What Motivates a Trump Supporter and Can Appeal to their Sense of Right and Wrong?

Common Sense 1 said:

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Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam’s page in his 1984 Eastern Virginia Medical School yearbook is displayed. At right, a photo shows a person in blackface and another wearing a Ku Klux Klan hood next to photos of the governor. (Eastern Virginia Medical School/AP)

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Northam is Not resigning...So you can put those 40 year old photos away

lurchadams said:

You make that happen, Gov. I'm behind you 100%!

Personally, I feel your desire to defend your parents is offsetting your ability to think rationally about those who support trump and this **** show of an administration.

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I’m being quite rational. I find most generalizations that I came across to be ridiculous and stupid; this article is no different. My anecdotal example of my father is an example of why the broad-brushing generalizations made in that stupid article are just that--stupid. My dad is not sexist, racist, homophobic, or any of the crap that is just falsely assumed to all Trump supporters. It’s not like he’s alone in that regard. It’s always funny how people that do this to their opposition always find it completely justified--up until it happens to them. Then it’s a problem. I consider myself a nuanced person, and none of these empty platitudes and sweeping generalizations sit well with me. If you wanna pretend like that’s a good way to look at the world, then go ahead. I can’t stop you. Just don’t expect me to be a part of it. :shrug:

I'm sorry you think the article is ****, but I think there is much truth to it.

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don’t agree, at all. The article is ****. But like I said before, this is Salon we’re talking about, and they are always making ****ty articles like this one. Just par for the course for those fools.

TheGoverness said:

I’m being quite rational. I find most generalizations that I came across to be ridiculous and stupid; this article is no different. My anecdotal example of my father is an example of why the broad-brushing generalizations made in that stupid article are just that--stupid. My dad is not sexist, racist, homophobic, or any of the crap that is just falsely assumed to all Trump supporters. It’s not like he’s alone in that regard. It’s always funny how people that do this to their opposition always find it completely justified--up until it happens to them. Then it’s a problem. I consider myself a nuanced person, and none of these empty platitudes and sweeping generalizations sit well with me. If you wanna pretend like that’s a good way to look at the world, then go ahead. I can’t stop you. Just don’t expect me to be a part of it. :shrug:



don’t agree, at all. The article is ****. But like I said before, this is Salon we’re talking about, and they are always making ****ty articles like this one. Just par for the course for those fools.

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Gov, let me start by saying that I don't disrespect your parents as parents. They're obviously wonderful parents because you're a wonderful person and that says a great deal about them as it does about you.

Having said that, I noticed you dodged my question.

"There are nothing but ****hole countries in Africa"

"If she wasn't my daughter I'd probably be dating her"

"I believe Putin, not the very American agencies charged with the sacred duty to protect us"

"I have people investigating Obama in Hawaii regarding his fake birth certificate and you won't believe what their finding"

"I'll pay $1million if Obama will release his college transcripts"

I embellished a little above, but you get the gist. So I'll ask you one more time and then I promise you, I'll drop it:

How can anyone support a person, charged with the highest responsibility in our country, who says and does these things? Just tell me how.

lurchadams said:

Gov, let me start by saying that I don't disrespect your parents as parents. They're obviously wonderful parents because you're a wonderful person and that says a great deal about them as it does about you.

Having said that, I noticed you dodged my question.

"There is nothing but ****hole countries in Africa"

"If she wasn't my daughter I'd probably be dating her"

"I believe Putin, not the very American agencies charged with the sacred duty to protect us"

"I have people investigating Obama in Hawaii regarding his fake birth certificate and you won't believe what their finding"

"I'll pay $1million if Obama will release his college transcripts"

I embellished a little above, but you get the gist. So I'll ask you one more time and then I promise you, I'll drop it:

How can anyone support a person, charged with the highest responsibility in our country, who says and does these things? Just tell me how.

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Didn't dodge your question. None of that has anything to do with what I'm saying. I've argued with my parents about many things that Trump has said, and my dad and I concur on quite a bit of it (my father's kinda like a 'I don't love or hate Trump' kind of guy), and my mom's usually the one that makes a myriad of excuses. But even despite that, that doesn't make them vile people, or in any way justifies making blanket statements about entire groups of people. It's silly behavior.

Hate, fear and ignorance is what motivates Trump supporters. That's why its fake doom and gloom 24/7 from republicans, pandering to the hate and fear of the right

TheGoverness said:

Didn't dodge your question. None of that has anything to do with what I'm saying. I've argued with my parents about many things that Trump has said, and my dad and I concur on quite a bit of it (my father's kinda like a 'I don't love or hate Trump' kind of guy), and my mom's usually the one that makes a myriad of excuses. But even despite that, that doesn't make them vile people, or in any way justifies making blanket statements about entire groups of people. It's silly behavior.

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And as I promised, I'm dropping it.

Upsetting you was the last thing I intended when I started this thread, Gov.

the three reasons Trump has support:

1. he was a better choice than Hillary (still true even though he has his own issues, obviously)
2. he is trying to get some things done that conservatives agree with.
3. supreme court justice nominations

not a single one of those has anything to do with hate or anger, and either of those you read into that is your own issue.

the blowback against Trump by the left and the broad generalization of his followers tends to cause some anger though.

lurchadams said:

Interesting article. Really gets to the heart of what motivates those who support trump and gives little hope for others to burst their hate bubble. I think the articles very inciteful!

Trump voters are selfish: They love him because they identify with him | Salon.com



I think these attributes exist with most conservatives as well.

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I'll take the title of the thread and modify it just a little.
'They love him because they identify with him, they hate us because we don't.' It's nothing more than tribalism and has nothing at all to do with historical facts. It's like Trump's comments about Amy Klobuchar's speech in the middle of a blizzard. He said "talking proudly of fighting global warming while standing in a virtual blizzard of snow, ice and freezing temperatures." This is how ignorant he is. He believes that if it's cold and snowing outside that climate change is a myth. He doesn't understand the very basic differences between 'weather' and 'global warming'. One other thing about Amy Klobuchar, I may be proven wrong, but from what I know about Amy Klobuchar so far, she just may be his biggest nightmare in 2020.

I learned long ago that there's not going to be any sort of 'bubble bursting'. They're committed and that's never going to change. The important thing is to realize that it's a waste of our and effort time trying to present facts. They're just going to fall back to 'what-about' this and 'what about Obama' and 'what about the Clinton's'. They'll rehash Uranium One, Benghazi, Hillary's emails and Clinton's sexual escapades just to deflect any of the wrongdoing by Trump.

There is something happening that the majority of Trump supporters don't see. Trump is becoming more and more isolated. We just had a bipartisan agreement on the budget to avoid a shutdown, now it goes to the Senate. Before the shutdown there was an offer of 1.6 billion for his wall and now after a 35 day shutdown there's less money, 1.3 billion in the bill, and the wording in the bill is quite specific, it is for a 'physical barrier' and that cannot be a 'concrete' barrier. We had democrats and republicans actually getting the work done in the conferences they've been holding.

Down in El Paso we saw the city council passed a resolution that essentially told Trump to stop lying about the crime in El Paso. There was Trump at his rally giving the exact same speech he gave three years ago about a manufactured crisis with manufactured facts. His supporters are stuck in that loop while the rest of the country is moving on. He's going to have to decide if he's going to participate in this forward movement on behalf of the country or if he's going to keep threatening in a petulant way to shut the government down.

Trump lost a lot more in the November midterms than he ever thought he would. Losing control of the House was a bigger defeat in more ways than he ever figured. The Freedom Caucus in the House, which is comprised mainly of former Tea Party members has been the single most powerful block of voters in the last ten years. The Freedom Caucus had previously been the majority of the minority and now the House Freedom Caucus are the minority within the minority and they no longer have any power to push their own, and Trump's,insanely alt-right conservative bills. Mark Meadows has already tweeted a statement slamming the conference agreement. But now, complaints from the more vocal members like Mark Meadows and Jim Jordan no longer carry any weight because the House is controlled by democrats.

lurchadams said:

And as I promised, I'm dropping it.

Upsetting you was the last thing I intended when I started this thread, Gov.

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You don't have to drop it if you don't want to. I am kinda annoyed, if I'm being totally honest. Because I am not a fan of that article's mindset. But I'm a big girl; I'll live.

What Motivates a Trump Supporter and Can Appeal to their Sense of Right and Wrong?

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Simply, curiously, infamously, and disquietingly: anything.

Trumpkins have no constant moral bar against which they measure things. They have only the bar defined tacitly by their political darling of the day, as it were. Remember, Trumpkins are folks who hew to the post-truth variant of postmodernist rhetoric.

Just yesterday I cited Steve Tesich's observation:
Trumpkins are the "we" of whom Tesich writes. The poignancy of this description defies diminution. The 2016 election was not only marked by boisterously and oft-repeated falsehoods, but also presented limited, unimaginative, and uninspiring moral worlds where the politically viable options offered but a choice between two moral failings:

• Clinton: acquiescence to extreme wealth inequality and to the unmitigated socially regressive aspects of globalization, and worse
• Trump: xenophobic sentiment coupled with an agenda of nationalist retrenchment and a clear disregard for the injustices visited upon members of minority groups within the supposedly hallowed nation.[SUP]1[/SUP]

Rather than rallying behind bold, vibrant, and ambitious moral agendas, Trumpkins adjudicated between the morally abject and the unspeakably worse. This moral quandary derives from social and political currency bereft a moral center buoyed by value for truth obtained in compliance with epistemic norms.

One needn't look hard or far to see Trumpkins have bound themselves to blatant breaches of traditional epistemic norms, partings proffered to animate procrustean parties' political approbation, unbaptized by established epistemic methods, of political claims. Trumpkins thus embraced three classes of sophistry:

• Trump's false assertions he demurred to, with anything existential and germane, defend when so bid.
• Trump's contradictory statements made in fairly short succession and which he refused to clarify.
• Most insidiously, Trump's unvarnished perfidy to traditional epistemic norms and/or of the epistemic authority of those who abide them.

With Trump's name adjacent, they not only bought the BS, but also defend it with utterly incredulous, sui generis BS of their own formulation. Some of the most egregious examples:

• Kellyanne Conway, responding to an inquiry re: Trump's claim that his inauguration was the most attended in US history, she declared he was merely offering "alternative facts."
• Given the rubric of a tweet wherein Trump purported he won both the electoral college and popular vote, provided one "deduct the millions of people who voted illegally," and well aware there was no evidence of illegal voting on the scale Trump suggested, VPOTUS-elect Pence was asked whether it be a POTUS-elect’s right to fabricate facts. Pence responded by conflating opinion and fact's nature to occlude the surreality of Trump’s claim.
  • "Well, it’s his right to express his opinion as president-elect of the United States. I think one of the things that’s refreshing about our president-elect and one of the reasons why I think he made such an incredible connection with people all across this country is because he tells you what’s on his mind."

Trump and his associates simply do not believe in the existence of an actual fact of the matter. Therefore, in their view, all factual claims are merely expressive of partisan bias. As Trump’s associate and former adviser, Roger Stone, asserts:
Debatable verisimility expunges moral absolutes and makes acceptable any immorality.

Note:

1. And let's be clear: Trumpkins aren't concerned with whether or not metaethical anti-realism necessarily undermines the practical purchase of moral claims. But then, being fundamentally unprincipled, they can't. They have the capacity for principle, but they undertake few to none of the things required to become so. At day's end, though much can be pursued freely, nothing one obtains therefrom, not even moral firmament, is free.