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This is the part that blows my mind consistently. The number of people screaming “WHY would ANYONE vote for him?!” and then not even considering trying to find

This is the part that blows my mind consistently. The number of people screaming “WHY would ANYONE vote for him?!” and then not even considering trying to find out is a true bummer.

jquery 2y ago
They’re literally trying to find out when they exclaim that question. To me this seems a pretty clear case of inflation=“punish the incumbent” and also Biden spread out the pain of covid recovery instead of making red states bear the burden. Kamala promised more of the same, including lots of investment into rural and red areas that aren’t gonna vote for her anyway. Result? 10-15 million blue voters stayed home this cycle. Trump turned out his entire base. Just pontificating…
- giancarlostoro 2y ago
  > They’re literally trying to find out when they exclaim that question. I've seen these conversations happen thousands of times in political communities online, before you know it, the person trying to understand starts getting angry at some point, and both people are calling each other names. Very few people truly want to understand the other side. If you want to understand the other side, the first step is to listen, and not say anything (don't try to defend your viewpoint, this isn't part of your goal, and it will derail it), ask questions, and agree to disagree politely.
  - immibis 2y ago
    Because those discussions go like this: (to a C programmer) "Why are you using C?" "Because it's memory-safe." "But it's not memory-safe." "Yes it is. Your program will just segfault rather than getting hacked." "No it won't... see these examples of C programs getting hacked without segfaulting." "You're using it wrong. See look, if you write with spaces instead of tabs, your program is memory-safe." Do you remember "MongoDB is web scale"? Would you not get angry when trying to find good reasons to use MongoDB? That's what it's like talking to the average Trump supporter, except it's about the removal of human rights instead of just which database you should use.
    - giancarlostoro 2y ago
      I see this behavior coming from either side. We are insanely polarized.
tdhz77 2y ago
We know why. They are ignorant, don't care, or duped. There is no reason to vote for a person morally bankrupt and doesn't have any reasonable solutions to problems. A person with felonies can't even be on a Jury in this country, and people elected him President after his attempt to overthrow the government? I would struggle to hire him to mow my grass let alone run the country. This whole "You need to talk to us" is ridiculous as the positions.
- sfblah 2y ago
  I'll give it a shot, just maybe to help one person understand. They voted for him because 15+ years of government + federal reserve policy has led to massive bubbles in all US capital assets while impoverishing a wide swath of the population. The people who voted for Trump are those who've "lost" in the giant crypto+stock Ponzi scheme. The reason people on the winning side of this have such a hard time seeing it is that, en masse, they've turned away from any semblance of traditional valuation measures for capital assets. I assume they've done this because it's too emotionally uncomfortable to consider the notion that their entire wealth isn't because they're geniuses but because of deranged government policy.
  - zaptrem 2y ago
    Isn't Trump the pro-"crypto Ponzi scheme" (as you called it) candidate? Asset prices of both crypto and stocks seem to think so.
    - sfblah 2y ago
      Yep. It's ironic and shitty, but people just did a protest vote. They aren't looking at the specific proposals. They don't care anymore. You're absolutely right, but honestly both parties are completely in on the Ponzi scheme. So it probably doesn't matter.
    - tim333 2y ago
      Not only pro but going to put your tax dollars in: >US Senator Lummis reaffirms Bitcoin will be become a national reserve asset following Trump's victory
immibis 2y ago
Many of us have, and that's how we know their stated reasons are just nonsense. There's a video of the creator interviewing a Trumper about how tariffs work....
- aydyn 2y ago
  You think you're going to get a solid answer interviewing some random person on the street? That's what an intelligent person would call a strawman. Do you want me to point you to the video of well-educated coastal elites calling the assassination attempt a Hoax? There are of course more than one reason why people voted for him, but there's literally tons of comments in this very thread explaining why with no nonsense and under no uncertain terms. Ironically, a lot of those comments get flagged and are no longer visible.
  - kulahan 2y ago
    No, I think there needs to be a culture of talking to and respecting people with different opinions. And before you jump to the extreme of “but they don’t want me to EXIST!”, that’s not the point. The point is that we temper each other, partially by negotiating, and partially by simply making the “other side” more used to our ideas. That just happens with repeated exposure. If something is scary, but generally not bad, people can get used to it, but only if they’re exposed to it regularly. You get used to public speaking after the ten thousandth time instead, because you’ve likely already confronted every fear you had in real life by now. Ironically, this is extremely easy to fix. Politicians can simply get along in public. We’ve got studies showing that political extremism can die almost overnight when the opposing politicians simply explain that they do respect their opponent. As for the people here explaining themselves clearly - that’s because dang has done a good job of fostering a community of high quality commenters. You won’t find this kind of discourse anywhere else, and it’s the main reason I treasure this site.
    - aydyn 2y ago
      > No, I think there needs to be a culture of talking to and respecting people with different opinions. Absolutely. > As for the people here explaining themselves clearly - that’s because dang has done a good job of fostering a community of high quality commenters. Hard disagree. The level of political discussion on HN is barely a step above r/politics. This is a forum for 110 IQ codecels who think minor domain expertise means they are smarter than everyone else in all aspects. The contempt for ordinary people in this very thread is nauseating.
anon291 2y ago
Yup all my comments offering to explain and explaining have been flagged. Even ones with no sarcasm. Just because waiting for someone to doxx me again and dang to do nothing.
- FirmwareBurner 2y ago
  HN just flags all comments that seem to support Trump in any way, even with good arguments. So no idea why comments are even open anymore when some points of view are obviously not allowed here yet 52% of the country seem to supported them to a degree. Obviously HN users just want their own groupthink eco chamber without wanting to hear other opinions. So in that regard I'm enjoying watching lib woketards having a mental breakdown for the second time since 2016. Stay ignorant, stay foolish. Hell, I'm not even from America and I saw it comming from a mile away. Calling half of their country "nazis" and "fascist" was the worst campaign move I have ever seen in my life.
  - brainphreeze 2y ago
    The user base here seems to be just as close-minded and condescending as it is on Reddit. Very disappointing to be honest.
    - anon291 2y ago
      Ideally the new economic policies will break the stranglehold of Silicon Valley. Already with the arrival of Musk, oracle, etc in Texas, there's a balance beginning to shift.
  - anon291 2y ago
    Yeah, I've been threatened and doxxed on this forum... no action. So brave. Stunning.
    - FirmwareBurner 2y ago
      Why?
vundercind 2y ago
Not trying? It was all the media did for like 2017 through 2018. “Venture safari-style among the rural or flyover-state-suburban white“ was practically its own genre, and it was everywhere. You couldn’t turn on NPR without hearing a devout rural white Christian relate how they prayed on it then held their nose and voted for the unrepentant sinner because of abortion. It’s why Vance’s weird, insulting book was embraced by the Left(!) as “real talk” from an actual member of the group they were trying to understand.
- gjsman-1000 2y ago
  [flagged]
  - vundercind 2y ago
    This is the kind of thing the people they interviewed were saying. [edit] I mean it was my shorthand for “I know he’s a serial adulterer, and his business dealings are shady, and he says some really awful things… but I prayed on it and…” which is closer to a direct quote of things I heard multiple times. Other demographics had other reasons but that was a common one from the pro-life set.
  - tomrod 2y ago
    To be fair, most Christian denominations establish inflexibility at the outset by claiming to be a worldview that is "true", "unerring", or similar attribute, despite lacking any epistemological introspection -- meaning of the 5,000 or so different denominations in the world, at least 4,999 are sorely disappointed that not only do they not reconcile to each other, they also don't reconcile to reality. Whereas a person can review an idea, try it on like a coat, see how it fits, and then keep or discard if it's found amenable and improving to their views of the world. Vice President Harris' opponent also professes and acts on a worldview wildly deviant from most, if not all, Christian denominations.
    - gjsman-1000 2y ago
      Well, objectively, only one religion can be true if any religion is true, just as the existence of gravity is irreconcilable with the existence of no gravity; but go on. We haven't grown up as a nation and collectively decided which one it is yet, but I have preferences. Not that preferences even matter - if I'm falling off a building, my preference for there to be no gravity won't make a difference.
kbrisso 2y ago
Why do people vote for him? America is a closet racist country and the education system obviously doesn't produce critical thinkers. The south is poor and Trump will make them money again some how - they believe that. Trump will make grocery prices' go down and create many magnificent jobs. Trump will make interest rates go down and loans cheaper. He will deport all the Mexicans so the black or white people can fill the jobs.Trump is a populist con man who conned his base. No public company or start up will ever hire a CEO like him. I call this political entropy. This is the decline in America in my view. It's a sad day and I will just stick my head in the sand and hope we make it through.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
AlexandrB 2y ago
I think it points to a real lack of humility. Why would you try to find out how your thinking might be flawed if you start with the assumption that everyone who disagrees with you is an idiot? And I say this as someone who did this exact thing in 2016.
redleggedfrog 2y ago
I did, partly out of curiosity, partly because I'm in a progressive town literally surrounded for a hundred miles by a sea of red. They like Trump because he appears anti-establishment and they fear/dislike the establishment. They don't feel the establishment in place is good for them. They truly, truly struggle with finances. Many are in the military and on food stamps. Some are farmers who can't make farming work anymore. They fear immigrants because they might take jobs or bring crime (and drugs). They fear they cannot protect themselves so the want access to guns. One common thread was the stimulus checks. They really liked the stimulus checks. Another thing is pining for the good ol' days. Lot of that, too. No issues like pronouns muddying things up. Generally, not racist, not sexist, but some are, just like any rando person. Seemed to me just like regular folk who are scared and can't make ends meet like they used to, well, a long time ago. The grocery store prices that are annoying to me are truly a decision point for them. Then when you take three steps back, and look at it objectively, it's often of their own doing. A lot, I mean a lot, of disparagement of education, even of K-12, so the means to get better employment is more of a struggle. A whole lot of drug and alcohol abuse on top of it. They are the only people I know who smoke. Lot of broken relationships and marriages. Family chaos. The image of solid salt of the earth isn't what my Trumper acquaintances (friends?) are experiencing. They are pretty desperate and really wish there was some way to get back on top of things. So, in desperation they vote for a person that promises to make it better. And really they don't care about much else. If you want to win elections, do the chicken in every pot line. This is all anecdotal of course, but I went to the effort, this was seven people, all of whom I'm on good terms with and converse with on a regular basis. And they were respectful of my position - that you need both conservatives (to keep what's good of the old ways) and progressives (to find new ways that are better) in the political arena to make it work. That's not a popular position, though.
- kulahan 2y ago
  This feels close enough to my experience that I believe you actually do speak genuinely with these people. I think a huge part of it is also that they feel seen by someone, finally. Trump did a great job of making these people feel like the spotlight was finally on them, and honestly it’s true.

This is the part that blows my mind consistently. The number of people screaming “WHY would ANYONE vote for him?!” and then not even considering trying to find out is a true bummer.

jquery 2y ago

They’re literally trying to find out when they exclaim that question. To me this seems a pretty clear case of inflation=“punish the incumbent” and also Biden spread out the pain of covid recovery instead of making red states bear the burden. Kamala promised more of the same, including lots of investment into rural and red areas that aren’t gonna vote for her anyway. Result? 10-15 million blue voters stayed home this cycle. Trump turned out his entire base. Just pontificating…

giancarlostoro 2y ago
> They’re literally trying to find out when they exclaim that question. I've seen these conversations happen thousands of times in political communities online, before you know it, the person trying to understand starts getting angry at some point, and both people are calling each other names. Very few people truly want to understand the other side. If you want to understand the other side, the first step is to listen, and not say anything (don't try to defend your viewpoint, this isn't part of your goal, and it will derail it), ask questions, and agree to disagree politely.
- immibis 2y ago
  Because those discussions go like this: (to a C programmer) "Why are you using C?" "Because it's memory-safe." "But it's not memory-safe." "Yes it is. Your program will just segfault rather than getting hacked." "No it won't... see these examples of C programs getting hacked without segfaulting." "You're using it wrong. See look, if you write with spaces instead of tabs, your program is memory-safe." Do you remember "MongoDB is web scale"? Would you not get angry when trying to find good reasons to use MongoDB? That's what it's like talking to the average Trump supporter, except it's about the removal of human rights instead of just which database you should use.
  - giancarlostoro 2y ago
    I see this behavior coming from either side. We are insanely polarized.

tdhz77 2y ago

We know why. They are ignorant, don't care, or duped. There is no reason to vote for a person morally bankrupt and doesn't have any reasonable solutions to problems. A person with felonies can't even be on a Jury in this country, and people elected him President after his attempt to overthrow the government? I would struggle to hire him to mow my grass let alone run the country. This whole "You need to talk to us" is ridiculous as the positions.

sfblah 2y ago
I'll give it a shot, just maybe to help one person understand. They voted for him because 15+ years of government + federal reserve policy has led to massive bubbles in all US capital assets while impoverishing a wide swath of the population. The people who voted for Trump are those who've "lost" in the giant crypto+stock Ponzi scheme. The reason people on the winning side of this have such a hard time seeing it is that, en masse, they've turned away from any semblance of traditional valuation measures for capital assets. I assume they've done this because it's too emotionally uncomfortable to consider the notion that their entire wealth isn't because they're geniuses but because of deranged government policy.
- zaptrem 2y ago
  Isn't Trump the pro-"crypto Ponzi scheme" (as you called it) candidate? Asset prices of both crypto and stocks seem to think so.
  - sfblah 2y ago
    Yep. It's ironic and shitty, but people just did a protest vote. They aren't looking at the specific proposals. They don't care anymore. You're absolutely right, but honestly both parties are completely in on the Ponzi scheme. So it probably doesn't matter.
  - tim333 2y ago
    Not only pro but going to put your tax dollars in: >US Senator Lummis reaffirms Bitcoin will be become a national reserve asset following Trump's victory

immibis 2y ago

Many of us have, and that's how we know their stated reasons are just nonsense. There's a video of the creator interviewing a Trumper about how tariffs work....

aydyn 2y ago
You think you're going to get a solid answer interviewing some random person on the street? That's what an intelligent person would call a strawman. Do you want me to point you to the video of well-educated coastal elites calling the assassination attempt a Hoax? There are of course more than one reason why people voted for him, but there's literally tons of comments in this very thread explaining why with no nonsense and under no uncertain terms. Ironically, a lot of those comments get flagged and are no longer visible.
- kulahan 2y ago
  No, I think there needs to be a culture of talking to and respecting people with different opinions. And before you jump to the extreme of “but they don’t want me to EXIST!”, that’s not the point. The point is that we temper each other, partially by negotiating, and partially by simply making the “other side” more used to our ideas. That just happens with repeated exposure. If something is scary, but generally not bad, people can get used to it, but only if they’re exposed to it regularly. You get used to public speaking after the ten thousandth time instead, because you’ve likely already confronted every fear you had in real life by now. Ironically, this is extremely easy to fix. Politicians can simply get along in public. We’ve got studies showing that political extremism can die almost overnight when the opposing politicians simply explain that they do respect their opponent. As for the people here explaining themselves clearly - that’s because dang has done a good job of fostering a community of high quality commenters. You won’t find this kind of discourse anywhere else, and it’s the main reason I treasure this site.
  - aydyn 2y ago
    > No, I think there needs to be a culture of talking to and respecting people with different opinions. Absolutely. > As for the people here explaining themselves clearly - that’s because dang has done a good job of fostering a community of high quality commenters. Hard disagree. The level of political discussion on HN is barely a step above r/politics. This is a forum for 110 IQ codecels who think minor domain expertise means they are smarter than everyone else in all aspects. The contempt for ordinary people in this very thread is nauseating.

anon291 2y ago

Yup all my comments offering to explain and explaining have been flagged. Even ones with no sarcasm. Just because waiting for someone to doxx me again and dang to do nothing.

FirmwareBurner 2y ago
HN just flags all comments that seem to support Trump in any way, even with good arguments. So no idea why comments are even open anymore when some points of view are obviously not allowed here yet 52% of the country seem to supported them to a degree. Obviously HN users just want their own groupthink eco chamber without wanting to hear other opinions. So in that regard I'm enjoying watching lib woketards having a mental breakdown for the second time since 2016. Stay ignorant, stay foolish. Hell, I'm not even from America and I saw it comming from a mile away. Calling half of their country "nazis" and "fascist" was the worst campaign move I have ever seen in my life.
- brainphreeze 2y ago
  The user base here seems to be just as close-minded and condescending as it is on Reddit. Very disappointing to be honest.
  - anon291 2y ago
    Ideally the new economic policies will break the stranglehold of Silicon Valley. Already with the arrival of Musk, oracle, etc in Texas, there's a balance beginning to shift.
- anon291 2y ago
  Yeah, I've been threatened and doxxed on this forum... no action. So brave. Stunning.
  - FirmwareBurner 2y ago
    Why?

vundercind 2y ago

Not trying? It was all the media did for like 2017 through 2018. “Venture safari-style among the rural or flyover-state-suburban white“ was practically its own genre, and it was everywhere. You couldn’t turn on NPR without hearing a devout rural white Christian relate how they prayed on it then held their nose and voted for the unrepentant sinner because of abortion. It’s why Vance’s weird, insulting book was embraced by the Left(!) as “real talk” from an actual member of the group they were trying to understand.

gjsman-1000 2y ago
[flagged]
- vundercind 2y ago
  This is the kind of thing the people they interviewed were saying. [edit] I mean it was my shorthand for “I know he’s a serial adulterer, and his business dealings are shady, and he says some really awful things… but I prayed on it and…” which is closer to a direct quote of things I heard multiple times. Other demographics had other reasons but that was a common one from the pro-life set.
- tomrod 2y ago
  To be fair, most Christian denominations establish inflexibility at the outset by claiming to be a worldview that is "true", "unerring", or similar attribute, despite lacking any epistemological introspection -- meaning of the 5,000 or so different denominations in the world, at least 4,999 are sorely disappointed that not only do they not reconcile to each other, they also don't reconcile to reality. Whereas a person can review an idea, try it on like a coat, see how it fits, and then keep or discard if it's found amenable and improving to their views of the world. Vice President Harris' opponent also professes and acts on a worldview wildly deviant from most, if not all, Christian denominations.
  - gjsman-1000 2y ago
    Well, objectively, only one religion can be true if any religion is true, just as the existence of gravity is irreconcilable with the existence of no gravity; but go on. We haven't grown up as a nation and collectively decided which one it is yet, but I have preferences. Not that preferences even matter - if I'm falling off a building, my preference for there to be no gravity won't make a difference.

kbrisso 2y ago

Why do people vote for him? America is a closet racist country and the education system obviously doesn't produce critical thinkers. The south is poor and Trump will make them money again some how - they believe that. Trump will make grocery prices' go down and create many magnificent jobs. Trump will make interest rates go down and loans cheaper. He will deport all the Mexicans so the black or white people can fill the jobs.Trump is a populist con man who conned his base. No public company or start up will ever hire a CEO like him. I call this political entropy. This is the decline in America in my view. It's a sad day and I will just stick my head in the sand and hope we make it through.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

AlexandrB 2y ago

I think it points to a real lack of humility. Why would you try to find out how your thinking might be flawed if you start with the assumption that everyone who disagrees with you is an idiot? And I say this as someone who did this exact thing in 2016.

redleggedfrog 2y ago

I did, partly out of curiosity, partly because I'm in a progressive town literally surrounded for a hundred miles by a sea of red. They like Trump because he appears anti-establishment and they fear/dislike the establishment. They don't feel the establishment in place is good for them. They truly, truly struggle with finances. Many are in the military and on food stamps. Some are farmers who can't make farming work anymore. They fear immigrants because they might take jobs or bring crime (and drugs). They fear they cannot protect themselves so the want access to guns. One common thread was the stimulus checks. They really liked the stimulus checks. Another thing is pining for the good ol' days. Lot of that, too. No issues like pronouns muddying things up. Generally, not racist, not sexist, but some are, just like any rando person. Seemed to me just like regular folk who are scared and can't make ends meet like they used to, well, a long time ago. The grocery store prices that are annoying to me are truly a decision point for them. Then when you take three steps back, and look at it objectively, it's often of their own doing. A lot, I mean a lot, of disparagement of education, even of K-12, so the means to get better employment is more of a struggle. A whole lot of drug and alcohol abuse on top of it. They are the only people I know who smoke. Lot of broken relationships and marriages. Family chaos. The image of solid salt of the earth isn't what my Trumper acquaintances (friends?) are experiencing. They are pretty desperate and really wish there was some way to get back on top of things. So, in desperation they vote for a person that promises to make it better. And really they don't care about much else. If you want to win elections, do the chicken in every pot line. This is all anecdotal of course, but I went to the effort, this was seven people, all of whom I'm on good terms with and converse with on a regular basis. And they were respectful of my position - that you need both conservatives (to keep what's good of the old ways) and progressives (to find new ways that are better) in the political arena to make it work. That's not a popular position, though.

kulahan 2y ago
This feels close enough to my experience that I believe you actually do speak genuinely with these people. I think a huge part of it is also that they feel seen by someone, finally. Trump did a great job of making these people feel like the spotlight was finally on them, and honestly it’s true.