I'm not sure Trumpism is about racism or any ism

[NCDem777]

Rather, I think it's about a hatred of the mere concept of society. It used to be that Republicans generally saw the need for things like environmental protection, anti-discrimination laws, shit like that. Hell, even Nixon had the idea of universal healthcare. They might not have gone as far as we'd have liked, but they admitted these things were valid.

But today not so much. While there are those who are against government purely for financial reasons, a lot of them just hate the idea that they can't do absolutely anything they want. The Republicans have been taken over by the prepper nitwits who have been dreaming of society collapsing into an every man for himself post-apocalypse hellscape since Y2K and have been actively working toward that aim. They dream of a world where no one's telling them they have to be considerate of other human beings and where they don't have to do anything that doesn't directly benefit them then and there.

The same world every 5-year-old dreamed of when he got his ass whooped for being a little shit.

It doesn't help that we've fetishized the whole "lone wolf going off into the wilderness" thing in our culture. We teach endlessly about the pioneers and the Wild West but we've deified them to such a degree that people legitimately want to go back to such days. But we never really taught about why those days left.

It wasn't because some government bureaucrat got bored, contrary to popular belief.

In short, we teach a lot about Daniel Boone and all them. But we don't talk a lot about the Donner Party. We don't talk a lot about the "rugged individualists" who didn't make it.

So what we're dealing with is not so much racism, sexism, etc. But people who genuinely hate society.

[elleng]

1. Seems like the 'society' thing may be part of it, due to bannon.

There are, imo, many reasons for those who support/ed trump to do so; I don't have a list with priorities.

[Squinch]

2. Nope. It's racism and sexism.

[obnoxiousdrunk]

3. +1. No window dressing.

[Squinch]

6. Lots of gyrations by many to come up with other things, but it's clear what these people are about.

And now they take no pains to hide it.

[ismnotwasm]

37. Exactly

All masks are off

[JTFrog]

5. Exactly. No excuses. nt

[Hortensis]

18. Political bigotry is just as real as those two.

And it goes both ways. It became huge on the right first, but thousands of these discussions on DU are revealing just how much hateful political bigotry is now poisoning the left also.

Conservatives are no more entirely defined by racism and sexism than blacks are defined by laziness and childish mentality.

We know the latter characterization is disgusting and a disgrace to utter. It's extremely important that we also recognize that political bigotry is every bit as hateful and shameful and even more potentially destructive. The survival of democracy itself depends on it.

[Squinch]

25. Ridiculous. Those who voted for Trump knew who he is. They knew he was a raging racist and a

serial molester of women.

By all accounts, the racism and sexism were primary draws for his voters. In a study of 2016 voters and how they voted, hatred for women was found to be THE greatest predictor of a vote for Trump.

A vote for Trump was an overt act of racism and sexism.

Your comparisons of conservatives and blacks is specious. "Conservative" describes what people DO not what they ARE. Conservatives are not born conservative. They actively choose conservativism. Lately that means they espouse every racist and sexist fallacy the conservative wing nuts choose to throw at them.

When I judge a conservative, I am not judging what they ARE, I am judging what they DO. That is not bigotry. That is observation. And boy howdy, don't we ALL observe them doing unimaginably horrible things every damn day.

Your phrase "political bigotry" is offensive against those affected by true bigotry. It's a ridiculous phrase. But if by it, you mean someone who draws conclusions based on the provable actions of Trump and the people who voted for him, so be it.

The survival of the democracy does NOT depend on our looking the other way about people's motives who have voted to put a racist and sexist in charge of our country. It DOES depend on our calling out that racism an sexism and not tolerating it.

[Cary]

31. Very true but human behavior is complex

Occam's Razor is about accepting the simplest solution to start, even if it's not the best possible answer. The racism and bigotry is the simplest answer and there is a lot of truth in it.

But you have to weave in stupidity, anti-intellectualism, denialism, oligarchs' greed, opportunsim, and plain old self-loathing.

Hey, half of the population has an IQ under 100. No one ever went broke under estimating the intelligence of the American people.

[uponit7771]

22. +1

[NewJeffCT]

23. I think it's a combination of things

Racism & Sexism for sure
but, also what the OP means

there are plenty of people who realize Trump is corrupt and weak, but are hoping he'll bring "change" to the country by breaking up Washington and getting us on a completely different path.

[Eliot Rosewater]

27. Yep

[kwassa]

4. It is about narcissism.

It is always about him, and it is never his fault.

[flamingdem]

7. It's about raw capitalism

No state borders, no morals

[Chitown Kev]

8. But the most self-professed so-called "moral people"

right-wing Christians voted for a man with no morals...

The irony has not escaped me...

[flamingdem]

11. whose sidekick is a Leninist

with a drinking problem and a desire to sew chaos .. Bannon is a charmer

[Chitown Kev]

17. Heh...

"Darkness is good," says Bannon, who amid the suits surrounding him at Trump Tower, looks like a graduate student in his T-shirt, open button-down and tatty blue blazer — albeit a 62-year-old graduate student. "Dick Cheney. Darth Vader. Satan. That's power. It only helps us when they" — I believe by "they" he means liberals and the media, already promoting calls for his ouster — "get it wrong. When they're blind to who we are and what we're doing."

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/steve-bannon-trump-tower-interview-trumps-strategist-plots-new-political-movement-948747

...and an admirer of Satan.

[Eliot Rosewater]

28. Bannon is calling the shots, this should scare the bejeezus out of every sane person alive.

But the GOP loves it.

At least there will be some entertainment value watching them destroy our country.

[grantcart]

9. It's tribal

[ProudLib72]

10. It's about doing what they like

But has nothing to do with any glamorous ideals of the lone wolf going off into the wilderness. Nope, not related to the Emerson and Thoreau school. More like capitalistic nihilism, grab what you can however you can because nothing else really matters.

[Bucky]

12. thank you

thank you, that was beautifully said

[Cha]

13. It really doesn't matter if you're "sure" or not.. it still is.

All you have to have done is paid attention his damn campaign.

[moondust]

14. Some of it is pure rebellion.

I suspect there may be people so rebellious that they refuse to wear their seatbelts and use their turn signals simply because that's what the big bad gubmint tells them to do.

[JudyM]

15. My sense is that it is different things to different strains of supporters.

Last edited Sat Mar 11, 2017, 09:45 AM - Edit history (1)

To some he was a populist who was going to drain the swamp and give the government back to the people. He's a convincing con man, and they fell for it.

To some he was a "successful" businessman who would bring a different, practical perspective to reinvigorating the national economy. (My conservative father believed this)

To some his general irreverence for the system and dispensing with political correctness seemed like he would bring change not only to government, but push back on a society that is making them feel bad about themselves as they fall farther behind economically.

To some he was pure dog whistle, unlocking their cages to freely insult and even terrorize POC, Jews, LGBT, etc.

Everyone who voted for him was willing to overlook his misogyny and racism for the wild card hope or firm belief that he would help the country. Everyone, that is, except the bigots, who voted for him because they liked everything he said.

[Hortensis]

19. Next #: SCOTUS. Large numbers who didn't like Trump voted for

him to save the Supreme Court from turning liberal for another 30 years. That issue decided the vote for many.

Agree entirely that conservatives come in many types from many places.

[Squinch]

29. And what does that mean, "save the SC from turning liberal?" It means keeping the SC from

being "overly supportive" of the liberal agenda, which goes back to ending racism and sexism.

They might call it lots of things. But it always goes back to needing to keep the ascendency of women and POC from going any further, and in rolling that ascendency back where possible.

[Hortensis]

33. You sound just as sincere as the people you criticize

for what you believe is basically one very narrow and hostile view on each subject for all.

For conservatives, the types prone to it, of course, intolerance and bigotry form around more communal ideas of "people like us versus those outsiders, those different ones."

But there is very much such a thing as left-wing bigotry also. Professionals call bigotry bias, and googling that term will pick up a lot more than bigotry will.

In any case, the intolerance/bigotry of the passionate left tends to be based on ideology or what those factions see as universal principles they (usually) want to extend to government. Those who don't join them in their crusades become targets of their hostility and enemies of their great missions. It can create a lot of angry noise and villifying, as in 2016, but it can also continue to develop into something as viciously, and even mass-murderously, hostile as anything the right can produce.

But as for the big differences, ask their victims if they make the injury more tolerable.

[Squinch]

36. Your need to insult me and question my sincerity is noted. In response,

I'll point out that your hostility comes from the fact that you are projecting.

You insist on characterizing as bigotry my strongly held position that Trump voters have been proven to have been motivated by racism and sexism.

What word, then, would you use to characterize your equally intractable insistence that no, though we all saw the blatant racism and sexism, the election was based on something else entirely?

You say I am intolerant of other views. What I see is me explaining my position and you throwing insults and attacking me for holding the position. Which of those responses shows more intolerance?

In this exchange between you and me, I'm not the one being hostile.

And no, dear. Though you feel the need to accuse me of inspiring mass murder, there is no reason for you to have such fear of the fact that I disagree with you.

[Hortensis]

38. I don't doubt your sincerity. As for the rest, please

don't ask me to respect your misrepresenting what I said. Since you brought the idea of you personally committing mass murder up, though, let me reassure you.

I think, in the very worst case imaginable, you would at least be one exceptionally charismatic leader away from even beginning to consider joining in large scale political violence against conservatives as an answer. Violence, not murder. The kind of leader, btw, the left has not yet produced as a general election candidate.

How you would behave if things progressed beyond that, I have no guess. Some run away into the woods. Some put their lives on the line to resist. Some tie their children on their backs and head for the border.

[Squinch]

40. Gosh. In addition to denying something you stated outright, AND accusing me of raising

the subject of mass murder when in fact you did that...

... in addition to those, now you are saying that I am a person who would be easily led to commit violence against a group of people. You are making enormous and horrendous assumptions about a person you know nothing about, and you are basing that assumption on nothing but the fact that my political position differs from yours.

Like I said, projection. Big honking projection.

[Hortensis]

41. Wow.

Revealing. I'm going to put you on full ignore, and that way you and I will never bother each other again. Bye.

[Squinch]

42. Saved me the trouble.

[Cary]

16. They have always had to hate

Watch the old BBC series "The Power of Nightmares." Hatred of "liberal" is pretty much the glue that holds them together.

They have just devolved since then to he even more thuggish and brutish.

[titaniumsalute]

20. I think it is 100% greed

Plain and simple. While we all wonder how racist and weird Steve Bannon is...he is set as a conjillionaire not for the rest of his life. Books, radio shows, speaking gigs, editorials, etc.

[still_one]

21. Everyone who voted for trump knew he was a racist, sexist, and xenophobe, and they still voted for

him.

[NurseJackie]

34. Did they vote for him *in spite* of that ... or *because of* that? I think...

... they were attracted to it.

Instead of saying they "still" voted for him, I'd say that they "gleefully" voted for him.

[still_one]

35. Understood. My point was it didn't bother them that he was a racist, sexist, and

xenophobe, and that says a lot about them

[NurseJackie]

39. Yep. I doubt that I'll ...

... ever fully understand what's going on inside the brains of people who try to defend them, or advocate for them, or make excuses for them, or who try to cloak and protect them with rambling, confusing, and convoluted pseudo-psycho-babble and amateur psychoanalysis.

(Sigh.)

[NCDem777]

44. It's true that he is a racist asshole

but, it's also true that the anti-society folks just find him simply as an ally of convenience,

Frankly, I think being anti-society is worse than simple racism

[still_one]

45. Racism is anti-society

[NastyRiffraff]

24. You're not sure?

I AM sure. Dump's racism, misogyny and general bigotry was there for all to see. He never tried to hide it; I'll give him that. Just in case people didn't get it the first time, he then doubled down when criticized for it. Those who didn't see that are too stupid to live. But they DID see it, and voted for him anyway. That makes them at best, complicit in his bigotry. At worst, they're racists, misogynists, etc. themselves.

[SHRED]

26. They like a "society"

As long as it military and Christian based.

[Eyeball_Kid]

30. It can probably be seen as an idealistic form of libertarianism.

Government is only needed for self-defense-- the only utilization of the commonwealth that's truly necessary. The rest, every aspect of society, is based upon individual initiative to establish transactional relationships for the advancement of the individual agent. It overlaps and converges nicely with white nationalism, neo-Nazi, Koch Brothers', and the Ayn Randian/social Darwinism nexus of political and philosophical drivel.

[underpants]

32. Pharmacism

This country is so drugged up* we've become paranoid and delusional.

*legal illegal and a combination of both

[BainsBane]

43. I guess the effort to whiten the US demographically

at least two top advisors from White Supremacist circles, and massive spike in hate crimes is just a coincidence.

It's easy to think racism isn't an issue when you aren't subject to it.

[ananda]

46. 45 and company want to destroy every social program ..

.. that props up the poor and the working classes in order
to move vast amounts of money upwards and force people
to work either as actual or virtual slaves.

They want to deregulate and privatize every aspect of
business and the public commons.

They want to build up the military and the police state in
order to destabilize both our populace and the world, in
effect then being more able to exploit labor and resources.

This was always the Reep/Corporate plan; and they have
manipulated the hate and ignorance of citizens to get
where we are now.