‘I like him even better now’: Trump’s true believers keep the faith
Millions of Democrats and independents view Trump’s four years in office as a disaster but for supporters it is his biggest asset
Wearing a shirt festooned with countless images of Donald Trump, Leverne Martin was looking cheerful for a man who had set off from Poplar Bluff, Missouri, at 9pm and driven through the night, arriving in Dubuque, Iowa, at 5.30am. When did he intend to sleep?
“As soon as President Trump is back in the White House,” the 55-year-old handyman replied without missing a beat. “If we don’t get him back in 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, where he belongs, we’re in a mess, man. That’s why I’m voting for President Trump. That’s why I drove nine hours.”
On a grey, rainy day, Martin was near the head of a long and winding queue outside a cavernous conference centre overlooking the Mississippi River. Like so many fans in so many towns and cities over nearly a decade, an overwhelmingly white crowd had come to cheer on Trump, elected US president in 2016, beaten by Joe Biden in 2020 and clear frontrunner for the Republican nomination in 2024.
It’s a cult.
If t**** told them it’s nut-cutting time, I bet many of them do it.
Now where is all that scary AI deepfakes stuff when you need it?
these people are so clueless
They are not clueless, they want to be lawless like Trump. They think we've created a fragile and disfunctional society by trying to make things fair, and these leftist ideologies are what's keeping them back from living the American dream.
They feel oppressed when they can't slap a womans ass in public, or just feeling out of place wherever they go because they want to throw trash on the ground, drive big trucks and buy as much toilet paper as they want. They think if Trump was elected, they would become the people who decide what's ok and not ok in society. Literally a "incel beta uprising" mentality.
TL;DR, They think when the revolution comes they'll be handed clipboards
They deserve everything that's going to happen to them, the only problem is it's going to happen to the rest of us too.
Some are clueless and some are malicious.
For the clueless ones, there's a sunk cost fallacy in effect. Similar to how a person who falls for a Nigerian prince scam will keep sending money, these people will keep supporting Trump (and sending money). After all, stopping now would admit that they were scammed for so long. Better (in their mind) to send another campaign contribution because this will DEFINITELY be the one that makes Trump turn their lives around.
For the malicious, they clearly see who Trump is and they like it. They want to be able to fly their Nazi flags while calling black people the N word and beating up anyone who is LGBTQ. They want women to be subjugated to men and for anyone who isn't a straight, white, Christian male to be a second class citizen (or worse). When Trump threatens the lives of people, the malicious folks cheer him on because that's how they want society to function - with them on top and everyone else kissing their toes in the hopes that it'll help avoid a kick to the face.
ventilator noises
Intubated person scribbles furiously on paper
Reads: Vaccines kill, send me home with some ivermectin
Ok bye 👋
It's hard to believe, but there has always been as much as 20% of the population who are willing to believe anything that makes them feel special. These are the people who think they would be successful and happy if they weren't being kept down by aliens, ghosts, or secret international conspiracies. What Trump has done is to give them an enemy they can see. That has brought them all together and brought in another segment who are slightly less crazy, but are united by their hatred of "others".
If most people in this country voted, they would be scary, but not large enough to be a political force. As it is, they are still a minority, but not by a safe margin. Any time they can convince a small group of independents to vote them they are capable of winning elections. Even without that, their "win by any means" non-ethic means they can game the system and outright cheat while feeling good about themselves. That has allowed them to win more elections.
We should be able to win back the independents, and I think we largely have. I don't know that there's much we can do about the rest of them. Now that they have been weaponized and unified, they will continue to be a threat until the current generation of them die off. We need to contest every election and fight for our democracy. There are enough of us to do that successfully, if we make the sustained effort to do it.
It's not that hard to believe when you realize human intelligence is a normal curve distribution. That bottom 20% will always do the stupid thing.
"Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that."
George Carlin
The average American has a below 6th grade reading comprehension.
@Cabrio @mister_newbie I come from the EU. Can someone please explain why this is happening in the US?
A combination of a 'tradition' of anti-intrllectualism and an education systen that has depreciated the value of critical thinking skillls.
I can't emphasize enough how the proudly ignorant are shouting down anyone who speaks from a position of facts and evidence in small communities and cities. I know it's not the only factor, but it feels HUGE and the kids growing up around it see that. I have a 9yr old in one of those places who is acutely aware of it to the point of changing her interactions with her friends to stay off the radar.
America never got rid of their fascists after the civil war, and now they are seeing the effects on their society.
@Cabrio Thanks!
All good points here. Apathy won't help.
An astute way to put it, thanks for writing it down.
Temporarily down on their luck. They would be millionaires if not for those awful people who think they have a right to be treated equally to them. Who took their jobs. Who are draining the welfare system and don't deserve a penny. They will happily crush the hands of those below them on the ladder so they remain above.
You can fool some of the people all of the time.
Those people are usually conservatives.
It's really easy.
Step1. Say u love Jesus
Step 2 say u love trump.
Step3 ???
Step4 profit
Step3 is selling a product basically anything cuz these morons try to cash trump bucks
There are also people who still support Nazis and that Venn diagram is a circle.
MAGAts are a total loss. We should do everything possible to minimize their impact on society.
They dug themselves that deep, huh? They should keep digging that grave. We hope we can move on without their regressive beliefs affecting others.
Stop trying to convince MAGAs - they won’t change their mind. Actually ignore them as good as possible.
Try to activate all those people that do not vote. This is the most important thing to do.
The problem is not them voting, the problem is them voting unopposed.
Do what now?
Hello dear Cult45. You know what? I have one helluva deal for you. I have a bunch of money tied up in Nigeria that I'd like to get so I'm going to make one of you cousin humpers the deal of a lifetime. I have a bridge for sale, and I'm willing to sell it to one of you mouth breathing snowflakes for a bargain of a lifetime.
Those soft-brained idolaters are still waiting for their commemorative sticker for signing over 80% of their assets to "stop the steal". They couldn't afford a bridge, no matter the bargain.
Literally anything happening:
Cultist: I like my cult even more now!
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Wearing a shirt festooned with countless images of Donald Trump, Leverne Martin was looking cheerful for a man who had set off from Poplar Bluff, Missouri, at 9pm and driven through the night, arriving in Dubuque, Iowa, at 5.30am.
Like so many fans in so many towns and cities over nearly a decade, an overwhelmingly white crowd had come to cheer on Trump, elected US president in 2016, beaten by Joe Biden in 2020 and clear frontrunner for the Republican nomination in 2024.
Video clips of allies such as the broadcaster Tucker Carlson and Hungarian autocrat Viktor Orbán and foes such as Biden and the Florida governor, Ron DeSantis, elicit boos and jeers.
When he rode down a New York escalator in June 2015, Trump demonised immigrants as criminals, drug dealers and rapists and made the building of a wall on the US-Mexico border his signature issue.
I’ll also invoke immediately the Alien Enemies Act to remove all known or suspected gang members.” He also promised to expand on a travel ban that barred people from several countries with majority-Muslim populations during his presidency.
The rally came amid fresh criticism from conservatives for Trump over his refusal to commit to a national restriction on abortion and description of DeSantis’s signing of a six-week ban as a “terrible mistake”.
The original article contains 1,637 words, the summary contains 218 words. Saved 87%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
A big part of this problem is that many of these people were selected as the most gullible and credulous from British society during the colonial era. Mix in religion, poor education and you have fertile ground for all sorts of whacky beliefs to grow unchecked. As we come out of the shadow of WWII we see the rise of populism all over the western world. The same methods the Nazis used are in effect: sowing division and cults of personality. The propagation of these ideas has been supercharged by the internet.
sad.