The word cult pops us frequently and I think that is far more appropriate. I know quite a few Trump supporters. And not all of them are unintelligent. Far from it. Like a cult it lures in people who have felt excluded, deprived, ignored, etc. And once these people are in so deep.......what are their options when the Trump train's wheels start falling off? Especially after potentially estranging themselves from friend and loved ones? Admit they were wrong and move on...................or double down and rationalize away? It's especially frustrating with boomer aged supporters. It's not that they are not smart, they just have zero desire to apply any sort of critical analysis/skepticism to what they read. "Oh you have multiple sources citing that Trump fucked up? Well I have this meme that says Hillary did a thing that one time, so I guess that means I'm right." Arguing with them feels like this honestly:
I’ve not ever seen a situation like this where a whole political party is hell bent on denying the results of a smooth election. Pompeo openly saying there will be a smooth transition to a second Trump term. These people are completely willing to abandon democracy as a whole because they lost one election.
Here's the thing: replace Trump with Obama and you see a more shallow, but similar cognitive dissonance. Trumpism is cultists, yes. But I fear politics in general is trending that way.
This just isn't true. Sure there were idiots in the Obama coalition, as is true of any political party, movement, or figure throughout time, but Obama didn't build a party whose foundations rested in the wholesale rejection of reality.
I would agree. When Trump won we had demonstrations and the whole "not my president" thing. Then four years of safe spaces and Trump is literally Hitler. Followed by some "mostly peaceful protests" and all of that. Going further back, Obama was called the anti-Christ. I would expect this year there will be some that hold on to the "stolen election" angle but for the most part it will be peaceful, much more so than if Trump had won again. Calling Repulicans stupid and racist will not make that better nor is it accurate, any more that calling Democrats socialist.
Pompeo is a bonifide nut job schizophrenic who believes in angels, fairies, goblins, and that the rapture is coming soon. Another complete clown who’s says nothing that matters or has truth to it.
It's not as deep, but I remember a few situations where you couldn't criticize Obama without being called racist. You can't criticize Trump without being a (commie/libtard/what the fuck ever). For example, those cages with all those immigrants in them were built during the Obama administration. For me, this is the fundamental problem with the news: it spends more time telling me how to feel than what's going on, and can't be bothered to consider nuance. Obama didn't build the party, he seized a moment and kind of highjacked it. Trump did the same thing more forcefully, and in doing so, Trump enabled a bunch of wild agendas to edge to the forefront. Their justifications were lies (election fraud! socialism! radical gay agenda!) because the truth (I wanna get REALLY fucking rich and hate paying taxes! I hate the darkies! I believe some whacky religious shit that no one else things ISN'T a cult!) wasn't palatable to the majority, especially to an increasingly diverse and sensitive electorate. Trump's cunt coalition relied on one side lying to the other: Barr, McConnell and Paul Ryan all considered Trump a means to very different ends. I think the concrete of history has yet to cure on Trump, and I think it'll settle on "lazy, inflammatory, but meh." I still think Bush committed far worse evils than Trump did and yet....Trump has been villainized to an almost comical degree, when the reality is he was pretty lazy, his accomplishments feeble and all he did was troll. We're still hypnotized by how shitty he is, as opposed to the immense failure his administration was, and that kind of needs to stop. The more people who look at Trump with pity, the more ridiculous his cult seems, and the quicker we all abandon it. If we continue the path of contempt and disgust, it galvanizes his supporters to ensure his brand of politics endures. Trump had a populist mandate that could have transcended liberal/conservative lines and actually solved some shit no career politician ever could, because of the invulnerability. He squandered that opportunity, and I think history should judge him more harshly for that, not a bunch of ignorant inflammatory tweets.
Every politician has had their defenders clutching their pearls, that's not the heart of the issue. The heart of the issue is that the modern Republican party requires a deep belief in completely unhinged conspiracies just to participate. Currently it's manifesting in the form of "this election was stolen by thousands of 'deep state' operatives across five states and both political parties" but it hardly started there. Our national energy policy is literally "science isn't real." That is the fundamental difference between Obama and Trump, between Democrats and Republicans. Democrats are exactly as shitty as you would expect a regular political party to be. Republicans are untethered from reality entirely. There is no equivalence. This strikes me as a delusion. There was never a mandate given that he didn't even garner more support than his opponent (which in most democracies is called "losing the election" but c'est la vie). There was also no opportunity to squander because there was never any genuine appetite for honest reform. His coalition was built on a mountain of lies atop a base of very ugly grievance politics. If he started actually, god forbid, improving the country, his base would have turned on him in a heartbeat. They didn't elect him to fix the problems the country faces, they elected him to hurt the people they don't like.
Let's not act like some of the peace treaties and renegotiation of our trade deals were nothing. With the exception of Covid, our economy was humming along better than ever based on the DOW. His tweets were agonizing, much like any old man typing an email or tweeting but even over the top for that. For all of his failings there were some accomplishments that we are better off for.
The economy was a bubble built on an irresponsible tax cut resulting in trillions more debt and forcing the fed to cut interest rates. That's a blazingly stupid way to stimulate the economy and completely unsustainable. The same policy's are partly responsible for the economy nearly collapsing in 2008.
Yes but then a Democrat can go into the presidency being forced to raise taxes and everyone can blame them!
He literally emptied the "Federal response during a recession" magazine during a boom period. Debt-financed tax cuts, direct stimulus, rock bottom interest rates. Shit was nuts.
Interest rates are on the FED not the president correct? The rest I don't necessarily disagree or agree with.
Yes, but he was definitely openly pressuring them about it, including threatening demotions for Powell and floating some crazy nominations, as well as doing shit that forced their hand like his tariff stunts.
Speaking of economy, what do all you smart folks think is going happen? It seems like it's still strong but with some many people out of work and small businesses hurting, its going to all come crashing down at some point, right?
I'll admit it: I'm glad that Trump lost (for now; it's not over yet.). IF Biden really does become president, is there anything y'all are afraid of? Biden said that he's going to make an executive order to sign into the Paris Accord, which I think is a huge mistake, and not signing it was one of the only good decisions Trump made (whether he made that decision on his own or not).
Why is it a bad thing to want clean water and clean air? Or less antagonistically what exactly is bad about the Paris Accord?