the political system. Anyone who has lost faith in the political system loves this. Trump pretends that the teleprompter is forcing him to talk and its all just a "through the motions" thing. Then Trump obviously goes off teleprompter and talks about different concepts, the "real stuff". (Or so goes his branding). This simple trick is enough to get the gist to his followers: don't listen to what I say (because I'm being forced to say this politically correct crap). This means that Trump's true actions are only limited to the imagination of the listener.
Trump is playing and leaning into the borne again Christian role. From a religious perspective, the "former enemy / former outsider" coming into religion is a common story and religious love it. Trump was openly a Democrat in the 90s / 00s before switching into Republicanism.
The "bulk" of Trump's political style is Know Nothing + Macho + anti-political correctness.
I would add the admittance of China to the WTO as another proximate cause. And one which probably had more of a material effect than NAFTA; but, NAFTA had already become a GOP talking point and it just stuck. China's entry to the WTO was also moved over the finish line by Bush II, though most of the ground work was laid by Clinton. So, it wouldn't have had the same clean narrative as NAFTA. US Employment in manufacturing went into freefall in late 2000 and early 2001. This was also during a recession, so that is intermixed with the effects of those changes in international trade. But, even as the recession receded and the US entered an economic boom, leading up to the 2008 crash, manufacturing employment in the US either held steady or decreased slightly. It's unsurprising that the same period saw a lot of offshoring of manufacturing to China. And this was also the period of Neoliberal economists pushing "comparative advantage" and how the US losing all those manufacturing jobs was a good thing.
So it's not surprising then that they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.
-- Barack Obama, 2008
His televised narcissistic collapse (now in it's 13th year) has emboldened every Archie Bunker wannabe, vacuous contrarian, all the racist chucklefucks, and miscellaneous shitstains the country has to offer. The rest of the people are sick and tired of having their empathy and compassion mocked and derided, their hopes and dreams dashed, and their future turned into nightmare fuel.
Yes, he was always a privileged asshole devoid of human compassion or understanding, but this is the moment at the WHCD on 4/30/2011 where he broke beyond repair: https://v.redd.it/sk0jqm81r5kd1
every Archie Bunker wannabe, vacuous contrarian, all the racist chucklefucks, and miscellaneous shitstains the country has to offer. The rest of the people are sick and tired of having their empathy and compassion mocked and derided, their hopes and dreams dashed
I couldn't help but to read this in the most tired, South London accent ever.
Big question with a lot of nuance and different angles you could approach from. What I think will clarify some things: the emotional side of liberal vs conservatives is that one side sees how humanity could be better and strives for that change, while the other worries that we'll get worse and resist the change.
Well for quite some time, things have been rapidly changing like no other time in history due in large part to advancements in technology. Both sides can see that we've ended up in some dark places as a result and generally the world is more confusing, divided, and stressful than ever.
In reality there is a lot of great progress that we've made in recent times. But people who are slow to adapt don't see it that way, which makes them extremely uncomfortable and left feeling like it totally justifies their philosophy. But nobody is listening because the popular media shuts them out.
So basically they're throwing a huge temper tantrum and trying to kick over the sand castle everyone else has worked so hard to build, because they feel fed up, self-righteous, and ignored. They don't see it that way, of course, they feel they're renegades tearing down a godless society and saving the world. They vote for a buffoon because they're tired of that idea being weaponized against them, so they're owning it. With him they're able to take center stage and be so loud and in your face that you can't ignore them.
I think the current economic and political system is failing a vast majority of Americans and like other authoritarian demagogues in the past, Trump misattributes that problem in ways that resonate with the bigotry and racism that exists in American culture.
America has had a long history of nationalism and exploitation that leaves it ripe for cherishing those values and minimizing critical thinking about current structures and questioning how those really only benefit the rich and powerful.
I think the current economic and political system is failing a vast majority of Americans and like other authoritarian demagogues in the past, Trump misattributes that problem in ways that resonate with the bigotry and racism that exists in American culture.
You just explained in one sentence what I bumbled my way through in four paragraphs. Well written, my friend.
He basically told all the racists, homophobes, transphobes, xenophobes, and anyone else who feels they're entitled to more than anyone else that they were right and they don't need to maintain any air of dignity or even basic human compassion about it anymore.
Look at that list and you'll see it's all people who base their whole identity around hatred of things they're afraid of or don't understand. That's what he tapped into, ignorance and fear.
Fear and lies.
See, all the really open minded citizens in America were just so happy when the country elected a black guy as president that they just had to go out and share that joy with the rest of the world!
There's always been a sort of background radiation of this. Decades ago Rush Limbaugh was prolific in inspiring a weird new direction of fashy talk radio shows and Fox capitalized on it like no other. Trump didn't do it, he just rode the surf.
Among other factors, I think humans have a certain instinctive drive: when there’s a broad sense of social malaise—when lots of people feel there’s something wrong with their social institutions, but there’s no consensus on how to remedy it—they gravitate toward whatever thing the social establishment seems most afraid of, because in our deep history that’s been an effective way to break out of dangerous institutional stasis.
Depending on the social establishment at the time, that anti-establishment movement could take many forms—religious, ideological, nationalistic, etc. So I think Trumpism is an inevitable reaction to the rise of the neoliberal establishment under Clinton and the Bushes: the underlying cause of the neoliberal malaise is economic, but the most visible social anxieties are over racism, sexism, and other social factors. So that creates a feedback loop of growing fear that attracts those feeling a general sense of discontent.