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I still don't get why rural voters latched onto a clearly narcissistic big city property developer who lies constantly and treat rural people like shit as a response to big city politicians who rural voters think lie constantly and treat rural people like shit.
Just because he said words they wanted to hear? Politicians do that all the time! How is he the one they believe?
All the points in the article are accurate, but it just doesn't make sense that the personification of everything they hate about cities is who they end up worshipping.
He's a fighter. He fights everyone, about everything. I think that's the crux of it.
Over the 1990s and 2000s these people were completely and utterly forgotten. Textiles, mines, manufacturing plants, they shuttered over and over and over and over again, and their children moved to big cities en masse. Their small cities and rural towns went from being on a growth trajectory (everything was on that trajectory between WWII and NAFTA) to being on a path to contraction and decay. Over that time they got madder, and madder, and madder, and madder, and they watched the Republican party (the one who at least paid lip service to "small government" and "traditional values") lean harder and harder into corporatism. They were promised good things over and over and over again, and they were constantly pandered to, then lied to, and then ignored. Wash, rinse, repeat.
Well, Trump was the first one who didn't talk, act, and think like the other guys. He wasn't a politician, and that's a great thing because (as they'd all come to agree) politicians are lying scum. So then not only was he willing to fight ferociously for them (and only them), he was willing to spit in the face of the people who lied to them all those years. And those political figures started to look like whiny little children when they stepped up and started saying, "hey, he's lying to you!" The voters' response was, "yeah? so the fuck what! you did too!"
He flips the system on its head, and he exposes politicians for what they are, because he's exactly like them but he doesn't give a fuck about playing the political game. To them, this is a godsend (literally). It's the first crack in the political system that gave them any kind of sustained, meaningful authority to push back both politically and culturally, and he delivered a court system that'll now push the entire country to the right over the next few decades. They simply don't care about the democratic institutions he's destroying, because they never helped the rural folk anyway.
Note: I don't personally agree with much of this nonsense, and I think it's a lot like shooting yourself in the face to cure a hangnail, but I'm just giving you a sense of how they look at it, and why he's so weirdly transcendent to them. He's a rich, connected insider, who decided to burn the system down from the inside.
Except he didn't fight for them and he lied constantly about fighting for them with no results.
And dementedly burning down everything one sees and grabbing pussies doesn't make one "a fighter" - just a narcissistic asshole criminal.
Hooray what a hero.
Even if I grant all the arguments are true for the sake of discussion, the fact that they've seen how incompetent and ridiculously stupid he is for FOUR YEARS not to mention he tried to destroy their fucking government and they're all "yay we upset city people" Okay Granpa Jones but that makes you objectively a complete fucking asshole moron and your continued support of this rapist fraud criminal is not helping you in any way at any level. Try again. Got someone smart? Articulate? Anyone? We're open - any age, any gender, any race - anyone? No? This guy huh. He's your guy is he. Yeah.
That's what we thought.
But they didn't see who he was. Their news media fed them a different story about liberals getting in his way and the immigrants making things worse and the government not letting him fix things. It's all the "lazy" city people voting for big government handouts that's making the world worse.
Anything he''s accused of is just liberal politics and a hoax.
Yeah it does.
Like, by definition. He fights.
It's not about facts though. They didn't logically choose to support him based on facts, figures, and results. It's all feelings.
Perception is reality
It's a good explanation. And it confirms the core nihilism motivating these voters. "Burn it all down" is an abdication of responsibility and self-infantilizing by forcing that responsibility on everyone else.
Their frustration and motivation, while I can understand it, is an insult to those of us continuing to keep it together as they make everything worse.
Left wing doomers and "revolutionaries": sweats profusely
Wasn't the first, Ross Perot had a huge following here in rural Utah for that very reason.
Well said.
If only there was a group of people who told us neoliberalism and NAFTA would be disastrous!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1999_Seattle_WTO_protests
https://depts.washington.edu/wtohist/testimonies/comesatime.htm
Interesting reflection in today's world where we keep getting told that the current administration has done great for the economy, and yet the wealth devide keeps growing, and more and more people are living paycheck to paycheck.
There's an also an interesting linguistic difference that is very noticeable between this movement and today's repercussions of the inaction that followed. While in English we often speak of "anti-globalization" in French they say "alter-mondialisation". A different globalization instead of against globalization. The French term much better described the left wing movement of the time, while the media only spoke of anti-globalization which now became a calling cry of the right.
Fun fact, a Twitter was originally conceptualized as a result of the 1999 protests^1 due to the difficulties and successes people on the streets had with coordinating via SMS (which at the time was rather new and novel).
Anyhow, I guess we should all vote for the neoliberal again, surely that will fix it!
[1] https://dl.acm.org/doi/fullHtml/10.1145/3485447.3512282
I mean, you're not wrong. I think Trump's ascendancy represents the collapse of the neoliberal consensus of the late 20th century. Where we go from here is anyone's guess, but the fact that both the left and right are screaming about the evils of neoliberalism means that there's now a bipartisan coalition willing to dismantle the institutions that arose out of that consensus. It's a loose coalition, to be sure, and each wing is arguing for fundamentally different futures, but they're still targeting the same players, and new economic models are now en vogue and within the realm of possibility. Just sucks that one of them is outright fascism.
The two also have been fundamental in establishing those policies.
Reganomics/Thatcherism is just as much to blame.
I'm actually go with "you are wrong". Under Biden, the wealth gap has grown in absolute dollars, but only because the wealthy had so much more to start with. Lower income families saw much higher percentage growth in wealth and income. Mathematically, it will take a long time for lower income families to catch up, but this is a good trend.
https://www.stlouisfed.org/open-vault/2024/feb/us-wealth-inequality-widespread-gains-gaps-remain
Because he gave their bigotry a voice.
First, train yourself to get suspicious every time you see simplicity. Any claim that the root of a problem is simple should be treated the same as a claim that the root of a problem is Bigfoot. Simplicity and Bigfoot are found in the real world with about the same frequency.
Credit to @shalafi@lemmy.world - this applies very well to this comment.
Yeah, what does that Occam guy know?
Occam's Razor is a philosophical thought experiment, nothing more.
That's why the important part of the phrase (that people tend to ignore) is "...all things being equal".
It means "if these multiple answers/solutions were to exist in a vacuum, and context was of no importance, the simplest answer/solution is probably the right one."
Here in the real, non philosophical world, absolutely nothing exists in a vacuum. Context always plays a role no matter how innocuous or silly the decision might be.
At it's simplest, I can say "Do I want to eat an Apple or an Orange right now."
Occam's razor tells me that the Apple is closer, so that's what I should eat.
But WHY is the apple closer? Did someone take it out of the fridge and leave it, so now it's spoiled?
Is it in a fruit bowl that happens to be out of oranges? That means someone might have eaten the last one, so getting up and going to the fridge to retrieve and orange could lead to disappointment and wasted time.
etc... etc...
Nothing is simple. Anyone who says it is is trying to sell you something.
Are you firm on the stance that it's only bigotry, and not, like, I dunno, motions wildly to the article a complex set of multidimensional issues?
What's the logical fallacy called when you misuse a logical fallacy?
E: "fallacy fallacy" or "argument from fallacy" (also known as: disproof by fallacy, argument to logic, fallacy fallacy, fallacist's fallacy, bad reasons fallacy [form of])
Description: Concluding that the truth value of an argument is false based on the fact that the argument contains a fallacy.
Good philosophy.stackexchange discussion about it.
Hey, if you want to believe it's just simple noble country folk that support Trump and not a bunch of fucking bigoted shitheels, that's your benefit of the doubt to give.
If you want to convince me, you'll need to do better than an op-ed in Store Brand Mad Magazine from someone who is airing his grievances that New Orleans got too much attention after Hurricane Katrina.
Are most of the people who voted for Trump bigoted shitheels? Possibly. Is everyone who voted for Trump in 2016 a bigoted worthless life? Absolutely not. Not even close. He campaigned on a multitude of issues, if you'll recall. And before that thought enters your head, no, I voted for Sanders in 16 and Biden in 20.
I know it helps to simplify things, but you can do better. Think outside of the Monkeysphere, or whatever you need to call it so you don't feel like you got the idea from Store Brand Mad Magazine.
Perhaps not, but January 6 left no doubt about the supporters who remained with him.
Lemmy: where everyone to the left of Biden must be a Russian Chinese Shill bot child, but let's give actual Trumpists the benefit of the doubt.
I'm not sure about your associates, but about 1/8th of the people I know voted for Trump now claim to have not done so. They have so much shame and regret over it that they lie about ever doing it. Post-2019, most who were big Trump supporters aren't anymore. There are still a couple doucheknuckles who have firmly twisted themselves inside the asshole of the propaganda well, but they are the loud few.
For this at least, we can be thankful.
You and I have very different Lemmy subscriptions.
Or sufficiently different opinions that you never twig the "zomg russian!" types.
And vice versa? I see them both, but Lemmy is more left leaning than reddit, although less political most of the time. Conversations are heating up now because it's election season in the US. Honest question: when you browse Lemmy do you typically read from your (lemmy.world) instance, or do you read from All instances, or do you have a curated list of subs from different instances? I try to stay off the political subs, and in fact the only reason I posted this article is because someone linked to a lemmy.world politics post and I ventured into the politics sub on lemmy.world and was struck by how fierce the left/right division was. Most of Lemmy doesn't seem to be like that, a comment here or there sure, but not constant like the politics sub.
An excellent video on the subject of simplicity that some other kind lemming shared with me (after which I watched every video this guy has made).
I read that rural voters often feel like the government isn't for them, they feel disempowered. And in response, they seek to undermine and break the system that disempowers them. They do not look to improve or change the system, they want to destroy it. So when people yell at them for threatening democracy by voting for a lunatic with dictator fantasies, they feel empowered.
I get that for voting, but not for how they gush and fawn over his rambling nonsense like he is the second coming.
They are not mutually exclusive. They idolize Trump, in part, because he is the middle finger to everyone who has made a mockery of their existence.
To them he's not a man, he is a symbol.
Who they worship doesn't matter. Based on the article, they voted for a brick to be thrown into the window of the elites. It really doesn't matter who that person is, just as long as they inflict damage on the elites who have been marginalizing them for years.
It was a super informative article and I hope people read it, and not assume from the title or read the summarized version like we usually do.
If we keep labelling them 'deplorables', it'll make things worse. We need to reach out and listen while also helping as best we can.
Then you're admitting that you're adding to the problem vs trying to resolve it. I know it's hard but nothing worth doing is easy.
Imo you should recuse yourself from the debate about them then due to your acknowledged bias.
Thing is that tiny d is one of the elite - a nepo baby and Manhattanite. Anyone that wanted to "throw a brick into the window of the elites" by voting for tiny d is not really voting for that, most likely.
Because rural voters are stupid, because Republicans have spent the last 30+ years destroying public education, especially in rural and minority heavy areas.
This isn't an insult, its a fact.
When you're uneducated and have little experience of the outside world... well, youre extremely easy to convince with rhetoric over actual policy results.
Then combine that with the massively super effective Republican media machine (Rush Limbaugh, Bill O Reilly, Sean Hannity, Ben Shapiro, Steve Bannon, Alex Jones) which reinforces the religion + culture + politics of the rural Republican areas, and there ya go.
I dunno, it seems obvious to me, but thats probably because I was raised by a ditto-head (Rush Limbaugh's term for his followers) who later became a Q Anon, illegal-firearm-manufacturing-in-his-garage wacko, in a poor, technically suburban but realistically rural area.
Why latch on to Trump in particular?
Because he made it ok for them to mask off and hate all the things they hate but have been lying about hating for decades.
Its a kind of catharsis for them, that manifests in collective hatred of inferior enemy groups.
You know, standard fascist shit?
It doesnt matter that Trump himself is the antithesis of what an idealized Republican person would be. What matters is he lets them feel comfortable expressing themselves.
It's not what he says, but how he says it. He knows what outrages them and plays on it. He pretends that it outrages him too.
I think it's partly his 'strong man' persona, but also that he was one of the only candidates hitting on all the things they needed to hear. We need to do more for our rural communities. Help the farmers! Help the coal miners! Keep oil production flowing! He touched on the lifeblood on these rural towns, which is something other conservative politicians weren't doing as much. That let his message spread wider organically, from people who were quite literally willing to devote their life to him. He 'stuck to his guns' (on the issues they cared about anyway) which is what let them ignore the other things he said and did. There was also one of the largest state-sponsored propaganda campaigns in Internet history backing his election. In many or most small towns it became an Us vs. Them (Trump being the Us) and if you know how small towns work then you know it's "When in Rome..." creating a massive echo chamber across conservative America. When the mob is rallying for something, you stay quiet or face the consequences. Many didn't stay quiet and became outspoken, which furthered the division.
He said those things and did nothing for rural areas. Why are they still in love with him?
I knownthe answer is Fox News and repetition, but how do they not see through the obvious facade?
You said it yourself. Propaganda works.
It's probably not a coincidence that the essay anchors on fictional movies as a foundation.
We really should have understood television while it was the only thing out there. We deliberately did not. (Well, there were nevery any tv shows about it. With the possible exception of TV Nation)
I'll go with the easy answer/low hanging fruit: he said the same racist and xenophobic shit they think instead of trying to couch it politically correct speech (which is one of the most ironic things I think I've ever said). The perfect encapsulation of this is a well known Lee Atwater quote:
Unfortunately, republican mindsets haven't changed in the last 60 years, so we're still dealing with the same bullshit.
It's tempting to just boil it down to racism and call it a day, but it's far more complicated than that.
To quote the article: