Hardship will just make them blame foreigners
Not if the argument is to offer the democratic party and more neoliberalism as an alternative. Yes, they’ll gladly suffer for fascism.
It’s our job to offer something better that explains their suffering and alienation. Thankfully this guy named Marx did a pretty good job explaining it.
And they can also continue to blame Biden.
Biden is also a tool of neoliberalism and class warfare. The fact that we sit here understanding that Trump voters will “endure suffering” for fascism should tell us something. It is because a vast majority of people in this country are fed up with neoliberalism that has existed since Reagan.
One side of the country has moved to the left and found actual answers that explain the alienation that they feel and the reason for their frustration. That reason is class conflict and worker exploitation. (This is sadly a small amount of people)
Another side of the country has been fooled by fascism and xenophobia. These are the Trump supporters.
And then we have the “middle” that is a minority in this country that is continue to defend neoliberalism. This is the democratic party and it’s loyal “vote Blue no matter who” block. These are often the people comfortable enough still to not feel frustration, that do not actually feel the economic impact.
Sadly that minority that is still holding strong to neoliberalism and the status quo is heavily preventing the country from learning actual leftist ideals.
No one wants the status quo and neoliberalism. So the average American is leaning right for “something else” because the Democratic party is offering them nothing but the status quo and weak policies.
The Democrats inability to evolve to a leftist populist message, under Sanders, is a very important part of understanding why people voted for Trump twice. They gave the Democrats one last chance under Biden and felt no material improvement to their lives.
It’s why they will blame Biden and hold onto this “change” in Trump. They will gladly suffer under something different than to suffer slightly less under the same system that has caused their struggles and alienation.
Unfortunately for us the only party that is somewhat normal is the dems and like you said they’re stooges for the capitalist class. I see no way out of this. I believe the dems are controlled opposition at this point. They would rather defend the status quo than fight for economic mobility. Bernie was right the whole time. While the republicans were cleaning house for MAGA, dems were eliminating all internal opposition. We need to do the same here on the left if the Democratic Party is to be saved.
Yes, this is all they will do.
Shun them. Trump supporters are evil, try and avoid working for them or with them in any way. Don’t talk to them. There is no need to be friendly. These people are actually supporting a Nazi revival.
That’s what I’m saying but my wife says I still gotta go to her dad’s house with her.
I really, really, have no interest in talking to that man. She shouldn’t either. He was a shit human before Trump was president and he’ll be a shit human long after. Half his kids (none of her full siblings, just her half- and step- siblings…her moms side is like some of the best people I’ve met and my MIL is probably the nicest lady in the world) are equally shitty, as are half his grandkids.
I mean hell, she gave up Target because of DEI, and she visits Target far more often.
Aitah?
One thing that worked with my partner was asking them if they had a racist or a mean relative and asking them how they felt spending time around them when they were kids.
We haven’t talked to his parents since November and he says he ain’t missing them at all.
Toxic-ass motherfuckers.
Seriously? Put on your big boy pants and say no.
Are we all just cowering down? Reading these comments makes it sounds like we should just all give up.
Doubt, fortunately. The extremists will largely never be turned, but most Trump supporters are moderates who care more about their own well-being than solidarity with the group. Mussolini is a great example of how an idiot dictator can quickly fragment his supporters and end up in the streets
“You can’t reason out of a position you didn’t come to through reason.”
They just hate for hate sake. It’s time to come to terms that the dumb will not be saved by gentle parenting but need to be dragged into reality.
Sure, but most of Trump’s voters did vote for him for a reason: their lives got noticeably harder under Biden. When their lives get even worse under Trump, they’ll vote for another change of party.
The cultists waving Trump flags and buying Trump teddy bears and reading Trump bibles are fueled by identity politics, but the idea that the average Trump voter is one of those cultists is a lie that Trump would very much like you to believe
“quickly” only after massive damage is done.
That and cons will always find a way to spin something to cause outrage and anger towards anyone but themselves.
Just went through that with an elderly neighbor recently.
She broke her foot and is in poor health, so we were walking her dog twice a day cause we are nice like that. She was always praising us for being such good people and a godsend to her.
One day, she made a comment that she thought Trump was doing a great job and I gently tried to explain to her that he was ruining our lives and countless others out there.
I was hoping she would have a moment of introspection, but no. She just immediately went on about the democrats, how we get offended too easily, and how she thinks I swear too much but she doesn’t hold it against me.
Everything except: “I’m sorry. I didn’t realize.”
Told her we no longer feel comfortable walking get dog.
Cue the waterworks and the “What about me? I can’t walk!”
It’s not worth engaging with these people. There is something broken in their brains.
They are brainwashed. The people we hate are actually some of trumps biggest victims. They are the victims of brainwashing. And they will soon be victimized in other ways as well. And when they question it, Trump will blame them, othe people, anyone but himself. And like victims of narcissistic abuse, they will do the mental backflips required to forgive Trump.
Y’all learned nothing from the election if you’re still trying to turn them.
not trying to turn them
trying to thin them.
If we had taxpayer universal healthcare, that’d be easy. Just give them all semaglutide. Problem solved.
I just encountered this last night with hardcore Trumper family members. They believe his tariffs are because the tariffed countries have their military subsidized by the American government and they need to pay their fair share. They think xwe’re going to have to “feel a little pain” for a year or two, then “it” will be better. What is “it”? Who the hell knows. They certainly don’t.
My dad isn’t a Trump supporter but he sure sounds like one. He’s fine with tariffs because “we won’t be paying them”. The underlying belief is that we shouldn’t import electricity or other goods, we should be producing our own, we should be self sustaining. And these tariffs are speeding up factories to open up in the states and produce US goods. The adjustment period (a few years at most) will be hard but worth it in the end - everything will be US made. Wohoo?
Never mind that our current infrastructure is crumbling and nothing is being done about it. And Trump is siphoning off any resources the us has. Never mind that many people today live paycheck to paycheck and as a result of this self imposed trade war will starve or freeze to death in the interim. Never mind that even if the US government decided to invest in this, it would take many many many decades to make US self sustaining, and once achieved prices will be higher than if we were to import the goods.
Yanis Varoufakis explains the reasoning
I like Yanis but I really don’t think that’s what Trump is doing.
I’m sorry, but Trump’s “America has been treated very unfairly” is more likely just an extension of his own persecution complex, which in turn is just fascist rhetoric, always with the grievance, eternally playing the victim card (“they humiliated us but we will get our revenge”), so I feel like Yanis is trying to interpret the well-known fascist humiliation fetish into a coherent economic vision… But it just isn’t. Trump’s woefully incompetent, so the only way what Yanis is saying would make sense is if his Heritage goons or oligarch buddies whispered stuff in his ear… although I would be highly doubtful even then that this is the plan, because their priority here seems to be to loot and plunder the state and turn it into a kind of Russian oligarchy with Christofascist characteristics. They’re way too high on power, as can be seen by how much they say and do right in the open, thinking they’re untouchable.
And I didn’t even mention the whole Curtis Yarvin network states tehnofeudalism, which Yanis should know about since he has a whole book called Tehnofeudalism, and I hope he mentions Yarvin and Peter Thiel in there and isn’t just saying how WEF style neoliberalism will eventually usher in tehnofeudalism, right? Right?!
PS: UnHerd is a pretty sus publication with a very TERF-ish bent. While they do sometimes get prominent lefties to write for it, it’s always for articles like this that are useful to them as they don’t really challenge the MAGA worldview (source: a MAGA acquaintance recommended me a recent Yanis interview rehashing this very article, and his takeaway was how smart Trump is). Tread carefully, there’s always an angle with this site.
That’s a great read and makes a ton of sense. Thank you!
I wrote another reply to the person who posted but I don’t like repeating myself, so I’ll just give the cliff notes:
Trump’s “America has been treated very unfairly” rhetoric is more likely just an extension of his own persecution complex, which in turn is just standard fascist rhetoric about how “we were once great, but we’ve allowed ourselves to be humiliated by our adversaries… but now we’ll be great again and take our revenge on all of them”. It’s nothing new. And while I have a high opinion of Yanis, I think he’s just wrong here, and I think that’s exactly why UnHerd (a sussy “alt-left” pro-TERF publication) was happy to publish his article.
All Trump’s gotta do is blame the Dems. Already going that route
And his dumb ass parrots will repeat his lies forever no matter what evidence they’re presented with
Group think is bad. Larger the group the lower the IQ.
Does that count here and on Reddit? Although I’ll say here on Lemmy, folks are much more open to actual dialogue than on Reddit.
So like music, the more popular the simplest chords it has.
No, they’re selfish and borderline retarded sheep. When a few retarded sheep start making the suffering noise, they’ll all join the chorus because they don’t have the capacity for independent thought
Reverse the kremlin playbook:
Talk to conservatives and be like: “Both side are the same, I’m voting Libertarian”
That’s kind of true: you can’t get them to see reason, only spite.
There is no need to swing Trump voters over.
There are more citizens who did not vote at all who can be engaged with and energized - because these policies are going to fuck them too.
We need to pretend to be conservative and be like: “I VOTED TRUMP AND HE DID NOTHING FOR ME, BOTH SIDE ARE THE SAME, I’M VOTING LIBERTARIAN 😡😡😡”
If half of conservatives voted a third party candidate, it would splinter the republican party.
Aka: the Reverse Kremlin stretegy
One danger, though: Trump’s campaign managers will try to swing them as well.
I am hopeful! But it will be a fight.
Imagine both parties swinging to third party accidentally 😏 -> 1/4, 2/4, 1/4
Too good to be true, lol
There’s a saying in my country: don’t get drunk on cold water. Meaning don’t gaslight yourself into wishful thinking, because hope can be a hell of a drug.
A third party win won’t happen overnight. The only way you can realistically get it is with ranked choice voting. Otherwise you’re stuck replacing Democrats (and why not, Republicans — in smaller races you can absolutely run a Bernie style progressive who keeps the focus on economics!) one by one because the institutions are already in place, and they’re really powerful! Also, remember they’re just institutions: parties don’t have ideologies, people do.
And before you think to vote for people like Jill Stein or whoever else while hoping that maybe this year the miracle will happen (i.e. getting drunk on cold water), remember that there’s a lot of groundwork that needs to be done by that candidate for them to be viable, and it essentially boils down to this: the whole country needs to know about that person and recognize them on the street come election year — if that’s not the case, then they’re either delusional, underfunded, or most likely an opportunist (possibly even an intentional spoiler paid by the opposition, like RFK was in the Dem primary).
Source: me. I’ve been on the third party hope train back in 2020, emboldened by “leftists” such as Jimmy Dore, BJG, Richard Medhurst, etc.
😇I agree 100%
The cons will swing libertarian and the libs will swing socialist, and then we’ll get a president that only 1/12th of the country actually voted for
It’s very frustrating.
What I’ve seen when I bring what’s happening up to family members step one is denial “oh he’s not doing that” step 2 is defend “well it’s probably for the best, kids do yern for the mines”.
Nothing is convincing.
Stages of grief. Most are just getting to denial.
My 90 year old grandma has moved onto bargaining. She’s trying to write a letter to DJT to “warn him about Musk”
Not bad progress, considering I couldn’t get her to budge at all over the past decade.
Stages of grief
Exactly. It doesn’t only apply to grief — any major change of beliefs will need to go through this process… unfortunately.
That’s kind of adorable.
I remember a moment before the election in 2016. A family member was going off on a Trump worshiping rant. I asked them what they thought of all the awful things that come out of his mouth. They responded with, “Oh, he’s just saying that stuff because he likes to get attention.”
I quoted a passage from Luke’s gospel. “The good person out of the good treasure of the heart produces good, and the evil person out of evil treasure produces evil; for it is out of the abundance of the heart that the mouth speaks.”
What happened next was amazing. They kind of paused and stared at their shoes with this expression that, if I could put words to it, would have said, “Shit. He’s got me there. How do I get around this one?” They then looked up, physically shrugged it off; like water off a ducks back. That stopped the rant but I knew that If they had to choose between Jesus and this particular version of the anti-christ, their choice was already made and it wasn’t Jesus.
I’ve seen multiple news articles/discussion about pastors being told that the Sermon on the Mount is too “woke.”
It’s been like that since Reagan. Carter was open about his faith and really genuine in it. He made the mistake of interviewing with Playboy and saying he had his own struggles with sin - as any believing Christian would admit.
But somehow Reagan became the evangelicals choice. Christian nationalism has always been the latter wearing the former as a fig leaf. The tenets of Christianity - as evidence by the things that they fight for their “first amendment rights” for - are reduced down to opposition to LGBT+ people, abortion, and ultimately women having any form of independence from their fathers or husbands. They have had nothing to do with Jesus or anything that could be said to be his message for a long time.
When Ollie North started giving tours on the evangelical circuit - that should have been a wake up call.
I’ve been there friend. It is not a fun experience but it was very enlightening. Someday they may see it but it is terrifying to understand how willingly ignorant some of us choose to be.
It doesn’t help that they have literally been programmed by right and far right propaganda that only influences and reinforces that mentality of “unity”.
the media titans know what they’re doing
And Cambridge Analytica
Those are just the easy parts of the equation to blame. The fact is none of it matters as much as wanting to believe what they’re telling you is true. Nobody can fix the hateful parts of those people except themselves. If they don’t then it will express itself in one form or another.
Yes and no. Media gives them all their cues and phrases. Media gives them their weltanschauung.
I’m a member of a lot of hiking communities on FB. Prior to Trump second presidency, they would blame any kind of problems related to insufficient budgeting to “ sending all money to Ukraine”. Now that he’s the president, and is BLATANTLY cutting budgets to national parks and forests, I see his supporters say “ it’s too bad we donated so much money to the national parks of Ukraine” or “ if Biden did this, you wouldn’t be complaining”, or some version of “ this is necessary, nothing really changed”.
Wild, would assume a hiking community would lean pretty solidly blue and be livid about cuts to national parks. As the last handful of elections have shown though, there are idiots all over the political spectrum.
I mean, just look at the comment fro the user “Ryan” to a post about a new schedule at the visitor’s center:
If you have trouble opening, I’ll copy and paste.
OP from Sequoia & Kings Canyon National Park:
“NEW VISITOR CENTER HOURS FROM THE Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks official Facebook Account . . .
Schedule update!
The adjusted schedule for visitor centers are as follows:
⛺️ Foothills Visitor Center is open Wednesday – Sunday from 9:30 a.m. to 4 p.m.
🌳 Giant Forest Museum is open Friday – Tuesday from 9:30 a.m. to 4 p.m.
⛰️ Kings Canyon Visitor Center is open Thursday – Sunday from 9:30 a.m. to 4 p.m.”
This one guy responds: “This sure seems like a lot of cuts given the limited number of job losses that I’ve read about. Is this just a political statement? While I wish the federal government would spend more on parks, I’m questioning my substantial donations at this point if efforts aren’t being made to make the best of the situation.”
To be fair, a lot of the do lean blue and are livid. But there are a lot of angry boomers on FB.
It’s also defending the cult leader mentality. Breaking with the cult puts you on the outside, and an enemy of the cult. Breaking free of a cult isn’t easy when the cult’s actions are constantly being reinforced and regurgitated by their leader and his media disinformation networks.
If only they agreed that Social Security, Universal Healthcare and just being nice to each other is better for everyone.
If we try to increase the quality of life for everyone, we’ll have a better world.
Some people can’t be happy unless they’re constantly angry about the people they were told to hate.
We call them gammons over here.
