Trump supporters

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 Darron 29 Nov 2020

For a brief dip into the mindset of some Trump supporters please do Google ‘The best of Jordan Klepper & Trump supporters’.

Simply breathtaking.

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 jon 29 Nov 2020
In reply to Darron:

Thanks!

 Derry 29 Nov 2020
In reply to Darron:

Oh he's great. I've been watching his clips on Trevor Noahs Daily Show for a while now. Ramped up heavily over the past two months. People will be looking back on that in 4 years time thinking 'was it all really that stupid?'

Removed User 29 Nov 2020
In reply to Darron:

It's great stuff. I wonder if conservatives have an equivalent, of Tucker Carlson interviewing Biden supporters as they ignorantly expose themselves to be misinformed Republicans?

I love all the anti-socialist stuff that equates socialism to communism. I'm on a tactical gun nut site as well, and it's fun when the dumber ones rail against socialism because of health care etc then to inform them that for the last decade the Scandinavians, Australians, Dutch, Brits etc the US has fought with in the coalitions are then commies by those standards, and it's a f*cking insult to them to be equated with communism. Morons.

1
 henwardian 29 Nov 2020
In reply to Darron:

It's really interesting to see peoples reactions in these videos. It is almost invariably "I believe X", then X is shown to be either non-sensical or false or whatever and you can see the gears turning and the panic setting in. And the next stage is either to stick completely rigidly with the original belief or try to throw off the interviewer with an even more extreme belief. 

My question would be, oh readers of UKC, do you honestly think you would fare any better at defending your beliefs if a professional journalist shoved a mic in your face when you weren't expecting it and suddenly launched into a debate with you?

Crazy beliefs aside, I'm not sure I would do very well and I strongly suspect that if you took the weakest 10 seconds from a 10 minute back-and-forth, I would look like a prize idiot.

Wow, I'm defending Trump supporters... the inner troll must be more than stirring!

OP Darron 29 Nov 2020
In reply to henwardian:

I know it’s for a satirical programme, it’s clever editing and a skilled performer. But.......surely there is enough there actually verbatim to make you indulge in some WTF type response?

 henwardian 30 Nov 2020
In reply to Darron:

> I know it’s for a satirical programme, it’s clever editing and a skilled performer. But.......surely there is enough there actually verbatim to make you indulge in some WTF type response?

There are lots of other posters for that

I had actually seen quite a bit of it before. I chuckle but deep down inside, I look at the election of Trump, the vote for Brexit, the proliferation of racism and extremism, etc etc and, well, it's hard to make an argument that we are worth fighting for much less saving. I guess if you take the point of view that life is pointless and meaningless then maybe we are not so bad because nothing we do matters.

1
Removed User 30 Nov 2020
In reply to henwardian:

> It's really interesting to see peoples reactions in these videos. It is almost invariably "I believe X", then X is shown to be either non-sensical or false or whatever and you can see the gears turning and the panic setting in. And the next stage is either to stick completely rigidly with the original belief or try to throw off the interviewer with an even more extreme belief. 

It's an established method of low quality debate that turns things emotive rapidly, the idea is questioner will just walk off and the doubling down idiot can claim that as a win. The left ahs it's version of it too, in competitive shaming.

> My question would be, oh readers of UKC, do you honestly think you would fare any better at defending your beliefs if a professional journalist shoved a mic in your face when you weren't expecting it and suddenly launched into a debate with you?

If your views are linear and not based on memorizing webs of memes and lies you'll do ok. The people in these videos are funny because they are not thinking, they are trying to read a script that Klepper keeps dismantling. These people are probably fine on other subjects that are not shown, but here we see some pillars of the Trump mentality are no more than 10 second tweets. None of these people are talking with duress (though some of their friends don't want to speak), these people are guilty of owning ideas that have no substance.

> Crazy beliefs aside, I'm not sure I would do very well and I strongly suspect that if you took the weakest 10 seconds from a 10 minute back-and-forth, I would look like a prize idiot.

Perhaps, but these people say some stunningly stupid stuff. Klepper is sharp at getting it out of them, but he doesn't back them into logical corners, he allows them to freely arrive at their statements. It's not the old 'Do you still beat your wife?' stuff.

> Wow, I'm defending Trump supporters... the inner troll must be more than stirring!

What gits me is how most of these mislead nitwits seem like really nice people. None appear as evil Proud Boys or skin heads. I think if you infiltrated a liberal scene and started poking people like this it might now be as funny.

 Pete Pozman 30 Nov 2020
In reply to henwardian:

> Wow, I'm defending Trump supporters... the inner troll must be more than stirring!

Correct!   Have you ever tried to argue with a trump supporter? It really is just another cult. Only direct experience can change their opinions. But even then the dyed in cultists would rather burn than change.

The only reasoned argument in favour of trump I've heard was from a banker who explained that trump was making him rich. 

2
 Offwidth 30 Nov 2020
In reply to Pete Pozman:

Trump had a majority again with white male college graduates. Normal GOP voters pretty solidly backed him. The idea Trump voters are all dim is plain deluded.

https://www.brookings.edu/research/2020-exit-polls-show-a-scrambling-of-dem...

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 henwardian 30 Nov 2020
In reply to Offwidth:

> Trump had a majority again with white male college graduates. Normal GOP voters pretty solidly backed him. The idea Trump voters are all dim is plain deluded.

I think what you are missing here is that "vote GOP" and "Trump supporter" may well not be at all the same thing psychologically. I'd love to know how many of Trump's votes were for him personally and what the percentage demographics started to look like if you were able to ask republican voters to pick either some middle-of-the-road republican or Trump.

I'm sure many people voted republican because that's what they always do and many more because republican party ideals fit with their ideals. Consider how many people were said to have held their noses and voted for labour despite Corbyn personally not being at all their cup of tea.

Post edited at 09:51
 henwardian 30 Nov 2020
In reply to Removed Userwaitout:

> It's an established method of low quality debate that turns things emotive rapidly, 

Yeah, and it's hardly helped by the huge mismatch in debating skills of the interviewer and interviewee. 

> If your views are linear and not based on memorizing webs of memes and lies you'll do ok.

Dunno about that. I think you'd be at Dunning-Kreuger risk if you think you'd do fine in a media interview without having any training or experience in one.

> Perhaps, but these people say some stunningly stupid stuff. Klepper is sharp at getting it out of them, but he doesn't back them into logical corners, he allows them to freely arrive at their statements.

Haha, I think I'd say "gives them enough rope to hang themselves with" if I was to characterise his style!

> What gits me is how most of these mislead nitwits seem like really nice people. None appear as evil Proud Boys or skin heads. I think if you infiltrated a liberal scene and started poking people like this it might now be as funny.

You know that republicans have won the popular majority only once since Reagan was in office? There is an effort that has got some way in the USA to circumvent the electorial college and go with the popular vote (essentially states sign up to a law which says they will appoint electors based on the popular vote result, not their individual state's result), couple that with the democratic core demographics all rising in number and the republican ones all falling and maybe we can all look forward to less right-wing America in the future. There, that's my happy thought for the day, do with it as you will

1
 Offwidth 30 Nov 2020
In reply to henwardian:

GOP voters chose Trump to be a candidate and they stuck by him. If you talk to actual Republican voters they are not normally stupid or monsters, they just believe in Republican ideals and don't want the alternative.

We should be careful with those stones in our greenhouse... we gave Boris and his popularism a massive majority under FPTP and in the EU right wing popularism is still doing well.

Unexpected events tend to show up the real dangers of these flawed popularist leaders. Covid seriously damaged Boris and his political brand supporters. Yet Trump still came close in that election despite the worst pandemic leadership response in the western world. Less than 0.5% in a few key swing states (a smaller gap than the Libertarian candidate for President polled).

 henwardian 30 Nov 2020
In reply to Offwidth:

> GOP voters chose Trump to be a candidate and they stuck by him. If you talk to actual Republican voters they are not normally stupid or monsters, they just believe in Republican ideals and don't want the alternative.

I don't know enough about the primaries system to pass comment. I agree with your latter point, that was pretty much what I was saying above, what I find it hard to reconcile is normal, sensible, reasonable people picking Trump as their candidate.

> We should be careful with those stones in our greenhouse... we gave Boris and his popularism a massive majority under FPTP and in the EU right wing popularism is still doing well.

Oh no, you have me all wrong. I'm not lauding our solution, our country direction, our leader, our majority party or, frankly pretty much anything else political here! I do think the AMS system we have plumped for in Scotland has some promise though. And I do prefer the prime minister approach as he/she really does have to rule with agreement of parliament, there is no executive order this and that and when it is past time for the leader to be replaced or they do something really terrible, they can be removed in a fairly straightforward manner.

 Offwidth 30 Nov 2020
In reply to henwardian:

Go to the US and talk to people. The climbing and walking is great out there.

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 henwardian 30 Nov 2020
In reply to Offwidth:

> Go to the US and talk to people. The climbing and walking is great out there.

I've been several times. Done some climbing, done loads of walking, loads of cycling and mountain biking, been to the woods to shoot guns been to the city centres to nearly get mugged, spoken to the paranoid, insane cops, stayed in an.... animal protection commune/squat?? chilled with the young groovy folks in California, spent time with the folk working 3 jobs just to afford to stay in a hostel...

It's been a few years since I was last there though so I can't really say I understand for sure how Trump fits into all those places. I keep meaning to take the van there and do a mega climbing trip but there are so many places to go climbing and so little time!

 Jamie Wakeham 30 Nov 2020
In reply to Darron:

Did you see the reaction a few years ago to a radio station tweeting the Declaration of Independence? Apparently they'd read it out every 4th of July, and decided to tweet it instead. Trump supporters simply didn't recognise the text - yes, that's the same 1400 words of text they wave their rifles around saying they will die to defend - and thought it was communist propaganda. That's the lack of self analysis you're dealing with... 

You'd have thought the first few lines at least were catchy enough.

1
 henwardian 30 Nov 2020
In reply to Jamie Wakeham:

> the Declaration of Independence?

I just had a skim and by god that is a hell of a long-winded way of saying "We don't like the way we have been treated by the king of England so we are going to declare independence". I mean, I'm pretty sure I covered all 1400 words of it in 21 words right there!

cb294 30 Nov 2020
In reply to Jamie Wakeham:

That stunt is pulled on the media every year, works a treat every time, no improvement in sight....

It also goes back a while. When I was at high school in a reasonably well off suburb of Seattle back in 1985/86 I had a liberal history teacher who quoted some bits of the DoI in a test at the beginning of term (including the famous opening lines), asking the students what the original source may be.

The majority of my classmates opted for "Communist Manifesto". He than had a right go at the class, pointing out that all four foreign students in the class had got it right, presumably because they had actually read both the DoI and the CM at some point during their school education.

CB

 fred99 30 Nov 2020
In reply to Offwidth:

> Trump had a majority again with white male college graduates. Normal GOP voters pretty solidly backed him. The idea Trump voters are all dim is plain deluded.

You mustn't confuse education (or even intelligence) with common sense.

I have known a number of highly educated persons that worked for the government at Malvern RSRE, which then became Quinetic. These were physicists, electronic "whizzes", mathematicians etc., not uneducated labourers. A fair number of these people were, to put it bluntly, barking mad. If they hadn't had the job they did, they would have been locked up for their own safety.

 Rob Exile Ward 30 Nov 2020
In reply to fred99:

Ha! Was that your part of the world as well? 

 redjerry 30 Nov 2020
In reply to Offwidth:

" they just believe in Republican ideals and don't want the alternative"

How would you summarize Republican ideals? 

 henwardian 30 Nov 2020
In reply to redjerry:

> How would you summarize Republican ideals? 

Every man for himself. Those who fall behind get left behind. There is nothing government can do better than the private sector. Take what you can, give nothing back.

Intact I've just realised that Republican ideals are personified in a certain famous pirate  

1
 redjerry 30 Nov 2020
In reply to henwardian:

I don't know what Offwidth thinks "Republican Ideals" are, but I would strongly dispute your interpretation above. 
I would say that the neoliberal/social darwinism viewpoint is a significant motivator for only a tiny fraction of republican voters.
Something borne out by numerous studies.

Removed User 30 Nov 2020
In reply to henwardian:

> Every man for himself. Those who fall behind get left behind. There is nothing government can do better than the private sector. Take what you can, give nothing back.

That might sum it up, but remember this, that those ideals are predominantly held by people who have nothing which makes an interesting juxtaposition to their British working class counterparts.

 henwardian 30 Nov 2020
In reply to redjerry:

Ok then, a slightly more adult response:

I think the republican viewpoint is based on:

- The American dream - anyone can make it, they just have to work hard.

- Low taxes and small "g" government - you pay for what you want and need, being forced to pay for someone else's needs is communism. If you don't have enough money for something (or no money) then you didn't work hard enough to deserve that thing (see point above). Also, taxation is theft.

- fortress America - the USA is the greatest country in the world, so therefore everyone else is trying to get in and it is important that that is stopped (to keep it the greatest country in the world).

- God - he is the boss, he has the final word and his word is the bible and therefore you'd want to be very inflexible on abortion, same sex relationships, etc. etc.

- Authoritarianism - rules are absolute, you follow them without question. Same goes for authority figures.

- Freedom - You are free to do whatever you want on your property or with your things.

(I'm definitely missing something as those last two seem pretty difficult to simultaneously embrace without a fair degree of cognitive dissonance).

Did I do any better? Want to recommend me a site to brush up on my knowledge?

 redjerry 30 Nov 2020
In reply to henwardian:

The majority of Republican voters are primarily motivated by identity. National, racial, religious, sexual etc. 
If something good has come out of the Trump era it's that it has made it crystal clear that for the party, the only republican "ideals" are entrenching their political power, deregulation and as regressive a tax system as they can get away with.
It's been a beautiful game for the Republican politicians. All you have to do is make the right noises/catwhistles/codewords and you get the allegiance of a huge swath of voters without any real need to produce legislation that addresses their priorities. Even when they have to throw the great unwashed a bone (think Trumps Muslim ban) it's usually so blatently unconstitutional that even an ultra-conservative supreme court can't stomach it. Then, it's back to the real business of tax cuts and pillaging public assets.

1
 Offwidth 01 Dec 2020
In reply to redjerry:

Pretty much the range you would see on Wikipedia search.

Edit: I've just seen your later post... I see you seem to have strong convictions on the subject (like a few too many Republicans) and as someone famous one said, convictions are a bigger enemy of the truth than lies.

Post edited at 00:22
2
 redjerry 01 Dec 2020
In reply to Offwidth:

pretty funny. I thought I'd humor you and do a wikepedia search.
"The page "Republican ideals" does not exist."

The bigger enemy of the truth is BBC style false equivalence.

Post edited at 01:04
Removed User 01 Dec 2020
In reply to redjerry:

Another Republican mantra might also be:

better dead than red.......................jerry

 Offwidth 01 Dec 2020
In reply to redjerry:

Really? Just a couple I got from a search of "Republican ideals wikipedia" (there are many more pages if you refine things).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republicanism_in_the_United_States

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Factions_in_the_Republican_Party_(United_Stat...

Irrespective of the damage the party has done in the US, and how much I disagree with most of their ideology, and how much I hate Trumpism, I refuse to demonise a significant proportion of Republican voters I met who were basically good people, in the tradition of Lincoln.

1
 Offwidth 01 Dec 2020
In reply to Removed User:

Their attitude of most towards socialism is indeed depressing, let alone things like communism. 

1
 redjerry 01 Dec 2020
In reply to Offwidth:

If you think that republicans actually believe, quite literally, almost any of the "ideals" that you will find on those pages then I've got some land in Florida to sell you. 
Here's the thing. It's easy to talk about how much you value democracy and freedom. But when the party you support actively works to, for example, restrict the voting rights of large groups within the population, out of pure political expediency, then all that talk is just pure BS. 
If turning a blind eye to that is your version of the high road, fine. For me, the high road involves being honest about the realities of who the republican party actually is at this moment in time. 

 Offwidth 01 Dec 2020
In reply to redjerry:

I thought we were talking about ordinary voters here, not political theorists. Most of them were working long hours and spending most free time with family, exercising or helping the local community. Because of the way news media works in the US most people I've talked to were are very well informed on local issues but poorly informed on most national news. 

2
Removed User 01 Dec 2020
In reply to henwardian:

> Dunno about that. I think you'd be at Dunning-Kreuger risk if you think you'd do fine in a media interview without having any training or experience in one.

One may not perform, but having logical thoughts to go with sane ideas would result in more being boring than some of the crack pot stuff presented here.

> You know that republicans have won the popular majority only once since Reagan was in office? There is an effort that has got some way in the USA to circumvent the electorial college and go with the popular vote (essentially states sign up to a law which says they will appoint electors based on the popular vote result, not their individual state's result), couple that with the democratic core demographics all rising in number and the republican ones all falling and maybe we can all look forward to less right-wing America in the future. There, that's my happy thought for the day, do with it as you will

Yes, apparently quite a few states already signed up for the idea.

I felt uncomfortable cheering the Biden horse on a month back, due to it being that stupid college system. It's worth having a look at the few other countries that use versions of it, paints it's own picture.

1
 elsewhere 01 Dec 2020
In reply to Removed Userwaitout:

Does the electoral college makes the system potentially far easier to manipulate by voter suppression, social media influence or foreign interference (eg Russia hacks Clinton email)?

Biden got 6 million more votes than Trump so you'd need to exclude or manipulate more than 6 million voters to change the result of the popular vote.

The electoral college was determined by a few marginal states where as few as 10,000 votes out of millions decided the state as 100% Biden or 100% Trump in the electoral college. You might be able to flip the electoral college result by manipulating seventy thousand voters to reverse Biden's winning margin in a few key states with the close results. A hundred times easier to manipulate?

For example manipulating or excluding 16k votes in Arizona, 13k votes in Georgia, 20k votes in Wisconsin and 19k votes in Pennsylvania would make those states Trump victories and tip the electoral college to a Trump re-election.

Basically targeted voter exclusion of 70,000 people does the trick. In reality you'd need to exclude (or manipulate) more voters as targeting is imperfect.

Post edited at 12:23
 Offwidth 01 Dec 2020
In reply to elsewhere:

6.24 million already and growing... they are still counting the last 1% in some states.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_United_States_presidential_election

Of course in the UK we can hardly crow given the PM is also determined by a small proportion of the electorate in marginal seats.

Post edited at 15:05
 Offwidth 01 Dec 2020
In reply to elsewhere:

Just spotted a terrible examples of inadvertant criminailty due to the complexity of voter registration.... from the Guardian live US covid response feed.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/live/2020/dec/01/us-election-2020-joe-b...

"Sam Levine

Crystal Mason, the Black woman sentenced to five years in prison for unknowingly voting illegally in 2016, is asking Texas’ highest criminal court to overturn her conviction.

The new filing late Monday evening is the latest in a case that has attracted national attention and has been highlighted by many as an egregious example of voter suppression.

The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals has discretion over whether or not to take the case or not. Mason has been out of prison on an appeal bond since 2018 as her case makes it way through the courts.

In 2016, Mason was on supervised release, which is similar to probation, for a federal tax felony but no one told her she was ineligible to vote. Even though the officials supervising her at the time testified they did not tell Mason she was ineligible to vote, a Texas appeals court ruled earlier this year her lack of knowledge “was irrelevant to her prosecution.” In their Monday filing, Mason’s lawyers take issue with that finding, noting that Texas law says someone has to “know” they are ineligible to vote and do so anyway to commit a crime.

When Mason showed up at the polls in 2016, a student poll worker offered her a provisional ballot because she wasn’t on the voter rolls, something he was required to do under federal law. Mason filled out the ballot, submitted it, and it wasn’t ultimately counted. Mason’s lawyers say that because her vote was ultimately rejected, she didn’t actually vote, but the lower appeals court earlier this year disagreed.

Since 2014, at least 12,668 provisional ballots have been cast in Tarrant county, where Mason lives in Texas. More than 11,000 of them were rejected. Mason appears to be the only person who had a provisional ballot rejected and was prosecuted."

Roadrunner6 01 Dec 2020
In reply to henwardian:

I think it can be even simpler than that. At times the Dems are too progressive for the bulk of the US. Many are quite happy and don't want big change, they just want to keep things as they are. Its easy to say the republicans are largely white racists but that's not true, many immigrants tend towards conservative views. Look at Cubans in Florida (complicated by the Cuban policy). But hispanics are largely catholics and tend to be fairly conservative.

Bernie and a few others pushed 'socialism' when they didn't mean socialism. The defund the police was also really bad messaging. It just was not well explained and the use of the term 'defund' played into the republican law and order message (which we know is bullshit).

The health industry/economy would be hit massively if we went medicare for all. Many do like their healthcare. I think a more moderate republican would win pretty convincingly but Biden was able to claim that ground and at the same time the progressives backed him having seen the damage Trump did. The problem is, like with the tories, the hard right have a stranglehold on the party.

Trump/Brexit/Boris are all the same. They've convinced people that its all the immigrants faults and if we look after our own we will be OK, when in reality automation will continue to take jobs. Look at Amazon and the growth of deliveries, that industry will increasingly be automated over the next 10-20 years. 

Removed User 01 Dec 2020
In reply to elsewhere:

> Does the electoral college makes the system potentially far easier to manipulate by voter suppression, social media influence or foreign interference (eg Russia hacks Clinton email)?

> Biden got 6 million more votes than Trump so you'd need to exclude or manipulate more than 6 million voters to change the result of the popular vote.

> The electoral college was determined by a few marginal states where as few as 10,000 votes out of millions decided the state as 100% Biden or 100% Trump in the electoral college. You might be able to flip the electoral college result by manipulating seventy thousand voters to reverse Biden's winning margin in a few key states with the close results. A hundred times easier to manipulate?

> For example manipulating or excluding 16k votes in Arizona, 13k votes in Georgia, 20k votes in Wisconsin and 19k votes in Pennsylvania would make those states Trump victories and tip the electoral college to a Trump re-election.

> Basically targeted voter exclusion of 70,000 people does the trick. In reality you'd need to exclude (or manipulate) more voters as targeting is imperfect.

Good post and thanks for presenting the numbers.

The college was initiated to herd and exclude voters. What stuns me is where it is today one can accurately pin point the people who's votes simply didn't matter, those who if they'd not shown up at all would have made no difference to the outcomes because the local sway was pre-determined. Political Calvinism they say, and have said for a long time.

It's telling that when Uncle Sam goes about trying to push democracy on others it's never the college version they go with.

Removed User 01 Dec 2020
In reply to Offwidth:

> Their attitude of most towards socialism is indeed depressing, let alone things like communism. 

I fly off the handle regularly with this.

I work with many US folk who are right leaning, not really Trump types, but guns, flags and paranoid, and the half-baked bullshit they spout about socialism and communism as a way to define their own hazy position really f*cking annoys me.

I was born in a western democratic socialist country and have lived in and visited multiple others. I've also spent a lot of time in communist countries, and been to the US, and what  people spout as anti-socialist rhetoric is simply bullshit. 

I find it insulting, as do my Dutch, Scandinavian, Japanese, Australian and Canadian friends that we are equated with communism - especially as we have unfailing stepped up to fight alongside the US every time they go off to fight authoritarianism. The rhetoric is they hate socialism because it's communism, but they will happily take our support and risk our people when it suits them. Plenty of socialists have shed blood fighting communism, many because it was right next door.

There is bad communism, but associating democratic socialism with it is another level of ignorance that only a brainwashed acolyte who's never seen either could make. It insults those of us who are and it ignores the rebranded socialist systems the US has like a massive military, leveraged police forces, entire sector bail outs and subsidized agriculture.

Post edited at 23:45
Roadrunner6 02 Dec 2020
In reply to Removed Userwaitout:

"and it ignores the rebranded socialist systems the US has like a massive military, leveraged police forces, entire sector bail outs and subsidized agriculture."

This.. they simply ignore that the US has massive socialist systems. They will get massively offended if you point this out. It's just a very lazy understanding many have.  

Post edited at 00:35
Removed User 02 Dec 2020
In reply to Roadrunner6:

It was amazing to watch the outcry from the right when defunding (whatever that actually may mean) the police.

An over-sized state security force with minimal accountability and pseudo military powers is one of the hallmarks of a communist system. 

One of the differences i see is that the US egalitarianism means anyone can aspire to being in the state-run marshal class, not just the social elites like under the USSR, which is almost more communist in a way.

 redjerry 02 Dec 2020
In reply to Removed Userwaitout:

Check this one out. A police department targeting a black community to fund municipal operations. 

https://www.justice.gov/sites/default/files/opa/press-releases/attachments/...

Roadrunner6 02 Dec 2020
In reply to Removed Userwaitout:

There was a really funny clip on the liberal red neck's page about Southern Red Necks suddenly being all pro-police.

The 2nd Amendment lobby should have been furious with the excessive police force being used over the summer. It was exactly the sort of tyrannical government they are meant to stand up against. 

Removed User 02 Dec 2020
In reply to Roadrunner6 & redjerry;

Yes the hypocrisy and blind spots in whole scenario make it easy to see how those interviewed in the OP's links arise.

Several weeks ago in the lead up to the election I got embroiled in an argument in a respectable community that includes companies people on this site will recognize, over the killing of the two police in LA. Straight away seemingly sane people linked it to an Antifa war on citizens rights to take down law & order and when I questioned it (through zero insight other than common sense) was rebuked with how they saw it for what it really was and I was in on the cop killing conspiracy. Sure enough a week later they caught the guy, a meth head.

Point being, I wonder if this love of paramilitary style police is a mechanism for the alt right to side against the 'leftist agenda' they are so scared of, whatever it is. All those things like restricted abortion rights, heavy drug penalties and teaching twisted forms of science are pillars of Stalinism just as heavy policing is, it's bizarre that they advocate it.

 Offwidth 02 Dec 2020
In reply to Removed Userwaitout:

It all depends on who you mean by 'they'. There are some seriously nasty Republican poiticians and wealthy lobby groups and GOP has sold itself down the river rather than oppose them.  Yet in my experience of seemingly well informed ordinary Republican voting citizens in the US SW (from about 40 multi-week holiday visits), they often oppose anti-abortion activists, nearly always opposed the distortion of science education based on religious dogma and sometimes even the 'war on drugs'. They were often passionate on environmental issues.  They all argued tax and regulation are necessary but currently too onerous.  I always regarded blanket labelling of people based on voting preferences as incredibly dangerous, so was probably more open than most to listen, but even I was surprised that ordinary Democrat and Republican voters I met usually seemed to have more in common than what divided them. Sometimes in bad way...some democrat voters were highly suspicious of 'socialism' as well and one got very defensive when I talked about the huge costs of national healthcare, disparity in outcomes, and corporate abuses in the US health system compared to the EU (like I had insulted his country).

If you watch intimate views inside american sub-groups, like those on view on Louis Theroux and Ed Balls shows, even the Republican extremists can have a human edge despite some crackpot political and religious views.

Roadrunner6 02 Dec 2020
In reply to Offwidth:

> If you watch intimate views inside american sub-groups, like those on view on Louis Theroux and Ed Balls shows, even the Republican extremists can have a human edge despite some crackpot political and religious views.

I struggle with this. I've a few friends who I genuinely like yet post crackpot shit, but I honestly believe they are fundamentally decent people. A few have unfriended me on facebook once they realized I was a liberal. But others it's something that I fight over myself, I know families who have the same conflict.

OP Darron 02 Dec 2020
In reply to Darron:

To what extent does a partisan media have in all this? Obviously I’m thinking, in particular, of Fox News. It seems to me that Hannity, Carlson and O’Reilly (now elsewhere of course) are bats**t crazy and will say anything to promote the causes of the far right. It’s particularly worrying as Murdoch has just got a licence to launch similar in the UK ( and others want to do the same). Fox has huge reach.

Decent people who are socially conservative end up believing in stupid things because of the ‘daily feed’? 

Removed User 03 Dec 2020
In reply to Offwidth:

> It all depends on who you mean by 'they'.

Yes very much so, and in the US 'they' is very diverse. Friends who are across the spectrum of conservative-liberal and right into the fringes can have the same thoughts on gun ownership, weed and taxes.

I actually think it's outside the US more than is hardwired into binary ideas about con vs lib. Though small, various forms of Libertarianism and Independants connect the circle so opposites meet in the US and have a not-insignificant face in the game. They don't win anything but are enough to sway things, Bernie and Ventura being good examples.

> If you watch intimate views inside american sub-groups, like those on view on Louis Theroux and Ed Balls shows, even the Republican extremists can have a human edge despite some crackpot political and religious views.

Agreed, I don't know Ball very well but Theroux showing the US like Attenborough does primates is good stuff.

Personally, though I find Klepper entertaining, he is the problem as much as Alex Jones is, being exactly what the Right mean when they foist their ideas of fake news and shallow hipster propaganda. Beyond the Starbuck's delivery there's not much substance yet people invest in him considerable gravity, though his interviews with liberals show him more as a standard reporter than anything interesting. His agenda is entertainment, not political insight.

Defining people by their voting choices is fraught, and any serious political theorist knows and accepts that - but what is popularly called politics isn't that. Modern politics is the process of defining peoples politics for them so they slot right into what a party offers, and all sides are doing it. 'Think this that and the other? Well have we got the party for you!'

 Enty 03 Dec 2020
In reply to Darron:

I'm having a shocker on Facebook. One of my hero black house DJs from Chicago who I've been following since 1988 has gone all Trump. Everyday he posts examples of court cases, re-counts etc etc and he's still convinced Trump will be president.
It's mental - and extremely sad

E

 Philb1950 03 Dec 2020
In reply to Darron:

You have displayed your own political bias with this reply. What about NYT for constantly and not always truthfully pushing a liberal woke agenda, as opposed to Fox at the other end of the spectrum. Decent people of a conservative leaning are not always believing a “stupid“ daily feed any more than you. I can’t stand Trump, but I have relatives in California who run a multi million dollar real estate business who like Trump because of his fiscal policies and are also scared of  BLM,s avowed political intentions to end capitalism. 

7
OP Darron 03 Dec 2020
In reply to Philb1950:

Yes, I have revealed a bias - I’m a liberal.

I fully agree with you about decent conservative people. Do you really equate the NYT in terms of the stuff the Hannity et al come out with? Still insisting the election was rigged despite evidence. Would the NYT do that?

Hannity has appeared at a Trump rally. My real concern is what may happen in the UK. Imagine if Kuenssberg, Boulton, or Peston did that.

 redjerry 03 Dec 2020
In reply to Philb1950:

"What about NYT for constantly and not always truthfully pushing a liberal woke agenda, as opposed to Fox at the other end of the spectrum"
Textbook false equivalence...well done.

Roadrunner6 03 Dec 2020
In reply to redjerry:

Yeah Trump will often cite the NYT when it suits him.. 

The great thing is hearing free market, pro free speech republicans demand the NYT report what they want.. There was also a guy on conservative talk media yesterday demanding viewers call in the FCC and not renew licenses for CNN etc.. and then they rail against the left's cancel culture.

 redjerry 03 Dec 2020
In reply to Roadrunner6:

As I mentioned upthread, you're missing the point if you're looking for coherence/intellectual honesty in those places. There's a very good reason why so many conservative arguments are so paper thin.
What motivates a huge chunk of conservative voters is identity...national, racial, religious, sexual etc. The policy details aren't what matters.
BTW: the decent people thing is pure straw man fallacy.
 

1
 Offwidth 03 Dec 2020
In reply to redjerry:

Treating people based on their face-to-face humanity rather than their occasional daft political posting is a strawman? That'll be those rigid convictions again. I'm not saying if push came to shove some wouldn't let you down but it's easy to get fooled by bullshit if you live in a Republican US bubble and a lot harder to consistently pretend to have a kind nature.

1
 redjerry 03 Dec 2020
In reply to Offwidth:

No, the straw man is making the focus of the argument about whether Trump voters are decent people or not. I'm not interested in that one way or the other. It's irrelevant.

In reply to redjerry:

It's not exactly news, is it? The US has a great many morons, as all nations do. The difference is that its morons are more entitled than other nations.

jcm

 Offwidth 04 Dec 2020
In reply to redjerry:

You're as bad as the gun toting maga hicks with your simplistic labels and without their excuse of being ignorant of the wider politics.

1
 Jonny 04 Dec 2020
In reply to Darron:

Meh. Just more laughing at averagely uninformed people being about as tribal as anyone else. Even then, it's Klepper who is being obtuse with the t-shirt man and his dates—the whole enterprise was a bit uncharitable, and there's a sense of (non-covid-related) social distancing that is unflattering. This is not what 'talking to the other side' looks like. It also doesn't have to be—it's comedy, so whatever people find funny is fine by me.

I agree with much of where the above discussion has gone: the taboo against 'socialism' and progressive taxation is unproductive and self-harming for most (and self-servingly lucrative for others), and conspiratorial thinking is common (although that's as common on the left as it is on the right, according to those who study these things).

As for the decency question, I think Haidt's moral foundations have much to say on this (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_foundations_theory#Political_ideology ). Republicans and Democrats simply differ on their weighting of Care/Harm, Fairness/Cheating, Loyalty/Betrayal, Authority/Subversion, Sanctity/Degradation, and Liberty/Oppression. They are all 'moral' foundations, as the theory's name suggests, and their bearers can be internally consistent to the same degree (at least potentially).

Certainly, most voters have more ballast and inertia than might be preferable, such that few easily switch sides when a Trump comes up (or his Democratic equivalent). On the other hand, a lot of what we saw in the above video was Trump supporters treating him as a member of their family (see the loyalty-betrayal axis above). Just as they might compliment their son or daughter's crappy drawing, so it is with Mr. Trump and his tweets. A bit silly, but not beyond the pale.

 Offwidth 05 Dec 2020
In reply to Jonny:

Another clear example that some Republicans don't give a shit about public health:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/dec/05/new-jersey-investigates-repub...

From the article: "The president of the New York Young Republican Club, Gavin Wax, scoffed at the criticism online, saying the group had done nothing wrong. “We embrace life and living while you all cower in your pods worried about a disease with a 99%+ survivability rate,”"

The US has broken it's daily record for covid deaths three times this week.

 Jonny 05 Dec 2020
In reply to Offwidth:

I think it's fascinating the extent to which this has become a predictor of the new left-right divide (less so the 'old' one from just a few years ago).

In a dynamical systems analogy, the attractor basins have become very deep. It's fun to climb the separating peak (more of a ridge, really)—great views from up there. Some fantastic lines up the wall too.

 Offwidth 05 Dec 2020
In reply to Jonny:

They look a steep change in compact ideals...hooks and a hand drill down for belays.

 redjerry 05 Dec 2020
In reply to Jonny:

"Republicans and Democrats simply differ on their weighting of Care/Harm, Fairness/Cheating, Loyalty/Betrayal, Authority/Subversion, Sanctity/Degradation, and Liberty/Oppression."

Definitely agree that hardwired (to an extent) moral tendencies play a large part in political leaning.  The problem is, as I mention above (re: identity), that appealing to that aspect of our nature has become almost the exclusive pitch for the republican party. There's a long, ugly history that informs us where that type of approach to politics can lead in the long run, It's a dangerous game and we're lucky that Trump, as lazy, small-mindedly venal and disorganized as he is, was the first, full consequence.

Thats a pretty vanilla statement for something that can have drastic consequences, "simply" doesn't quite cover it.

Post edited at 15:37

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