Mr. Tea
Let's Talk About Ceps
Well if you want to operate at the same level as the most egregiously mentally ill person here, then you do you, I guess.
Clinamenic
Binary & Tweed
Murphy
cat malogen
The effects - damage as effect - are still being analysed, surely
Ukraine, NATO, American sociopolitical divisions, border policy whatever that is/was with an incomplete wall and a migrant crisis, country’s like Germany’s defence spending right up (see also Ukraine) as Europe braces for a possible Trump win
Haven’t been to the US since 2011, Obama’s first term (remember him?) seems like another world now looking back, DC particularly, because of the attempted insurrection but that was mostly a mob chancing their arm who were never going to do any extensive damage beyond getting nicked
If he fades in this election he could be seen as a generational breeze blowing through but if he wins, people who were less brazen the first term will dig in for belligerency’s sake second time round
Ukraine, NATO, American sociopolitical divisions, border policy whatever that is/was with an incomplete wall and a migrant crisis, country’s like Germany’s defence spending right up (see also Ukraine) as Europe braces for a possible Trump win
Haven’t been to the US since 2011, Obama’s first term (remember him?) seems like another world now looking back, DC particularly, because of the attempted insurrection but that was mostly a mob chancing their arm who were never going to do any extensive damage beyond getting nicked
If he fades in this election he could be seen as a generational breeze blowing through but if he wins, people who were less brazen the first term will dig in for belligerency’s sake second time round
version
Well-known member
I don't get the impression that's the root of a lot of people's issue with him. It's just another thing chucked on the pile after the fact.
Mr. Tea
Let's Talk About Ceps
It's surely part of a reason why there's a noticeable difference in his popularity among men and women, though.
version
Well-known member
Yeah, probably, but millions already hated him before they heard the accusations. The allegations of specific crimes started coming out after he'd already pissed everyone off being so outrageous and obnoxious on the campaign trail and during the debates.
Clinamenic
Binary & Tweed
Not expecting you to share, but for me it would be interesting to me to know more about you and your family's location and the cultural, religious, and race/ethnic background.
If your parents represent the average Trump voter, an interesting question to ask is why is he more popular in areas that have always been more backwards wrt racism, sexism, etc. - Me, I'm a white guy from the bible belt (and have spent years in different regions of the south, including again in two different places these last few years) so I kinda know something about the culture where he is most popular.
I have a lot of conservative (Ronald Reagan is a hero) family (one of my brothers has named every one of his three sons after Republican presidents) and religious (I'm talking southern Baptist here) family, where a few have actually been voting Democrats in the last couple of elections and it certainly isn't because
These Reagan worshipping southern Baptists are also educated and well read (including the history-teaching brother with the three sons named after Republican presidents).
That's just my Dad's side!
My mom, well her family is from deep Appalachia (like only one generation away from no indoor plumbing or running water - I'm talking the kind of places you see in the movie Deliverance) and is also southern baptist and absolutely despises Trump, and I think for good reason being she's a woman that has fought since at least the 1970s to be taken seriously academically and professionally in the south, and fighting for women's rights including abortion, and raising my older brother and I as a divorced single mother on welfare while she worked and went to school (also with help from the govt) to better herself.
And your mom voting for him out of spite is kind of like a self-fulfilling prophecy since one of the stereotypes of a Trump voter is exactly that - a spite voter.
edit: Also, full disclosure, I'm on "the dole" as the brits say, for fairly severe nonverbal learning disorder, and I don't buy that Trump didn't know or remember that disabled person he was mocking - or that he mocked others in the same way - even I can see that his hand and arm movements were clearly different than in those instances where people have tried to compare them to his flailing arms/hands in other instances of mocking where people tried to do comparisons.
MOREOVER, as someone that still to this day doesn't feel comfortable even doing something as simple as running if people can see me, due to years of mockery about my motor skills when I was growing up and no one knowing about nonverbal learning disorder at the time, I generally find mockery of any kind to be scummy unless it's in "good fun".
I guess I'm just kind of annoyed by what seems like "six of one", "half dozen of another" kind of equivalency.
dilbert1
Well-known member
Sure. My dad immigrated from Canada as a teenager, lived in Washington state and Vancouver BC before joining the US Air Force in his mid to late 20s. Mom is from Orlando, FL but can’t stand it there and also joined the Air Force in her 20s, they met while both being stationed in Texas. They’re both white, my dad was raised atheist but came around to the non-denominational Protestantism of my mother, I believe they both became a bit more religious after she survived a pretty bad bout with cancer when I was a toddler. My dad stayed in the military (they call it the ‘Chair Force’, he worked as a paralegal and was never deployed) until I was 14 so I grew up moving around a lot, including out of the country, every couple years before settling in WA when he retired. As a military family you are kind of sequestered from regional and provincial culture, and while the military tends to lean conservative a bit, its quite diverse and like a microcosm of the country. Enlisted (which my parents both were) tend to vote Dem actually, while the officers trend Republican.
Well that’s not exactly it. She does feel vaguely persecuted or alienated by the culture at large, as most ‘people of faith’ tend to in the US anyways. And so I think that is a motivation to affirm herself and her beliefs by voting, but she doesn’t like Trump to piss people off, she digs his ‘vibes’, the quasi anti-status quo thing he has going and how ‘real’ he is, how he talks to his constituency in a way she doesn’t see as condescending. Plus she’ll just vote for any Republican, voting against abortion is a lynchpin issue for her. Stopping the other side from ruining the country seems to motivate everyone who takes voting seriously, not sure if that’s the same thing as doing it out of spite, perhaps it is. But like I said, my parents are really quiet about politics and don’t take it all that seriously, they have the vague sense its one big corrupt circus but that its nonetheless your civic duty to vote and at least one side is a bit more their speed culturally.
Yeah, I hope that with my comments I don’t seem like I think the guy is a good person, he’s definitely a ruthless asshole. My mom’s very sensitive to stuff like that but will make excuses for his vulgarity like “he’s silly” and “I care more about what he does than what he says,” the latter of which clearly isn’t true because she doesn’t follow policy at all, but that kind of cognitive dissonance (much abused term but whatever) is kind of baked in to American politics, she’ll take the bad with the good, maybe she assimilates it to his unfiltered honesty, political uncorrectness, etc. Obviously overall I have a very, very different perspective from them but I’ve learned to sympathize with where they're coming from more over the years, even if I think its basically as ridiculous as going to bat for either party.
reminds me of trying to understand why my mom still has been southern baptist all of these years, besides tradition, when she has often been considered so radical and/or been ruffling feathers as far back as I can remember