Cont: Trump’s Coup - Part 2
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Delvo
Дэлво Δε&#
Another way in which many Democrats behave as if their goal is to keep losing & failing indefinitely.
The Democrats lose, and they try to play off their losses as being too good to play the game, therefore they get a moral victory, therefore they never really feel like they lost, so they never adjust their actions.
Thermal
August Member
I'm gonna go ahead and call them stupid. It's the intellectual elitist in me that pooh-poohs the wearing of dead raccoons and murder as a means of expressing political dissatisfaction.
Meadmaker
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What's with the dead raccoons? Did I miss a fashion trend? That's the second reference I've read to dead raccoons in two days.
With respect to the "stupid" discussion, I think the danger is in assuming that all Trump supporters are as stupid as the ones in that video..
Mike!
Official Ponylandistanian National Treasure. Re
I'm thinking a couple few of the Capitol aggressors were wearing Davy Crockett style racoon skin caps. You know, that whole, "Remember the Alamo!" , line of thought kind of thing. It's the only "logical" conclusion I can see.
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Cain
Straussian
It's difficult to deprogram someone with cultish beliefs if you begin by calling them "stupid," especially if they're stupid.
Segnosaur
Penultimate Amazing
I guess the question is how you actually define 'dumb/stupid/etc.'.
Yes, there are people who are otherwise successful but whom otherwise support. But, if a person is so.. gullible/foolish that they would vote for/support someone who is such an obvious fraud as Trump... that's a pretty big blind spot that they have in their intellect.
The question here is... is it actually possible to 'change hearts and minds' of Trump supporters. They have drunk the kool-aid, and may be forever be unreachable.
Minoosh
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You think Davy Crockett, I think Dan'l Boone. My brother and I belonged to the Fess Parker Fan Club and we each received a genuine imitation coonskin cap. Davy Crockett is maybe more on topic but I think Fess Parker played them both, so that works too.
I sure hope the hats were fake. Hate to think they were real!
cosmicaug
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I remember seeing articles & videos about him at some protest in AZ (it may have been the 'the pens they gave us made our votes invisible to the machines' conspiracy protest —do I remember correctly that at one point there seemed to be danger of protesters breaking in at this one?) and reading how he was a regular at these sorts of things. Him being the poster boy of the most prominent event of our stupid coup, the takeover of the Capitol building? Yes, that was definitely a thing I did not see coming.
The problem is you can't argue any version of the "It's all our fault because we gave Trump too much attention" argument without arguing that Trump is somehow validated in doing what he is doing because he got so much attention.
Yeah we maybe, in hindsight, shouldn't have given proto-Trumpism so much attention. That still doesn't shift the onus and blame from Trump to us.
And really only in hindsight do we know whether Trump was something that was going to "go away" without attention. Some problems die in the without sunlight, some fester and ooze and come back stronger years later. Attention sanitizes somethings and feeds others.
Yeah we maybe, in hindsight, shouldn't have given proto-Trumpism so much attention. That still doesn't shift the onus and blame from Trump to us.
And really only in hindsight do we know whether Trump was something that was going to "go away" without attention. Some problems die in the without sunlight, some fester and ooze and come back stronger years later. Attention sanitizes somethings and feeds others.
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Thermal
August Member
Our intrepid Qanon Shaman is sporting what indeed appears to be roadkill in this winter's insurrectionist fashion lineup. Nicole Miller is scrambling to make rodent headgear all the Congressional rage on the Spring catwalks.
I don't think they are all stupid. I share the common belief that many are uncompromising Red voters, and will pull that lever for any candidate with an R next to their name. Some are simply anti-all-these-wild-and-crazy-young-folks.
But the Dildo Stormers have to be stupid by definition, IMO. It was just painfully foolish to think that the US government would tolerate what they were trying to do. Maybe some got swept up in the fantasy, and meant no harm. That is stupid too.
Stupid is as stupid does, I've heard. Are you thinking that anything about the Storming showed good thinking? Not seeing that.
Meadmaker
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And here I'll take acbyTesla's side, and say that Trump supporters don't have to be stupid.
Some of them are just Republicans. They have values. They have opinions. Trump is closer to those opinions than Biden is. They don't like Trump very much, but he's better than a Democrat. That doesn't mean they are fooled into believing Trump is anything other than a fraud. It just means they don't think his fraud is as important as low taxes, or whatever their pet issue is.
Among those people there are even people who like Trump a lot better than other Republicans, because Trump had the conviction to plow ahead with policies in the face of opposition.
So, I would say that if you can't see that he is a fraud, that's a blind spot. If you can see the fraud, but figure it is tolerable, or perhaps even beneficial, in you getting what you want, then that's just being a Republican. It doesn't mean you are stupid.
But that guy in the video looking through a Senator's notebook and being certain that there was going to be dirt that he could use against those scummy Senators? He's just dump as a stump.
Meadmaker
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I don't imagine there were many, if any, bright people who entered the Capitol with the crowd. I don't think all Trump supporters are like the people on the Mall that day.
But I was struck by how few of them actually entered the Senate chamber. There were a handful, even as video taken at the same time showed hundreds of people roaming the halls nearby. I think a lot of the crowd may have decided that going into the Senate Chamber was going just a little bit too far. They thought they could get away with just being in the building, but they realized entering the actual Senate chamber was crossing a line, which showed some measure of intelligence.
The ones who actually went in? They were dumb as stumps.
*Loud cough* So let me get this straight. A bunch of stupid people just keep being stupid and you can neither reason with them (because they are stupid) or just call them stupid (because that is mean) but also they are like... doing a lot of damage and we can't just ignore them.
WOW IF ONLY THERE WAS A MOVEMENT OR SOMETHING THAT TRIED TO WARN US THIS WOULD HAPPEN!
WOW IF ONLY THERE WAS A MOVEMENT OR SOMETHING THAT TRIED TO WARN US THIS WOULD HAPPEN!
Meadmaker
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I suppose that even when I say "Trump supporters", there are a couple of different definitions. There is anyone who voted for Trump. There is anyone who thought Trump was a really good President. Finally, there are people who thought, and may still think, that Donald Trump is the rightfully elected President of the United States and that Joe Biden is a usurper who stole the election.
It's easy to be intelligent and vote for Trump. It's not quite as easy to be intelligent and thing that Trump was actually a good President. It's awfully hard to believe that Trump won the election, but it was stolen. That last category is filled mostly by the low IQ crowd.
ETA: And, with respect to that last category, those who pretend to be in it in order to manipulate the stupid people.
It's easy to be intelligent and vote for Trump. It's not quite as easy to be intelligent and thing that Trump was actually a good President. It's awfully hard to believe that Trump won the election, but it was stolen. That last category is filled mostly by the low IQ crowd.
ETA: And, with respect to that last category, those who pretend to be in it in order to manipulate the stupid people.
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My grandmother taught me, "The Good Book says, 'Be kind to dumb animals.'"
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Thermal
August Member
...and to those who inexplicably wear them on their heads.
Segnosaur
Penultimate Amazing
But was Trump really closer to their values than Biden or Clinton is?
Republicans have traditionally been pro-free trade. They have generally been in favor of the use of the American military. Trump appears to be opposed to many of the values that these republicans had previously professed.
As for Taxes... yes, Trump and the republicans cut taxes. But the cuts heavily favored the wealthy. Poor/middle class people didn't really benefit. (And its even worse for many of them after covid-19). If middle/lower class people are sticking with Trump because "they love them some tax cuts", even though those tax cuts aren't helping them, that's also a form of stupidity.
Perhaps having anti-abortion supreme court judges might be a reason to have supported Trump. But then, the majority of Republicans actually want to see Roe v. Wade left in place. So these republicans are voting for a guy who's doing something they don't want.
This is going to be very not easy to put into words.
Obvious caveat; Trump Supporters are not a homogeneous Borg collective they, even on an individual level, don't have one singular, consistent reason for supporting Trump. Caveat entered into the record.
We're making the wrong distinction. It's not between smart and stupid, if such a thing could even really be put into words, it between politics driven politics and politics driven by things that aren't politics.
It's a huge mistake to look at a phenomenon like Trump and go "I don't understand these people's politics."
Trump is not a political entity in the same way Obama, Clinton, the Bushes, or even Reagan was.
This is, largely not completely obviously (again caveat already entered into record, don't @ me) but largely not a political movement. It's a movement against politics. And even that's over-simplifying it.
It's a movement against a bitter, cynical, nihilistic strawman version of politics.
Obvious caveat; Trump Supporters are not a homogeneous Borg collective they, even on an individual level, don't have one singular, consistent reason for supporting Trump. Caveat entered into the record.
We're making the wrong distinction. It's not between smart and stupid, if such a thing could even really be put into words, it between politics driven politics and politics driven by things that aren't politics.
It's a huge mistake to look at a phenomenon like Trump and go "I don't understand these people's politics."
Trump is not a political entity in the same way Obama, Clinton, the Bushes, or even Reagan was.
This is, largely not completely obviously (again caveat already entered into record, don't @ me) but largely not a political movement. It's a movement against politics. And even that's over-simplifying it.
It's a movement against a bitter, cynical, nihilistic strawman version of politics.
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