china

[billy rubin]

i live and work in blue collar appalachia, where allegiance to trump is taken for granted. but the doublethink is strange. i listened to a military veteran explain how he supported trump because he (the veteran) believed in the US constitution, which is something that trump openly disdains.

and i listen to people complain about immigrants taking away their jobs, when my county is 93 percent white, and hispanics make up 1.0 percent of the population. there are zero hispanics in my occupation.

hitler was a fan of the big lie, and i'm sorry to see that it still works.

[Tom62]

Trump appealed to a lot of hard working, non intellectual, ordinary people who had lost trust in the political establishment. First of all, the Republican party had been very effective in demonizing Obama. That was quite easy, because People like Clinton and Obama were the epitomes of the college type of political elite that seemed to have a disdain for these "deplorables". After the "Clinton era", the democratic party moved more to the left; added stuff like gender politics, white men bashing and political correctness to the mix; so it is no wonder that these people now feel even more lost and continue to support Trump. Hence, the more Trump is politically incorrect, the more his followers love it. The way I see it, Trump is the monster created by the right, the left and the media.

[xSilverPhinx]

It seems that at least part of the culture of the US has skipped over "plausible" deniability to bald faced counter-factual denial. I see the concept of "face" as institutionalized egoism; in the US, part of the population has bought into a cult-like glorification of one man's campaign to stroke and protect his ego, going so far as to profess to believe blatant falsehoods. Rather than any internally applied standard, right and wrong are subservient to the interests of this figurehead.

It's far from the first time that we've seen this phenomenon in prototypically "western" cultures. It seems reasonable to question whether this is an aberration or a manifestation of an integral component of such cultures. I don't think we can place such a clear delineation between "east" and "west" in regard to morality when this sort of behavior happens with regularity.

This is the most disturbing part of the phenomenon occurring in the USA, and it is one I did not see coming.  Perhaps it comes in part from the natural tendency of some to seek a savior, an Anointed One, a knight on a white horse.  I hope it passes.  It's frightening.

^ Yup. I just don't understand that mentality. In the presidential race, our family was watching the chump stump at a rally, and when he said something bizarre, and the crowd went wild, we all just looked at each other  like this- 

You guys might as well be talking about the Presidential race in Brazil, another "western" "democratic" country. It's uncanny just how many similarities there are between Trump and his bitch, Jair "Bozo" Bolsonaro.

He used many of the same strategies Trump did.

[xSilverPhinx]

Trump appealed to a lot of hard working, non intellectual, ordinary people who had lost trust in the political establishment. First of all, the Republican party had been very effective in demonizing Obama. That was quite easy, because People like Clinton and Obama were the epitomes of the college type of political elite that seemed to have a disdain for these "deplorables". After the "Clinton era", the democratic party moved more to the left; added stuff like gender politics, white men bashing and political correctness to the mix; so it is no wonder that these people now feel even more lost and continue to support Trump. Hence, the more Trump is politically incorrect, the more his followers love it. The way I see it, Trump is the monster created by the right, the left and the media.

Trump played the game very well. He isn't wholly competent for the office but that doesn't seem to matter because he's charismatic and has more than enough confidence in himself to make up for his shortcomings. People prefer a confident but incompetent man to a less confident but more competent one. He carries himself like a saviour and so a saviour he is to many.

[Dark Lightning]

The chump is wholly incompetent to the office he holds! He's putting people in positions with the express intent of dismantling the US Government infrastructure. Just take Betsy De Vos, who has absolutely no experience in education, as Sec Ed, or Scott Pruitt, who got put in charge of the EPA, and who was in coal mining, as examples. Never mind that his spawn and their spouses are a bunch of know-nothings who are further ruining the country and enriching themselves with their positions. I would look forward to lengthy prison terms for all, but I expect that their wealth will shield them from that. 

[Tank]

Trump appealed to a lot of hard working, non intellectual, ordinary people who had lost trust in the political establishment. First of all, the Republican party had been very effective in demonizing Obama. That was quite easy, because People like Clinton and Obama were the epitomes of the college type of political elite that seemed to have a disdain for these "deplorables". After the "Clinton era", the democratic party moved more to the left; added stuff like gender politics, white men bashing and political correctness to the mix; so it is no wonder that these people now feel even more lost and continue to support Trump. Hence, the more Trump is politically incorrect, the more his followers love it. The way I see it, Trump is the monster created by the right, the left and the media.

Trump played the game very well. He isn't wholly competent for the office but that doesn't seem to matter because he's charismatic and has more than enough confidence in himself to make up for his shortcomings. People prefer a confident but incompetent man to a less confident but more competent one. He carries himself like a saviour and so a saviour he is to many.

Substitute Hitler for Trump and read that again.

[Ecurb Noselrub]

Trump appealed to a lot of hard working, non intellectual, ordinary people who had lost trust in the political establishment. First of all, the Republican party had been very effective in demonizing Obama. That was quite easy, because People like Clinton and Obama were the epitomes of the college type of political elite that seemed to have a disdain for these "deplorables". After the "Clinton era", the democratic party moved more to the left; added stuff like gender politics, white men bashing and political correctness to the mix; so it is no wonder that these people now feel even more lost and continue to support Trump. Hence, the more Trump is politically incorrect, the more his followers love it. The way I see it, Trump is the monster created by the right, the left and the media.

Trump played the game very well. He isn't wholly competent for the office but that doesn't seem to matter because he's charismatic and has more than enough confidence in himself to make up for his shortcomings. People prefer a confident but incompetent man to a less confident but more competent one. He carries himself like a saviour and so a saviour he is to many.

Substitute Hitler for Trump and read that again.

The whole rise of Neo-Nazism is troubling. We can always spot Nazism when it's "over there", but it sneaks up on us when it's "over here."