It hurts people they think are lesser, such as LGBTQ and people of color. Racism and bigotry are very much alive in the USA. They would eat a shit sandwich if they thought a lib would smell their breath. Hate is all they know.
“We made people we don’t like fucking miserable for a bit”
Ultimately the kind of person that goes all in on a cult like MAGA could lose everything to shitty policy or because their great leader started a war or smth – But they’ll still reason it was worth it because all those <Slur>s were put in their place.
I normally do not talk politics with people I know, but this one person said they like trump because: “all I know is when he was president, I did good financially”.
I tried to tell him that the government is slow to enact things so he did good because the previous president. He didnt want to hear that and dismissed it.
If that’s all he knows he doesn’t know very much.
Like most MAGA.
Crabs in a bucket. They don’t care if things get worse for them as long as they inflict the same suffering on everyone else.
Many years ago, I was at a friend’s house and his parents were watching Bush on Faux News. Friend said, “We’re loyal Republicans. We’d rather have an idiot in office than a Democrat.”
Edit: Before the inauguration, I got back in touch with another Friend who went to a few protests but converted to maga because he started listening to the JRE podcast and whatever the algorithm also recommended. We know the type of influence that jre guy has on vulnerable minds. The podcast host literally twisted his mind 180 degrees.
Edit 2: I’m not sure that I consider them friends anymore as they would rather have their guy in office and not care that people like me get screwed over.
MAGA doesn’t know.
They’re fearful, hateful, instinctive idiots who are more afraid of being proven wrong than anything. The definition of ride or die.
if you ask a hundred of them…
you will get a hundred different answers.
they voted because it made them feel good and addressed their anger. not for any rational reasons. it’s why they are so surprised at what is going on.
they had NO IDEA what they were voting for or why they were voting.
They’re too deep to take it back now they gotta go full nazi and act like everyone else is the problem
Hurting their perceived enemies.
This really is the only right answer.
Some believe that we are reclaiming American greayness. That the tariffs are just china writing a big check to the usa. That majes feel like we are finally fighting back.
You have other that just feel good that dei, woke, sjw, litard, liberal, etc etc policy are goibg away. So society cab finally put good compient people in jobs and not be held vack by forced racial quotas.
You have other that love tge nazi salute stuff and really feel lije the government is finally working for them.
You have many who just feel good its not a democrat in office
They get to be part of a cult of hate?
The way it is playing out in my family has led me to have to totally reevaluate my perception of my own father.
He is a generally kind man. He stayed with my mom for two decades as she declined with Parkinson’s. He took good care of her when so many people might have ghosted.
But based on his inability to see the danger here to things he himself values, I can no longer think of him as a good man. He has always valued knowledge and reason yet he swallowed the cat-eating crap out of Ohio in spite of the clear bullshit of it.
He is Mormon and very faithful. So I don’t know what he gets out of this all, except that it has required me to grieve him before his passing.
He is not actually a good person I am afraid, but he is very obedient. Learning that distinction is very painful. He does not possess the moral clarity to know the difference between what is legal/popular and what is right.
I always idolized my dad as a child because he was in so many ways a good father. We will probably never speak again.
I shared with my mother, only yesterday, that I consider her somewhat of a bad person for voting for orange for a second term. I said that she could be forgiven for not perceiving what he is the first time (though it was obvious to anyone with limited understanding of the world), but after seeing him in action and voting for him again, she should be ashamed of herself. I don’t expect the relationship to ever fully recover, as I will not forgive her for endangering my loved ones and all of us collectively.
“ He is not actually a good person I am afraid, but he is very obedient.”
Sadly this is the legacy of the LDS faith.
You guys should watch Heretic.
Which one? I see three in the last 12 years. I’m guessing it’s the 2024 one?
Don’t forget the cliqueiness. I’ve been the victim of the mormon cliques more than once.
The first LDS family I knew were all rabid aggressive assholes. It’s funny that in hindsight these might be the most real and honest LDS followers I have met.
Sorry for your loss.
Religion sucks so much, especially the more dogmatic ones. Mormonism is gross.
One insight I would offer is that categorising people as “good” or “not good” may not be helpful. I suspect that your dad probably invests a lot of effort in being a good man, he’s just unable to acknowledge that his perspective has been corrupted.
We judge ourselves by our intentions but others by their actions.
It’s not wrong to never speak to him again, but maybe this will make the mourning easier.
Thank you.
Yes, I agree black and white categories aren’t the ideal way to describe people.
But there comes a time when nuance is used against the compassionate to normalize reprehensible actions. We are in that time now.
It is for these reasons that I cannot stand listening to NPR anymore. The ineffectual hand wringing and disingenuous ’liberal self-reflection’ is tiresome and we are well past the time for thoughtful think-pieces.
I’m very grateful that my parents have never lived in the Utah bubble; they saw right through Trump in 2016, and, for the first time in their lives, voted for someone other than a Republican.
Keep in mind that Benson was hard right; he would have thought that John Birchers were leftists. He and his faction may not have led the church for very long, but they had a profound influence on it.
It can hard to see good people do bad things. To learn all that love came with limits
I’ve talked to friends that were very excited Trump won. Recently tried having an open conversation with someone that left my community afterwards over the conversations because I didn’t come to his side.
They just believe it’ll be better. What better? They don’t know. They can’t verbalize, because they’re told it’s terrible now and will be better.
They believe Trump isn’t a criminal, didn’t incite violence on Jan 6, the woke people are out to get them, etc. I’ve literally asked people to define “woke” for me when they use it that way. They can’t. They don’t know. They’re not bad people, they’re brainwashed at this point.
I agree. I’ve heard people say that they willingly voted for a criminal rapist huckster and I don’t believe that. They thought he was something different. They are fucking dumb, not evil.
Pretty sure the common denominator is “owning the libs.”
It’s not just liberals that are voting against their opposition more than they are voting for the political candidates they vote for; the other side is largely doing the same. That’s why American democracy is failing: we’re so disillusioned with our own parties that we’ve been reduced to voting for them just to keep the opposition from power. Hence, no matter how we vote, we’re dissatisfied, but we tell ourselves pretty stories to make it all right. The only real winners are corporations, which have all of these clowns in their pockets.
I’ve been saying it for years and every time I’m told “but if you don’t vote the lesser evil the greater evil wins!”
Well, as predicted, if you do vote the lesser evil the bar is lowered year after year until both are significantly more evil than before. Standards must be enforced. We need to demand candidates that are better than last year’s, not just better than the opposition.
Are you making the assertion that each successive candidate gets more evil? Do you think Bill Clinton was a more moral person than Barak Obama?
Not every candidate, but a general trend of “lesser evil” candidates. Obama wasn’t a lesser evil candidate, he was a genuinely good one.
I agree, but I honestly don’t know what the solution is. Beyond blind revolution, which is inherently chaotic and difficult to predict, I don’t see a solution. The U.S. seems doomed to spiral in the same way we’ve seen other nations do so for the foreseeable future. It all depends on how this current administration plays out and how people react to it in the future. Americans are so uneducated and gullible these days that I can’t predict how they’ll behave (and I’m an American).
If the lesser evil were consistently voted in year over year, the evilness would slowly decline.
The problem is that doesn’t happen. The lesser evil is often not selected, that’s the part that shifts the scale.
If all a candidate has to do to get elected is be less evil than the other, then there’s no incentive to be good; instead candidates are free to be as evil as they want up to the limit of the opposition. If a candidate had to be less evil than the person they’re succeeding, sure, we’d get less evil over time. But that’s not the case, they’re compared to their opponents not their predecessors. Every time we elect someone shitty we show them they don’t have to be any better than that to get elected.
This is basically what I keep telling people.
The lesser evil sucks, its still evil, but there is zero path to good, by ever supporting the evil evil.
Like, at least with the lesser evil, you are moving in the right direction to dig yourself out.
There is no more consensus about anything between MAGA people than there is among the left. People are individuals and they have different values. Voting for a party/candidate doesn’t mean they agree on everything. There’s likely greater differences in views and values within the groups than between them.
the left
Quick reminder: America has no left. The Dems are centre-right vs GoP far-right (and counting).
This is very true.
Here in Missouri, for instance, voters went red but also passed a $15 minimum wage, required paid sick leave, and voted down an abortion ban. It’s ironic, considering Democrats always insist that if they just get more
conservativecentrist they’ll win elections.
