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this post was submitted on 10 Feb 2025
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To be honest, I have never understood why the "average joe" ever identified with Trump, whose whole point is that he is a "successful" billionaire businessman. Why they believe he's looking out for the little guy is beyond me.
These people are the common clay of the land.
Rural people generally on average mistrust city people. City person shows up one day and gives them riches beyond their wildest imaginations, two hundred dollars and a luxury import chocolate. Other city people say "don't trust these gifts, that guy is a known con artist". Rural people didn't grow up in an environment where scammers could just get away with it, cuz they'd get beat up by the other 80 people in the town that all knew them.
They don't have the defenses mechanism of skepticism built in from day 1. They often do not understand the difference between the law as written vs as intended, because strict interpretation of the rules is not required for a small society of people that all generally know teachers other to function.
Where do they think Trump is from?
Probably one of a few things.
But most likely, imo, is that the average Joe is just way less politically engaged or aware, then you and your peers. They don't see all the bullshit, bigotry, obvious lies, the way R policies will fuck them over. They just know times are tough, prices are high and "right wing dude said he'd fix it".
how about just good old fashioned racism?
That comes under "likes his toxic traits - bigotry"
Why they believe he was ever a successful businessman is beyond me...
The guy is a fucking rich kid moron.
He had what, 5 bankruptcy? Very successful
6 bankruptcies. He even managed to bankrupt a casino, which is basically a license to print money.
hes a clown. the whole bread and circus thing.
I think it has to do with the conservative tendency to see a natural hierarchy to humanity.
(begin sarcasm)
Obviously, rando leopard victim currently under discussion is a member of the upper echelon of that human hierarchy. They are confused by the same things as Trump, they hate the same people as him, and they see the same TrRuTh about the world as him.
Surely, those are enough "good people" attributes that any day now they will get swept along on the Trump train and will be out of the trailer and sitting on a golden shitter before you know it. He might even let them push the button that takes food stamps away from a brown skinned single mother!
Or, and hey let's be fair, maybe some of them are smarter than that. They know that no Aryan Dividends are coming their way. But they have the integrity to tough it out while the other "good" people in charge spend all their energy hurting the subhuman garbage that deserves it most. That is obviously more important than education or human rights or whatever the limp-wristed liberal cucks are crying about today.
The money is just part of the deal when you're one of the master race-- err, no, I mean when you're one of the good people, the REAL Americans. It's not like you have to be BORN already having the money or just win the lottery some other way, lol.
Because they don't think of themselves as the little guy. No matter how poor they are, they're always temporarily embarrassed millionaires.
Same... I have always known Trump to be an idiot... literally the stereotypical kid whose Dad is ashamed of because he decided to clown around and never accomplished anything given all the opportunities
I think people are reacting mainly emotionally (i.e. "I feel that this person can be trusted") rather than doing any meaningful level of political analysis and that the attraction of many for confident loudmouth politicians is in part a reaction to a couple of decades of being swindled by soft speaking slippery suits on both sides of the isle.
(Politically Aware people - which I imagine most of us here are - tend to expect from others similar levels of being well informed about Politics and thinking it to be important, when in reality most people do not think, care or are as well informed about politics anywhere as much as the Politically Aware)
These things come in cycles and we're back in the age when people are over-saturated with the "sophisticated misdirection and half-truth deceiver" type of swindler whilst not being innured to the "loud and brash liar" type of swindler, because the last couple of decades have been dominated in politics by the former kind of manipulator whilst the last time the latter type was dominant was almost a century ago.
That's my theory.
I also don’t see how anyone could possibly feel like they trust this guy. He has a long history as a real estate grifter tax evader, and a reputation for stiffing contractors. If you ever listen to him speak, it shouldn’t take more than a couple sentences to realize it’s all BS. There’s literally decades of news article on him being a con man Plus, doesn’t anyone remember his disaster of a first term?
I reckon some people are naive to that specific kind of scammer, others are stupid, yet others don't trust the sources of that information that he's a "real estate grifter tax evader, and a reputation for stiffing contractors" and some might even think "yeah, but he won't do it to us" - so a mix of stupidity and wishful thinking.
As the saying goes (in reverse order) "You can't deceive everybody all of the time but you can deceive some people all of the time or all people some of the time".
I mean, even in real estate his grifter's grift was still working so there were still people falling for it.
Even back then I wondered how his con line still worked. But I suppose once you believe he’s a billionaire, all bets are off. But in the political realm, you have his disaster of a first term, two failed runs for president, and 30 years of headlines about him being a con man. You have very memorable headlines about gold toilets and bankrupting a casino, twice. To balance that off the only thing casting him in a positive light is the TV show he funded for exactly that purpose
Just because you and I are starting from the assumption that those headlines are true, doesn't mean Trump supporters start from the same assumptions.
Judging by political discussions I've had with some people (though not related to Trump), people commonly judge political leaders based on how they feel about them, i.e. the impression they have of them, and that feeds in to trusting or not what they say and what is said about them, all of which would explain why the sterotypical loudmoth populist who talks confidently has been historically very successful.
Judging by what I see even withing the small leftwing political party I'm a member of in my own country, even supposedly thinking people (i.e. well educated types) have a strong confirmation bias for the words of leaders they "feel" are trustworthy and against criticism of them, though the stereotype of leader that best works at making those specific people feel thus is different from the brash loudmouth sterotype of Trump.
Zooming back to Trump and the US, I would say that people who still support him have a strong feeling that he's a good leader and that feds into a heavy bias to trust his words and distrust the criticism that appears of him as politically motivated attacks.
I would even go as far as saying that in a World were most authoritative common sources (i.e the Press, many of whom often overtly gloat of being "Opinion Makers") take political sides and hence aren't implicitly trustworthy, I expect this mechanism of anchoring one's trust on an individual that feels right is much more commonly used than it would have been in a Media environment were the Press didn't take sides and tried to shape opinion.
IMHO, Trump and others like him are a symptom of the Press having been increasingly used for Propaganda in the last couple of decades (though there are other effects at play) and hence why you see such types have more success in countries were the Press has longer and deeper taken political sides.
He is an open mysiginist and racist and the large number of closeted bigots in the US love him for it.
Except at this point, they are not even closeted anymore.
A major reason for the vehement support the right receives is trying to control what people can say.
The left has itself to blame for its overreaching censorship in online spaces for why so many people feel more comfortable being part of the right.
You can't just tell the "average joe" that a man is a woman and vice-versa, then ban him for saying otherwise and expect him to stay on your side.
Can you explain what you mean with "censorship in online spaces from the left"? As far as I know, most of our digital infrastructure is in the hand of MAGA right wing billionaires (X, Facebook, Instagram) and other people who are not really known as left (Reddit, TikTok, Google/YouTube). Most of our big social networks are not doing any left wing censorship. YouTube will demonitize you when you swear enough, because advertisers don't like that. Musk will censor you when you disagree with his politics. Trump will fire you if you mention certain words. But that is right wing censorship. So where are those spaces where the left is censoring everything that are pushing people to vote for the right?
You think everyone is a transphobic bigot and that's what swayed the vote?
There's no helping people like you.
Yeah, I rest my case.
Keep doing your part to try and control what people think while expecting them to join your side.
I think you're right but no one wants to hear it. Everyone's extremely polarized and people seem to be happy to point the finger and say "you voted wrong" with smug arrogance. I bet a lot of Trump voters felt like they didn't have a better choice.