MAGAs don't believe in doctors or medicine. That's just Jim, he's "politically neutral" and got suspended from med school after "prescribing" meth to his brother for ADHD, and selling it to him, and synthesizing it. Jim's alright, and you don't need no doctor, we can just go ask Jim what's going on.
We all laugh but I had a coworker once who was basically this entire comment but living and breathing. Let's call him Colton.
My asshole boss hired Colton when I was on vacation to be my "assistant" and I spent more time trying to fix his damage than get anything done. He had a neck tattoo and couldn't wear clothes that fit, he was constantly sweating and going to the bathroom to do whatever cocktail of drugs kept him vertical. Colton said once "I got a doctor that lives next door, he hooks me up with medicine."
One time Colton got involved in a robbery with one of our other employees, Colton wasn't charged but the homeowner knew Colton was involved and came to the showroom where I worked with a gun. Police were called, it was a whole thing.
When the '09 recession hit, most of the workforce was laid off, myself included. My boss kept Colton on though because he liked having someone he could bully easily and he looooved treating Colton like a punching bag.
Very few people voted for Trump based on his policy decisions. Most people just see him as a Washington outsider who speaks his mind and that's where it starts and ends. They like him as a person.
People flabbergasted how anyone could "like Trump as a person" don't realize that the average American worker spends 6 - 7 days a week stuck in traffic, working overtime, working side jobs, struggling to maintain a house or family, and gets all their news and information from a few minutes of social media and talk radio every day.
Most people have not seen the countless clips and stories of Trump's incompetence and rotting brain, they see what Facebook wants them to see, or what their friends say, and they don't really give it a lot of thought. The average Trump-voting conservative might not be very informed but they genuinely aren't all bad people. Just dumb people.
If you're here reading lemmy or reddit, you're someone who can read lemmy and reddit on a friday afternoon and that means that some part of your life allows for such luxuries, or you already have formed a strong opinion and have tuned your recreational reading to match. This isn't the case for everyone.
We need to understand this fact a lot better to undo the polarization that the real evil conmen have set up in this country.
I had family members who were planning on voting for Trump and all it took was talking about his failed policies and playing a few clips of him saying how he really feels about things like guns and poor people and they changed their mind. That simple. Do not underestimate your powers to change hearts and minds.
I remember growing up hearing that most people voted for the candidate they thought they could sit down and have a beer with. Then I started paying attention to politics and kind of forgot this really basic idea. It's almost like a trap, the more you educate yourself, the more you assume that other people are doing the same thing. Then you're flabbergasted when people vote against your preferred candidate since it seems so obvious. But seriously, look at the last few decades of presidents:
Bill Clinton seemed more relatable and someone you could have a beer with than Bush Sr, then also with Bob Dole.
Dubya, bless his dumb little heart, felt more down to earth than Gore or Kerry.
Obama was infinitely cooler than McCain or Romney.
Trump, as much of a jackass as he is, certainly seems more fun to hang out with than Hillary.
The major outlier here was that Biden beat Trump. It kind of goes to show you just how bad Trump fucked up. Had he just somewhat competently managed COVID, there's a good possibility he would have won in 2020.
Most people don't give a shit about appointing Supreme Court Justices, immigration policy, monetary policy, disaster preparedness, etc. They just wanna look at a politician and say "Yeah, they'd probably be my friend if we met" and that's it.
Those with college education and who are politically active tend to lean towards the left, it's good to remember that. A lot of people, especially right-leaning people, have no fucking idea what policies they're actually voting for and operate purely off vibes and buzzwords.
Despite the obvious fact that he wouldn't piss on them if they were on fire. He's not only a shit person, we have more evidence that he's rotten to the core than most people currently alive.
Yes, yes I know there are murdering dictators worse than trump. But if we only consider the context of currently living US politicians you'd be hard pressed to find anyone else you could write thousands of objectively factual pages about their immorality
These people think that everyone in government is a secret pedo rapist, I'm sure having someone flaunt their immorality feels comparatively more moral. The problem obviously being that not everyone is govt is actually a pedo rapist lmao.
Exactly. Trump supporters vote for a brand. His actual policies, words, and actions are a very distant second to the support they have for the Trump brand, which as you said is seen as a truth teller and adversary to the "elites" in DC.
Tribal action vs. principled action. Humans have been dealing with this since forever. Lots of people are unable to act on principle and default to follow the leader of the tribe they identify with, ditching their self-proclaimed principles. Some people are willing to ditch the tribe to uphold their principles. And so on and on our eternal struggles continue.
If SCOTUS declares that president's have infinite immunity today, it will be really funny to bully my grandpa that Biden is going to murder Trump and get away with it 🤭