I think I am beginning to understand why so many otherwise nice people are suddenly voting for Trump

[BigBearJohn]

Last edited Wed Sep 28, 2016, 12:26 AM - Edit history (1)

Could it be the same reason why otherwise good people could be led into lynching an innocent person. The provocateur (Trump) incites the crowd to the point of violence. (Taking back the country). The threat can be real or imagined. It makes no difference as long as the emotions are raised to a high enough fervor. Push enough of the right buttons and you can drive almost anyone psychotic.

You need a real leader like Hillary Clinton to calm the crowd down and bring them back to their senses

Anyway -- just my opinion.

[phallon]

1. I think it goes further, to the bone.

[RKP5637]

2. He's using very similar tactics as Hitler did. n/t

[BigBearJohn]

3. i was just thinking the same thing

[Lint Head]

8. Godwin's Law breaks down with Donald Trump. Trump is

shmoozing his way onto office by using scapegoating and outright lies. If this piece of fecal matter were to be elected the neo brown shirts would have a field day. Hitler IS abut as good a reference one can use. Not necessarily the killing of millions of Jews part. Just the way he would get into office and govern. All media would be suspect and lies would prevail. Goebbels would be proud. Tell a lie long enought it becomes the truth. Of course a truth is not a fact.

[RKP5637]

12. Yep, Goebbels would be proud. It's dangerous what is happening to the US. Trump, is splitting

the country apart and enabling endless hatred even as he loses.

[raging moderate]

26. Or Mussolini, Hitler's Italian counterpart.

Last edited Wed Sep 28, 2016, 01:13 PM - Edit history (1)

Some of what Trump says reminds me of Mussolini's writings, which I read (some) many years ago. Mussolini talked about how the rich company owners of his day could not maintain control individually with their individual sticks, and how they should bind their sticks together by using the power of the government as a kind of rope (fasces) to gain the upper hand. As I recall, that is why he and the Nazis were called fascists. And Trump's facial expressions and body postures and hand gestures are very similar to Mussolini.

[RKP5637]

37. Definitely! He has the mannerism of a strong armed dictator! n/t

[Demonaut]

4. they are the folk who follow Randall Flagg

[winetourdriver]

5. Flagg

Was just thinking about "The Stand" again, maybe appropriate reading for these times.

[LiberalLoner]

6. +1

[The_Casual_Observer]

7. I used to wonder who those people were on the streets

In those old movies of Hitler driving along the parade. After living through the Iraq war and now this turnip asshole I know that it's just the same fucking people all around us.

[yortsed snacilbuper]

10. "In those old movies of Hitler driving along the parade."

And after the war they all said they didn't know what was going on!

[The_Casual_Observer]

13. Right, nothing has changed. People haven't all of a sudden evolved in 80 years.

A good 40% of this very population are right there on that street corner today. The veneer of civility is paper thin. Look at any of the assholes at those trump bund meetings. Don't tell me that they are in anyway evolved from the idiots of 1937 Berlin.

[Warpy]

9. Mob psychology is certainly a big part of it

People who attend those rallies get caught up in the crowd excitement and get carried along, thinking the excitement makes them for Trump.

So far, he's able to control the mob well enough that it hasn't started to destroy the arena. That's not going to last forever.

[JI7]

11. i don't think they are good people. maybe they are good to other white people

but not anyone else who they see as taking away "their country" .

[Johonny]

33. +1

[MrScorpio]

38. Bingo!

[pangaia]

14. You just figured this out?

[BigBearJohn]

16. thank you

[enki23]

15. Because they aren't nice people.

.

[JohnnyRingo]

17. Actually, I think it's much more an anger issue.

There's a large angry collective of working class white men behind Trump, that much we know. Born of a realization that their economic progress is stymied and stoked by years of the Tea Party movement, I've heard two distinct views:

The first is based solely in racism, though they'll vehemently deny it, where they firmly believe the president is a Muslim who has been taking care of blacks and Hispanics for the past eight years. Now they see an opportunity to elect a man who promises to focus on the needs of the white working man. These people will never vote for someone who preaches any form of social equality. Not this year anyway.

The second view is very similar but somewhat less racist in that they feel they bust their asses 40 to 60 hours a week and all they get is a roof over their head, they eat every day, drive a crappy car, and have cable TV w/ internet. They look around at the welfare class and believe they have the same basic things without working. It used to be that a smart phone separated the working from the poor, but now most everyone seems to have a personal device that compares to an iPhone. That realization, though inaccurate, frosted the cake.

These people see Trump as the man who will crack the whip on the indigent and give their own meager existence some meaning. He's seen as the "if you don't work, you don't eat" candidate opposed to Hillary's "it takes a village" approach to social equity. They want to be able to say: "I work so I don't end up like that guy".

LBJ long ago said: "If you tell the lowest white man he's better than the best black man, he'll not notice that you're picking his pockets." "Hell, If you give him someone to look down upon, he'll empty his pockets for you."

Donald Trump has tapped into that white resentment to great effect.

[awoke_in_2003]

19. The LBJ quote is right on

that is a big part of it. Another part is that a decent sized chunk of people are uneducated, uninformed sheep that scream about Freedumb yet love authoritarians (because they never think the authority will affect them)

[KingCharlemagne]

23. ^^This is fucking brilliant and deserves to be its own OP. - nt

[Zing Zing Zingbah]

25. Such a negative perspective some people have

They've given up on trying to do better for themselves and are instead trying to punish other people for doing just as well as them without working as hard (as they perceive it). This is a lot like racism I think in that they want to make a group of people inferior to themselves for the purpose of feeling better about themselves. The difference is it is based on work instead of skin color. I can see how these folks would be aligned with racists, sexists, etc. They are all focused on making other people beneath them instead of trying to make improvements for everyone. This attitude seems to extend from materialism and being jealous of what other people have. They think its not fair so and so has this and that because they don't work as hard as me. They make a lot of judgements about other people that they may not know very well. A lot of feeling sorry for themselves and no empathy for other people. They are a very selfish group of people. Again, it makes sense with all the materialism that has been pushed in this country for so long that these folks would think and act in these ways.

[redstatebluegirl]

27. That same group wants women to go back to 1950.

They want to be the one who controls "their woman", she meets him at the door in high heels and a cocktail. What a crock of crap.

They don't want women in the workplace telling them what to do.

Not going back fellas, not now, not ever. I watched my mom put up with that crap for 20 years, she died young, I think she saw that as the only way out.

A lot of the love of Trump is that these guys wish they could control their model wife the same way.

[liberalmuse]

29. Very astute observation!

I wish I could rec this post. Anyone who has known some of these people can see you've hit the nail on the head.

And then there are the evangelicals who've been preached to that liberals are of the devil and conservatives are of god. That's a whole other post.

[smirkymonkey]

30. +1000

[Locrian]

35. he's offering a way (illusionary) to power

The people you mention that feel left out (drive a crappy car, work etc) have no power or control, are pissed and want a target to punish. Trump (being the con man he is) and (sad to say) Hillary's lack of appeal to many make a perfect target.

It gives them a way to strike back at the perceived ills of their life. The tragedy of course is that they are being played as fools.

[applegrove]

18. Reminds me of the short story "The Lottery".

[canetoad]

21. Curiosity piqued

Had to go read "The Lottery". Very powerful story frightening story. Thanks for bringing it up.

The author, in describing letters she received afterwards said, "People at first were not so much concerned with what the story meant; what they wanted to know was where these lotteries were held, and whether they could go there and watch"

[applegrove]

22. Chilling. I really do worry about Trump's base. The GOP in all its' forms

is responsible for tending them like a garden of racism over the years. They really could do anything. Have you seen them being interviewed? We read the short story in high school - I have no need to reread it. I've seen too much.

[wickerwoman]

20. If you give people a choice between brussels sprouts and bacon flavoured cheez-wizz

a depressing number of Americans are always going to choose the cheez-wizz even if they know it's terrible for them.

Lecturing them about how nutritional brussels sprouts are just makes them want the cheez-wizz more. It's not until they have the first heart attack that they cotton on to the fact that maybe they should start being a bit more careful about what they eat. And the American public has had the equivalent of a series of massive coronary events ever since the 80s so why anyone in 2016 would even consider voting for yet another trickle-down economics global financial crisis in the making like Trump is beyond me.

But anyway, somehow we have to show people how Clinton's policies will benefit them personally and how Trumps will harm them personally without making them feel like they are being lectured to. Getting celebrities out there helps.

[Vinca]

24. We don't like to talk about it, but the population of this country has really been dumbed down

over the decades. It's like a neon sign in this election with people who will be hurt the most by Trump lining up for hours to bow down to him. It's got nothing to do with President of the United States, it's because he was/is a "star." It's because so many people live in areas where the only thing they can find to listen to is right wing, hate radio and Trump is their mascot. It's because Fox News is a free channel in most cable and satellite packages and Trump is also their mascot. It's frightening.

[Initech]

36. We can thank Reagan and Nixon for that.

[Odin2005]

28. Philosopher Hannah Arendt called it the "banality of evil".

[Starry Messenger]

31. The ones I know hate immigrants and Obama.

They are like Brexiters.

[bagelsforbreakfast]

32. It used to be the discovery of a lie impacted the prospects of the person lying...

Trump is merely the epitome of lying in volume on a national stage. However the Republican party (and unfortunately many corporate Democrats also) continually lies by accusing their opponents of exactly the very nefarious deeds and intentions they themselves harbor - and what they themselves are doing/have done (i.e. lie). Nowadays lying is merely another accepted mode of discourse. Almost as ubiquitous as a sneeze (or sniffle) in public conversation. Perhaps it should have it's own punctuation mark?

[La Lioness Priyanka]

34. so many nice people didn't think black people were human hence the lynchings

so many nice people don't think of women as equal to men, hence some of the trumpism.

nice people can be evil as fuck.

[sendero]

39. Could it be...

... that people are tired of the status quo? Of being lied to about just about everything? HRC IS the status quo. Plenty of Trump supporters are really just anybody-but-HRC folks.

Is Trump a lying asshole? Yes. Tell me HRC is not. People would rather roll the dice than get a known bad deal. At least then they have a chance.

It's not psychotic to not want to vote for one of the architects of the trade and bank disasters we are facing today. In fact, it is the ignorance of so many Americans that permits them to even consider HRC.

And FWIW, I'm not voting for either of them.