Everyone is always afraid to say why people like Trump or Marie Le Pen have some level of popularity and it’s just that there’s a lot of people in the world who believe in racism. You end up with these goofy ass explanations for Trump where it’s NAFTA or shit and it’s like no you know what it is
“Oh Trump is a conman, he’s pulling the wool over peoples eyes” Yeah to some degree, but the main core reason he was President and might well be President again is a lot of people fucking love being racist
And it fucking sucks because I’d love to believe in the idea that if everyone voted and had their say we’d have good enlightened leaders and I don’t know. I don’t know looking at the history of our country why that would necessarily be the case.
“People feel left behind!”
Yes absolutely! We should have universal income or strengthen unions or have free college or increase the minimum wage or do a bunch of domestic projects
“Actually instead of that let me show you this security camera footage of a migrant chasing a blonde woman”
I have the opposite read: Trump, Le Pen, et al. happen when times are relatively good. When people are well off. When many don’t care about a functional government because they got theirs. Sprinkle in a threat of the status quo flipping and they’ll go fash
I think we can get these types in both good and bad times, but anecdotally I will say the Trumpers in my family are all people who are well off and seem motivated by not wanting 'the other' to take their stuff.
They happen when working people are stressed due to losses to their financial stability, and perceived social instability. They're opportunists and parasites, and when empowered, act to inflame the circumstances that made them seem like an alternative in the first place.
The people who "already got theirs" are always around, and will always be only too happy to work with such opportunists so long as doing so continues to let them get even more.
But you can't put someone in office just bc the theft-class says so -- you still need the voters on the ground to do it.
The “working people” in the US consistently vote for the Dems by the largest margins. It’s the higher wage earners that tilt right. All this is confused by Donald Trump never getting within a million votes of a majority in any election…
Or maybe a solution is not apparent, so the next best thing is to make everyone else lose more so they can schadenfreude themselves to sleep.
Personally, I’m coming around to the belief that this is all class war and everyone is being treated to the “divide and rule” strategy
I don’t think it’s the individual thinking they can chuck the state. It’s more that the very wealthy are capitalizing on various weaknesses of state capacity. People still need the state but they see the weaknesses and it’s easy to manipulate them. This is why Trump is always promising to do stuff.
Yeah, after the economy enjoyed a fair degree of recovery from the Great Recession. This has been the pattern for decades: elect a Democrat to fix the problems caused by electing a Republican. Rinse and repeat
Theres a reason a lot of these people who absolutely could use the UBI and unions and any other social service but will oppose it at all costs. Because they’d rather not let brown or black people get these same services they can’t have that. Not ever. Even if it hurts themselves. It’s just racism.
It's a combination of this though. You feel left behind? Yes, you are and it's because of this scapego.. err, this foreigner here. An effective strategy for centuries, unfortunately.
Similar to how I feel when people seem to claim each red state is that way because of voter suppression. Some of them, yes there is a strong case for that. But not all of them. I don't think my state of KY would flip if voting was a required action.
I agree. I'd add to it that the press and media has a much bigger role in opinion-formation than anybody likes to acknowledge, and that the US press being largely owned by conservatives helps this along, but Yeah: lots of people are just Awful.
someone once said to me how awful immigrants are, how they ruin everything
i gestured to my white english husb next to me and said "like him? he's an immigrant"
"no but he did it right"
"actually the lawyer had him overstay"
"but its different"
"why"
"it just is, he works"
"so do they"
etc
our lawyer, when we were still in process and about to be in a place that had those "document checks" for people they suspected were immigrants:
"you don't have to worry about that, he's the wrong color to be stopped"
This is also when you get to realize that federal jobs enforcing immigration laws aren’t easy to get, and that these particular ones are highly desirable for racists who want to turn their hobby into a profession.
That’s also where the fascists breed. Monsters trained to use government power.
it gets rough when you start to think about how the entire onus for this whole project really boils down to rich landowner-class men who owned slaves wanting tax breaks on their stolen land
The thing I always say that pisses people off is that Hitler was nothing - it's the german people who let him into power who were the real evil. Without them, Hitler is some wacko ranting to himself about the Jewish problem on the streets of Berlin.
Yeah, like while higher voting turn-out would likely improve some or even many things, it likely would solve the fundamental issues. For example, Australia has had compulsory voting with turnouts regularly above 90% for nearly a century and still gets racist and ring-wing leaders.
I mean, this Hannah Arendt's old take on the "mobilization of the masses." Generally the only thing that really mobilizes the masses is hatred, so, realistically, the best society is one with low levels of political engagement.
America has never been a country where all eligible Citizens voted and had their say. Not even one day has this been true. The Voting Rights Act and legislation like John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act tried to put the USA on the path but SCOTUS & Republicans killed or gutted them
i think a big part of this is people thinking folks believe in racism as some kind of philosophical position and it’s not, it is a pleasure, a thrill. folks don’t just believe in racism, they get off on it, and that’s a different kind of attachment than most the rest of us have to our politics
