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Yeah. With Trump it's a little different. I actually get it kind of. He's authentic to himself in a way most politicians are not. He's just a big fat mean asshole who likes shouting and cheeseburgers and raw-dogging porn stars. He doesn't like paying taxes and he doesn't like smart people who try to get one over on him. For the most part, what you see is what you get.
I think a lot of rural America has an absolute hatred for Washington, because Washington for the most part hasn't given a fuck what happened to them for the last 50 years. And I think they see Trump, and say well, he's an asshole, but he's not one of those weird plastic people who've been stealing from my pension fund and making sure my health insurance doesn't work, and he seems to hate them too and not afraid to get violent with them. Hey, that sounds pretty fuckin' good from where I'm standing. He's got my vote.
I'm not saying their assessment of the impact of Trump on their pension fund is accurate. But their read of him as a person, I think, is actually the root cause of why they like him and I think that part is true.
Yes. 😢
Yeah. They want a strong man to hurt all of the people that the alt-right media has told them are the cause of their problems. Only...
...is the exact opposite of true (he's plastic, but angry plastic instead of bland plastic). Which brings me to...
I don't think he is, though. I don't even think he knows what that would look like. I don't think he likes giving speeches, he just likes applause. I don't think he wants to be president (and I don't think he did in 2016 or 2020 either), he's just terrified of what'll happen if he's not in the limelight anymore. I don't think he likes Coca-Cola or Big Macs, I think he just does whatever will make the person/people in front of him say how great he is. I don't think he has a self outside of what other people tell him it is.
Incidentally, that's why he has a quarter million indictments.
Oh, I wasn't saying he was honest. He presents himself as smart and rich, which is flaming bullshit. I think some of his followers believe him about that, but that's not why they like him; there are plenty of genuinely smart and rich people they despise.
The awful neoliberal suit-wearing jerks are one kind of asshole who's hurting their financial futures and the communities their kids have to live in, and they know that. But absolutely you're right; Trump is something much, much worse and much more dark, and they're making a terrifying mistake by supporting him just because he is (genuinely, and with real authenticity) not one of those people.
You may get this then:
https://www.cracked.com/blog/6-reasons-trumps-rise-that-no-one-talks-about
After all these years, I've never read anything that explains Trump supports so perfectly.
This was a good read, thanks for sharing
Rural Americans by and large don't have pensions anymore if in fact they ever did, and they've been thoroughly brainwashed to believe that their insurance worked better back when you could be kicked off your plan for costing too much and be blacklisted from getting any in the first place if you had a pre-existing condition. No, the thing that they liked about Trump was that he said he hated all the people they hated too, and he gave them license to speak their hate aloud after decades of being told that they were bad people if they hated somebody because of some indelible feature of their origin or identity.
I seem to remember back in the early 2000s there was some media coverage of some local scoundrel running for some office and people were really taken with it. I think it was essentially a Trump prototype. That media coverage probably entered the subconscious of millions of voters.
Also, let's not forget about Rob Ford. People's love for an obvious con man is truly a vulnerability of all societies.