this post was submitted on 06 Aug 2023
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It's simple: he spoke to an undercurrent of emotional resentment that a lot of people had and gave them permission to feel like they were good people (or at least not bad people) for feeling that way. Every seemingly logical explanation that the right twists into place in hindsight is only a justification for that gut reaction.
They want to feel good for having xenophobic, nationalist feelings. He gave them permission and said they were the good guys and everyone who disagrees is wrong. They only care about the facts that back up that perspective, everything else is conveniently discarded to defend their collective ego. 45's narcissism helps him win this crowd because he's been ignoring all inconvenient facts his whole life, and whenever that habit catches up with him he always has a scapegoat or 12 ready to go.
Well written, I wonder what caused that emotional resentment?
My guess would be cancel culture, I believe his supporters only like him because progressive people hate him.
Probably has something to do with racism and the election of a black president.
the emotional resentment comes from the perpetual victim mentality. the only way their way of life works is if they are constantly under attack by a villain of the week thats simultaneously incompetent and feeble but also sadistic and near unstoppable.
Yeah I guess there's also underlying issues of feeling lost and insignificant in a complex world. Add to that economic struggle and a lacking class awareness and cognitive dissonance does the rest.
It doesn't hurt his popularity with his supporters that so many hate him, it fits with the overall narrative of that constituency that people want them silenced.
You can see this is in how many conservatives complain about cancel culture silencing them, they use phrases like "you can't say anything anymore" enmass on social media and run dozens of media publications and TV about how their voices are being silenced.
The irony of all this is ignored in the fury.
To really understand trump's popularity you need to see him as a symptom not a cause. People who grew up without exposure to difference, in environments where difference was not tolerated, are feeling upset that the differences are being accepted.
They always believed the narrative that those differences just didn't exist in the past and so the can see a rapid change in the world which they see as the destruction of the world they know.
Had they known that differences were their all along, only being kept out of sight, they'd know this isn't a slide towards anything, it's just a recognition of everything that was always already there.