this post was submitted on 08 Jul 2023
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United States | News & Politics

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Nearly a quarter of Republicans say classified docs charges make them more likely to support Trump: poll (thehill.com)
submitted 1 year ago by baronvonj@lemmy.world to c/usa@lemmy.ml
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I just can't even with this.

About 24 percent of polled Republicans say the charges in the classified documents investigation make them more likely to support Trump, while 21 percent said the same with regard to the 34-count indictment related to falsified business records in a Manhattan court case.

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[–] Lemmylefty@vlemmy.net 39 points 1 year ago (1 children)
  1. I’m a good person.
  2. Being a good person means I hate bad people.
  3. The people who are against me are bad, because I’m a good person.
  4. Trump hates all the people I hate and is a strong male leader, so I follow him.
  5. The only people who would attack him (read: me) are bad people.
  6. People complain and produce false charges when they are afraid of their enemies and need to take them down.

Conclusion: I identify more strongly with Trump for being attacked for being right by bad people.

The sad thing is that, short of taking a mental sledgehammer to some really important internal concepts of self-esteem and value, you can’t stop this train of thought, and you’ll upset them for even suggesting it’s what they think. The closest you can get is putting in their heads the sense that Trump won’t win, in which case they’ll glom onto the next narcissistic, reactionary blowhard.

If you want some more detailed dissection of this thought process, read “The Authoritarians” by Bob Altmeyer: https://archive.org/details/The_Authoritarians_Bob_Altemeyer_2006.pdf/page/n2/mode/1up

It’s an easy read, but damn if it wasn’t chilling the first time I read it, back in the Obama years.

[–] baronvonj@lemmy.world 13 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Yeah, I understand the sequencing. I just can't understand not seeing Trump as a bad person. Or the people who say "I don't like Trump, but I like what he's doing."

[–] Lemmylefty@vlemmy.net 17 points 1 year ago

Many of them are just straight up lying, a little bit to you and a little bit to themselves.

For others, it’s the sense that they’ve lost the golden age of their fathers made BY and FOR their fathers alone, for which someone must pay.