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.
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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.
Small towns, small minds.
Don’t underestimate the sexism (particularly gamergate 4chan incels).
Fascism.
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
Hey, my boomer dad got to be a slave soldier AND live the dream.
Because his dad was a dentist and he could afford to pay for college after Uncle Sam, it turns out, got him shot twice, blown up once, and gave him leukemia.
But at least Vietnam doesn’t have universal healthcare.
actually 87% of the Vietnamese population are covered by social health insurance (as of 2018)
I know, I’m referring to the fact that all that got done to him to defend a fascist state against Big Scary Communist Ho Chi Minh who actually wanted to be a US Ally against Chinese influence in Asia.
And then they didn’t even fucking win. Which was probably good, but still.
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 Carlinist club has no member status in the America club, unfortunately.
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.
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.
I and hate to admit it have read it all. And I never thought I would say it but one book made me feel unclean, dirty, and really question America so much I may find work elsewhere.
Yep, he’s literally Hitler, just without the mass genocide (yet).
We’ve always wondered how so many people followed Hitler, now we know
There is plenty of genocide, war, and all that. It’s just done at a sustainable pace and mostly in places that don’t look like US soil. Hitler rushed and got a reaction. This time it’s going to be worse.
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.
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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.
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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.
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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).
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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:
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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.
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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.
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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
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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.
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!
Fear and lies.
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.
As long as you only get the opinions of people who don’t support Trump, you’ll never understand this.
How do you mean?
I get that you’re implying that people who don’t support Trump can’t know what goes on in a Trump supporters head or understand the movement (not true).
But if you can’t explain it yourself then you simply can’t know what you’re talking about, you don’t even understand what it is that they’ll never understand! How would you be able to know if they are able to understand or not!?
No, people who don’t support Trump are perfectly capable of understanding Trump supporters’ reasons.
It’s just that they don’t, and don’t try to either.
Yeah, but you haven’t explained it either in two posts now which says to me that you don’t know and you’re just being contrarian.
I’m not a Trump supporter
Right, so all that means is you don’t know what trump tapped into and think that means no one else can.
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.
American politics has been described as a two party system, but it is really a one and a half party system. One party creates a winning political coalition while the minority party has to deal with the remains. Sometimes the minority party wins major elections, but it is generally rare.
There are two ways the parties shift or reorganize.
The first is when one party collapses. Most recent examples were Republicans in 1932 and Democrats in 1968. The majority party messes up so much that it is blatantly apparent that they aren’t going to win elections any more and the transfer of power is rather peaceful.
The second is due to mainly demographic change as the majoriry party becomes the minority party. This is generally more risky for democracies as the shift is gradual and there isn’t a firm reason parties to switch. There is also more electoral chaos as votes are a lot closer.
One example was the Election of 1800, where Southern and Westward expansion in the country had led Jefferson and Burr to beat Adams, but then there was a stalemate on who would be picked. While a political solution was found in the end, militias were being drawn up and there was a growing threat of civil war.
The second example was the Civil War. While Lincoln won a minority of votes, it was apparent that future elections would likely be won by the party of thr North due to increasing immigration.
It seems like Trump is tapping into this demographic fear. More educated voters vote Democratic and the populace is becoming more educated. Outside of Florida, it appears that voters are choosing to move to Republican Sun belt states and voting Democrat. What was thought of as a party collapse in 2008 is turning out to be a demographic shift instead. So, the former dominant party is fighting back to delay or prevent the shift.
Vast inequality in a society built upon a white supremacist/patriarchal power structure.
any way to destroy the structure?
It’s hard to influence anyone to “destroy the structure”, they think they need it. However the “vast inequality” gets support from at least half the population
- Everyone wants better schools, even those misguided enough to micromanage schools in their own image.
- Everyone wants the workers they know to be treated fairly, even if they can’t apply that to the general Population and believe unions are wrong
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LOL not laughing at you but you remind me of one of my brothers who currently sits on the city council in our home town. And he uses there own speech/weapons against them since they are all pro douchebag except my brother. When they wanted to ban books he showed up reading one while they talked and when they came to him to place his vote he said oh I am sorry I was reading a banned book and then read it allowed until his time passed and since it required all of them to vote he abstained by just reading outloud from a book that would get banned. He read the whole thing whitch took an hour until the rest got pissed off and gave up. We don’t know where he gets it from or how the hell he was elected but he is a huge smartass. So in our county no books got banned because of him. He still pisses them off by putting is feet up on the table so much they had to do a ruling about it. I think at some point in his life he read a handbook of polotics or something and uses the grey area pretty much to his own free will. Thats enough for now…I appreciate you writing all that out and it was very inciteful…no sarcasm.
