This is BS.
Every single election we are told that economic hardship is the only thing pay attention to. Sure, many of these rubes will continue to be fooled and are irredeemable. But a shit ton are going to notice and eventually get tired of getting fucked.
I am not saying they will stop voting republicans because they do seem to like the pain, but they would sure as hell eat the current administration
Historically not true. USSR collapsed, Nazi Germany collapsed etc.
And if you think that is true why doesn’t every government try “hardships” to keep it’s people together? You start from the false idea that this would work…
Their struggle isn’t shared thou. Trump supporters are not a monolith, they are composed of a diverse number of groups with different and often competing interests.
Yea they all deal with the same rise in prices, the same lack of services from their government… the same treatment from not racist members of society.
Ok sure the corpos and whatnot who put him in place dont share the struggles, but all the civies who voted for him sure do.
It is absolutely shared in the sense that any hardship they face is solely because they voted for Donald Trump. We ran into this last night with my MIL. She thought both the employees at Lowe’s and Panda Express were “harassing” her because they somehow knew she was a Trump supporter.
My wife said that people were just having a hard time right now to avoid the conflict and her mom responded that “Oh that must be Trump’s fault too” and stormed out of her husband’s birthday party lmao.
Trailer Park burnt down? Must be someone who hates that they love Trump. Economy crashing? Must be because they just hate Trump.
It’s so fucking annoying.
Sounds like your MIL is in the 2nd stage of grief.
Hardship will just make them blame foreigners
Something about the LiBeRaL dEeP sTaTe keeping him from deporting them fast enough. The “in” group has to be simultaneously strong and helpless, the “out” group weak but somehow paradoxically able to prevent the “strong” leadership from accomplishing anything for the good of the people.
It’s very frustrating.
What I’ve seen when I bring what’s happening up to family members step one is denial “oh he’s not doing that” step 2 is defend “well it’s probably for the best, kids do yern for the mines”.
Nothing is convincing.
Stages of grief. Most are just getting to denial.
My 90 year old grandma has moved onto bargaining. She’s trying to write a letter to DJT to “warn him about Musk”
Not bad progress, considering I couldn’t get her to budge at all over the past decade.
That’s kind of adorable.
Stages of grief
Exactly. It doesn’t only apply to grief — any major change of beliefs will need to go through this process… unfortunately.
It doesn’t help that they have literally been programmed by right and far right propaganda that only influences and reinforces that mentality of “unity”.
the media titans know what they’re doing
And Cambridge Analytica
Those are just the easy parts of the equation to blame. The fact is none of it matters as much as wanting to believe what they’re telling you is true. Nobody can fix the hateful parts of those people except themselves. If they don’t then it will express itself in one form or another.
Yes and no. Media gives them all their cues and phrases. Media gives them their weltanschauung.
I remember a moment before the election in 2016. A family member was going off on a Trump worshiping rant. I asked them what they thought of all the awful things that come out of his mouth. They responded with, “Oh, he’s just saying that stuff because he likes to get attention.”
I quoted a passage from Luke’s gospel. “The good person out of the good treasure of the heart produces good, and the evil person out of evil treasure produces evil; for it is out of the abundance of the heart that the mouth speaks.”
What happened next was amazing. They kind of paused and stared at their shoes with this expression that, if I could put words to it, would have said, “Shit. He’s got me there. How do I get around this one?” They then looked up, physically shrugged it off; like water off a ducks back. That stopped the rant but I knew that If they had to choose between Jesus and this particular version of the anti-christ, their choice was already made and it wasn’t Jesus.
I’ve been there friend. It is not a fun experience but it was very enlightening. Someday they may see it but it is terrifying to understand how willingly ignorant some of us choose to be.
It’s also defending the cult leader mentality. Breaking with the cult puts you on the outside, and an enemy of the cult. Breaking free of a cult isn’t easy when the cult’s actions are constantly being reinforced and regurgitated by their leader and his media disinformation networks.
I’m a member of a lot of hiking communities on FB. Prior to Trump second presidency, they would blame any kind of problems related to insufficient budgeting to “ sending all money to Ukraine”. Now that he’s the president, and is BLATANTLY cutting budgets to national parks and forests, I see his supporters say “ it’s too bad we donated so much money to the national parks of Ukraine” or “ if Biden did this, you wouldn’t be complaining”, or some version of “ this is necessary, nothing really changed”.
Wild, would assume a hiking community would lean pretty solidly blue and be livid about cuts to national parks. As the last handful of elections have shown though, there are idiots all over the political spectrum.
I mean, just look at the comment fro the user “Ryan” to a post about a new schedule at the visitor’s center:
If you have trouble opening, I’ll copy and paste.
OP from Sequoia & Kings Canyon National Park:
“NEW VISITOR CENTER HOURS FROM THE Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks official Facebook Account . . .
Schedule update!
The adjusted schedule for visitor centers are as follows:
⛺️ Foothills Visitor Center is open Wednesday – Sunday from 9:30 a.m. to 4 p.m.
🌳 Giant Forest Museum is open Friday – Tuesday from 9:30 a.m. to 4 p.m.
⛰️ Kings Canyon Visitor Center is open Thursday – Sunday from 9:30 a.m. to 4 p.m.”
This one guy responds: “This sure seems like a lot of cuts given the limited number of job losses that I’ve read about. Is this just a political statement? While I wish the federal government would spend more on parks, I’m questioning my substantial donations at this point if efforts aren’t being made to make the best of the situation.”
To be fair, a lot of the do lean blue and are livid. But there are a lot of angry boomers on FB.
Not if the argument is to offer the democratic party and more neoliberalism as an alternative. Yes, they’ll gladly suffer for fascism.
It’s our job to offer something better that explains their suffering and alienation. Thankfully this guy named Marx did a pretty good job explaining it.
That and cons will always find a way to spin something to cause outrage and anger towards anyone but themselves.
Just went through that with an elderly neighbor recently.
She broke her foot and is in poor health, so we were walking her dog twice a day cause we are nice like that. She was always praising us for being such good people and a godsend to her.
One day, she made a comment that she thought Trump was doing a great job and I gently tried to explain to her that he was ruining our lives and countless others out there.
I was hoping she would have a moment of introspection, but no. She just immediately went on about the democrats, how we get offended too easily, and how she thinks I swear too much but she doesn’t hold it against me.
Everything except: “I’m sorry. I didn’t realize.”
Told her we no longer feel comfortable walking get dog.
Cue the waterworks and the “What about me? I can’t walk!”
It’s not worth engaging with these people. There is something broken in their brains.
They are brainwashed. The people we hate are actually some of trumps biggest victims. They are the victims of brainwashing. And they will soon be victimized in other ways as well. And when they question it, Trump will blame them, othe people, anyone but himself. And like victims of narcissistic abuse, they will do the mental backflips required to forgive Trump.
I know they are brainwashed.
I don’t even hate her.
I feel bad for her because she’s legitimately fucked without our help, but I cannot continue helping her when she cannot even acknowledge that both my life and her own life are so much harder because of her vote.
She cannot even say she is sorry because she legitimately believes she has done no wrong.
She’s blowing up my phone to ask us to please continue walking her dog but I cannot do that anymore.
The mask has fallen off her face.
You’re talking about babies who couldn’t wear a mask during COVID. They have no sense of struggle and no toleration for hardship
They also had their god emperor refusing to wear masks, and political leaders openly denying the disease.
They had support for their grievences.
They won’t get that over the economy. Instead, they’re getting “this is necessary” and “you’ll just have to make some sacrifices for the economy”.
They’ll just be told that Democrats, immigrants, and trans people are causing the hardship.
Their God emperor was wearing a mask and taking vaccine shots behind the scenes. He then tells them the opposite.
I even have trouble believing the people that “converted back”. I just think if things change for them and time passes they’ll go back to being Republicans or MAGA.
100%. The people who have turned away from the Republican party have only done so out of a distaste for Trump, and maybe Elon. They are almost certainly not opposed much of what is being done, just how they are going about it, and who is doing it.
Or, they’ve just had their faces eaten by leopards, and are upset that they’re suffering the consequences of their actions.
You don’t get to be a Republican in 2016 or 2024 without being ok with burning the whole system down, with dreams of it being to your own benefit. They just don’t trust the current would-be monarchs to be the ones to actually give them what they believe they’re due.
“you’ll just have to make some sacrifices for the economy”.
Musk’s new response when asked about hundreds of thousands of starving children directly tied to USAID cuts. It’s a sacrifice he’s willing to happily make.
Reverse the kremlin playbook:
Talk to conservatives and be like: “Both side are the same, I’m voting Libertarian”
That’s kind of true: you can’t get them to see reason, only spite.
There is no need to swing Trump voters over.
There are more citizens who did not vote at all who can be engaged with and energized - because these policies are going to fuck them too.
We need to pretend to be conservative and be like: “I VOTED TRUMP AND HE DID NOTHING FOR ME, BOTH SIDE ARE THE SAME, I’M VOTING LIBERTARIAN 😡😡😡”
If half of conservatives voted a third party candidate, it would splinter the republican party.
Aka: the Reverse Kremlin stretegy
One danger, though: Trump’s campaign managers will try to swing them as well.
I am hopeful! But it will be a fight.
Imagine both parties swinging to third party accidentally 😏 -> 1/4, 2/4, 1/4
Too good to be true, lol
The cons will swing libertarian and the libs will swing socialist, and then we’ll get a president that only 1/12th of the country actually voted for
There’s a saying in my country: don’t get drunk on cold water. Meaning don’t gaslight yourself into wishful thinking, because hope can be a hell of a drug.
A third party win won’t happen overnight. The only way you can realistically get it is with ranked choice voting. Otherwise you’re stuck replacing Democrats (and why not, Republicans — in smaller races you can absolutely run a Bernie style progressive who keeps the focus on economics!) one by one because the institutions are already in place, and they’re really powerful! Also, remember they’re just institutions: parties don’t have ideologies, people do.
And before you think to vote for people like Jill Stein or whoever else while hoping that maybe this year the miracle will happen (i.e. getting drunk on cold water), remember that there’s a lot of groundwork that needs to be done by that candidate for them to be viable, and it essentially boils down to this: the whole country needs to know about that person and recognize them on the street come election year — if that’s not the case, then they’re either delusional, underfunded, or most likely an opportunist (possibly even an intentional spoiler paid by the opposition, like RFK was in the Dem primary).
Source: me. I’ve been on the third party hope train back in 2020, emboldened by “leftists” such as Jimmy Dore, BJG, Richard Medhurst, etc.
A third party win won’t happen overnight. The only way you can realistically get it is with ranked choice voting. Otherwise you’re stuck replacing Democrats (and why not, Republicans — in smaller races you can absolutely run a Bernie style progressive who keeps the focus on economics!) one by one because the institutions are already in place, and they’re really powerful! Also, remember they’re just institutions: parties don’t have ideologies, people do.
You’ve basically got three options:
- Reform the party from within (this is how we got MAGA via the Tea Party).
- Replace one of the existing parties with a new one (this has happened a few times over the years, and failed many more).
- Change the underlying system in a way that doesn’t inevitably collapse into a two party system. For example, approval voting. RCV is better than what we have, but it still has serious issues with spoiler effect and strategic voting, they just look a little different than they do under FPTP. STAR and Approval are much better, but STAR is comparatively complicated to explain and report on while Approval is dead simple.
😇I agree 100%
Social identity. Hardship together. This is no joke.
I just FaceTimed with a MAGA this week as they industriously cooked a weeks worth of food to freeze. This is an individual who traditionally only defrosts processed crap on baking sheets, despises leftovers, and grocery shops every 1-3 days rather than storing food.
Not this week. Now they’re all about unprocessed foods, cooking to save money, and meal planning in advance. A 180 shift from a week ago. In addition, they’re starting a pantry.
That’s the rough part a lot of Americans need to swallow: MAGA is full of disenfranchised people that would otherwise organize in solidarity for the common good of the working class.
There’s just been so many wedges and fences built up from the Cold War that the ruling class has been able to deflect and distract from progressive policy and maintain power.
They are trash people who are lost causes
I doubt it will be noticeable overnight, but at least some of his supporters will be pushed into a degree of impoverishment that inhibits political engagement.
They aren’t engaged now. Anyone who really looks at politics beyond the talking points that are delivered by the right knows how insane the right is.
Lack of citizen engagement makes it easier to blame immigrants and trans women.
OK, I have read some evidence that shows how when a level of impoverishment is reached, people are too preoccupied with day to day and week to week survival to bother with voting or much of any other civil engagement.
I won’t waste more time on this, I’m not interested in arguing over the definition of ‘disengaged’.
People in the grave can no longer vote for Trump.
Isnt that what most of his voter base already is?
The fact that they voted means they are not disengaged.
Yours might have just been an offhand comment, but as it might be a genuine question I provided a brief answer.
It was kind of both. I see what you mean now though
Not every Trump voter is a die hard MAGA, a large amount just don’t pay attention and vote republican out of habit because the media has told them for decades that Republicans are better for the economy or just because that is the party their parents voted for.
Knew 2 guys that just hated Trans ppl more than anything
That’s the base, right there. Frothing hated of “others.” There’s a core of Americans that are just shit, and they’ve been smearing it everywhere they touch since Nixon. Or that fucking cocksucker Woodrow Wilson.
I know people like that too, and I know a lot more who aren’t like that. On average, 24% of the people I meet voted Trump, and I know exactly three people who wear the hats and complain about the transes. The vast majority of people who voted for him feel the same about him as Harris voters felt about her.
Believe it or not, there are already MAGA people pissed at him in hard red states/districts.
Ah yes, the “Pity me, I didn’t get mine” crowd.
Yep, and they’ll vote every Republican in again next time regardless.
99/100 of em are lost causes.
