Former President Donald Trump’s supporters say they hold him as a source of true information over their family, friends, and religious leaders, according to a new CBS News/YouGov poll out on Sunday.
it’s not a cult, guys
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Fucking. Morons.
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This is absolutely grade A batshit crazy, not just your average dystopian batshit crazy.
All the lead poisoning is getting into the boomer’s reasoning and reading comprehension skills.
It’s advanced batshit crazy
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You don’t believe in God? This is him, he came back.
I mean, if you read the Bible, especially the old testament, the Abrahamic God basically acts like a spoiled toddler. It tracks.
Not the smartest bunch. Unfortunately, that bunch seems to encompass 30-40 percent of the American population.
Half of all people are dumber than average.
Half are dumber than the median, not the average (although they’re probably close)
Half of all people are dumber than the median. I am assuming the mean is actually higher than the median so chances are way more than half of all people are dumber than what people normally think of when they think average.
A lot of words to say CULT
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As much as we want to simply call these people “stupid” or “clueless” (which many people in this thread have already one) but it is much deeper than that.
Further, doing so will galvanize their support for their guy.
People like to imagine that making it obviously shameful to follow a guy would discourage people, but if you are open to considering the guy, you just get pissed, dig in, and let your persecution complex run wild. Famously, Hilary Clinton did a misstep in calling Trump followers “deplorables”. Which might have been an apt word to describe his die-hard adherents, but a much broader population took that as an insult, that the perception of “it’s us or them” had been validated. Even if they didn’t believe in Trump “per se”, the culture is absolutely support your guy, no matter what, or else the bigger evil other guy will ruin your country.
No one wants to believe they are being conned, that they are being manipulated. That the person they believe in is so bad. In the rare case where someone admits they were for Trump, but now recognize that he is a bad person, they are still likely to face ridicule for having ever been in a situation to fall for Trump’s shtick.
Making something obviously shameful is to do so with reason. Telling people they are stupid and being manipulated is not people reacting by digging in, they are just responding to personal attacks. That falls to self-defense. Rational discussions about your own beliefs give others a chance to accept them. Trying to force them is just… Well… Facisim.
The part that is fascinating to this Canadian, is that a lot of his supporters’ hardships are increased by the policies of the GOP. The demographic that is the largest recipient of federal social aid in the US is poor white people in the South and Midwest. Yet they continually vote for the party that has a clear policy of eliminating these programs.
Just before 2016, I saw this video that I wish I could find again. This journalist went somewhere in the Rust Belt to talk to these (overwhelmingly white) people. Of course, she got the usual “We believe in God, Guns and Country, and active trying to change that… Yada yada” stuff. But the interesting part was when she had an exchange with some fellow that went sort of like this (from memory):
“So, you’ve voted Republican all your life?” “Yep.” “And in your lifetime, have things gotten better, of worse for you?” “Oh, way worse.” “So… You keep voting for the same party, and your situation never get better?” “Yeah. But it could…” “Right, but it hasn’t. So why not try voting for the other party and seeing?” “Yeah, but it could!”
I’m not sure how you fix this type of “logic”.
I tried finding that video a few times the last few years, and couldn’t. Maybe it’s time to try again.
It is all about messaging.
Republicans are masters are connecting with people and selling them a cart full of lies. These people could sell icecubes to eskimoes.
On the flip side, Democrats couldn’t sell a starving person a free meal. It is infuriating to watch. Democrats can make big wins and they are afraid to celebrate them because of asinine “liberal guilt”… because god forbid someone somewhere might not be doing so good, so we shouldn’t celebrate our successes. It is exhausting dealing with these people. They will suck the fun and excitement out of a room.
The Democratic party should be acting as the “hype man” right now for Biden’s successes as President. Reminding people where we were and how much we have accomplished. They should have been doing this for the last year, but even if they started now, it wouldn’t be terrible. Will it happen? I doubt it. They should also go on the offensive and attacking Trump and the entire GOP but Dems tend to be too spineless to ever do that.
Policies of Trump… I don’t know. About year two into his presidency, wages went up quite a bit in areas I lived in. Jobs became more available. General craziness was down, except for all those spouting hate at Trump the entire time.
I’m not saying I particularly paid much attention or attribute community growth due to his presidency, but things were getting better while he was president and dramatically tanked a year or two after Biden took over.
Just the general feel of places I’ve lived over the past 8 years or so.
For reference, I lived in low density suburban/rural areas during this time. May be way different in proper cities.
Wages have gone up much more under Biden who after all, inherited a badly crippled economy in the 1st place. Trump talks a lot, makes big promises, tells lots of lies, but meanwhile his only legislative accomplishment was to sign a giant tax cut for the rich that was completely written by congressional Republicans rather than his own administration.
And that’s not even mentioning all his foreign policy blunders and the fact that he was an international laughing stock among all our major allies.
I could go on but I won’t.
On the low end I haven’t seen wages increase, if anything they’ve fallen, but they may be more to do with the whole of 2020 craziness that resulted in even greater worker shortages amongst the laborers, and the system comming back to equilibrium.
Foreign policy blunders? Pretty sure that’s the first thing Biden did. Jump out of Afghanistan so fast we abandoned Europe and trampled some of our own.
Then there’s the whole, cripple the European economy thing. I know there’s more to it than that, but with the Ukraine thing, America really pressured Europe into crippling itself.
But I digress. I’m not trying to defend trump, nor attack Biden. Just note my casual observinces of my local economy.
I don’t want to “study” or empathize with magats.
I want to belittle and (electorally) destroy them into irrelevance.
I grew up in a magat household. They’re magats because they’re fucking morons. I solved the mystery for you - no additional study is required.
I got in a debate once with my mom about the age of the Earth (of course she’s a young Earth creationist). I brought up the speed of light - we see things that are farther than 6000 light years, so the Earth has to be more than 6000 years old. Her rebuttal: “What if the sky is like an Etch-a-Sketch that God is holding up for us to see?” How do you reason with someone that believes something like that? Do you really think I brought up stellar parallax or spectroscopy that would change her mind?
My grandma, I bought her an iPad 10 years ago so she could get on Facebook and watch YouTube and stuff. Big mistake! Now I have to hear stuff about how Hillary Clinton has been arrested and convicted by a military tribunal and is wearing an ankle bracelet and will be put in prison after the 2018 election. Adrenochrome. Comet Ping Pong. Democrats want to chop off elementary school age boys penises. Bamboo ballets. Mike Lindell. Ballots dumps. Obama controls everything. Porn in schools. Democrats are trying to make us eat bugs.
Prior to the iPad I had probably heard her mention politics like less than a handful of times in my entire life.
She wouldn’t get the COVID vaccine… Even though she’s 83 obese, arthritic, congestive heart failure, diabetic, and has had two previous heart attacks. Then she got COVID and almost died, was in the hospital for more than month, now on oxygen at home… STILL WON’T GET VACCINATED.
These are not people that reason or think about anything. The only way to get them on our side would be a propaganda network to compete with Sinclair, Fox, OAN, Newsmax, Hannity, Neck, Levin, Shapiro, PragerU, Crowder, Savage, Breitbart, Daily Caller, Daily Wire, Project Veritas, The Blaze, WND, Candace, Jordan Peterson, The Washington Times, etc… And then pump that down their YouTube and Facebook feeds. Unfortunately I don’t know any left wing billionaires that want to create competing institutions to these things.
Not to mention the right wing message of simple solutions, zero thinking, and your prejudices are actually a good thing is hard to compete with.
Way to completely miss the point.
You cannot reason someone out of something he or she was not reasoned into.
I think a lot of Democrats/liberals have West Wing Syndrome where they think if they make a convincing argument in a speech or debate that the other side will then come to the light… They won’t. They’re either evil or stupid or a combination of both.
Interestingly the magats don’t have this problem. They don’t give a shit about convincing you of anything, they just want their side to win and our side to lose.
You don’t see earnest studying of it because both established parties enjoy the “Go Sports Team” dynamic it’s part of.
One thing I’d like a better understanding of is the percentage of people that really are rabid Trump supporters vs the people who just voted for him because he was the Republican candidate. I feel like the polls at this point are worthless and we really won’t know how many of them there really are until the primaries. Maybe we will get a better view after the debates.
Anyway, I’m curious if you or anyone else has stats as to how many cult members there really are?
I personally don’t have a problem with Republicans. l think low taxes, small, government and even religion are a valid world views. I don’t necessarily agree with it, but I understand why they do, I just wish they backed someone who respected our institutions.
They claim about 60% of GOP votes. That translates to about 20% of all voters are hardcore MAGAts. Even if that number is rounded up a little, I would say at least 15% are the rabid Trump supporters you are talking about. That’s roughly 25M people. That is not an insignificant number of people. Then there will be a ton of other votes for Trump and the GOP simply because some people will vote for their party regardless.
Now in THEORY I could agree with you that having a party push for low taxes and small government isn’t bad. But the GOP hasn’t believed that in decades. They might still campaign on that message because who doesn’t want their taxes lowered, but there is absolutely nothing “fiscally responsible” about that party and every time they gain power, they prove that.
And that is my personal biggest worry is that if Trump somehow doesn’t win the GOP nomination, some other Republican could step up and start singing the same “lower taxes” bullshit that they’ve been trying for ages but ultimately when they get power they will try shoving religion down our throats, cut abortion rights even further, cut taxes - but only on the ultra wealthy, which will leave the rest of us with even more massive deficits - and increased spending on military programs we simply do not need.
Republicans have proven time and again that they do not deserve support.
One of the most frustrating aspects of this whole situation is listening to the absolute braindead takes I hear from the left. There’s a lot of coastal elitism going around and it almost makes want to side with the magats just out of spite. I hear armchair socialists who have never done a day of physical labor in their lives making fun of farmers while stuffing their faces full of cheetos made from corn grown in Iowa. The few attempts I’ve seen to reach across the isle have been from the patronizing position of “we need to teach these hateful know-nothings in flyover country about their privilege and how to vote properly”, instead of trying to learn why they believe what they do and how best to reach them.
I know that they’re wrong. I know this because I was raised in a stable household by loving parents and was given a good education, but I get why they’re angry. To be honest, I’m angry too.
What the fuck are you talking about?
I’m talking about years of cultural division and social neglect which have helped construct a funnel on top of the populist to fascist pipeline, into which an entire generation of young midwestern men are being dumped.
I know these people, they are my family and friends. Many of them started out as promising future-socialists. Then they looked to people who were supposed to be their allies in coastal blue states, and were immediately met with ridicule and derision. This provided a chance for fascists to swoop in and say “fuck those assholes, come roll with us and we’ll change the system together”. A lot of young men naïvely took the bait, and were radicalized in short order.
Christian fascism relies on a persecution complex, and you(collectively) have been helping feed into it.
You’re not pointing at anything.
I’m from the fucking Midwest. Any “young man” that ate the fascist bullshit ate it because they were fed it from their friends and families. It wasn’t the scapegoat “coastal elites” or the “globalists” or the “bankers,” it was a learned behavior. My dad eats that shit and tried to feed it to me and my siblings. My grandpa eats that shit and fed it to my dad and aunt.
If you want to blame anyone, blame Fox for making it so easy for anyone to feast 24/7 on fascism talking points where you turn your brain off. My dad is a smart guy, no question about that. Lots of Republicans are! But that never stopped him or any of them from being a dumb piece of shit loser. Because he chooses to ignore the facts as they are presented to him. He chooses not to know what the 16th Amendment is. He chooses not to understand the costs of education. He chooses to believe the lies that are said to him when you give direct video or picture proof otherwise.
Because if he didn’t, he’d be wrong. And I think he can’t accept being that fundamentally wrong.
I’m not blaming any one thing for the rise of fascism in America. There are a myriad of factors which have built up over the past 50 years to bring us to this point. MY point, was that ONE OF THESE FACTORS OUT OF MANY HAS BEEN AN INCREASING HOSTILITY BETWEEN GEOCULTURAL REGIONS OF THE UNITED STATES. This has helped, in addition to the aforementioned other factors, to reinforce a sense of political isolation, and political isolation mixed with economic desperation and preexisting prejudices breeds extremism.
The only people to blame for fascism are fascists and those who profit off of them. It just so happens that I chose to bitch about this one specific element in this specific comment thread because it is one that I feel is often overlooked, you absolute mollusk.
You were the one that assumed I wasn’t from the Midwest, not I you.
The increasing hostility isn’t the cause of “coastal elites,” though, so it is still misplaced rage. The only one you can reasonably blame for that would be the upper class, which, regardless if you understood it or not, is not the same thing. The term “coastal elite” is a loaded term to target certain types of people. It is, as you already put it, another way to isolate, but also one used by fascists themselves., which is why I put heavy emphasis on your usage of it.
But, yes, I do agree that I am typically a slug of some sort and that my mucus trail is both far and wide.
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trying to learn why they believe what they do and how best to reach them.
Can I upvote this more than once??
This is very, very spot-on.
And the fact that someone here has downvoted you speaks volumes to the very point you are trying to make!
The Left is extremely exclusionary and in many ways has HELPED Trump more than almost anyone else. Yes he’s a piece of shit. Yes he deserves to die in jail, but stop pushing groups away because eventually they could end up falling for MAGA propaganda. We are already seeing reports of how an alarming number of white male teens are joining right wing groups. What does the Left do? Make it worse by calling out bullshit like “white privilege” or calling them “incels” or simply “racist”. These guys are just kids and they hear one side that is constantly degrading males and constantly blaming whites… well what the fuck do you think those teens are going to do? They are going to find a group that accepts them. It is so obviously and yet so infuriating how the Left can’t see what they are doing.
These guys are just kids and they hear one side that is constantly degrading males and constantly blaming whites
I don’t hear that side anywhere. I hear at most maybe a few sporadic dumbasses. Maybe get your ears checked.
It’s a cult
I got told I’ll get kicked out of my own apartment by someone who isn’t on the lease if I make fun of trump and Republicans out loud lmao.
Me and my mother are on the lease. Her BF who lives with us isn’t . Apparently he’ll kick me out of my own apartment (I’m 25 btw. Not a kid.)
So why is your mother dating this douche?
Her mother is just like him
Start slowly adding feces to his food
I was downvoted for this comment on another thread:
1/3 of the electorate would be happy to have trump rape their kids live on C-SPAN and would line up to suck his asshole as an expression of gratitude.
I stand by it.
Only if their kid was liberal. Then they’d be ok with it.
I feel that the (crazy) leftists would support this.
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Just like cult members. 🙄
It’s terrifying how similar the Trump playbook is to that of a cult leader. Convincing someone that they must trust you over their family and friends is step one to getting them isolated and exploitable.
Exact same thing the left is doing. Non stop telling us how y is good and x is bad. If your family supports x, clearly they are crazy jew natzis who much be eliminated from your life! Get out now!!!
Also, Trump was saying that? I don’t remember that being brought up before.
Like this one…
Trumpism is a cult
A death cult.
Hopefully they won’t do what death cults usually do, if you catch my drift
If their leader tells them to wear Nikes and have drink of poison because that way the comet will pick them up and maga, I’d say we don’t stand in the way.
A comet may be the only way left to make America great again ><
They’ll take it as far as the pollster wants ask. It’s not really about what they believe or say, it’s about unwavering support and owning the libs. They know they’ll never be tested where they have to choose, so it’s just a big game to them.
Jeeeesus fucking christ. America is one fucked up culture. I feel bad for them.
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I honestly think that if not for your MSM, most people would be reasonable. The MSM is abusing people’s natural hatred of injustice up to a fever pitch at all the wrong things.
I don’t know we can really blame MSM. It certainly is contributing to a degree, but for one, online misinformation is arguably a greater problem than, and for another, people were terrible and unreasonable before mass media was ever a thing. It’s not like slave holders thought slavery was great because the 17th century mainstream media told them it was fine that black people weren’t people.
There’s been systemic cultural problems forever.
Social media (Meta) is the number one reason these days. When Facebook decided to add news and other bs to old peoples’ feeds it was all over after that.
Trump cultists are like maybe 30% of the republicans, making them 15% of the population at best. They’re just really fking loud and obnoxious. In the election Trump loses by a landslide. I suspect he’ll be in jail (or house arrest) before then tho.
Trump cultists are like maybe 30% of the republicans, making them 15% of the population at best.
It doesn’t matter if the vast majority of republicans aren’t trump cultists, it only matters that the vast majority of republicans will vote for him when they’re alone in that voting booth.
That makes the vast majority of republicans willing (and some eager) to bring a fucking fascist, and all that he stands for, back into power. This is an existential threat to democracy in the US, not even being hyperbolic.
Well, the standing president isn’t exactly the ideal picture of someone who isn’t facist…
Most people I meet seem reasonable until they get behind a keyboard… Or a wheel.
Thank you.
