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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: September 19th, 2023

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  • Couple of things:

    1. Revolution sounds good until it actually happens, and then it sucks. It unleashes all the crazies and the outcome is uncertain. And it tanks the economy.
    2. If you look at exit polls, people told you why they voted for Trump. Rightly or wrongly, they don’t believe he is a fascist, or at least that the US system won’t allow him to indulge his fascist tendencies. Again, I don’t know if they are correct, but that’s what most people believe.
    3. The majority believe that the wokism and identity politics of the left is a greater threat to democracy than Trump.

    So, the answer to your question is that you won’t find much support IRL because most people don’t actually think they are supporting fascism. Time will tell if Trump is an actual fascist or just a blowhard. I wish we didn’t have to wonder, but there you have it.









  • This is the conclusion I’ve come to as well. I used to be frustrated at how stupid Trump supporters are. I would wonder how anyone could be so gullible, cynical, racist, or mysogynist as to vote for Trump. How does he get away with, even prosper, saying such crazy and harmful things? But I’ve come to the conclusion that Trump voters are just extremely unhappy. A vote for Trump is a big fuck-you to the establishment. Both parties were basically run by a modern day aristocracy. The Kennedys, the Clintons, and the Bushes are the most obvious dynasties, but they also have many, many surrogates. More importantly, they defined a kind of cursus honorum for becoming president, including all of the right schools, fraternities, clubs, contacts, donors, etc that you have to follow to move up through the various offices to get to the top. The Tea Party disrupted the Republican aristocracy, but then Trump came along and just obliterated it.

    Now, on the one hand, we can probably all get behind the idea that breaking up the aristocratic hold on political parties is a good thing. However, history has also shown that supporting populist demagogues who specialize in chaos and hateful rhetoric often leads to a bad time for the country and the people.

    These last five years are the first time in my life that I’m genuinely worried for the stability of the republic. It has been said many times by people who have lived through it that people never think civil war will actually happen until it does. And then they look back and the signs were obvious. Whoever actually wins, when half of the population is voting for a hateful chaos candidate, that’s a big red flag.




  • If you really want to know why Trump is still competitive, listen to Anthony Scaramucci, a.k.a. The Mooch. He worked for Trump for a couple of weeks before being fired by him. The Mooch is a long-time conservative investor-type who knows Trump well and can’t stand him, so he has been helping the Democrats. Thr Mooch really understands Trump and his followers. I’m pretty sure he helped with Harris’s debate prep, especially helping her understand how to get under Trump’s skin.

    He hosts a great podcast along with Katty Kay called The Rest Is Politics US (as opposed to the parent program The Rest Is Politics UK). https://tripus.supportingcast.fm

    In particular, check out the last two post-debate episodes:

    #27 Trump vs. Harris: What You Didn’t See

    #28 Why Kamala Harris Still Has a Problem



  • In my case, we had a very religious guy in the office. Elder Gen X, not quite a boomer. He was very open about being evangelical and morally conservative, which was perhaps irritating to some, but tolerable. But then Trump and COVID happened and he went off the deep end, spouting COVID conspiracy theories and talking about supporting Trump and the Bible and the end-times. We eventually had to fire him.

    The problem since 2016 is that people don’t have to be explicitly “talking politics” for their intolerant views to be known. Trump isn’t really a “conservative” in any traditional sense. He is a crass hate machine, and that is his overwhelming brand. So, if you support him, you are pretty much advertising that you are intolerant. It isn’t hard to see how that would be hostile to young people who have been raised to be tolerant above all else.