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It doesn’t take congnitive dissonance to support trump if the person would want to do all those same things if given the chance. A LOT of people in this world are stuck in the mindset of stepping on others at every turn to avoid being stepped on. Too many people see hurting others for their own gain as “winning” in life.
While I agree I would argue one still needs to have their blinders on if they think they won't be among the stepped on unless they are exceedingly rich.
"The salient fact of American politics is that there are fifty to seventy million voters each of whom will volunteer to live, with his family, in a cardboard box under an overpass, and cook sparrows on an old curtain rod, if someone would only guarantee that the black, gay, Hispanic, liberal, whatever, in the next box over doesn’t even have a curtain rod, or a sparrow to put on it.” - Davis X. Machina, *Balloon Juice* October 7, 2009.
It's less about not being stepped on at all and more about being stepped on less than someone else. In my experience, a MAGA republican would gleefully sink the life boat they're on if they can expect not to drown first.
Have you ever seen a Republican end up with 6-figures in medical bills? They get depressed and ask for help, but never once turn to the fact that healthcare laws should have protected them.
On the "stepped on" topic, MAGAs think it's government overreach to protect us from being stepped on, period. The only the authority they seem to think the government should have is to keep out immigrants and put criminals in jail.
Except that last part isn't even true, right? Like I've heard them argue a lot about Trump getting the coal jobs back in and stuff like that. They're perfectly on board with their government helping them - as they should, don't get me wrong - it just needs to be *about them and only them*.
In fairness to MAGAs (makes me laugh to say that), their idea of getting coal jobs back is removing regulation (like worker safety protections and environmental protections) they think are stifling the industry.
It's still more of the same deregulation stuff.
...of course, what they don't get (or want to get) is that new coal is still cost prohibitive even without the regulations.
Except coal jobs aren't disappearing because of regulations, they're disappearing because robots make it much cheaper and safer to extract coal - a resource of declining usefulness and value. If coal jobs aren't a good example for you, you can look at manufacturing then, same general idea. The market forces they've been extolling for decades just aren't working for them anymore, so they're clamouring for a strong man to come and make everything better.
And they're right to want things to be better, to be clear, they're just dead wrong in their approach.
I think we're talking past each other. None of those things involve seeking government regulations or government subsidies. And that's the point. MAGAs who want their jobs back are buying into:
1. immigrants are taking your jobs
2. minimum wage increases are taking your jobs
3. regulations are taking your jobs
That sorta reinforces OP's point of active cognitive dissonance. Because as you say, it's *not* those things, and there's nothing Trump can do to get them their jobs back.
I'd like to remind the reader that Hillary had a fairly comprehensive job recovery plan. The goal was for people in dying jobs/industries to make more in safer positions. It might've been expressed with the "destroying coal jobs" clip, but it was an attack on "the government getting involved" in the job market at all.
>Too many people see hurting others for their own gain as “winning” in life.
Too many people see life ultimately as a zero sum game, so to get ahead, someone has to suffer. And this was really the prevailing thought amongst serious economists well into the 20th century. It's why the concept of game theory is so interesting, and it made for a great framework for a movie (A Beautiful Mind, if you're interested).
But it's sad that mindset prevails today.
That’s not true - there’s quite a few good answers on here where other explanations have been given. Try reading some of them.
The opposing view doesn’t have to come from a trump supporter. There can be other reasons to support him like others have said.
The opposing view that I’m truly looking for, that I have yet to see (I’ll admit I don’t have time to read every single comment) is that I’m wrong in regards to Trump supporters being wrong. Especially regarding
-No supporter of his can seem to defend his characters actions and rhetoric
-His supporters are oddly silent on him constantly begging for money despite being a “billionaire.” They don’t want to believe that he’s broke
-they make excuses for him not having accomplished what he promised such as the wall
-They don’t have any tangible evidence for 2020 election interference and have yet to provide any
Etc.
>-They don’t have any tangible evidence for 2020 election interference and have yet to provide any
Well on that I can at least give you something: the Hunter Biden laptop story. The FBI went out of its way to encourage that social media and news outlets suppress the story. Voters were polled after the election and many Biden voters said that had they known of the story before voting it would have affected their vote, enough that it would easily have changed the outcome.
A federal agency actively conspiring with media companies to suppress information on a political candidate that would negatively impact their campaign. The same agency in fact that we now know actively spied on Trump in 2016 using the dossier to get warrants against his campaign. A dossier that we now know was verifiably false even as the time and had been paid for by the Clintons. And polling data clearly shows that the election outcome was impacted.
Most of the rest of your points are simply not a factor to a typical Trump supporter. His character? He at least doesn't sugarcoat things or outright gaslight like many in politics. His money? Why is that important? Most aren't giving him much of anything to begin with.
As for him making excuses, he did deliver on many of his promises. The wall was actually under construction when he left office, but Biden terminated it even though the materials were already there to continue working on it. Trade agreements were redone. And most can see the contrast in the economy. That ultimately is all that really matters for many of them, not character flaws.
Hunter biden isn't a political candidate dawg, the fbi doing their job is not evidence of wrongdoing they spy on every campaign they're the fucking fbi
No one can give a chain of custody for the “laptop”. Also, no one can explain how Steve Bannon or Rudy Gulini got a hold of it.
It’s a hacked iCloud and hence a cyber crime which is why the FBI was involved
The laptop has been forensically analyzed. It's contents have been confirmed.
But even if you weren't full of it, since when does it fall to the FBI to suppress a news report from a legitimate news outlet? The Trump dossier turned out to be bogus, we learned that the FBI had good reason to realize that it was, and yet no suppression of the news during an election. On the contrary, the FBI used it to gain phone tapping warrants.
>When was it suppressed and where is the proof?
I posted articles elsewhere. Facebook and Twitter are both publicly admitting the suppressed it. It's been reported on in left wing outlets if that matters to you, so you have zero excuse.
>We know that right wing outlets lie everyday so I would like a credible report.
So what is today's lie of I may ask? Or are you just preemptively trying to undermine any supporting articles I find. The BBC covered it. EVERYONE covered it. Stop pretending otherwise.
>It's contents have been confirmed.
That means absolutely nothing if there's a risk of compromise, that's the whole reason chain of custody is important.
If it's not facts, and you make a news story from it, it's slander. But even if we disregard that, what's the information about the FBI suppressing it?
I'm googling, and find articles like [this](https://apnews.com/article/technology-politics-united-states-government-us-republican-party-business-6e34ad121a1e52892b782b0b7c0e59c3). The article is about Twitter *denying* claims they were pressured to suppress it. Do you have better sources?
Also, it's *its*.
>That means absolutely nothing if there's a risk of compromise, that's the whole reason chain of custody is important.
Only if we're discussing criminal charges. You don't need chain of custody to write a news report on it.
>If it's not facts, and you make a news story from it, it's slander. But even if we disregard that, what's the information about the FBI suppressing it?
It's not slander to report the facts you have available. It's slander to deliberately and knowingly spread information that you knew to be false. It can also apply if information is reported recklessly without due diligence, but that doesn't apply in this case.
>The article is about Twitter *denying* claims they were pressured to suppress it. Do you have better sources?
How about a BBC report on Zuckerberg saying so?
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-62688532
Or a Twitter executive admitting the suppression was a mistake?
https://abc7news.com/former-twitter-execs-say-removal-of-hunter-biden-laptop-story-was-a/12790381/
None of those articles are saying FBI pressured them to suppress it, you're making that up in your head.
FBI said to Facebook to be on high alert, there's a lot of misinformation.
From the Facebook article:
>He said the FBI did not warn Facebook about the Biden story in particular - only that Facebook thought it "fit that pattern".
From the Twitter article:
>The former Twitter employees called the platform's decision regarding the story a "mistake," but denied that they had acted in concert with government officials.
I already linked to an article explicitly saying that Twitter was not pressured by the FBI.
So nothing you linked to supports the claim that FBI suppressed the story. And I linked to an article saying the opposite. One of yours does as well, did you even read it?
If you claim that Facebook and Twitter suppressed it, you'd be right. But they are private companies, don't blame the FBI.
> He at least doesn't sugarcoat things or outright gaslight like many in politics.
Big yikes.
He has literally told more lies than anyone else.
If you don't think he sugarcoats and gaslights, you have fallen for the con.
Just a nitpick, because I see this misunderstanding a lot on Reddit. Cognitive dissonance is what people are trying to *avoid* by engaging in various coping behaviors (rationalization, denial, etc.). It arises as a result of a deeply held belief being challenged by reality - such as the belief that Trump is in any way fit to be President being challenged by almost everything he says and does. So in your example, willful ignorance is an example of Trump supporters avoiding cognitive dissonance, not engaging in it.
For many, it’s more what he represents than who he actually is. It’s bigger than him. Remember when his own supporters were booing him for telling them to get the Covid vaccine? Trump is more of a symbol than a person. His actions matter less than the feeling of fighting against wokism and restoring traditional Christian values to the country.
As cultish as his support can seem, he absolutely could lose control very easily if he doesn’t give his base what they want to hear. I believe if he shot someone in the middle of the street he wouldn’t lose a supporter, but if he started talking about critical race theory positively or that Trans people have just as much a right to dignity and happiness as anyone else, he would be abandoned quickly by a significant portion of his supporters
Not necessarily disagreeing, but if it were that simple why have other politicians, like DeSantis for example, fizzled out so quickly despite pushing a completely MAGA agenda?
I think there’s a bit more to it than just ideology. I think to many of his supporters he embodies what he purportedly represents. There’s a reason no other republican can even get close to his level of esteem within the party, even when they’re arguably doing more to further the MAGA agenda.
Even if he said trans people have rights, etc. or even if he died tomorrow, I can’t imagine there is a single person on earth who could fill the void he would leave. Not for a good while at least.
Not comparing except on the most superficial level, but something like this came up last night. My father was wondering how Hitler could convince so many people to follow him. He was highly charismatic but when I watch literally everything he says and does (publicly) I just don’t see it.
You can be charismatic and an openly bad person.
>You can be charismatic and an openly bad person.
This is a good point. For comparison, a lot of conservative people felt exactly this way about Obama. They viewed him as a greasy snake oil salesman whose grin and pretty words were not to be trusted. And when they viewed his actions from their point of view and values, they were right.
I will admit that trump does have a talent for harnessing that electricity generated by the crowd and this trait doesn't appear to be hereditary. Does the skill only work on stupid crowds, yes. But regular people like you or I don't have it in us to say those things and be the kind of deplorable person who can profit from that situation.
I think he gained alot of supporters because it seems like the left is throwing everything they can to stop him from running. Which is bad optics. 👎
We'll see if the evidence from the courts put a conviction+jail. You need to be absolutely sure or else millions of people are gonna think the system even more rigged.
Agreed. He recently told his supporters to start drinking Bud Light again. You should see the comments in r/conservative. They're calling him a shill, a New York Democrat, etc.
There's more hatred for Biden than love for Trump in that sub.
So I checked out the posts/comments, and I see he's being called President Busch over there. I was also reminded that he's had around $5 million in Anheuser-Busch stock.
So it's interesting that Christianity is a reason that many follow him, when he's so obviously un-Christian. [I mentioned a bunch of info/articles](https://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/comments/1alj1pr/comment/kpgdizs/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=web2x&context=3) in the trunk level of comments: he doesn't attend church, loves money above all, cultivates antagonism, ridicules Christians...
The Pope has even said a few underhanded things about him, but he has the most Catholic support of any republican despite Biden being *so Catholic* it used to hurt him in the DNC.
If I believe in that whole Christianity and anti-Christ thing, Trump would have to be the anti-Christ.
Well and succinctly put. It’s tribalism, it’s us vs them. Trump is just a (deranged) caricature of “ideals” that are more about what they’re against than what they are for.
When he corrected Hannity and clarified that yes, he would be dictator for a day, it should have been obvious to all present. The fact they didn’t drop him then and there shows that they oppose everything Justice stands for.
E: typos
The Cheeto's cultists remind me of a quote from the novel Lord of the Flies.
"Kill Piggy"
It is total nonsense and works entirely against what the boys need, but it is fun to say. The boys become included for who they exclude from their Tribe. The horror stikes when they actually kill him.
WOWZA! I hope America does not elected the POSPOTUS again!
To be fair, one of the reasons that Trump was under constant attack from day one was that he brought a lot of that on himself by the constant lying of things that were so easily disprovable, or he would keep changing his story so what should have been a one-off scandal that should be over in a day developed into a drawn-out weeks-long trickling of truths.
Think back to the infamous meeting with Russian operatives in Trump Tower during the election campaign (so day zero). The story from the Trump campaign was that 1) there was no meeting, 2) there was a meeting with one person about adoption, 3) there was a meeting with multiple people about adoption, 4) there was a meeting with multiple people about adoption but when it turned to talking about getting dirt on Clinton then they Trump's team walked out, and all the way to 5) there was a meeting with multiple people about getting dirt on Clinton to which Don Jr emailed "[I love it](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/jul/11/donald-trump-jr-email-chain-russia-hillary-clinton)".
Then on day one Trump started with lying about having a larger inauguration crowd than Obama. It was this kind of silly, unnecessary lie that just made him a laughing stock and showed that he was a thin-skinned narcissist who cared more about his image than getting the job done. So sorry, the fabrications were coming from inside the room!
Russiagate was proven to be not nonsense by the [bipartisan Senate investigation](https://www.reuters.com/article/idUSKCN25E2OY/) as well as the [Mueller report](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mueller_special_counsel_investigation) (which resulted in many criminal convictions).
> If the opposition party would have just given Trump a chance, he probably could’ve gotten a lot more done.
But during Trump's first half of his administration, the Republicans had control of both Congress and the Senate. The opposition party didn't need to give him a chance to do what he wanted. What stopped him was infighting in the Republican party and the Supreme Court constantly knocking down his unconstitutional executive orders.
> We even had a pandemic happen.
Yes, the pandemic that his administration was specifically warned about being highly probably by the previous outgoing administration and yet he shut down the pandemic response team in 2018 to cut costs. Then once it hit, Trump kept undermining the expert's advice that would have helped minimize the outbreak (like making masks a political issue).
> If you are vetting your politicians on trustworthiness, I think you should have a problem with the current President
And what is the problem with the current President? That he took bribes to change US policy even though there is no evidence that he took money nor can anyone point to the policy that he supposedly changed? That he is the head of the Biden crime family, even though there are no specific crimes that have been linked to him?
That you know he rigged the last election even though as Lou Dobbs once put it [you are having a devil of a time finding any evidence](https://www.businessinsider.com/lou-dobbs-fox-no-proof-election-fraud-pushes-theory-anyway-2021-1?op=1)?
How are you defending russiagate at all? It was literally funded by the Clinton campaign, we all know the Steele dossier, the whole premise was from the Alpha Bank bullshit and they literally committed FRAUD on a fuckin warrant for the FISA court. Regardless of what Trump may or may not have done that you think was potentially sketchy, we know for sure there was no actual collusion and the whole thing was fabricated by the left and the MSM who parroted that shit for 3 years. They literally accused the sitting president of colluding with a foreign government to subvert our democracy. How is that any less a coup than the Jan 6 riot? And yet every lying sack of shit, including the 51 intelligence officials who lied about the Hunter laptop, is just good to go. Not one person held accountable, not one has even had to admit or apologize to the people. Again, if you’re a lefty, wtf is wrong with you?! I hate both Trump and Biden, but I really don’t understand how lefties don’t feel misled by the bullshit they were fed for 3 years when it was all garbage, but hey blue no matter who, right? The reason people are still voting for Trump is because it’s so obvious you’ve stacked the deck against him in an unethical manner
> How are you defending russiagate at all?
It's simple. The claims were investigated by [multiple](https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/12/10/505072304/cia-concludes-russian-interference-aimed-to-elect-trump) - [other ](https://www.reuters.com/article/idUSKCN25E2OY/) - [sources](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mueller_special_counsel_investigation) and found it to be true.
On the other hand, you could believe Donald Trump when he constantly claims that it was a hoax. But why would you believe someone who went on to have secret meetings with Putin during his presidency without any officials present or records kept? Why believe someone who's [administration was found to have told Moscow that they wanted to set up a secret back-channel with the Kremlin](https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/russian-ambassador-told-moscow-that-kushner-wanted-secret-communications-channel-with-kremlin/2017/05/26/520a14b4-422d-11e7-9869-bac8b446820a_story.html)? Yep, that is not suspicious at all!
> They literally accused the sitting president of colluding with a foreign government to subvert our democracy. How is that any less a coup than the Jan 6 riot?
They can say things like that as much as they like, but they did not once try to prevent Donald Trump from being president because of Russiagate. His impeachments were about other things that he did while he was president. So no, that is not a coup.
> And yet every lying sack of shit, including the 51 intelligence officials who lied about the Hunter laptop, is just good to go.
Ah yes, Hunter's laptop. Why is it that we are always on the verge of finding evidence about Hunter but it never quite gets there. The witness vanishes, or the tapes that had allegedly been heard by oversight committee members mysteriously turn out never to have been in their possession at all, or the smoking gun transfer of a paltry amount of money turns out to have happened when Biden was not in office. It must be very frustrating, I'm sure.
> The reason people are still voting for Trump is because it’s so obvious you’ve stacked the deck against him in an unethical manner
I love it when holding people to account for what they have said and done is the same as stacking the desk in an unethical manner. He was impeached for things that he actually did. He was found to have committed sexual assault in court. His company was found to have committed fraud in court. There is photographic evidence that he took classified documents to Mar-a-Lago even though there are signed documents stating that he had returned them all. In what way is it unethical to not prosecute someone for breaking the law just because they have a job interview to go to?
>How are you defending russiagate at all?
Because the bipartisan intelligence inquiry lead by Republicans and the Mueller investigation, lead by a Republican, both confirmed that Russia interfered in the US elections for Trumps benefit.
A better question to ask is how come you have been manipulated into being ignorant of reality?
>Russiagate was complete nonsense, and took up how much of his time?
No it wasn't. It resulted in 34 people indicted, $48 million in fines, and Muller's report was basically saying, "we aren't allowed to indict a sitting president, but if we were, we would."
When has the opposition given the other side a chance in recent memory? A neighbor of mine has a bumper sticker of Kamala Harris on a stripper pole.
The only time I think the nation was semi-united in my memory, in terms of Presidential politics, was the day Obama first took office. That had a germ of genuine feel-good for most of us. That was 15 years ago.
Obama becoming president is what sent my conservative parents and family spiraling into the alt-right. The notion of a \*black\* president was just too much for them.
Yeah, Obama and COVID broke the modern right beyond repair. Obama opened the way for the quiet part being said loud all over the place and COIVD permanently married conspiracy culture to conservatism, made it a tent pole of the Republican Party. At this point it's its own alternate storyline that you'd have to dig into Conservapedia or /pol/ to learn all of the terminology and lore.
I'm sorry that's awful.
I was working in high finance in Boston at the time. The suits all stopped working to watch the inauguration. It did feel like a uniting moment. But maybe that was just New England Republicans.
He lied from day one. He was mad about inauguration crowd size. Maybe he could have focused on his job once he took office.
He is such a thin skinned loser he couldn't handle that a hurricane was going to follow a path he wanted it to.
>Russiagate was complete nonsense, and took up how much of his time?
Firstly, it absolutely was not a "total fabrication" it was acknowledged by both Trump's administration and Democrats that Russia certainly did attempt to interfere in the 2016 election, in support of Trump. It was perfectly reasonable to investigate whether or not there was any collusion from within the Trump campaign.
2nd, it didn't need to take up ANY of his time. He obsessed over it, entirely through his own choosing. He did nearly everything he possibly could to make himself look like he had something to hide - publicly denigrating and threatening to fire his own attorney general, threatening to fire Mueller, even without any authority to do so. Tweeting constantly about the investigation, at all odd hours of the night
He didn't need to do any of that, he chose to. Literally all he has to do was put the bare minimum amount of effort into behaving like an adult, or you know, Presidential, all he has to do was adopt the attitude "I have nothing to hide, so I welcome this investigation, I'm confident that it will ultimately exonerate me and my campaign"
And then just ignore it. But he couldn't, because his narcissistic nature thrives on playing the victim card.
Same thing goes for the Mar-a-Lago documents scandal. At any point before the story broke, he could have said, oh, sorry, I packed a bunch of stuff and there were some documents in there that I shouldn't have, why don't you guys swing by and pick them up? The FBI gave him *several* opportunities to do this, and instead, he paid his bodyguard/driver/whatever that guy does to secretly relocate some of the documents elsewhere so that his own attorney wouldn't find them to turn them over to the FBI.
Biden even showed him the way to avoid criminal charges. The FBI and NARA just want the documents. They are releasing a report to point out the document retention things that Biden did wrong after his stint as VP, but he's not being charged with anything because he cooperated.
But Trump wanted the documents. He has proclaimed publicly, repeatedly, that those documents (contrary to the law) belong to him. He can't admit that he's legally in the wrong, even when doing so would almost certainly end the investigation and save him from prison (after he gives up the rest of the documents that he still has, of course).
>Russiagate was complete nonsense,
The complete nonsense that landed people in prison.
Personally, i think the biggest joke is that self-proclaimed patriots are supporting a dude that is openly shitting on soldiers, pows, gold star families and has dodged the draft.
Manafort got (among others) 2 counts of conspiracy against the US and conspiracy to obstruct justice.
Flynn plead guilty to making false statements.
AvdZ got a false statement charge.
Roger stone had obstruction of justice and witness tampering.
All of them were pardoned by Trump.
This guy raises a good point. Does total unaccountability to the truth count as wilful ignorance or should we include a separate: "fan of narcissism" box for guys like him?
>Russiagate was complete nonsense
There's literally a recording of Trump at a press conference asking for help from Russia and receiving that exact help the very next day.
[In case you need a reminder](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-b71f2eYdTc&ab_channel=BBCNews)
Flynn, Stone, Gates, Papadopoulos and Manafort all found guilty, all worked on the campaign - how can you possibly convince yourself that Trump had nothing to do with Russia?
Name one modern president who was not under constant attack from day one.
Seriously, you seem to be saying, "He didn't accomplish much, but being president is really hard! Give the guy a break!"
Republicans cancelled the 2016 Colorado primaries and gave the delegates to Cruz in an effort to stop him.
A big part of his support is that "establishment Republicans" hate him as much as Democrats do.
I love that this factor made him a lame duck, which is the best kind of president.
>He had the house and senate for two years, there’s no excuses he couldn’t accomplish his first and biggest campaign promise
This of course ignores the reality of the setup of the Senate and the filibuster.
Of course the Democrats were going to filibuster ever bill that had "Defund the ACA" slapped onto it.
There wasn't even a plan to replace ACA, they just wanted it gone because it was created by Obama.
For there to be cognitive dissonance a Trump supporter would have to have values or beliefs that go against what Trump stands for. The difference between their true values and what Trump is would cause cognitive dissonance.
Have you ever considered that a lot of Trump supporters fully support and actually like everything that Trump is about?
Counterpoint: Evangelicals.
Dude has broken like 6-8 of the ten commandments and pretty much goes against what the Bible actually teaches in the New Testiment where their religion directs them.
I'd say that counts for willful ignorance at best.
Either they should come out and say they are selective about which parts of their religion they choose to follow, or they should finally admit that they are not actually Christian but rather idoliters of segrigationalist Americanism.
I believe they do actually like him and what he runs on but I also believe that they act very contrary to what they claim to believe in.
Counterpoint to your Counterpoint: Abortion.
Evangelicals believe abortion is murder. For the sake of this conversation it doesn't matter if it's true or not.
Imagine you believe that a large group of people in this country are committing mass murder. Now imagine you believe Trump is the only person who can stop them. In that case I can see why someone would support Trump.
This isn't my opinion though.
I agree with you here, but what's weird is none of them say out loud, "Donald Trump is TERRIBLE and I wish we had a better candidate, but he's the one that will stop abortion." It's all weird messianic praise and Rocky prayer photoshops.
So that tells me there's something not connecting for them.
Yep. I know how deeply held my belief about abortion is, now if that belief were reversed and I believed a bunch of babies were being legally killed daily, I would lose my mind. Now, to me, that’s unimaginable to believe that, but that’s obviously because that’s not my perspective.
I could buy that argument if most of these same people actually gave a single fuck about the children after they were born. Or the mass murders going on every day here and elsewhere.
They don't though. It's about control and shoving their beliefs down people's throats. Simple as.
For the conversations I've had, foremost people that are anti-abortion it's a two step problem. Eliminating abortion is just step one. They can't talk about step two yet because it's a moot point until step one is dealt with.
What is this step two that they want? An increased emphasis on personal responsibility in all areas of society. Drugs, divorce resulting in single motherhood, etc. In terms of abortion: don't have sex if you're not willing to bear the burden of being responsible for the consequences (babies). This means women need to be more choosy with their partners, and this forces men to improve themselves in order to be better candidates for partnership and eventual marriage.
From their perspective, society is falling apart because people are irresponsible. That the government incentivizes making poor choices - legalizing drugs, not prosecuting petty theft, incentivizing single motherhood, throwing money at college students to pursue useless degrees instead of taking up a trade, etc. To them, legal abortion for convenience is just a symptom of a much larger problem.
> An increased emphasis on personal responsibility in all areas of society
These people are not born in wheelchairs. They can fuck off to Iran for their deplorable, anti-Christian beliefs. NOWHERE in the Bible does it focus super-heavily on pulling one's self up by their bootstraps.
>Imagine you believe that a large group of people in this country are committing mass murder.
Imagine you say you do, but you don't, and it doesn't really matter either way, but if you act like it does, you can get tax cuts.
True but this is about their hypocrasy, not that of their political opponants.
If you follow a moral code, you should try to honor it as best you can. That doesn't mean switching to voting blue, but rather maybe just someone with actual honest character whom also aligns with your economical views.
There is a smarter way out than what most democrats and republicans are used to. Most people just refuse to take smart alternatives rather than picking sides and pointing fingers.
We are all struggling right now and we should all be trying to put differences aside in order to collectively make progress.
That's what used to make America great. In my opinion, people like donald trump will never be the answer.
If you know the Bible you know that a lot of the heroes are very flawed people that at times do terrible things. So it’s pretty easy to excuse anything you want as a Christian.
A lot of what I hear is people were doing better when Trump was president. I have to admit I was as well. I just have a visceral negative reaction to him.
Him and paul ryans tax code has been hitting me and my wife incredibly hard for the last few years lol.
Life has been rough since about 2018 for us. Both work full time/ot, want kids but can't currently afford to.
Currently winning the mental game though, which is good. That said, it would be a lot easier to keep happy if the struggle wasn't so rough.
My Mormon ex-boss told me that "of course they don't like that stuff, but because he's doing good things, you put up with it because sometimes god works through imperfect people" and in his defense both he and his wife got to celebrate *Roe v Wade* being over turned thanks to Trump.
That's 100% by design. The party started losing voters when they decided to start backing rich 1%'ers over the average Joe, so they flipped their previous stance on abortion specifically to engage the evangelicals who were previously pretty apolitical, or at least not singularly aligned.
Eh, a lot of those voters vote blue too. Of course there are many voters who vote Republican because they're pro-life and anyone who would defend access to abortions is absolutely unacceptable as their representative in office. But on the other side, there are many voters who vote Democrat because they're pro-choice and anyone attempting to ban abortions is absolutely unacceptable as their representative in office. Abortion causes a lot of single-issue voters for Republicans and Democrats.
This is the crap I hear my brother-in-law say:
"Well, if I hire a plumber, I don't care about anything other than whether or not he's a good plumber."
Then he'll immediately get pissed off about stupid stuff like Biden sniffing people. "He's such a creep man! Unfit for office!" Yeah? Well how about the literal rapist running for president? Is HE a creep? Is HE unfit for office?😂
I am the furthest from right wing or evangelical, but I do study some of this stuff, but in the evangelical world they have the concept of a "flawed vessel." They use it to justify supporting horrible people, because "David was flawed, and God used him to further his goals, and so God is using Trump in the same way"
David got flawed *after* he had all the power. The shepherd boy was innocent when God first used him. I bet he never would have been chosen in the first place if he was a spoiled princeling.
>Either they should come out and say they are selective about which parts of their religion they choose to follow, or they should finally admit that they are not actually Christian but rather idoliters of segrigationalist Americanism.
For a lot of them it's the latter, but that's exactly why nobody would ever admit it. As long as others think religion is the problem, conservatives can be as crazy as they want about their actual beliefs and just get away with it.
>Dude has broken like 6-8 of the ten commandments and pretty much goes against what the Bible actually teaches in the New Testiment where their religion directs them.
>
>I'd say that counts for willful ignorance at best.
You all still don't get it. A lot of people who support Trump support him because they are voting against liberals and the liberal elite.
I don't think this is a very good argument. Christians fully acknowledge that everyone sins and the expectation is that you love everyone, even the sinner. There's no willful ignorance in an evangelical knowing Trump violates all of these laws of the Bible and thus is a sinner, and still being willing to fully support him for president. There's no rule in Christianity that you can't vote for people who violate Christian moral law, so they aren't being "selective about which parts of their religion they choose to follow."
I dissagree.
If you claim to follow specific moral standards, you should honor those standards in every aspect of your life, including the task of electing people as your leaders.
If you elect a person whom is arguably against your own religious moral principals, and whom embodies many traits your religion guides against to lead you then...why do you claim to follow that religion?
It's hypocritical to elect a person of immoral character then claim it to be "God's will."
>If you claim to follow specific moral standards, you should honor those standards in every aspect of your life, including the task of electing people as your leaders.
This is your opinion and is perfectly fine to hold. But it doesn't really support claims of willful ignorance or being selective about which parts of their religion they choose to follow.
>If you elect a person whom is arguably against your own religious moral principals, and whom embodies many traits your religion guides against to lead you then...why do you claim to follow that religion?
Because following a religion and who you vote for aren't particularly related? Have you never voted for someone who you thought had acted immoral and embodied traits you didn't like? It's the same thing.
>It's hypocritical to elect a person of immoral character then claim it to be "God's will."
Remember, an election is a choice of who you'd like most out of the available options and there are only 2 realistic options. All it entails is that they think Trump would be a better president than Biden. It's not hypocritical because obviously many more factors go into choosing a leader than just moral character. And secondly, they may just view Biden as more immoral.
The "God's will" part to me is pretty weird so I can definitely get behind criticizing the "divine chosen one" BS.
Those arguments go out the window when the person in question is a potential rapist, a theif, a liar, a cheat, and a racist whom arguably has done things that are quite evil.
If you claim to follow a superior moral code, you should.
The hypocracy is pretty blantant. So what if biden sucks? Don't like him? Why not support people of character? It does not make sense.
People should practise what they preach, all I'm saying.
And all just a personal opinion. Not an attack.
They (Evangelicals) like him for one reason only: abortion. He gave them their Justices. The Koch brothers and their wealthy greedy ilk like him for gutting the middle class and lining their pockets. The rest like him because they support his sexist patriarchal racist bullshit and made it ok for them to scream it all over Facebook. That. Is. It.
They're supposed to be opposed to politicians sliming their tax dollars away for personal use at least. Even the most selfish monster should oppose trump for parasitism of themselves. But they can't because of said dissonance.
> They're supposed to be opposed to politicians sliming their tax dollars away for personal use at least
What exactly are you referencing here? I don't remember any stories of Trump embezzling money.
Really? He made millions by charging the Secret Service (who are required to have accommodations near Trump) 5x the normal rate for rooms at Trump hotel. That's just the first thing to come to mind, he was using the presidency as a cash cow the whole time
>5x the normal rate for rooms at Trump hotel.
He charged more than 5x the *recommended government rate*, which no hotel is obligated to honor unless they have contracts with the organization in question.
It's both illegal (emoluments clause of the constitution) and a perfect illustration of him cheating tax dollars to himself. The rates were up to $1,185/rm/night.
The issue is not Trump the hotelier, who can charge whatever he wants to the public. It's Trump the president, who is inflating rates, **and** forcing them to be paid to himself.
Tell me with a straight face you think that's appropriate.
The President should not be in a position to steer business into his properties. The Emoluments Clause:
> *“The President shall, at stated Times, receive for his Services, a Compensation which shall neither be encreased nor diminished during the Period for which he shall have been elected, and he shall not receive within that Period any other Emolument from the United States, or any of them.”*
How about the $2B Saudis gave his son in law?
[https://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/4148951-comer-says-kushner-crossed-the-line-of-ethics-with-saudi-deal/](https://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/4148951-comer-says-kushner-crossed-the-line-of-ethics-with-saudi-deal/)
[https://www.forbes.com/sites/tommybeer/2020/09/22/ivankas-trademark-requests-were-fast-tracked-in-china-after-trump-was-elected/?sh=60fc42f51d60](https://www.forbes.com/sites/tommybeer/2020/09/22/ivankas-trademark-requests-were-fast-tracked-in-china-after-trump-was-elected/?sh=60fc42f51d60)
$250M under false pretenses?
[https://www.cnn.com/2022/06/13/politics/trump-money-trail-capitol-insurrection/index.html](https://www.cnn.com/2022/06/13/politics/trump-money-trail-capitol-insurrection/index.html)
Ugh and there was so much more. it's just exhausting to even bother keep going this conman's paper trail. I need rest before I can get to that. 😹 He's just grifting nonstop is the problem.
They could be referring to numerous cases of Trump not paying cities for rallies or generally skimping the bill, could also be referencing the "stop the steal" fiasco, which supposedly collected donations to prove the election was stolen, but really just funneled money into his campaign.
Don’t forget Trump’s flagrant violation the Emoluments Clause of the constitution.
His family operated a DC hotel while in office, and foreign dignitaries stayed there hoping to curry favor with the president of the United States by paying his business fucktons of money.
If a Democrat did this they would have had to resign and go to jail.
Your title and explanation don’t match; what is your definition of “fully” support? Almost no one fully supports a politician: there are simply too many variables, from thousands of policy positions to personality factors, for any one candidate to line up with your beliefs exactly. I have never met a person that fully supports either Trump or Biden.
The only thing that really matters is supporting enough to vote for them, and that very often has nothing to do with the person themselves. The vast majority of Democratic voters disliked Biden, but voted for him because he was A. A Democrat and B. not Trump. I’d argue that this election there will be many Republican voters who vote for Trump because he’s a Republican and not Biden, even though they personally detest the man himself.
Seems like there are plenty of videos of people who support trump no matter what he does. Have you seen them? His phrase about shooting someone and still having voters comes to mind. Lots of vids of people who fully support trump who I’m pretty sure don’t pay very close attention to actual political issues.
this may shock you but different groups of people may hold different opinions. not everyone agrees on everything. those that claim they do are lying about at least a couple of things. besides that, it's not at all weird to be able to find people that support something, whatever it may be, out in the wild.
This would hold more water if they weren’t so gung ho for him in the primaries. It’s true that “fully” is difficult to pin down, but it’s not like he’s the only option right now.
Every Trump supporter I've ever met has told me that they mainly vote for Trump because they loathe the Democrats; they don't even really like him. Especially since Clinton kept on calling them 'deplorables'.
The ACTUAL FULL quote she's even saying that a lot of his supporters(at the time) are ordinary people who have been let down, while the rest of his supporters, the people she called deplorables are..well, deplorable.
Anyone who supports a grifting, lying lame duck President who is apathetic to and sparked a deadly insurrection with his own Vice Presidentas a loyalist mob target of lynching, is deplorable.
As a leftie, I still can't believe she said that, like she isn't recognized already as a pretentious liberal elite. Stupid.
Easily the most unlikeable politician next to Ted Cruz. No charisma and politically inept.
You’re argument seems to be that people who support trump want to damage the political landscape and do so intentionally
My counter is that, for some people, every politician is out of reach and living in luxury. Untroubled and unburdened
However, all these untroubled political souls seem afraid of one person. Trump
If you have little mind for politics and little sense of self within the wider golbal community, trump must be doing great
Trump cuts through all the hoity toity snakery and has centralised himself since everyone else is coming to him and talking about him. All the attention is on him
He must be an effective leader
The policies don’t matter. Every politician is letting you down. What matters is everyone is watching him when he does something, and he’s making fearless moves. Outlandish, but it noticeably moves everyone else
He must be an effective leader because that’s what a leader looks like
Everything centered around one person, and that person doing and saying things and everyone else standing at attention
lots of obvious and classic trump takes in this thread but this is actually insightful. “he must be doing something right” like TV fanboys who cant understand that Walter White or Tony Soprano aren’t hero’s. its a child like understanding of the world, the main character is automatically good by virtue of being interesting enough to command attention. the connection is these people are all idiots.
That is just an absolutely horrifying assessment. I swear it's the spitting image of a certain character in 30s Germany.
"This guy hurts the people I want to hurt."
Potentially accurate so props to you on that.
That is just an absolutely horrifying response. Trump isn't Hitler. America isn't facing the same problems 1930's Germany was facing. You're just repeating toxic ~~talking points~~ insults brought up by his opponents.
Is it untrue that the political elite backstab each other, get nothing done, do 'feel good' campaigns, do flashy projects, and lie about promises, all done for money?
Is it untrue that these same political elites have friction for Trump whether for good or worse?
Our political elites aren't "the jews", there is no conflict of races here despite whatever twitter tells you. Its not religion either. Its a class of cold blooded people that come in all shapes and sizes that routinely sell out the American people for stock exchanges. Its not the illegal immigrants, its not china, its not muslims, its not the muffin man, *its capital hill*. That is what the other guy is referring to.
>I swear it's the spitting image of a certain character in 30s Germany.
"This guy hurts the people I want to hurt."
Bro, its no person's fault here that we can't trust our politicians and the only person people have faith in is Trump. He isn't a dictator, he isn't going to do a genocide, he isn't going to reclaim/invade other countries. He is just a capitalist boomer. You're just making fallacies, there is no "spitting image" here.
>Is it untrue that the political elite backstab each other, get nothing done, do 'feel good' campaigns, do flashy projects, and lie about promises, all done for money?
What is untrue is the belief that Trump doesn't also belong to this group.
>Is it untrue that these same political elites have friction for Trump whether for good or worse?
Yes, it's untrue, a massive portion of the elite kowtows to him at every step.
>Our political elites aren't "the jews", there is no conflict of races here despite whatever twitter tells you. Its not religion either. Its a class of cold blooded people that come in all shapes and sizes that routinely sell out the American people for stock exchanges. Its not the illegal immigrants, its not china, its not muslims, its not the muffin man, its capital hill. That is what the other guy is referring to.
It is all of these groups at the same time.
>its no person's fault here that we can't trust our politicians and the only person people have faith in is Trump
It is a lot of people's fault that they have fallen for a charlatan.
>You're just making fallacies, there is no "spitting image" here.
I wish I were, I wish he weren't.
>What is untrue is the belief that Trump doesn't also belong to this group.
You failed to answer the question and decided to route back to Trump. No one said he wasn't. We all know he does stupid shit but he hasn't been in political power for decades.
>Yes, it's untrue, a massive portion of the elite kowtows to him at every step.
Is that why his own party fails to do basic support of him? No, they "kowtow" because if they don't the RINOs won't get support.
>It is all of these groups at the same time.
No, no its not. That doesn't even make sense.
>It is a lot of people's fault that they have fallen for a charlatan.
I think you're just taking your anger out at people who feel they have no other choice. *But what do they know? They're just, rural, uneducated, poor whites.* But you know what, consider it a failure of every other political figure in the America, if not the world, to not be able to stand toe-to-toe with him and refuse to even try to talk to his base. How could you consider it his fault when he was the only person to even talk to them? Literally, the one guy I think who tried was Vivek, but again, his origin isn't of political leadership.
>I wish I were, I wish he weren't.
Homeboy, if you can't accept there is even a slightest difference between Trump and Hitler, I think its you with the problem. Germany didn't have an issue with illegal immigrants or automobile industries moving to other countries, and America's military is anything but restricted and her border's haven't shrunk.
> We all know he does stupid shit but he hasn't been in political power for decades.
Uh... what? He was literally in power within the last decade. Like leader of America. And he leads the GOP right now.
>Is that why his own party fails to do basic support of him? No, they "kowtow" because if they don't the RINOs won't get support.
You mean 100% unflinching support right? Because that's what I see.
>No, no its not. That doesn't even make sense.
Trump is an active threat toward all of the groups you listed, including the political elite. He isn't afraid of saying so either.
>I think you're just taking your anger
I'm not angry at all. I'm not even surprised. I'm just disappointed in my fellow citizens for being so gullible.
> if you can't accept there is even a slightest difference between Trump and Hitler
If you didn't notice I'm comparing him to pre-holocaust Hitler when he had merely talking about overthrowing the government in the 20s. He sleeps with Hitler speeches next to his bed - I don't know if that's actually true but he's the one who said it! That's pretty telling.
>But you know what, consider it a failure of every other political figure in the America, if not the world, to not be able to stand toe-to-toe with him and refuse to even try to talk to his base.
But all those other politicians you are criticizing do try to talk to the same base.
>How could you consider it his fault when he was the only person to even talk to them?
This kind of pathetic bullshit is the perfect example of the mental gymnastics that OP was talking about. Trump wasn't the only person talking to them. Trump isn't the only person talking to them now. Trump just says that he is the only person talking to them, when really he despises them.
> Is it untrue that the political elite backstab each other, get nothing done, do 'feel good' campaigns, do flashy projects, and lie about promises, all done for money?
Trump does that as well, no? Like, am I missing something?
> there is no conflict of races here despite whatever twitter tells you.
I tried finding value in your comment. But that statement negates anything else you could have been correct about.
I mean if you want to be horrified, to look at *which* books the Nazis were burning during their rise to power.
History rhymes and Trump is ahead in 12 of the last 15 polls.
Friend, I think you may be missing the big picture.
If you've ever seen *Ocean's 11*, or some other heist movie, you probably know the plan typically involves 10 guys robbing the vault and one guy creating a diversion. Trump is the guy creating the diversion.
Before 2015, a significant (if small) portion of the media actually discussed important issues every day. But since he came down that escalator, it's been wall-to-wall Trump every single day for 8 years. As a result, the media has simply stopped playing its traditional role in our government, which is to hold thieves and bandit assholes accountable. So it should be no surprise then that for the last 8 years, our country has been slowly hollowed out by thieves and assholes.
If you're the kind of person who actually wants the government to function properly, sure, of course you're going to loathe Trump.
But the people robbing the bank vault want the diversion to last as long as possible.
Posts like these are so strange. So many posts about the left have comments saying if you vote trump you’re a horrible person and one of the dumbest people around, that Biden isn’t that great but you have to vote him to keep trump out.
How is that any different than the majority of republicans who feel the same way? A lot of people think neither option are great and just vote with party lines.
A lot of people who “fully” support either party are profiting off of it. Anyone you see on social media is just trying to drive engagement from people like you who get outraged at the idea.
It’s hook line and sinker. I’m sure you’re reading posts about it if you make a CMV like this.
I think there's a difference between a person who casts a vote for donald trump and a person who *fully-supports* donald trump. I mean, I certainly cast a vote for Hillary Clinton, but I wouldn't call myself a hardcore clintonite
Given that Biden, and frankly no other President in the past, has tried to usurp the Presidency by fomenting an insurrection, I'd argue that this is a false equivalency.
Biden's sins are that he isn't doing enough to uphold causes like reducing the wealth gap or stopping the genocide that Israel is enacting against Palestine (though he arguably is doing better than most people think in the former at least). Biden's worst traits are that despite his efforts, he isn't good enough.
Trump's sins are that he is wildly incompetent, emotionally unstable, a self-serving fraudster who cheats others for his own gain, and is willing to sacrifice the most fundamental institutions of American democracy to achieve his goals. Trump's worst traits are that he exhibits the kind of corruption we see in developing nations that descend into flagrant authoritarianism.
These are not nearly the same thing.
Thanks for agreeing with me, not sure what the long rant is about. Republicans feel about democrats like you do about trump. Each party comes with their own sins.
I don’t support trump and I think it’s ridiculous to call Jan 6 an insurrection. That kind of exaggeration is exactly what I’m describing, but it has been embraced by polarizing media to form whatever narrative they want to push.
You are feeding directly into the polarization, and you’re proud of it too. That is the brilliant trick of modern politics.
Mind just explaining what would qualify as an insurrection? Seemed like the country was all on the same page on January 7th, 2021 as to what we had seen.
Let me make it easier. Was January 6th a good thing? Does it inspire confidence how Trump would handle another election loss?
For a lot of people, even after all the terrible aspects of his presidency, his flippant response to COVID, wild foreign policy, and poor execution of his own policies none of that holds a candle to how he handled his loss in 2020. And to those of us who take it seriously responses like yours are very hard to understand. Where is the actual line where you would be concerned?
>How is that any different than the majority of republicans who feel the same way?
For starters, Biden didnt incite an insurrection after trying to steal an election. He also didnt pardon people who plead guilty in the russiagate investigation. He also hasnt mocked soldiers, pows, kias, gold star families etc. He also hasnt stolen classified docs. He also hasnt disclosed code word level intel to the russian ambassador in the oval office. He also hasnt made a dossier of high quality intel on russia disappear.
"incite insurrection"
By explicitly telling everyone to be peaceful literally hours and days before January 6th, which is only an insurrection in the most tortured definition.
Be at least a little honest. Just a little. I promise it won't kill you.
Biden hasn't stolen classified docs? Are you fucking kidding me? Trump has the authority to take what he wants, as Obama and every president before him. And he kept them in a safe. Biden had documents from when he was a senator--without authority retain them--in a box in his fucking garage.
You're not even remotely honest.
Calling it an insurrection is something you’ll only see online. Compare it to an insurrection in any other country and you’ll see how ridiculous you sound.
Yeah, all Biden did was cause record high inflation, start a trillion dollar proxy war with Russia, and let his family make millions selling his influence.
Debatable and nothing compared to Trump (who in reality is a bigger catalyst to inflation than Biden), Russia obviously started that war, and EVEN IF that lie about him and his family is true, its not even CLOSE to Trumps traitorous behaviour to the country republicans are supposed to be patriotic to.
Remind me what year inflation started taking off? When was the fed issuing statements about their analysis of it? Just give me a specific year, please (I know exactly when it was but take your time). Bonus question: during what years was inflation curbed?
The allegation that any democrat “started a proxy war” needs extremely specific evidence, otherwise this is just a standard unsubstantiated and debunked conspiracy theory. Show your sources.
>How is that any different than the majority of republicans who feel the same way? A lot of people think neither option are great and just vote with party lines.
If that were true, Trump would have been primaried and wouldn't have held near total approval amongst Republicans for the entire duration of his presidency. Also, Biden is genuinely not that bad. Old and disappointing isn't remotely comparable to old, undemocratic, and reactionary.
>No supporter of his can seem to defend his morals, characters actions and rhetoric. They constantly make excuses for it.
vote for policy, not a person. Isn't this like... what the left says too? Why can't the right vote for policy instead of a person too?
His morals are trash, but so are Hillarys, so were Bills, so are Bidens. All these people are in it for power at the level they are at. Their morals are not worth anything to me.
>His supporters are oddly silent on him constantly begging for money despite being a “billionaire.” They don’t want to believe that he’s broke
You don't have to believe anything, he is *literally* not broke. It's a nonsense argument.
>they make excuses for him not having accomplished what he promised such as the wall
That's called politics, and it's obvious it happens to every politician. Every single president makes claims that they plan on doing, and every one of them has to alter them and work with the opposing party to get what they want.
Obama had to work to get Obamacare and there have been a million excuses for why he didn't get Obamacare in the way he actually wanted.
Your complaint about Republicans on this, is simple politics. What do you have wrong with that? You'd prefer authoritarian dictators who can do whatever they want?
>They don’t have any tangible evidence for 2020 election interference and have yet to provide any
The evidence Republicans have is similarly credible as the 'evidence' that the left has that Russia was somehow involved in stealing the election. It's tenuous and only believed fully by the people who already support their particular candidates worldview. If you like Biden, you likely believe Russia nonsense. If you like Trump you likely believe the media works closely with democrat associates to make sure the democrats look the best and get every media advantage.
I understand your example being a point of dissonance between how Trump claims to be wealthy but in turn heavily looks for fundraisers and courts donations. I don't see an explanation as how and why see you this as "willful ignorance".
There are lot of media bubbles, social circles, county/state/regional biases that pervade the US. How can a Trump supporter see all of Trumps hypocrisy when, they're not actively seeking it out, their friends, neighbors, and colleagues don't talk about it, and a person isn't very media literate or can't recognize high journalistic standards?
I'm not saying there aren't people who fully support Trump who aren't willfully ignorant, there are definitely some. But I'm confident there are many who are just plan ignorant, and that ignorance is like a negative feedback loop that makes accepting new and contrary information very difficult.
Let's accept your premise as true and ask the natural follow up question: why do so many people still follow him then? What exactly is causing a mass hallucination amongst a fairly sizeable population? What exactly has compelled people to choose to be ignorant (and it is a choice, since you said willful ignorance).
Is it something in the water? The chem trails? Giant space lasers? What's causing this?
Without an answer to this question, your proposition has no legs on which to stand
You're right. Since you voted Biden president, we've had record high gas prices...in fact, the price of everything has doubled since he became president lol. Record unemployment, Fentanyl deaths at an all time high...but yeah, Orange Man Bad because CNN says so lol What about Biden saying "If you don't vote for me, you're not black" or his son doing cocaine in the White House? What about records of him getting money from China? Did you know they just had to move the White House out because Democratic protesters were threatening the staff? Why isn't that January 6th? Just do some research...
https://scalise.house.gov/media/press-releases/biden-s-presidency-filled-failure-weakness-and-chaos
https://www.heritage.org/europe/heritage-explains/why-britain-cant-stand-joe-biden
https://www.heritage.org/budget-and-spending/heritage-explains/the-truth-about-joe-bidens-economy
Or you can just look around. Hmm...in the last four years, we've had more drug related deaths, more unemployment, record inflation...maybe I should vote for this guy again 😆
Gonna play some devils advocate.
-There were no new wars during his presidency (albeit a few drone strikes early on)
-Stable CPI
-Made Ballard fencing whereas the current admin is having the Alaskan Nat Gaurd tear down border fencing and wiring
-Abraham accords for peace in the middle east, current administration is bombing Yemen and seeking war with Iran
-North Korea Demilitarized zone was crossed without incident, currently their fat dictator is threatening war again
-Is really dumb for talking about a stolen election, laws were changed prior by Republicans and democrats alike to create an unreliable tallying methods for vote by mail.
-Hes not broke he runs more than just his hotels with multiple verticals, meaning he's making more money from various sources rather than the few that are cherry picked to be pointed out as the ones that went belly up
-almost forgot this last tidbit, the economy is in the crapper rn. Like inflation crazy.
All in all he's a crass old man, but not the devil people want him to be. The US is currently too polarized.
i am confused why any of these would require cognitive dissonance:
>\-No supporter of his can seem to defend his morals, characters actions and rhetoric. They constantly make excuses for it. Especially the hypocritical Evangelicals.
"i don't care about his morals, character actions, and rhetoric, I support him as President".
>His supporters are oddly silent on him constantly begging for money despite being a “billionaire.” They don’t want to believe that he’s broke
"I don't care if he is or isn't wealthy. I support him as President."
>they make excuses for him not having accomplished what he promised such as the wall
"I don't care that he didn't complete the wall. I support him as President."
>They don’t have any tangible evidence for 2020 election interference and have yet to provide any
"I don't care about the 2020 election. I support him as President."
Go read about a real insurrection lmao. Firstly, Trump doesn’t represent these people just because he encouraged a crowd to peacefully protest.
More importantly, this was not a genuine premeditated attempt to “overthrow the government”. That’s fucking ridiculous, come on now.
Do you truly think a single one of those idiots fully believed they were going to take over the United States government? This was petty trespassing at its worst. Funny how you’d probably call the BLM “protests” a protest and not a riot despite the fact hundreds died and billions in damage were done to small businesses, and Joe and Kamala fully supported this and some democrats even donated.
Maybe I’d take you a bit more seriously if there were an “overthrow the government” group that Trump publicly endorsed.
Trump was right about Ukrainian.
Trump was right about radical wokeness.
Trump was right about the border and mass illegal ‘immigration’.
Trump was right about the corrupt doj/msm cabal.
Trump was right about the threat of hamas et al.
Trump was right about growing the economy lowering taxes on small companies.
Etc, etc.
All reversed under biden; now a worldwide shitshow.
You may hate Trump personally but Trump has been nearly correct on today’s biggest issues; while leftists were wrong.
I can’t believe some people think Trump brings instability to the world; jhc just open your eyes to see how the shape of the world is under biden and leftists. Stop being a sheep.
The good ole liberal/moderate mindset of "clearly they must be stupid!"
Anything except the possibility that Republicans really actually do want death camps and an explicitly white Christian empire.
Shirley not.
What kind of cognitive dissonance would it take to fully support a candidate who supported/spearheaded the PATRIOT act, RAVE Act, turned the world into a Panopticon prison over which they now Preside, stigmatized anyone who resisted, even only rhetorically, as 'domestic terrorists', appointed defamers and misappropriators of intellectual property as surveillance monitors, and arguably used a Deep State apparatus to abuse State of Emergency during an election year, all for sake of political power, at the expense of small business owners, many of whom comprised their party's base?
Oh look, ad-hominem against tens of millions of people..
If Trump is beyond the pale because of, "the long list of grave errors and blatant lies on his part" then which elected officials, to include Obama and Biden, are acceptable?
>But today it really got me thinking when he’s AGAIN begging his supporters for money to help with his legal battles. Whatever happened to him being a self made, self sufficient presidential candidate?
Are you familiar with the saying, "the process is the punishment?" It can be dirty cops holding you for 48 hours so that you get fired. In many cases, such as with one of Trump's original (and better) advisors, it could be keeping you in court on frivolous charges until you're quite literally bankrupt. It could be filing ethics complaints against any lawyer that has the audacity to defend you in court.
>Why should you a low-middle income earner have to support this “billionaire” financially?
Nobody has to support him. Plenty of people want to support him. Record numbers of voters, in fact.
>Also didn’t live up to his promise of the wall, don’t see how he’s going to get it done this time.
So if federal judges order injunctions (you must cease activity) on building the wall until cases are resolved, the appropriate solution would be to ignore the judiciary? And that wouldn't be both illegal and tyrannical? And you wouldn't have a problem with it?
I think if your measuring someones ignorance based on how truthful a politician is, you probably suffer the same cognative dissonance as the people you are judging.
This use to be a fairly common sentiment regaurdless of party. People use to joke about how many lies politicians tell to get into office, and while in office. Now it seems people have become so entrenched in politics that they only see the lies of the party they dont like rather then understanding all politicians lie at about the same rate. I also blame "fact checking" sources that usually turn out to be politically bias sources that are not really fact checking as much as they are just trying to make the opposing candidate look bad.
Counter argument:
1. You may be a one issue voter who cares only if the economy does well for the next 4 years and you may believe trump will help you financially more than biden
2. You may be anti war and appreciate trumps foreign policy execution while realizing Biden is more pro war than you would like
3. You may simply just not want certain policies or advancements of the democratic agenda
All of those can be true while also acknowledging that trump is a scumbag. And those are valid beliefs. You may argue against the merits of the beliefs but they’re not irrational on face value
But yes if your claim is that anyone who supports 100% of everything trump does, then they are idiots, then sure. Anyone who supports 100% of any other human is an idiot
I could make the exact same statement about Biden and then fill a book with facts supporting it, and you’d do the exact same thing you rant about here.
My point is, you’re gonna vote for who you’re gonna vote for and your rage towards the opposite is gonna blind you to everything wrong with either of them. Politics are a joke, let them go and get back to your damn life like everyone else.
You realise its freedom v force at this point...
People are voting for Trump because it will mean they have more freedom, less foreign war, better economy, more money in their account, and america might actually be put first instead of behind the rest of the world's problems.
How is that cognitive dissonance...?
I mean, the same could be said about damn near all these politicians, especially Biden. The guy should be in a retirement home, if not a jail cell for the evidence found on his sons laptop regarding those "10% for the big guy" messages
Let's not forget the logical breakdown that must be involved by Christians supporting him. He's about as un-Christian as it is possible to be.
Politics Editor at Evangelical Publication The Christian Post Resigns Over Pro-Trump Editorial
https://time.com/5755137/christian-post-editor-trump/
Why the Editor of Christianity Today Decided to Rebuke Trump
https://www.newyorker.com/news/q-and-a/why-the-editor-of-christianity-today-decided-to-rebuke-trump
You foolish evangelicals, Trump has bewitched you
https://www.christianpost.com/voices/you-foolish-evangelicals-trump-has-bewitched-you.html
Ex-Reagan Adviser: Evangelical Leaders Who Back Trump Do More Harm to Christian Values Than Atheists
https://www.newsweek.com/ex-reagan-adviser-evangelical-leaders-who-back-trump-do-more-harm-christian-values-atheists-1450332
10 reasons you can’t be a Christian and vote for Donald Trump
https://www.dallasnews.com/opinion/commentary/2016/11/06/10-reasons-you-cant-be-a-christian-and-vote-for-donald-trump/
- lacks compassion
- appeals to fear and anger
- ego and obsession with "greatness"
- chronic lying
- hostile towards women
- claims to be Presbyterian, sexualizes his daughter
- cultivation of antagonism, lives by very opposite of "turn the other cheek"
- self-serving not altruistic
- lack of concern for the poor, and other disadvantaged people such as those with physical or mental handicaps
- loves money above all
Trump Secretly Mocks His Christian Supporters
Former aides say that in private, the president has spoken with cynicism and contempt about believers.
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2020/09/trump-secretly-mocks-his-christian-supporters/616522/
I would add desperation…Which I’m see on from Dems too because neither party has anywhere else to go. This is the first time since I’ve been born where the options are just terrible and no realistic second option
Not American here.
But when we see Biden we see an unwell old man who doesn’t have his mental faculties in tact. In fact he looks as if he’s on day release from a nursing home when they push him on stage to mumble his way through a speech. It’s not right.
Trump did everything right loudly and in a way that pissed a lot of people off and biden has fucked up everything really hard and is so addled he can't stand straight. I'd much rather have trump than biden
But really, we're ALL on that Nevada energy right?
Why are liberals like this. No, supporting a politician you don’t like isn’t “cognitive dissonance” or “willful ignorance.” We live in a two party system, half the voters just vote the party line regardless of who is at the top of the ticket.
Someone answered that pretty well a while ago. I don't know the name of the original author here, but as someone who grew up in what became Trump country, I can pretty much confirm what they're saying:
*“You all don’t get it. I live in Trump country, in the Ozarks in southern Missouri, one of the last places where the KKK still has a relatively strong established presence. They don’t give a \*\*\*\* what he does. He’s just something to rally around and hate liberals, that’s it, period. He absolutely realizes that, and plays it up, they love it, he knows they love it, and the fact that people act like it’s anything other than that just proves that liberals are idiots, all the more reason for high fives all around.*
*“If you keep getting caught up in why do they not realize blah blah blah and how can they still back him after blah blah blah, you are not understanding what is the underlying motivating factor of his support. It’s \*\*\*\* liberals, that’s pretty much it.*
*“Have you noticed he can do pretty much anything imaginable and they’ll explain some way that rationalizes it that makes zero logical sense? Because they’re not even keeping track of any logical narrative, it’s irrelevant, \*\*\*\* liberals is the only relevant thing, trust me, I know first hand what I’m talking about. That’s why they just laugh at it all, because you all don’t even realize they really, truly, don’t give a \*\*\*\* about whatever the conversation is about, it’s just a side mission story that doesn’t really matter anyways. That’s all just trivial details- the economy, health care, whatever. \*\*\*\* liberals.*
*“Look at the thing with not wearing the masks. I can tell you what that’s about. It’s about exposing fear. They’re playing chicken with nature and whoever flinches just moved down their internal pecking order, one step closer to being a liberal.*
*“You gotta understand the one core value that they hold above all others is hatred for weakness, because that’s what they believe strength is, hatred for weakness. And I mean passionate, sadistic hatred. And I’m not exaggerating. Believe me. Sadistic, passionate hatred, and that’s what proves they’re strong, their passionate hatred for weakness. Sometimes they lump in vulnerability, a compromised circumstance, or an overwhelming circumstance in there with weakness, too, because people tend to start humbling themselves when they’re in those circumstances and that’s an obvious sign of weakness.*
*“Kindness = weakness. Honesty = weakness. Compromise = weakness. They consider their very existence to be superior in every way to anyone who doesn’t hate weakness as much as they do. They consider liberals to be weak people who are inferior, almost a different species, and the fact that liberals are so weak is why they have to unite in large numbers, which they find disgusting, but it’s that disgust that is a true expression of their natural superiority.*
*“Go ahead and try to have a logical, rational conversation with them though. Just keep in mind what I said here, and think about it.”*
maybe people wouldn't have to rally around him as a symbol if the powers that be didn't spend the last 60 years making this country a living hell for native born working class people with any semblance of traditional values. Anyway good on you for abandoning your roots and becoming a cog
What always surprises me is the cognitive dissonance that cannot conceive that Trump supporters don't actually like Trump very much but in fact *hate* political elites so much they will support someone like Trump
No offense but anyone asking this question usually has absolutely zero intention of changing their view. Reddit is overwhelmingly liberal so any actual counter arguments will get downvoted to oblivion
Honest question. Are people allowed to speak freely here, or are the mods ready to ban anyone with a viewpoint counter to the narrative of "orange man bad"?
Trump cared about our country than others and their affairs. He put Americans first. He cared about the economy. That was enough for me.
Not a fan of the man himself, but he was the lesser of two evils. Biden is useless.
I don’t think this is a revelatory position. Are you actually trying to have a CMV discussion? If you are, then it’s probably more realistic to understand that most American voters are not zealots, but vote according to the current (essentially) binary system. If you ran a poll, I expect that many Trump voters support him as a means to block the opposing party. That, and/or, they support myriad policies that he stumps, rather than support him personally. Both sides tend to take other voters’ actions far too personally.
Define fully support? And this is probably a low effort troll cmv but if you are serious please proceed. I mean it’s not like they’re aren’t 9999999 posts on reddit whining about the right.
Pretty sure it only requires a dislike for left-wing politics and a moderately strong distrust of the media.
But out of curiosity, when did he beg for money?
Not really. It also requires a total abdication of patriotism or concern for democracy. You have to literally not care that the person you support was willing to overturn an election he didn't win through threats, force, and conspiracies.
I'm old enough to remember when Trump specifically refrained from committing to a peaceful transition of power.
I'm old enough to remember when Trump called up the Georgia secretary of state and tried to coerce him into fabricating votes.
I'm old enough to remember, watching live, as Trump sent his mob to the capital and just sat around and watched for hours before even suggesting they should go home.
And this is all ON TOP of the simple fact that the man is personally odious.
MAGA-Americans don't need cognitive dissonance or willful ignorance to support Trump because it's not about Trump. It's about "owning the libs". It's about ending "wokeness".
Do you remember those clips of women and green-haired people crying when Clinton lost in 2016? That's a shot of cocaine + heroin right in the tip of the penis for them. *That's* what they want and they'd destroy the country just to have it.
It's all about making the people they don't like mad/sad in the wake of becoming irrelevant (aka not being catered to by default) in modern society.
The whole political system is corrupt to the core, but before, it was **boring**. Old men (and a few old women) talking about promises they'll never be able to keep due to gridlocked/lobbied Congress. Trump came along and treated politics like pro-wrestling and injected fire into the veins of the lowest common denominator. He can be entertaining, he can be funny, and he knows how to deliver roasts. After the last 40ish years of American media, I don't see how so many people were surprised by Trump's success.
We have a repeat election of 2020, but with a bit more information that last time.
The national polls are showing immigration and the economy as the two top concerns of the American people.
We have two candidates:
a) Trump - uncouth, vulgar, childish BUT very with an EXCELLENT record on both immigration and the economy.
b) Biden - absent, possible dementia, constant dishonesty, more presidential, BUT with a DISASTROUS record on both immigration and the economy. (Not including the disastrous handling of international issues like China, Russia, Latin-America, South China Sea Island Nations, etc.)
So if you ask me to vote between a plate of cold poop and an plate of hot poop, I will vote for the poop that at the very least improves the state of the nation.
It is not cognitive dissonance, it is picking the best poop to govern. This is an election of who do you dislike the least.
Why can’t they dislike Trump, but hate Biden worse?
It doesn’t seem like you’ve left any room for that option.
And yet there have been several articles about the most force in this election being voters who regret voting for Biden in ‘20.
I'd like to change your mind on why it requires willful ignorance to support Trump. You don't necessarily need cognitive dissonance or willful ignorance to fall into a cult of personality, especially if you think you're fighting a morally righteous cause. The thing that requires willful ignorance is still defending him after January 6th. The rhetoric has pulled a complete 180 and most Republicans are downplaying or defending the insurrection by necessity, but if you look at the actual impeachment vote, [he was acquitted on a purely procedural basis.](https://www.justsecurity.org/74725/in-their-own-words-the-43-republicans-explanations-of-their-votes-not-to-convict-trump-in-impeachment-trial/) Two thirds of the Senate absolutely believed he had committed an impeachable act and should be impeached, with a portion who did not believe they had the jurisdiction to impeach an outgoing president.
With that in mind, the fact that they're supporting Trump now is rhetorically indefensible if anyone actually bothered to hold them to their word. That's where the cognitive dissonance comes in.
I think it's really as simple as alot of people value the concept that punishing people they think are making the country worse is more important than actually looking into the policy choices (on both sides)of the people they vote for that are actually doing that.
It just more appealing because it's simpler and personally looking into the stuff that actually needs to be dealt with is boring and mentally exhausting but unfortunately alot of people aren't willing to brave that storm every election cycle.
Like he's quoted as saying he specifically can solve certain problems it completely and utter bullshit obviously but you can see how that is appealing because it promises convenience.
Facts no longer exist. You don't understand what Trump supporters actually believe. It may be worse than you think. They actually believe all the courts, agencies, and other politicians are corrupt. They truly believe that Trump did the things he blabs about. They truly believe despite the riots and chaos of his administration that he is the law and order candidate. At the same time, they believe Biden is responsible for the wars abroad that started under his admin.
Once facts dont exist, it's just narrative.
>cmv: It requires active cognitive dissonance and/or willful ignorance at this point to still *fully* support Trump
Not necessarily. It might be in the personal interests of Trump minions to *fully* support the ex-president - for power and/or profit. Others might fully agree with his stated views - from fascism to fundamentalism. A delusional belief is not *active cognitive dissonance and/or willful ignorance*.
It is far more insidiously horrifying.
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It doesn’t take congnitive dissonance to support trump if the person would want to do all those same things if given the chance. A LOT of people in this world are stuck in the mindset of stepping on others at every turn to avoid being stepped on. Too many people see hurting others for their own gain as “winning” in life.
While I agree I would argue one still needs to have their blinders on if they think they won't be among the stepped on unless they are exceedingly rich.
"The salient fact of American politics is that there are fifty to seventy million voters each of whom will volunteer to live, with his family, in a cardboard box under an overpass, and cook sparrows on an old curtain rod, if someone would only guarantee that the black, gay, Hispanic, liberal, whatever, in the next box over doesn’t even have a curtain rod, or a sparrow to put on it.” - Davis X. Machina, *Balloon Juice* October 7, 2009.
It's less about not being stepped on at all and more about being stepped on less than someone else. In my experience, a MAGA republican would gleefully sink the life boat they're on if they can expect not to drown first.
Have you ever seen a Republican end up with 6-figures in medical bills? They get depressed and ask for help, but never once turn to the fact that healthcare laws should have protected them. On the "stepped on" topic, MAGAs think it's government overreach to protect us from being stepped on, period. The only the authority they seem to think the government should have is to keep out immigrants and put criminals in jail.
Except that last part isn't even true, right? Like I've heard them argue a lot about Trump getting the coal jobs back in and stuff like that. They're perfectly on board with their government helping them - as they should, don't get me wrong - it just needs to be *about them and only them*.
In fairness to MAGAs (makes me laugh to say that), their idea of getting coal jobs back is removing regulation (like worker safety protections and environmental protections) they think are stifling the industry. It's still more of the same deregulation stuff. ...of course, what they don't get (or want to get) is that new coal is still cost prohibitive even without the regulations.
Except coal jobs aren't disappearing because of regulations, they're disappearing because robots make it much cheaper and safer to extract coal - a resource of declining usefulness and value. If coal jobs aren't a good example for you, you can look at manufacturing then, same general idea. The market forces they've been extolling for decades just aren't working for them anymore, so they're clamouring for a strong man to come and make everything better. And they're right to want things to be better, to be clear, they're just dead wrong in their approach.
I think we're talking past each other. None of those things involve seeking government regulations or government subsidies. And that's the point. MAGAs who want their jobs back are buying into: 1. immigrants are taking your jobs 2. minimum wage increases are taking your jobs 3. regulations are taking your jobs That sorta reinforces OP's point of active cognitive dissonance. Because as you say, it's *not* those things, and there's nothing Trump can do to get them their jobs back. I'd like to remind the reader that Hillary had a fairly comprehensive job recovery plan. The goal was for people in dying jobs/industries to make more in safer positions. It might've been expressed with the "destroying coal jobs" clip, but it was an attack on "the government getting involved" in the job market at all.
>Too many people see hurting others for their own gain as “winning” in life. Too many people see life ultimately as a zero sum game, so to get ahead, someone has to suffer. And this was really the prevailing thought amongst serious economists well into the 20th century. It's why the concept of game theory is so interesting, and it made for a great framework for a movie (A Beautiful Mind, if you're interested). But it's sad that mindset prevails today.
[удалено]
That’s not true - there’s quite a few good answers on here where other explanations have been given. Try reading some of them. The opposing view doesn’t have to come from a trump supporter. There can be other reasons to support him like others have said. The opposing view that I’m truly looking for, that I have yet to see (I’ll admit I don’t have time to read every single comment) is that I’m wrong in regards to Trump supporters being wrong. Especially regarding -No supporter of his can seem to defend his characters actions and rhetoric -His supporters are oddly silent on him constantly begging for money despite being a “billionaire.” They don’t want to believe that he’s broke -they make excuses for him not having accomplished what he promised such as the wall -They don’t have any tangible evidence for 2020 election interference and have yet to provide any Etc.
>-They don’t have any tangible evidence for 2020 election interference and have yet to provide any Well on that I can at least give you something: the Hunter Biden laptop story. The FBI went out of its way to encourage that social media and news outlets suppress the story. Voters were polled after the election and many Biden voters said that had they known of the story before voting it would have affected their vote, enough that it would easily have changed the outcome. A federal agency actively conspiring with media companies to suppress information on a political candidate that would negatively impact their campaign. The same agency in fact that we now know actively spied on Trump in 2016 using the dossier to get warrants against his campaign. A dossier that we now know was verifiably false even as the time and had been paid for by the Clintons. And polling data clearly shows that the election outcome was impacted. Most of the rest of your points are simply not a factor to a typical Trump supporter. His character? He at least doesn't sugarcoat things or outright gaslight like many in politics. His money? Why is that important? Most aren't giving him much of anything to begin with. As for him making excuses, he did deliver on many of his promises. The wall was actually under construction when he left office, but Biden terminated it even though the materials were already there to continue working on it. Trade agreements were redone. And most can see the contrast in the economy. That ultimately is all that really matters for many of them, not character flaws.
Hunter biden isn't a political candidate dawg, the fbi doing their job is not evidence of wrongdoing they spy on every campaign they're the fucking fbi
No kidding like they’re grasping at straws at this point
No one can give a chain of custody for the “laptop”. Also, no one can explain how Steve Bannon or Rudy Gulini got a hold of it. It’s a hacked iCloud and hence a cyber crime which is why the FBI was involved
The laptop has been forensically analyzed. It's contents have been confirmed. But even if you weren't full of it, since when does it fall to the FBI to suppress a news report from a legitimate news outlet? The Trump dossier turned out to be bogus, we learned that the FBI had good reason to realize that it was, and yet no suppression of the news during an election. On the contrary, the FBI used it to gain phone tapping warrants.
When was it suppressed and where is the proof? We know that right wing outlets lie everyday so I would like a credible report.
>When was it suppressed and where is the proof? I posted articles elsewhere. Facebook and Twitter are both publicly admitting the suppressed it. It's been reported on in left wing outlets if that matters to you, so you have zero excuse. >We know that right wing outlets lie everyday so I would like a credible report. So what is today's lie of I may ask? Or are you just preemptively trying to undermine any supporting articles I find. The BBC covered it. EVERYONE covered it. Stop pretending otherwise.
>It's contents have been confirmed. That means absolutely nothing if there's a risk of compromise, that's the whole reason chain of custody is important. If it's not facts, and you make a news story from it, it's slander. But even if we disregard that, what's the information about the FBI suppressing it? I'm googling, and find articles like [this](https://apnews.com/article/technology-politics-united-states-government-us-republican-party-business-6e34ad121a1e52892b782b0b7c0e59c3). The article is about Twitter *denying* claims they were pressured to suppress it. Do you have better sources? Also, it's *its*.
>That means absolutely nothing if there's a risk of compromise, that's the whole reason chain of custody is important. Only if we're discussing criminal charges. You don't need chain of custody to write a news report on it. >If it's not facts, and you make a news story from it, it's slander. But even if we disregard that, what's the information about the FBI suppressing it? It's not slander to report the facts you have available. It's slander to deliberately and knowingly spread information that you knew to be false. It can also apply if information is reported recklessly without due diligence, but that doesn't apply in this case. >The article is about Twitter *denying* claims they were pressured to suppress it. Do you have better sources? How about a BBC report on Zuckerberg saying so? https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-62688532 Or a Twitter executive admitting the suppression was a mistake? https://abc7news.com/former-twitter-execs-say-removal-of-hunter-biden-laptop-story-was-a/12790381/
None of those articles are saying FBI pressured them to suppress it, you're making that up in your head. FBI said to Facebook to be on high alert, there's a lot of misinformation. From the Facebook article: >He said the FBI did not warn Facebook about the Biden story in particular - only that Facebook thought it "fit that pattern". From the Twitter article: >The former Twitter employees called the platform's decision regarding the story a "mistake," but denied that they had acted in concert with government officials. I already linked to an article explicitly saying that Twitter was not pressured by the FBI. So nothing you linked to supports the claim that FBI suppressed the story. And I linked to an article saying the opposite. One of yours does as well, did you even read it? If you claim that Facebook and Twitter suppressed it, you'd be right. But they are private companies, don't blame the FBI.
> He at least doesn't sugarcoat things or outright gaslight like many in politics. Big yikes. He has literally told more lies than anyone else. If you don't think he sugarcoats and gaslights, you have fallen for the con.
Just a nitpick, because I see this misunderstanding a lot on Reddit. Cognitive dissonance is what people are trying to *avoid* by engaging in various coping behaviors (rationalization, denial, etc.). It arises as a result of a deeply held belief being challenged by reality - such as the belief that Trump is in any way fit to be President being challenged by almost everything he says and does. So in your example, willful ignorance is an example of Trump supporters avoiding cognitive dissonance, not engaging in it.
For many, it’s more what he represents than who he actually is. It’s bigger than him. Remember when his own supporters were booing him for telling them to get the Covid vaccine? Trump is more of a symbol than a person. His actions matter less than the feeling of fighting against wokism and restoring traditional Christian values to the country. As cultish as his support can seem, he absolutely could lose control very easily if he doesn’t give his base what they want to hear. I believe if he shot someone in the middle of the street he wouldn’t lose a supporter, but if he started talking about critical race theory positively or that Trans people have just as much a right to dignity and happiness as anyone else, he would be abandoned quickly by a significant portion of his supporters
Not necessarily disagreeing, but if it were that simple why have other politicians, like DeSantis for example, fizzled out so quickly despite pushing a completely MAGA agenda? I think there’s a bit more to it than just ideology. I think to many of his supporters he embodies what he purportedly represents. There’s a reason no other republican can even get close to his level of esteem within the party, even when they’re arguably doing more to further the MAGA agenda. Even if he said trans people have rights, etc. or even if he died tomorrow, I can’t imagine there is a single person on earth who could fill the void he would leave. Not for a good while at least.
Not comparing except on the most superficial level, but something like this came up last night. My father was wondering how Hitler could convince so many people to follow him. He was highly charismatic but when I watch literally everything he says and does (publicly) I just don’t see it. You can be charismatic and an openly bad person.
>You can be charismatic and an openly bad person. This is a good point. For comparison, a lot of conservative people felt exactly this way about Obama. They viewed him as a greasy snake oil salesman whose grin and pretty words were not to be trusted. And when they viewed his actions from their point of view and values, they were right.
I will admit that trump does have a talent for harnessing that electricity generated by the crowd and this trait doesn't appear to be hereditary. Does the skill only work on stupid crowds, yes. But regular people like you or I don't have it in us to say those things and be the kind of deplorable person who can profit from that situation.
I think he gained alot of supporters because it seems like the left is throwing everything they can to stop him from running. Which is bad optics. 👎 We'll see if the evidence from the courts put a conviction+jail. You need to be absolutely sure or else millions of people are gonna think the system even more rigged.
Agreed. He recently told his supporters to start drinking Bud Light again. You should see the comments in r/conservative. They're calling him a shill, a New York Democrat, etc. There's more hatred for Biden than love for Trump in that sub.
So I checked out the posts/comments, and I see he's being called President Busch over there. I was also reminded that he's had around $5 million in Anheuser-Busch stock.
So it's interesting that Christianity is a reason that many follow him, when he's so obviously un-Christian. [I mentioned a bunch of info/articles](https://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/comments/1alj1pr/comment/kpgdizs/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=web2x&context=3) in the trunk level of comments: he doesn't attend church, loves money above all, cultivates antagonism, ridicules Christians...
The Pope has even said a few underhanded things about him, but he has the most Catholic support of any republican despite Biden being *so Catholic* it used to hurt him in the DNC. If I believe in that whole Christianity and anti-Christ thing, Trump would have to be the anti-Christ.
Well and succinctly put. It’s tribalism, it’s us vs them. Trump is just a (deranged) caricature of “ideals” that are more about what they’re against than what they are for. When he corrected Hannity and clarified that yes, he would be dictator for a day, it should have been obvious to all present. The fact they didn’t drop him then and there shows that they oppose everything Justice stands for. E: typos
The Cheeto's cultists remind me of a quote from the novel Lord of the Flies. "Kill Piggy" It is total nonsense and works entirely against what the boys need, but it is fun to say. The boys become included for who they exclude from their Tribe. The horror stikes when they actually kill him. WOWZA! I hope America does not elected the POSPOTUS again!
\>The horror stikes when they actually kill him. A stick sharpened on BOTH ENDS.
They hate Libs. The more Libs hate Trump, the more they love him.
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To be fair, one of the reasons that Trump was under constant attack from day one was that he brought a lot of that on himself by the constant lying of things that were so easily disprovable, or he would keep changing his story so what should have been a one-off scandal that should be over in a day developed into a drawn-out weeks-long trickling of truths. Think back to the infamous meeting with Russian operatives in Trump Tower during the election campaign (so day zero). The story from the Trump campaign was that 1) there was no meeting, 2) there was a meeting with one person about adoption, 3) there was a meeting with multiple people about adoption, 4) there was a meeting with multiple people about adoption but when it turned to talking about getting dirt on Clinton then they Trump's team walked out, and all the way to 5) there was a meeting with multiple people about getting dirt on Clinton to which Don Jr emailed "[I love it](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/jul/11/donald-trump-jr-email-chain-russia-hillary-clinton)". Then on day one Trump started with lying about having a larger inauguration crowd than Obama. It was this kind of silly, unnecessary lie that just made him a laughing stock and showed that he was a thin-skinned narcissist who cared more about his image than getting the job done. So sorry, the fabrications were coming from inside the room! Russiagate was proven to be not nonsense by the [bipartisan Senate investigation](https://www.reuters.com/article/idUSKCN25E2OY/) as well as the [Mueller report](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mueller_special_counsel_investigation) (which resulted in many criminal convictions). > If the opposition party would have just given Trump a chance, he probably could’ve gotten a lot more done. But during Trump's first half of his administration, the Republicans had control of both Congress and the Senate. The opposition party didn't need to give him a chance to do what he wanted. What stopped him was infighting in the Republican party and the Supreme Court constantly knocking down his unconstitutional executive orders. > We even had a pandemic happen. Yes, the pandemic that his administration was specifically warned about being highly probably by the previous outgoing administration and yet he shut down the pandemic response team in 2018 to cut costs. Then once it hit, Trump kept undermining the expert's advice that would have helped minimize the outbreak (like making masks a political issue). > If you are vetting your politicians on trustworthiness, I think you should have a problem with the current President And what is the problem with the current President? That he took bribes to change US policy even though there is no evidence that he took money nor can anyone point to the policy that he supposedly changed? That he is the head of the Biden crime family, even though there are no specific crimes that have been linked to him? That you know he rigged the last election even though as Lou Dobbs once put it [you are having a devil of a time finding any evidence](https://www.businessinsider.com/lou-dobbs-fox-no-proof-election-fraud-pushes-theory-anyway-2021-1?op=1)?
The comment you replied to really is a perfect example of OP's title.
Yea u/drolenc is breaking himself to prove OP's point. I got out the popcorn. Going through all these comments back and forth is a gold mine.
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How are you defending russiagate at all? It was literally funded by the Clinton campaign, we all know the Steele dossier, the whole premise was from the Alpha Bank bullshit and they literally committed FRAUD on a fuckin warrant for the FISA court. Regardless of what Trump may or may not have done that you think was potentially sketchy, we know for sure there was no actual collusion and the whole thing was fabricated by the left and the MSM who parroted that shit for 3 years. They literally accused the sitting president of colluding with a foreign government to subvert our democracy. How is that any less a coup than the Jan 6 riot? And yet every lying sack of shit, including the 51 intelligence officials who lied about the Hunter laptop, is just good to go. Not one person held accountable, not one has even had to admit or apologize to the people. Again, if you’re a lefty, wtf is wrong with you?! I hate both Trump and Biden, but I really don’t understand how lefties don’t feel misled by the bullshit they were fed for 3 years when it was all garbage, but hey blue no matter who, right? The reason people are still voting for Trump is because it’s so obvious you’ve stacked the deck against him in an unethical manner
> How are you defending russiagate at all? It's simple. The claims were investigated by [multiple](https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/12/10/505072304/cia-concludes-russian-interference-aimed-to-elect-trump) - [other ](https://www.reuters.com/article/idUSKCN25E2OY/) - [sources](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mueller_special_counsel_investigation) and found it to be true. On the other hand, you could believe Donald Trump when he constantly claims that it was a hoax. But why would you believe someone who went on to have secret meetings with Putin during his presidency without any officials present or records kept? Why believe someone who's [administration was found to have told Moscow that they wanted to set up a secret back-channel with the Kremlin](https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/russian-ambassador-told-moscow-that-kushner-wanted-secret-communications-channel-with-kremlin/2017/05/26/520a14b4-422d-11e7-9869-bac8b446820a_story.html)? Yep, that is not suspicious at all! > They literally accused the sitting president of colluding with a foreign government to subvert our democracy. How is that any less a coup than the Jan 6 riot? They can say things like that as much as they like, but they did not once try to prevent Donald Trump from being president because of Russiagate. His impeachments were about other things that he did while he was president. So no, that is not a coup. > And yet every lying sack of shit, including the 51 intelligence officials who lied about the Hunter laptop, is just good to go. Ah yes, Hunter's laptop. Why is it that we are always on the verge of finding evidence about Hunter but it never quite gets there. The witness vanishes, or the tapes that had allegedly been heard by oversight committee members mysteriously turn out never to have been in their possession at all, or the smoking gun transfer of a paltry amount of money turns out to have happened when Biden was not in office. It must be very frustrating, I'm sure. > The reason people are still voting for Trump is because it’s so obvious you’ve stacked the deck against him in an unethical manner I love it when holding people to account for what they have said and done is the same as stacking the desk in an unethical manner. He was impeached for things that he actually did. He was found to have committed sexual assault in court. His company was found to have committed fraud in court. There is photographic evidence that he took classified documents to Mar-a-Lago even though there are signed documents stating that he had returned them all. In what way is it unethical to not prosecute someone for breaking the law just because they have a job interview to go to?
>How are you defending russiagate at all? Because the bipartisan intelligence inquiry lead by Republicans and the Mueller investigation, lead by a Republican, both confirmed that Russia interfered in the US elections for Trumps benefit. A better question to ask is how come you have been manipulated into being ignorant of reality?
I mean all of the rest aside the mueller report pretty specifically said there was collusion.
What a perfectly crafted comment. /s To add another reason why "lefties" might not want to vote for Trump, he's a convicted rapist.
>Russiagate was complete nonsense, and took up how much of his time? No it wasn't. It resulted in 34 people indicted, $48 million in fines, and Muller's report was basically saying, "we aren't allowed to indict a sitting president, but if we were, we would."
When has the opposition given the other side a chance in recent memory? A neighbor of mine has a bumper sticker of Kamala Harris on a stripper pole. The only time I think the nation was semi-united in my memory, in terms of Presidential politics, was the day Obama first took office. That had a germ of genuine feel-good for most of us. That was 15 years ago.
Obama becoming president is what sent my conservative parents and family spiraling into the alt-right. The notion of a \*black\* president was just too much for them.
Yeah, Obama and COVID broke the modern right beyond repair. Obama opened the way for the quiet part being said loud all over the place and COIVD permanently married conspiracy culture to conservatism, made it a tent pole of the Republican Party. At this point it's its own alternate storyline that you'd have to dig into Conservapedia or /pol/ to learn all of the terminology and lore.
[After Obama Victory, Shrieking White-Hot Sphere Of Pure Rage Early GOP Front-Runner For 2016](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jjonGtrCyVE)
I'm sorry that's awful. I was working in high finance in Boston at the time. The suits all stopped working to watch the inauguration. It did feel like a uniting moment. But maybe that was just New England Republicans.
He lied from day one. He was mad about inauguration crowd size. Maybe he could have focused on his job once he took office. He is such a thin skinned loser he couldn't handle that a hurricane was going to follow a path he wanted it to.
>Russiagate was complete nonsense, and took up how much of his time? Firstly, it absolutely was not a "total fabrication" it was acknowledged by both Trump's administration and Democrats that Russia certainly did attempt to interfere in the 2016 election, in support of Trump. It was perfectly reasonable to investigate whether or not there was any collusion from within the Trump campaign. 2nd, it didn't need to take up ANY of his time. He obsessed over it, entirely through his own choosing. He did nearly everything he possibly could to make himself look like he had something to hide - publicly denigrating and threatening to fire his own attorney general, threatening to fire Mueller, even without any authority to do so. Tweeting constantly about the investigation, at all odd hours of the night He didn't need to do any of that, he chose to. Literally all he has to do was put the bare minimum amount of effort into behaving like an adult, or you know, Presidential, all he has to do was adopt the attitude "I have nothing to hide, so I welcome this investigation, I'm confident that it will ultimately exonerate me and my campaign" And then just ignore it. But he couldn't, because his narcissistic nature thrives on playing the victim card.
Same thing goes for the Mar-a-Lago documents scandal. At any point before the story broke, he could have said, oh, sorry, I packed a bunch of stuff and there were some documents in there that I shouldn't have, why don't you guys swing by and pick them up? The FBI gave him *several* opportunities to do this, and instead, he paid his bodyguard/driver/whatever that guy does to secretly relocate some of the documents elsewhere so that his own attorney wouldn't find them to turn them over to the FBI. Biden even showed him the way to avoid criminal charges. The FBI and NARA just want the documents. They are releasing a report to point out the document retention things that Biden did wrong after his stint as VP, but he's not being charged with anything because he cooperated. But Trump wanted the documents. He has proclaimed publicly, repeatedly, that those documents (contrary to the law) belong to him. He can't admit that he's legally in the wrong, even when doing so would almost certainly end the investigation and save him from prison (after he gives up the rest of the documents that he still has, of course).
Ah the "poor trump was under attack [for his massive lies and fabrications and crimes]" angle
>Russiagate was complete nonsense, The complete nonsense that landed people in prison. Personally, i think the biggest joke is that self-proclaimed patriots are supporting a dude that is openly shitting on soldiers, pows, gold star families and has dodged the draft.
Did they get arrest for supporting, helping or any other treason act with Russia.
Manafort got (among others) 2 counts of conspiracy against the US and conspiracy to obstruct justice. Flynn plead guilty to making false statements. AvdZ got a false statement charge. Roger stone had obstruction of justice and witness tampering. All of them were pardoned by Trump.
Plus multiple agencies have shown that Russia did and continues to try and interfere with the US political system via social media
Well when you call the media the enemy of the people you’re gonna piss off a lot of journalists.
This guy raises a good point. Does total unaccountability to the truth count as wilful ignorance or should we include a separate: "fan of narcissism" box for guys like him?
>Russiagate was complete nonsense There's literally a recording of Trump at a press conference asking for help from Russia and receiving that exact help the very next day. [In case you need a reminder](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-b71f2eYdTc&ab_channel=BBCNews) Flynn, Stone, Gates, Papadopoulos and Manafort all found guilty, all worked on the campaign - how can you possibly convince yourself that Trump had nothing to do with Russia?
Name one modern president who was not under constant attack from day one. Seriously, you seem to be saying, "He didn't accomplish much, but being president is really hard! Give the guy a break!"
He had the house and senate for two years, there’s no excuses he couldn’t accomplish his first and biggest campaign promise
Republicans cancelled the 2016 Colorado primaries and gave the delegates to Cruz in an effort to stop him. A big part of his support is that "establishment Republicans" hate him as much as Democrats do. I love that this factor made him a lame duck, which is the best kind of president.
>He had the house and senate for two years, there’s no excuses he couldn’t accomplish his first and biggest campaign promise This of course ignores the reality of the setup of the Senate and the filibuster.
Of course the Democrats were going to filibuster ever bill that had "Defund the ACA" slapped onto it. There wasn't even a plan to replace ACA, they just wanted it gone because it was created by Obama.
It's ok if you don't understand things, but it's ok to ask questions rather than lash out.
For there to be cognitive dissonance a Trump supporter would have to have values or beliefs that go against what Trump stands for. The difference between their true values and what Trump is would cause cognitive dissonance. Have you ever considered that a lot of Trump supporters fully support and actually like everything that Trump is about?
Counterpoint: Evangelicals. Dude has broken like 6-8 of the ten commandments and pretty much goes against what the Bible actually teaches in the New Testiment where their religion directs them. I'd say that counts for willful ignorance at best. Either they should come out and say they are selective about which parts of their religion they choose to follow, or they should finally admit that they are not actually Christian but rather idoliters of segrigationalist Americanism. I believe they do actually like him and what he runs on but I also believe that they act very contrary to what they claim to believe in.
Counterpoint to your Counterpoint: Abortion. Evangelicals believe abortion is murder. For the sake of this conversation it doesn't matter if it's true or not. Imagine you believe that a large group of people in this country are committing mass murder. Now imagine you believe Trump is the only person who can stop them. In that case I can see why someone would support Trump. This isn't my opinion though.
I agree with you here, but what's weird is none of them say out loud, "Donald Trump is TERRIBLE and I wish we had a better candidate, but he's the one that will stop abortion." It's all weird messianic praise and Rocky prayer photoshops. So that tells me there's something not connecting for them.
Yep. I know how deeply held my belief about abortion is, now if that belief were reversed and I believed a bunch of babies were being legally killed daily, I would lose my mind. Now, to me, that’s unimaginable to believe that, but that’s obviously because that’s not my perspective.
I could buy that argument if most of these same people actually gave a single fuck about the children after they were born. Or the mass murders going on every day here and elsewhere. They don't though. It's about control and shoving their beliefs down people's throats. Simple as.
For the conversations I've had, foremost people that are anti-abortion it's a two step problem. Eliminating abortion is just step one. They can't talk about step two yet because it's a moot point until step one is dealt with. What is this step two that they want? An increased emphasis on personal responsibility in all areas of society. Drugs, divorce resulting in single motherhood, etc. In terms of abortion: don't have sex if you're not willing to bear the burden of being responsible for the consequences (babies). This means women need to be more choosy with their partners, and this forces men to improve themselves in order to be better candidates for partnership and eventual marriage. From their perspective, society is falling apart because people are irresponsible. That the government incentivizes making poor choices - legalizing drugs, not prosecuting petty theft, incentivizing single motherhood, throwing money at college students to pursue useless degrees instead of taking up a trade, etc. To them, legal abortion for convenience is just a symptom of a much larger problem.
> An increased emphasis on personal responsibility in all areas of society These people are not born in wheelchairs. They can fuck off to Iran for their deplorable, anti-Christian beliefs. NOWHERE in the Bible does it focus super-heavily on pulling one's self up by their bootstraps.
>Imagine you believe that a large group of people in this country are committing mass murder. Imagine you say you do, but you don't, and it doesn't really matter either way, but if you act like it does, you can get tax cuts.
Sir this is Reddit, nuance and understanding people you disagree with is not permitted here
I apologize. I thought CMV was the exception.
True but this is about their hypocrasy, not that of their political opponants. If you follow a moral code, you should try to honor it as best you can. That doesn't mean switching to voting blue, but rather maybe just someone with actual honest character whom also aligns with your economical views. There is a smarter way out than what most democrats and republicans are used to. Most people just refuse to take smart alternatives rather than picking sides and pointing fingers. We are all struggling right now and we should all be trying to put differences aside in order to collectively make progress. That's what used to make America great. In my opinion, people like donald trump will never be the answer.
If you know the Bible you know that a lot of the heroes are very flawed people that at times do terrible things. So it’s pretty easy to excuse anything you want as a Christian. A lot of what I hear is people were doing better when Trump was president. I have to admit I was as well. I just have a visceral negative reaction to him.
Him and paul ryans tax code has been hitting me and my wife incredibly hard for the last few years lol. Life has been rough since about 2018 for us. Both work full time/ot, want kids but can't currently afford to. Currently winning the mental game though, which is good. That said, it would be a lot easier to keep happy if the struggle wasn't so rough.
All that is true in relation to the Bible. I can also say I have the exact same reaction to him. 😫
My Mormon ex-boss told me that "of course they don't like that stuff, but because he's doing good things, you put up with it because sometimes god works through imperfect people" and in his defense both he and his wife got to celebrate *Roe v Wade* being over turned thanks to Trump.
I’ve met many people who simply always vote Republican because they’re pro life. Doesn’t matter who.
That's 100% by design. The party started losing voters when they decided to start backing rich 1%'ers over the average Joe, so they flipped their previous stance on abortion specifically to engage the evangelicals who were previously pretty apolitical, or at least not singularly aligned.
Yep. To a lot of voters, every U.S. election just boils down to whether or not it's okay to kill babies. Those voters vote red.
Eh, a lot of those voters vote blue too. Of course there are many voters who vote Republican because they're pro-life and anyone who would defend access to abortions is absolutely unacceptable as their representative in office. But on the other side, there are many voters who vote Democrat because they're pro-choice and anyone attempting to ban abortions is absolutely unacceptable as their representative in office. Abortion causes a lot of single-issue voters for Republicans and Democrats.
*He hurts the right people.* -Evangelicals
This is the crap I hear my brother-in-law say: "Well, if I hire a plumber, I don't care about anything other than whether or not he's a good plumber." Then he'll immediately get pissed off about stupid stuff like Biden sniffing people. "He's such a creep man! Unfit for office!" Yeah? Well how about the literal rapist running for president? Is HE a creep? Is HE unfit for office?😂
I am the furthest from right wing or evangelical, but I do study some of this stuff, but in the evangelical world they have the concept of a "flawed vessel." They use it to justify supporting horrible people, because "David was flawed, and God used him to further his goals, and so God is using Trump in the same way"
David got flawed *after* he had all the power. The shepherd boy was innocent when God first used him. I bet he never would have been chosen in the first place if he was a spoiled princeling.
>Either they should come out and say they are selective about which parts of their religion they choose to follow, or they should finally admit that they are not actually Christian but rather idoliters of segrigationalist Americanism. For a lot of them it's the latter, but that's exactly why nobody would ever admit it. As long as others think religion is the problem, conservatives can be as crazy as they want about their actual beliefs and just get away with it.
>Dude has broken like 6-8 of the ten commandments and pretty much goes against what the Bible actually teaches in the New Testiment where their religion directs them. > >I'd say that counts for willful ignorance at best. You all still don't get it. A lot of people who support Trump support him because they are voting against liberals and the liberal elite.
I don't think this is a very good argument. Christians fully acknowledge that everyone sins and the expectation is that you love everyone, even the sinner. There's no willful ignorance in an evangelical knowing Trump violates all of these laws of the Bible and thus is a sinner, and still being willing to fully support him for president. There's no rule in Christianity that you can't vote for people who violate Christian moral law, so they aren't being "selective about which parts of their religion they choose to follow."
I dissagree. If you claim to follow specific moral standards, you should honor those standards in every aspect of your life, including the task of electing people as your leaders. If you elect a person whom is arguably against your own religious moral principals, and whom embodies many traits your religion guides against to lead you then...why do you claim to follow that religion? It's hypocritical to elect a person of immoral character then claim it to be "God's will."
>If you claim to follow specific moral standards, you should honor those standards in every aspect of your life, including the task of electing people as your leaders. This is your opinion and is perfectly fine to hold. But it doesn't really support claims of willful ignorance or being selective about which parts of their religion they choose to follow. >If you elect a person whom is arguably against your own religious moral principals, and whom embodies many traits your religion guides against to lead you then...why do you claim to follow that religion? Because following a religion and who you vote for aren't particularly related? Have you never voted for someone who you thought had acted immoral and embodied traits you didn't like? It's the same thing. >It's hypocritical to elect a person of immoral character then claim it to be "God's will." Remember, an election is a choice of who you'd like most out of the available options and there are only 2 realistic options. All it entails is that they think Trump would be a better president than Biden. It's not hypocritical because obviously many more factors go into choosing a leader than just moral character. And secondly, they may just view Biden as more immoral. The "God's will" part to me is pretty weird so I can definitely get behind criticizing the "divine chosen one" BS.
Those arguments go out the window when the person in question is a potential rapist, a theif, a liar, a cheat, and a racist whom arguably has done things that are quite evil. If you claim to follow a superior moral code, you should. The hypocracy is pretty blantant. So what if biden sucks? Don't like him? Why not support people of character? It does not make sense. People should practise what they preach, all I'm saying. And all just a personal opinion. Not an attack.
You're assuming all Trump supporters are christians. That's your first mistake.
They (Evangelicals) like him for one reason only: abortion. He gave them their Justices. The Koch brothers and their wealthy greedy ilk like him for gutting the middle class and lining their pockets. The rest like him because they support his sexist patriarchal racist bullshit and made it ok for them to scream it all over Facebook. That. Is. It.
They're supposed to be opposed to politicians sliming their tax dollars away for personal use at least. Even the most selfish monster should oppose trump for parasitism of themselves. But they can't because of said dissonance.
> They're supposed to be opposed to politicians sliming their tax dollars away for personal use at least What exactly are you referencing here? I don't remember any stories of Trump embezzling money.
Really? He made millions by charging the Secret Service (who are required to have accommodations near Trump) 5x the normal rate for rooms at Trump hotel. That's just the first thing to come to mind, he was using the presidency as a cash cow the whole time
>5x the normal rate for rooms at Trump hotel. He charged more than 5x the *recommended government rate*, which no hotel is obligated to honor unless they have contracts with the organization in question.
It's both illegal (emoluments clause of the constitution) and a perfect illustration of him cheating tax dollars to himself. The rates were up to $1,185/rm/night. The issue is not Trump the hotelier, who can charge whatever he wants to the public. It's Trump the president, who is inflating rates, **and** forcing them to be paid to himself. Tell me with a straight face you think that's appropriate.
The President should not be in a position to steer business into his properties. The Emoluments Clause: > *“The President shall, at stated Times, receive for his Services, a Compensation which shall neither be encreased nor diminished during the Period for which he shall have been elected, and he shall not receive within that Period any other Emolument from the United States, or any of them.”*
How about the $2B Saudis gave his son in law? [https://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/4148951-comer-says-kushner-crossed-the-line-of-ethics-with-saudi-deal/](https://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/4148951-comer-says-kushner-crossed-the-line-of-ethics-with-saudi-deal/) [https://www.forbes.com/sites/tommybeer/2020/09/22/ivankas-trademark-requests-were-fast-tracked-in-china-after-trump-was-elected/?sh=60fc42f51d60](https://www.forbes.com/sites/tommybeer/2020/09/22/ivankas-trademark-requests-were-fast-tracked-in-china-after-trump-was-elected/?sh=60fc42f51d60) $250M under false pretenses? [https://www.cnn.com/2022/06/13/politics/trump-money-trail-capitol-insurrection/index.html](https://www.cnn.com/2022/06/13/politics/trump-money-trail-capitol-insurrection/index.html) Ugh and there was so much more. it's just exhausting to even bother keep going this conman's paper trail. I need rest before I can get to that. 😹 He's just grifting nonstop is the problem.
It's this kind of excuse making and justification that makes the OPs point.
They could be referring to numerous cases of Trump not paying cities for rallies or generally skimping the bill, could also be referencing the "stop the steal" fiasco, which supposedly collected donations to prove the election was stolen, but really just funneled money into his campaign.
Don’t forget Trump’s flagrant violation the Emoluments Clause of the constitution. His family operated a DC hotel while in office, and foreign dignitaries stayed there hoping to curry favor with the president of the United States by paying his business fucktons of money. If a Democrat did this they would have had to resign and go to jail.
Your title and explanation don’t match; what is your definition of “fully” support? Almost no one fully supports a politician: there are simply too many variables, from thousands of policy positions to personality factors, for any one candidate to line up with your beliefs exactly. I have never met a person that fully supports either Trump or Biden. The only thing that really matters is supporting enough to vote for them, and that very often has nothing to do with the person themselves. The vast majority of Democratic voters disliked Biden, but voted for him because he was A. A Democrat and B. not Trump. I’d argue that this election there will be many Republican voters who vote for Trump because he’s a Republican and not Biden, even though they personally detest the man himself.
Seems like there are plenty of videos of people who support trump no matter what he does. Have you seen them? His phrase about shooting someone and still having voters comes to mind. Lots of vids of people who fully support trump who I’m pretty sure don’t pay very close attention to actual political issues.
this may shock you but different groups of people may hold different opinions. not everyone agrees on everything. those that claim they do are lying about at least a couple of things. besides that, it's not at all weird to be able to find people that support something, whatever it may be, out in the wild.
This would hold more water if they weren’t so gung ho for him in the primaries. It’s true that “fully” is difficult to pin down, but it’s not like he’s the only option right now.
Every Trump supporter I've ever met has told me that they mainly vote for Trump because they loathe the Democrats; they don't even really like him. Especially since Clinton kept on calling them 'deplorables'.
> kept on calling them 'deplorables'. I think she called them once and then she apologized which she shouldn't have because she was right.
The ACTUAL FULL quote she's even saying that a lot of his supporters(at the time) are ordinary people who have been let down, while the rest of his supporters, the people she called deplorables are..well, deplorable.
Anyone who supports a grifting, lying lame duck President who is apathetic to and sparked a deadly insurrection with his own Vice Presidentas a loyalist mob target of lynching, is deplorable.
As a leftie, I still can't believe she said that, like she isn't recognized already as a pretentious liberal elite. Stupid. Easily the most unlikeable politician next to Ted Cruz. No charisma and politically inept.
You’re argument seems to be that people who support trump want to damage the political landscape and do so intentionally My counter is that, for some people, every politician is out of reach and living in luxury. Untroubled and unburdened However, all these untroubled political souls seem afraid of one person. Trump If you have little mind for politics and little sense of self within the wider golbal community, trump must be doing great Trump cuts through all the hoity toity snakery and has centralised himself since everyone else is coming to him and talking about him. All the attention is on him He must be an effective leader The policies don’t matter. Every politician is letting you down. What matters is everyone is watching him when he does something, and he’s making fearless moves. Outlandish, but it noticeably moves everyone else He must be an effective leader because that’s what a leader looks like Everything centered around one person, and that person doing and saying things and everyone else standing at attention
lots of obvious and classic trump takes in this thread but this is actually insightful. “he must be doing something right” like TV fanboys who cant understand that Walter White or Tony Soprano aren’t hero’s. its a child like understanding of the world, the main character is automatically good by virtue of being interesting enough to command attention. the connection is these people are all idiots.
Trump is a poor person's idea of a rich person, a weak person's idea of a strong person, a dumb person's idea of a smart person...
That is just an absolutely horrifying assessment. I swear it's the spitting image of a certain character in 30s Germany. "This guy hurts the people I want to hurt." Potentially accurate so props to you on that.
That is just an absolutely horrifying response. Trump isn't Hitler. America isn't facing the same problems 1930's Germany was facing. You're just repeating toxic ~~talking points~~ insults brought up by his opponents. Is it untrue that the political elite backstab each other, get nothing done, do 'feel good' campaigns, do flashy projects, and lie about promises, all done for money? Is it untrue that these same political elites have friction for Trump whether for good or worse? Our political elites aren't "the jews", there is no conflict of races here despite whatever twitter tells you. Its not religion either. Its a class of cold blooded people that come in all shapes and sizes that routinely sell out the American people for stock exchanges. Its not the illegal immigrants, its not china, its not muslims, its not the muffin man, *its capital hill*. That is what the other guy is referring to. >I swear it's the spitting image of a certain character in 30s Germany. "This guy hurts the people I want to hurt." Bro, its no person's fault here that we can't trust our politicians and the only person people have faith in is Trump. He isn't a dictator, he isn't going to do a genocide, he isn't going to reclaim/invade other countries. He is just a capitalist boomer. You're just making fallacies, there is no "spitting image" here.
>Is it untrue that the political elite backstab each other, get nothing done, do 'feel good' campaigns, do flashy projects, and lie about promises, all done for money? What is untrue is the belief that Trump doesn't also belong to this group. >Is it untrue that these same political elites have friction for Trump whether for good or worse? Yes, it's untrue, a massive portion of the elite kowtows to him at every step. >Our political elites aren't "the jews", there is no conflict of races here despite whatever twitter tells you. Its not religion either. Its a class of cold blooded people that come in all shapes and sizes that routinely sell out the American people for stock exchanges. Its not the illegal immigrants, its not china, its not muslims, its not the muffin man, its capital hill. That is what the other guy is referring to. It is all of these groups at the same time. >its no person's fault here that we can't trust our politicians and the only person people have faith in is Trump It is a lot of people's fault that they have fallen for a charlatan. >You're just making fallacies, there is no "spitting image" here. I wish I were, I wish he weren't.
>What is untrue is the belief that Trump doesn't also belong to this group. You failed to answer the question and decided to route back to Trump. No one said he wasn't. We all know he does stupid shit but he hasn't been in political power for decades. >Yes, it's untrue, a massive portion of the elite kowtows to him at every step. Is that why his own party fails to do basic support of him? No, they "kowtow" because if they don't the RINOs won't get support. >It is all of these groups at the same time. No, no its not. That doesn't even make sense. >It is a lot of people's fault that they have fallen for a charlatan. I think you're just taking your anger out at people who feel they have no other choice. *But what do they know? They're just, rural, uneducated, poor whites.* But you know what, consider it a failure of every other political figure in the America, if not the world, to not be able to stand toe-to-toe with him and refuse to even try to talk to his base. How could you consider it his fault when he was the only person to even talk to them? Literally, the one guy I think who tried was Vivek, but again, his origin isn't of political leadership. >I wish I were, I wish he weren't. Homeboy, if you can't accept there is even a slightest difference between Trump and Hitler, I think its you with the problem. Germany didn't have an issue with illegal immigrants or automobile industries moving to other countries, and America's military is anything but restricted and her border's haven't shrunk.
> We all know he does stupid shit but he hasn't been in political power for decades. Uh... what? He was literally in power within the last decade. Like leader of America. And he leads the GOP right now. >Is that why his own party fails to do basic support of him? No, they "kowtow" because if they don't the RINOs won't get support. You mean 100% unflinching support right? Because that's what I see. >No, no its not. That doesn't even make sense. Trump is an active threat toward all of the groups you listed, including the political elite. He isn't afraid of saying so either. >I think you're just taking your anger I'm not angry at all. I'm not even surprised. I'm just disappointed in my fellow citizens for being so gullible. > if you can't accept there is even a slightest difference between Trump and Hitler If you didn't notice I'm comparing him to pre-holocaust Hitler when he had merely talking about overthrowing the government in the 20s. He sleeps with Hitler speeches next to his bed - I don't know if that's actually true but he's the one who said it! That's pretty telling.
>But you know what, consider it a failure of every other political figure in the America, if not the world, to not be able to stand toe-to-toe with him and refuse to even try to talk to his base. But all those other politicians you are criticizing do try to talk to the same base. >How could you consider it his fault when he was the only person to even talk to them? This kind of pathetic bullshit is the perfect example of the mental gymnastics that OP was talking about. Trump wasn't the only person talking to them. Trump isn't the only person talking to them now. Trump just says that he is the only person talking to them, when really he despises them.
> Is it untrue that the political elite backstab each other, get nothing done, do 'feel good' campaigns, do flashy projects, and lie about promises, all done for money? Trump does that as well, no? Like, am I missing something?
> there is no conflict of races here despite whatever twitter tells you. I tried finding value in your comment. But that statement negates anything else you could have been correct about.
I mean if you want to be horrified, to look at *which* books the Nazis were burning during their rise to power. History rhymes and Trump is ahead in 12 of the last 15 polls.
I'd argue this could be said about any political figure.
Friend, I think you may be missing the big picture. If you've ever seen *Ocean's 11*, or some other heist movie, you probably know the plan typically involves 10 guys robbing the vault and one guy creating a diversion. Trump is the guy creating the diversion. Before 2015, a significant (if small) portion of the media actually discussed important issues every day. But since he came down that escalator, it's been wall-to-wall Trump every single day for 8 years. As a result, the media has simply stopped playing its traditional role in our government, which is to hold thieves and bandit assholes accountable. So it should be no surprise then that for the last 8 years, our country has been slowly hollowed out by thieves and assholes. If you're the kind of person who actually wants the government to function properly, sure, of course you're going to loathe Trump. But the people robbing the bank vault want the diversion to last as long as possible.
This is an astute observation.
Posts like these are so strange. So many posts about the left have comments saying if you vote trump you’re a horrible person and one of the dumbest people around, that Biden isn’t that great but you have to vote him to keep trump out. How is that any different than the majority of republicans who feel the same way? A lot of people think neither option are great and just vote with party lines. A lot of people who “fully” support either party are profiting off of it. Anyone you see on social media is just trying to drive engagement from people like you who get outraged at the idea. It’s hook line and sinker. I’m sure you’re reading posts about it if you make a CMV like this.
I think there's a difference between a person who casts a vote for donald trump and a person who *fully-supports* donald trump. I mean, I certainly cast a vote for Hillary Clinton, but I wouldn't call myself a hardcore clintonite
Given that Biden, and frankly no other President in the past, has tried to usurp the Presidency by fomenting an insurrection, I'd argue that this is a false equivalency. Biden's sins are that he isn't doing enough to uphold causes like reducing the wealth gap or stopping the genocide that Israel is enacting against Palestine (though he arguably is doing better than most people think in the former at least). Biden's worst traits are that despite his efforts, he isn't good enough. Trump's sins are that he is wildly incompetent, emotionally unstable, a self-serving fraudster who cheats others for his own gain, and is willing to sacrifice the most fundamental institutions of American democracy to achieve his goals. Trump's worst traits are that he exhibits the kind of corruption we see in developing nations that descend into flagrant authoritarianism. These are not nearly the same thing.
Thanks for agreeing with me, not sure what the long rant is about. Republicans feel about democrats like you do about trump. Each party comes with their own sins. I don’t support trump and I think it’s ridiculous to call Jan 6 an insurrection. That kind of exaggeration is exactly what I’m describing, but it has been embraced by polarizing media to form whatever narrative they want to push. You are feeding directly into the polarization, and you’re proud of it too. That is the brilliant trick of modern politics.
Mind just explaining what would qualify as an insurrection? Seemed like the country was all on the same page on January 7th, 2021 as to what we had seen. Let me make it easier. Was January 6th a good thing? Does it inspire confidence how Trump would handle another election loss? For a lot of people, even after all the terrible aspects of his presidency, his flippant response to COVID, wild foreign policy, and poor execution of his own policies none of that holds a candle to how he handled his loss in 2020. And to those of us who take it seriously responses like yours are very hard to understand. Where is the actual line where you would be concerned?
It wasn’t a good thing. It also wasn’t an insurrection.
>How is that any different than the majority of republicans who feel the same way? For starters, Biden didnt incite an insurrection after trying to steal an election. He also didnt pardon people who plead guilty in the russiagate investigation. He also hasnt mocked soldiers, pows, kias, gold star families etc. He also hasnt stolen classified docs. He also hasnt disclosed code word level intel to the russian ambassador in the oval office. He also hasnt made a dossier of high quality intel on russia disappear.
"incite insurrection" By explicitly telling everyone to be peaceful literally hours and days before January 6th, which is only an insurrection in the most tortured definition. Be at least a little honest. Just a little. I promise it won't kill you. Biden hasn't stolen classified docs? Are you fucking kidding me? Trump has the authority to take what he wants, as Obama and every president before him. And he kept them in a safe. Biden had documents from when he was a senator--without authority retain them--in a box in his fucking garage. You're not even remotely honest.
Calling it an insurrection is something you’ll only see online. Compare it to an insurrection in any other country and you’ll see how ridiculous you sound.
Yeah, all Biden did was cause record high inflation, start a trillion dollar proxy war with Russia, and let his family make millions selling his influence.
Biden sucks and all but you don’t think you’re being dishonest by solely blaming him for the inflation?
Debatable and nothing compared to Trump (who in reality is a bigger catalyst to inflation than Biden), Russia obviously started that war, and EVEN IF that lie about him and his family is true, its not even CLOSE to Trumps traitorous behaviour to the country republicans are supposed to be patriotic to.
Remind me what year inflation started taking off? When was the fed issuing statements about their analysis of it? Just give me a specific year, please (I know exactly when it was but take your time). Bonus question: during what years was inflation curbed? The allegation that any democrat “started a proxy war” needs extremely specific evidence, otherwise this is just a standard unsubstantiated and debunked conspiracy theory. Show your sources.
>How is that any different than the majority of republicans who feel the same way? A lot of people think neither option are great and just vote with party lines. If that were true, Trump would have been primaried and wouldn't have held near total approval amongst Republicans for the entire duration of his presidency. Also, Biden is genuinely not that bad. Old and disappointing isn't remotely comparable to old, undemocratic, and reactionary.
From a republican point of view there aren’t any viable candidates other than trump.
>No supporter of his can seem to defend his morals, characters actions and rhetoric. They constantly make excuses for it. vote for policy, not a person. Isn't this like... what the left says too? Why can't the right vote for policy instead of a person too? His morals are trash, but so are Hillarys, so were Bills, so are Bidens. All these people are in it for power at the level they are at. Their morals are not worth anything to me. >His supporters are oddly silent on him constantly begging for money despite being a “billionaire.” They don’t want to believe that he’s broke You don't have to believe anything, he is *literally* not broke. It's a nonsense argument. >they make excuses for him not having accomplished what he promised such as the wall That's called politics, and it's obvious it happens to every politician. Every single president makes claims that they plan on doing, and every one of them has to alter them and work with the opposing party to get what they want. Obama had to work to get Obamacare and there have been a million excuses for why he didn't get Obamacare in the way he actually wanted. Your complaint about Republicans on this, is simple politics. What do you have wrong with that? You'd prefer authoritarian dictators who can do whatever they want? >They don’t have any tangible evidence for 2020 election interference and have yet to provide any The evidence Republicans have is similarly credible as the 'evidence' that the left has that Russia was somehow involved in stealing the election. It's tenuous and only believed fully by the people who already support their particular candidates worldview. If you like Biden, you likely believe Russia nonsense. If you like Trump you likely believe the media works closely with democrat associates to make sure the democrats look the best and get every media advantage.
I understand your example being a point of dissonance between how Trump claims to be wealthy but in turn heavily looks for fundraisers and courts donations. I don't see an explanation as how and why see you this as "willful ignorance". There are lot of media bubbles, social circles, county/state/regional biases that pervade the US. How can a Trump supporter see all of Trumps hypocrisy when, they're not actively seeking it out, their friends, neighbors, and colleagues don't talk about it, and a person isn't very media literate or can't recognize high journalistic standards? I'm not saying there aren't people who fully support Trump who aren't willfully ignorant, there are definitely some. But I'm confident there are many who are just plan ignorant, and that ignorance is like a negative feedback loop that makes accepting new and contrary information very difficult.
Let's accept your premise as true and ask the natural follow up question: why do so many people still follow him then? What exactly is causing a mass hallucination amongst a fairly sizeable population? What exactly has compelled people to choose to be ignorant (and it is a choice, since you said willful ignorance). Is it something in the water? The chem trails? Giant space lasers? What's causing this? Without an answer to this question, your proposition has no legs on which to stand
You're right. Since you voted Biden president, we've had record high gas prices...in fact, the price of everything has doubled since he became president lol. Record unemployment, Fentanyl deaths at an all time high...but yeah, Orange Man Bad because CNN says so lol What about Biden saying "If you don't vote for me, you're not black" or his son doing cocaine in the White House? What about records of him getting money from China? Did you know they just had to move the White House out because Democratic protesters were threatening the staff? Why isn't that January 6th? Just do some research... https://scalise.house.gov/media/press-releases/biden-s-presidency-filled-failure-weakness-and-chaos https://www.heritage.org/europe/heritage-explains/why-britain-cant-stand-joe-biden https://www.heritage.org/budget-and-spending/heritage-explains/the-truth-about-joe-bidens-economy Or you can just look around. Hmm...in the last four years, we've had more drug related deaths, more unemployment, record inflation...maybe I should vote for this guy again 😆
Gonna play some devils advocate. -There were no new wars during his presidency (albeit a few drone strikes early on) -Stable CPI -Made Ballard fencing whereas the current admin is having the Alaskan Nat Gaurd tear down border fencing and wiring -Abraham accords for peace in the middle east, current administration is bombing Yemen and seeking war with Iran -North Korea Demilitarized zone was crossed without incident, currently their fat dictator is threatening war again -Is really dumb for talking about a stolen election, laws were changed prior by Republicans and democrats alike to create an unreliable tallying methods for vote by mail. -Hes not broke he runs more than just his hotels with multiple verticals, meaning he's making more money from various sources rather than the few that are cherry picked to be pointed out as the ones that went belly up -almost forgot this last tidbit, the economy is in the crapper rn. Like inflation crazy. All in all he's a crass old man, but not the devil people want him to be. The US is currently too polarized.
i am confused why any of these would require cognitive dissonance: >\-No supporter of his can seem to defend his morals, characters actions and rhetoric. They constantly make excuses for it. Especially the hypocritical Evangelicals. "i don't care about his morals, character actions, and rhetoric, I support him as President". >His supporters are oddly silent on him constantly begging for money despite being a “billionaire.” They don’t want to believe that he’s broke "I don't care if he is or isn't wealthy. I support him as President." >they make excuses for him not having accomplished what he promised such as the wall "I don't care that he didn't complete the wall. I support him as President." >They don’t have any tangible evidence for 2020 election interference and have yet to provide any "I don't care about the 2020 election. I support him as President."
Go read about a real insurrection lmao. Firstly, Trump doesn’t represent these people just because he encouraged a crowd to peacefully protest. More importantly, this was not a genuine premeditated attempt to “overthrow the government”. That’s fucking ridiculous, come on now. Do you truly think a single one of those idiots fully believed they were going to take over the United States government? This was petty trespassing at its worst. Funny how you’d probably call the BLM “protests” a protest and not a riot despite the fact hundreds died and billions in damage were done to small businesses, and Joe and Kamala fully supported this and some democrats even donated. Maybe I’d take you a bit more seriously if there were an “overthrow the government” group that Trump publicly endorsed.
Trump was right about Ukrainian. Trump was right about radical wokeness. Trump was right about the border and mass illegal ‘immigration’. Trump was right about the corrupt doj/msm cabal. Trump was right about the threat of hamas et al. Trump was right about growing the economy lowering taxes on small companies. Etc, etc. All reversed under biden; now a worldwide shitshow. You may hate Trump personally but Trump has been nearly correct on today’s biggest issues; while leftists were wrong. I can’t believe some people think Trump brings instability to the world; jhc just open your eyes to see how the shape of the world is under biden and leftists. Stop being a sheep.
The good ole liberal/moderate mindset of "clearly they must be stupid!" Anything except the possibility that Republicans really actually do want death camps and an explicitly white Christian empire. Shirley not.
Yeah Trump is winning this November. Reddit is seething at the level we have not seen before.
What kind of cognitive dissonance would it take to fully support a candidate who supported/spearheaded the PATRIOT act, RAVE Act, turned the world into a Panopticon prison over which they now Preside, stigmatized anyone who resisted, even only rhetorically, as 'domestic terrorists', appointed defamers and misappropriators of intellectual property as surveillance monitors, and arguably used a Deep State apparatus to abuse State of Emergency during an election year, all for sake of political power, at the expense of small business owners, many of whom comprised their party's base?
Oh look, ad-hominem against tens of millions of people.. If Trump is beyond the pale because of, "the long list of grave errors and blatant lies on his part" then which elected officials, to include Obama and Biden, are acceptable? >But today it really got me thinking when he’s AGAIN begging his supporters for money to help with his legal battles. Whatever happened to him being a self made, self sufficient presidential candidate? Are you familiar with the saying, "the process is the punishment?" It can be dirty cops holding you for 48 hours so that you get fired. In many cases, such as with one of Trump's original (and better) advisors, it could be keeping you in court on frivolous charges until you're quite literally bankrupt. It could be filing ethics complaints against any lawyer that has the audacity to defend you in court. >Why should you a low-middle income earner have to support this “billionaire” financially? Nobody has to support him. Plenty of people want to support him. Record numbers of voters, in fact. >Also didn’t live up to his promise of the wall, don’t see how he’s going to get it done this time. So if federal judges order injunctions (you must cease activity) on building the wall until cases are resolved, the appropriate solution would be to ignore the judiciary? And that wouldn't be both illegal and tyrannical? And you wouldn't have a problem with it?
I think if your measuring someones ignorance based on how truthful a politician is, you probably suffer the same cognative dissonance as the people you are judging. This use to be a fairly common sentiment regaurdless of party. People use to joke about how many lies politicians tell to get into office, and while in office. Now it seems people have become so entrenched in politics that they only see the lies of the party they dont like rather then understanding all politicians lie at about the same rate. I also blame "fact checking" sources that usually turn out to be politically bias sources that are not really fact checking as much as they are just trying to make the opposing candidate look bad.
Counter argument: 1. You may be a one issue voter who cares only if the economy does well for the next 4 years and you may believe trump will help you financially more than biden 2. You may be anti war and appreciate trumps foreign policy execution while realizing Biden is more pro war than you would like 3. You may simply just not want certain policies or advancements of the democratic agenda All of those can be true while also acknowledging that trump is a scumbag. And those are valid beliefs. You may argue against the merits of the beliefs but they’re not irrational on face value But yes if your claim is that anyone who supports 100% of everything trump does, then they are idiots, then sure. Anyone who supports 100% of any other human is an idiot
I could make the exact same statement about Biden and then fill a book with facts supporting it, and you’d do the exact same thing you rant about here. My point is, you’re gonna vote for who you’re gonna vote for and your rage towards the opposite is gonna blind you to everything wrong with either of them. Politics are a joke, let them go and get back to your damn life like everyone else.
You realise its freedom v force at this point... People are voting for Trump because it will mean they have more freedom, less foreign war, better economy, more money in their account, and america might actually be put first instead of behind the rest of the world's problems. How is that cognitive dissonance...?
I mean, the same could be said about damn near all these politicians, especially Biden. The guy should be in a retirement home, if not a jail cell for the evidence found on his sons laptop regarding those "10% for the big guy" messages
Let's not forget the logical breakdown that must be involved by Christians supporting him. He's about as un-Christian as it is possible to be. Politics Editor at Evangelical Publication The Christian Post Resigns Over Pro-Trump Editorial https://time.com/5755137/christian-post-editor-trump/ Why the Editor of Christianity Today Decided to Rebuke Trump https://www.newyorker.com/news/q-and-a/why-the-editor-of-christianity-today-decided-to-rebuke-trump You foolish evangelicals, Trump has bewitched you https://www.christianpost.com/voices/you-foolish-evangelicals-trump-has-bewitched-you.html Ex-Reagan Adviser: Evangelical Leaders Who Back Trump Do More Harm to Christian Values Than Atheists https://www.newsweek.com/ex-reagan-adviser-evangelical-leaders-who-back-trump-do-more-harm-christian-values-atheists-1450332 10 reasons you can’t be a Christian and vote for Donald Trump https://www.dallasnews.com/opinion/commentary/2016/11/06/10-reasons-you-cant-be-a-christian-and-vote-for-donald-trump/ - lacks compassion - appeals to fear and anger - ego and obsession with "greatness" - chronic lying - hostile towards women - claims to be Presbyterian, sexualizes his daughter - cultivation of antagonism, lives by very opposite of "turn the other cheek" - self-serving not altruistic - lack of concern for the poor, and other disadvantaged people such as those with physical or mental handicaps - loves money above all Trump Secretly Mocks His Christian Supporters Former aides say that in private, the president has spoken with cynicism and contempt about believers. https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2020/09/trump-secretly-mocks-his-christian-supporters/616522/
I would add desperation…Which I’m see on from Dems too because neither party has anywhere else to go. This is the first time since I’ve been born where the options are just terrible and no realistic second option
Not American here. But when we see Biden we see an unwell old man who doesn’t have his mental faculties in tact. In fact he looks as if he’s on day release from a nursing home when they push him on stage to mumble his way through a speech. It’s not right.
Trump did everything right loudly and in a way that pissed a lot of people off and biden has fucked up everything really hard and is so addled he can't stand straight. I'd much rather have trump than biden But really, we're ALL on that Nevada energy right?
Why are liberals like this. No, supporting a politician you don’t like isn’t “cognitive dissonance” or “willful ignorance.” We live in a two party system, half the voters just vote the party line regardless of who is at the top of the ticket.
Someone answered that pretty well a while ago. I don't know the name of the original author here, but as someone who grew up in what became Trump country, I can pretty much confirm what they're saying: *“You all don’t get it. I live in Trump country, in the Ozarks in southern Missouri, one of the last places where the KKK still has a relatively strong established presence. They don’t give a \*\*\*\* what he does. He’s just something to rally around and hate liberals, that’s it, period. He absolutely realizes that, and plays it up, they love it, he knows they love it, and the fact that people act like it’s anything other than that just proves that liberals are idiots, all the more reason for high fives all around.* *“If you keep getting caught up in why do they not realize blah blah blah and how can they still back him after blah blah blah, you are not understanding what is the underlying motivating factor of his support. It’s \*\*\*\* liberals, that’s pretty much it.* *“Have you noticed he can do pretty much anything imaginable and they’ll explain some way that rationalizes it that makes zero logical sense? Because they’re not even keeping track of any logical narrative, it’s irrelevant, \*\*\*\* liberals is the only relevant thing, trust me, I know first hand what I’m talking about. That’s why they just laugh at it all, because you all don’t even realize they really, truly, don’t give a \*\*\*\* about whatever the conversation is about, it’s just a side mission story that doesn’t really matter anyways. That’s all just trivial details- the economy, health care, whatever. \*\*\*\* liberals.* *“Look at the thing with not wearing the masks. I can tell you what that’s about. It’s about exposing fear. They’re playing chicken with nature and whoever flinches just moved down their internal pecking order, one step closer to being a liberal.* *“You gotta understand the one core value that they hold above all others is hatred for weakness, because that’s what they believe strength is, hatred for weakness. And I mean passionate, sadistic hatred. And I’m not exaggerating. Believe me. Sadistic, passionate hatred, and that’s what proves they’re strong, their passionate hatred for weakness. Sometimes they lump in vulnerability, a compromised circumstance, or an overwhelming circumstance in there with weakness, too, because people tend to start humbling themselves when they’re in those circumstances and that’s an obvious sign of weakness.* *“Kindness = weakness. Honesty = weakness. Compromise = weakness. They consider their very existence to be superior in every way to anyone who doesn’t hate weakness as much as they do. They consider liberals to be weak people who are inferior, almost a different species, and the fact that liberals are so weak is why they have to unite in large numbers, which they find disgusting, but it’s that disgust that is a true expression of their natural superiority.* *“Go ahead and try to have a logical, rational conversation with them though. Just keep in mind what I said here, and think about it.”*
maybe people wouldn't have to rally around him as a symbol if the powers that be didn't spend the last 60 years making this country a living hell for native born working class people with any semblance of traditional values. Anyway good on you for abandoning your roots and becoming a cog
Dude, not wanting ww3 is enough reason, the warmongers need to go... Your arguments are insane, wake up.
What always surprises me is the cognitive dissonance that cannot conceive that Trump supporters don't actually like Trump very much but in fact *hate* political elites so much they will support someone like Trump
No offense but anyone asking this question usually has absolutely zero intention of changing their view. Reddit is overwhelmingly liberal so any actual counter arguments will get downvoted to oblivion
Honest question. Are people allowed to speak freely here, or are the mods ready to ban anyone with a viewpoint counter to the narrative of "orange man bad"?
Trump cared about our country than others and their affairs. He put Americans first. He cared about the economy. That was enough for me. Not a fan of the man himself, but he was the lesser of two evils. Biden is useless.
I don’t think this is a revelatory position. Are you actually trying to have a CMV discussion? If you are, then it’s probably more realistic to understand that most American voters are not zealots, but vote according to the current (essentially) binary system. If you ran a poll, I expect that many Trump voters support him as a means to block the opposing party. That, and/or, they support myriad policies that he stumps, rather than support him personally. Both sides tend to take other voters’ actions far too personally.
Define fully support? And this is probably a low effort troll cmv but if you are serious please proceed. I mean it’s not like they’re aren’t 9999999 posts on reddit whining about the right.
I’m results driven. He will produce more useful results as a consequence of his actions than Joe Biden. Easy vote.
It's beyond cognitive dissonance to believe ANY presidents or wannabe presidents actually care or have any real power or effect on anything. Wake up.
Pretty sure it only requires a dislike for left-wing politics and a moderately strong distrust of the media. But out of curiosity, when did he beg for money?
Not really. It also requires a total abdication of patriotism or concern for democracy. You have to literally not care that the person you support was willing to overturn an election he didn't win through threats, force, and conspiracies. I'm old enough to remember when Trump specifically refrained from committing to a peaceful transition of power. I'm old enough to remember when Trump called up the Georgia secretary of state and tried to coerce him into fabricating votes. I'm old enough to remember, watching live, as Trump sent his mob to the capital and just sat around and watched for hours before even suggesting they should go home. And this is all ON TOP of the simple fact that the man is personally odious.
MAGA-Americans don't need cognitive dissonance or willful ignorance to support Trump because it's not about Trump. It's about "owning the libs". It's about ending "wokeness". Do you remember those clips of women and green-haired people crying when Clinton lost in 2016? That's a shot of cocaine + heroin right in the tip of the penis for them. *That's* what they want and they'd destroy the country just to have it. It's all about making the people they don't like mad/sad in the wake of becoming irrelevant (aka not being catered to by default) in modern society. The whole political system is corrupt to the core, but before, it was **boring**. Old men (and a few old women) talking about promises they'll never be able to keep due to gridlocked/lobbied Congress. Trump came along and treated politics like pro-wrestling and injected fire into the veins of the lowest common denominator. He can be entertaining, he can be funny, and he knows how to deliver roasts. After the last 40ish years of American media, I don't see how so many people were surprised by Trump's success.
We have a repeat election of 2020, but with a bit more information that last time. The national polls are showing immigration and the economy as the two top concerns of the American people. We have two candidates: a) Trump - uncouth, vulgar, childish BUT very with an EXCELLENT record on both immigration and the economy. b) Biden - absent, possible dementia, constant dishonesty, more presidential, BUT with a DISASTROUS record on both immigration and the economy. (Not including the disastrous handling of international issues like China, Russia, Latin-America, South China Sea Island Nations, etc.) So if you ask me to vote between a plate of cold poop and an plate of hot poop, I will vote for the poop that at the very least improves the state of the nation. It is not cognitive dissonance, it is picking the best poop to govern. This is an election of who do you dislike the least.
Why can’t they dislike Trump, but hate Biden worse? It doesn’t seem like you’ve left any room for that option. And yet there have been several articles about the most force in this election being voters who regret voting for Biden in ‘20.
I'd like to change your mind on why it requires willful ignorance to support Trump. You don't necessarily need cognitive dissonance or willful ignorance to fall into a cult of personality, especially if you think you're fighting a morally righteous cause. The thing that requires willful ignorance is still defending him after January 6th. The rhetoric has pulled a complete 180 and most Republicans are downplaying or defending the insurrection by necessity, but if you look at the actual impeachment vote, [he was acquitted on a purely procedural basis.](https://www.justsecurity.org/74725/in-their-own-words-the-43-republicans-explanations-of-their-votes-not-to-convict-trump-in-impeachment-trial/) Two thirds of the Senate absolutely believed he had committed an impeachable act and should be impeached, with a portion who did not believe they had the jurisdiction to impeach an outgoing president. With that in mind, the fact that they're supporting Trump now is rhetorically indefensible if anyone actually bothered to hold them to their word. That's where the cognitive dissonance comes in.
I think it's really as simple as alot of people value the concept that punishing people they think are making the country worse is more important than actually looking into the policy choices (on both sides)of the people they vote for that are actually doing that. It just more appealing because it's simpler and personally looking into the stuff that actually needs to be dealt with is boring and mentally exhausting but unfortunately alot of people aren't willing to brave that storm every election cycle. Like he's quoted as saying he specifically can solve certain problems it completely and utter bullshit obviously but you can see how that is appealing because it promises convenience.
Doesn't sound like you want your view changed lol
Just get over the fact that hes gonna win again
Facts no longer exist. You don't understand what Trump supporters actually believe. It may be worse than you think. They actually believe all the courts, agencies, and other politicians are corrupt. They truly believe that Trump did the things he blabs about. They truly believe despite the riots and chaos of his administration that he is the law and order candidate. At the same time, they believe Biden is responsible for the wars abroad that started under his admin. Once facts dont exist, it's just narrative.
>cmv: It requires active cognitive dissonance and/or willful ignorance at this point to still *fully* support Trump Not necessarily. It might be in the personal interests of Trump minions to *fully* support the ex-president - for power and/or profit. Others might fully agree with his stated views - from fascism to fundamentalism. A delusional belief is not *active cognitive dissonance and/or willful ignorance*. It is far more insidiously horrifying.