6 ms·

Trump's base is still with the principles of the movement. It's important not to confuse the popularity of the man with the popularity of what he represents. T

by krapp 5mo ago

Trump's base is still with the principles of the movement. It's important not to confuse the popularity of the man with the popularity of what he represents. The American right has wanted 95% of what Trump is doing for decades - the game plan for this was written up by conservative think tanks and evangelical Christians. They may reject him but they'll vote for whomever the movement decides will be his inheritor. Trump's purpose was to be a chaos agent and get the fascists in the door, but the utility of a pure cult of personality only goes so far. Now they will need to nail down their power structures and propaganda, and get the bureaucracy running without him. And the best thing (for them) is, the crazier Trump gets on his way out, the more reasonable their alternative looks. And he'll look even better when the shock of Trump's policies and the closing of the Strait of Hormuz start to hit hard within a Democratic administration.

RickJWagner 5mo ago
[flagged]
- krapp 5mo ago
  I'm not talking about decent people, I'm talking about racists and xenophobes and yes, fascists. When Hillary Clinton made her remark about the "basket of deplorables" (to use a well-worn example of the left "ganging up on decent conservatives") meaning the white supremacist and Christian nationalist factions infiltrating and co-opting the Republican Party and conservative movement through Trumpism, she was 100% correct. A Decent person would would recognize what Trumpism is and who it attracts and would rather stop supporting it than lean into the hatred like some comic book supervillain. Decent people aren't so hidebound to a specific political identity that they can only view criticism from the other side as slander against them personally. Yours is one of the staunchest pro-Republican, pro-Trump and anti-leftist accounts here, so I assume you voted for Trump every time you could and would probably vote for him again if it were possible. But for you to see what Trump and the right are doing, and what American conservatism has become, and excuse it as a rational response to leftists being too mean despite being correct is a wild piece of self-deception (as well as boilerplate conservative propaganda.) I wish that you and people like yourself would learn to read the room before it's too late. Trump and his ilk don't deserve your respect or your loyalty. The left isn't your enemy. You don't have to keep carrying water for these assholes. Whatever you think you're getting isn't going to be worth what you're going to lose in exchange.
  - RickJWagner 5mo ago
    [flagged]
    - litoE 5mo ago
      I can understand your not liking Harris, Biden, Clinton et. al. But I can't understand how you selected a person like Trump as your candidate for President. One time, maybe. But three times in a row?
    - was8309 5mo ago
      I'm guessing the religious people at your neighborhood churches feel pretty strongly about the value of truth. How do they make that work with support for trump? I'm not trying to do a gotcha, I seriously can't see past the dissonance.
      - bulbar 5mo ago
        Dividing people into "the left" and "the right" (or Republican / Democrat or whatever) as if it's over homogenous entity is very bad for any discourse. Not writing this as an answer here to address you specifically, it's done by virtually everybody. When people say "the right did X" most likely the person they are discussing with didn't do X, but might (to some degree) identify with being part of what is meant by "the right". Same goes for "the left". I live in Europe, so I don't have the deep knowledge and experience of people living in the US, but I have a more high level perspective instead. To me, that partisan thinking is the biggest problem in the US, by far. All above was originally written as an answer to Rick, but I figured here might be the better place for it, because I don't see an indication for past or present support of Trump. All he said was "I am a conservative voter" while vastly agreeing to the the critics of Trump. But because everything is "them or us" he is is one of "them" and therefore he is X and does Y and so on. I believe if the US wants to survive, society needs to overcome that at least to some degree. Biden acknowledged that by using the term "Time to heal", at least that was my interpretation back then. Didn't work obviously, maybe he was the wrong person for the job or it wasn't time for it yet, idk.
- k_roy 5mo ago
  > If you wonder how people could ever vote for someone like Trump, I think it’s got something to do with that kind of rhetoric. So the rhetoric is the problem here, and not the reasons the rhetoric exists? The rhetoric is in response to the objectively bad actions of this administration. If nothing else, the rank and foul disregard for so much of the Constitution and flagrant disregard for basic human rights and dignity. Remember the tan suit? The sleepy Joe Biden? Frankly, it's completely disingenious to ignore the fact that the leader of this movement, gets on his social media and says the most foul things possible every day.. and then you try to indict both sides. A rando on the internet saying garbage is not the same as the leader of the whole movement, because that just empowers the people who follow him. Nobody that you should take seriously said anything bad about the murder of Charlie Kirk. But when the President gets on social media and says he's glad people are dead, or that it's okay to wipe out a civilization, and his base cheers for him, that's not rhetoric and we should just ignore it? Sorry. That's just completely intellectually dishonest
  - RickJWagner 5mo ago
    [flagged]
    - k_roy 5mo ago
      "As far as you can tell?" Again, it's completely disingenous to compare random internet trolls on Reddit/Facebook/Youtube/etc to the office of the President. I invite you to actually find a case of a politician, a news source, or someone else who isn't one of these folks on the left, that celebrated the assassination attempts, or the murders of Kirk of the UHC CEO. Mark Hammil? Okay? The dude from Tenacious D? Okay. Other than that, new sources, politicians, the decent left? All universally condemned it. Compare that to the attack of on Paul Pelosi, the murders of the Minnosota representive, her husband, and their dog, murders of Alex Pretti and Renee Good. EVERYBODY on the right. From the previous people mentioned whose opinions should be ignored, to almost every Conservative news outlet, to many politicians including the office of the President. None of them condemned it, instead focused on why they "deserved it". Multiple academic sources, using real and verified datasets, which I'm sure you just see and "owned by the liberals", like START (Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism) at the University of Maryland, ADL, have demonstrated the right is overwhelming far more comfortable with violence and violent rhetoric. Look at what you are doing and what EVERY response of yours is. Saying "getting fascists in the door" is not rhetoric, when there are so many things happening in our government and country that in any other decade would be objectively fascist. You again, turned this entirely into a US vs THEM. Ignoring the fact that what this link was about is wrong, and somehow continuing defending the rhetoric because in your mind "the other side is doing it too"
- amalcon 5mo ago
  Wrong. Republicans have been nasty forever (e.g. calling Democratic voters baby-killers who hate America since at least Reagan, redoubling that under Bush, redoubling again under Trump). They still win elections, and Democrats responded for decades by ignoring it. That is what has led to Trump. What little evidence we have indicates that bullying just works. It's not the only thing that works -- see Obama -- but it does work. Ignoring the bullying doesn't.
- lopsotronic 5mo ago
  I wanted to say, I probably disagree with you on more or less everything that plagues this nation, but thanks for dipping your toe in strange waters both here and in your judgement of leaders. The fact you're even willing to talk puts you in a different bracket from the reactionary forces that have co-opted the levers of the conservative party. I live and work in a very conservative area, and the only sentiment I can read is the desire for more actual blood, more paralegal cadres, more shootings, "cleansing" the lawless cities. No conversation extends further than fifteen seconds before a luckless leftist-adjacent strawman is strung up as the prime mover of the ills under discussion, whether it be optics standards or the disintegration of local roads. "We never had any [[redacted]] before they made us do DEI" because of course avionics are, like bears, sensitive to melanin or the presence of menses. Luckily I have a white face, a cop haircut, and encyclopedic knowledge of war and firearms. I am too much of a coward to whisper anything to arouse suspicion regarding my true politics. Good way to get on the pink slip list.

by krapp 5mo ago

RickJWagner 5mo ago

[flagged]

krapp 5mo ago
I'm not talking about decent people, I'm talking about racists and xenophobes and yes, fascists. When Hillary Clinton made her remark about the "basket of deplorables" (to use a well-worn example of the left "ganging up on decent conservatives") meaning the white supremacist and Christian nationalist factions infiltrating and co-opting the Republican Party and conservative movement through Trumpism, she was 100% correct. A Decent person would would recognize what Trumpism is and who it attracts and would rather stop supporting it than lean into the hatred like some comic book supervillain. Decent people aren't so hidebound to a specific political identity that they can only view criticism from the other side as slander against them personally. Yours is one of the staunchest pro-Republican, pro-Trump and anti-leftist accounts here, so I assume you voted for Trump every time you could and would probably vote for him again if it were possible. But for you to see what Trump and the right are doing, and what American conservatism has become, and excuse it as a rational response to leftists being too mean despite being correct is a wild piece of self-deception (as well as boilerplate conservative propaganda.) I wish that you and people like yourself would learn to read the room before it's too late. Trump and his ilk don't deserve your respect or your loyalty. The left isn't your enemy. You don't have to keep carrying water for these assholes. Whatever you think you're getting isn't going to be worth what you're going to lose in exchange.
- RickJWagner 5mo ago
  [flagged]
  - litoE 5mo ago
    I can understand your not liking Harris, Biden, Clinton et. al. But I can't understand how you selected a person like Trump as your candidate for President. One time, maybe. But three times in a row?
  - was8309 5mo ago
    I'm guessing the religious people at your neighborhood churches feel pretty strongly about the value of truth. How do they make that work with support for trump? I'm not trying to do a gotcha, I seriously can't see past the dissonance.
    - bulbar 5mo ago
      Dividing people into "the left" and "the right" (or Republican / Democrat or whatever) as if it's over homogenous entity is very bad for any discourse. Not writing this as an answer here to address you specifically, it's done by virtually everybody. When people say "the right did X" most likely the person they are discussing with didn't do X, but might (to some degree) identify with being part of what is meant by "the right". Same goes for "the left". I live in Europe, so I don't have the deep knowledge and experience of people living in the US, but I have a more high level perspective instead. To me, that partisan thinking is the biggest problem in the US, by far. All above was originally written as an answer to Rick, but I figured here might be the better place for it, because I don't see an indication for past or present support of Trump. All he said was "I am a conservative voter" while vastly agreeing to the the critics of Trump. But because everything is "them or us" he is is one of "them" and therefore he is X and does Y and so on. I believe if the US wants to survive, society needs to overcome that at least to some degree. Biden acknowledged that by using the term "Time to heal", at least that was my interpretation back then. Didn't work obviously, maybe he was the wrong person for the job or it wasn't time for it yet, idk.
k_roy 5mo ago
> If you wonder how people could ever vote for someone like Trump, I think it’s got something to do with that kind of rhetoric. So the rhetoric is the problem here, and not the reasons the rhetoric exists? The rhetoric is in response to the objectively bad actions of this administration. If nothing else, the rank and foul disregard for so much of the Constitution and flagrant disregard for basic human rights and dignity. Remember the tan suit? The sleepy Joe Biden? Frankly, it's completely disingenious to ignore the fact that the leader of this movement, gets on his social media and says the most foul things possible every day.. and then you try to indict both sides. A rando on the internet saying garbage is not the same as the leader of the whole movement, because that just empowers the people who follow him. Nobody that you should take seriously said anything bad about the murder of Charlie Kirk. But when the President gets on social media and says he's glad people are dead, or that it's okay to wipe out a civilization, and his base cheers for him, that's not rhetoric and we should just ignore it? Sorry. That's just completely intellectually dishonest
- RickJWagner 5mo ago
  [flagged]
  - k_roy 5mo ago
    "As far as you can tell?" Again, it's completely disingenous to compare random internet trolls on Reddit/Facebook/Youtube/etc to the office of the President. I invite you to actually find a case of a politician, a news source, or someone else who isn't one of these folks on the left, that celebrated the assassination attempts, or the murders of Kirk of the UHC CEO. Mark Hammil? Okay? The dude from Tenacious D? Okay. Other than that, new sources, politicians, the decent left? All universally condemned it. Compare that to the attack of on Paul Pelosi, the murders of the Minnosota representive, her husband, and their dog, murders of Alex Pretti and Renee Good. EVERYBODY on the right. From the previous people mentioned whose opinions should be ignored, to almost every Conservative news outlet, to many politicians including the office of the President. None of them condemned it, instead focused on why they "deserved it". Multiple academic sources, using real and verified datasets, which I'm sure you just see and "owned by the liberals", like START (Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism) at the University of Maryland, ADL, have demonstrated the right is overwhelming far more comfortable with violence and violent rhetoric. Look at what you are doing and what EVERY response of yours is. Saying "getting fascists in the door" is not rhetoric, when there are so many things happening in our government and country that in any other decade would be objectively fascist. You again, turned this entirely into a US vs THEM. Ignoring the fact that what this link was about is wrong, and somehow continuing defending the rhetoric because in your mind "the other side is doing it too"
amalcon 5mo ago
Wrong. Republicans have been nasty forever (e.g. calling Democratic voters baby-killers who hate America since at least Reagan, redoubling that under Bush, redoubling again under Trump). They still win elections, and Democrats responded for decades by ignoring it. That is what has led to Trump. What little evidence we have indicates that bullying just works. It's not the only thing that works -- see Obama -- but it does work. Ignoring the bullying doesn't.
lopsotronic 5mo ago
I wanted to say, I probably disagree with you on more or less everything that plagues this nation, but thanks for dipping your toe in strange waters both here and in your judgement of leaders. The fact you're even willing to talk puts you in a different bracket from the reactionary forces that have co-opted the levers of the conservative party. I live and work in a very conservative area, and the only sentiment I can read is the desire for more actual blood, more paralegal cadres, more shootings, "cleansing" the lawless cities. No conversation extends further than fifteen seconds before a luckless leftist-adjacent strawman is strung up as the prime mover of the ills under discussion, whether it be optics standards or the disintegration of local roads. "We never had any [[redacted]] before they made us do DEI" because of course avionics are, like bears, sensitive to melanin or the presence of menses. Luckily I have a white face, a cop haircut, and encyclopedic knowledge of war and firearms. I am too much of a coward to whisper anything to arouse suspicion regarding my true politics. Good way to get on the pink slip list.