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

Chillfolks said:
Power motivates them, just like power motivates Democrats to allow alleged rapists and racists to stay in office in Va
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Really? What power motivated the GOP to support a racist pedophile for the US senate in AL?
 
MrWonka said:
Yeah, I really think that's a big part of it. African Americans and many Latinos are physically superior to the average white person. Naturally, they're generally bigger, faster, and stronger. The result is that white people have to convince themselves that they're smarter than these miniorities in order to protect their fragile egos. You notice that most white people don't have an issue admitting that Asians are smarter than them. At least not when you're talking about book smarts, math, and science. Asians are generally physically less dominate than whites so it's okay to admit they're really smart in certain areas. Of course whites have to convince themselves they're better at things like common sense smarts and leadership ability.

All African Americans dominate physically. All the Asians score higher on tests. So white people have to invent these immeasurable qualities that make themselves feel superior in some other way.
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It's really not all African Americans dominating either. There are plenty of great white athletes but I've been convinced that many conservatives believe the way they do because they feel short changed.

And I say that as a normal white dude who always felt superior to every other man on the planet (although I know I'm not). For some reason a ton of republicans are scared to death that they're in that dance club/bar scene at the end of "Animal House".
 
TheGoverness said:
More like insightfully stupid.
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I'm sorry, Gov. Tell me how your parents defend this:

"I saw thousands of Muslims celebrating the fall of the twin towers in New Jersey".

"Because I'm famous I can grab women by the *****"

"I'm calling for a ban on all Muslims entering this country until we find out what it going on".

"Mexicans aren't sending their best, their sending criminals and rapists".

"Meghan's got blood coming out of their whatever".

"I didn't pay off a porn star of playmate. Wait, I guess I did"

"Putin's telling the truth, and all our intelligence agencies are lying traitors".

Explain to me, Gov. how anyone can defend someone who says and does these things? Explain to me how anyone like elected to public office can still have the support of people after saying an doing those things and I'll email the Mods and have them delete this thread, I promise!
 
MrWonka said:
The long and short of it is that conservatives are heavily motivated by fear. They tend to be older, lower in intelligence and have difficulty dealing with complex systems and change. Newer and complicated ideas confuse them. In their confusion, they get scared and resort to fight or flight type decision making. They want to return to what they know and what they're comfortable with rather than try to adapt to a changing world. The fear also drives selfishness. The saying goes that desperate times call for desperate measures, but conservatives tend to view any situation that confuses them or is new to them as a desperate situation. Any person they don't know well or doesn't remind them of themselves is viewed as a threat. They are more eager to gravitate towards a kill or be killed attitude regardless of whether there is a legitimate threat to themselves or not.

Liberals, on the other hand, tend to be younger and more intelligent. This makes them more adaptable to change and more willing to embrace new ideas and new situations in a more rational way. They're more adventurous and optimistic about the future. Their confidence in their own position makes them more altruistic and willing to help those in need even if they can't return the favor. Their relative youth makes them focus more on long term problems and solutions as well as want to form long term alliances rather than simply hunker down and defend the ones they have.

Sadly, most conservatives think that their relative age brings them wisdom, but in truth, there's a fine line between wisdom and prejudice. They've spent their entire lives doing things a certain way. They think their experience has taught them how things work, and can't accept the possibility that there may actually be better ways of doing them. They take new concepts as an insult to their intelligence implying that they were too stupid to figure these things out a long time ago. They've based their entire lives on the belief that certain things were true, and when someone tries to tell them they're not they simply won't have it no matter how much evidence you provide for them.

I think the best thing we can try and do is for those of us who are younger and more liberal with parents and relatives who are older and more bitter is to make them understand that there comes a time when they need to start letting their children have the country they want. Make them understand that we don't want their protection anymore, and we want to decide our own future. As sad as it may sound they need to understand that their time on this earth is coming to an end, and it is the younger generation that is going to have to deal with the ramifications of the decisions we make today. They may disagree without decisions, but ultimately we're the ones who will have to pay the price for them and so we want to make them.

My suggestion is to not bother wasting your time trying to help them understand why you want what you want. Let them believe it's wrong all they want to. Just make them understand that you don't want the same future that they want and since you're the one who is going to be living in that future you want to be the one who decides it whether it's right or wrong. The older generation isn't going to be alive in 20 years to apologize to their children if they make mistakes today. But we'll still be alive in 20 years to admit our parents were right if we mess it up ourselves.
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Great post until the end. Nope, I'm going to continue to call trump out and call out those who support his ****. If we don't stop calling him out, we run the risk of accepting his behavior as "normal". '

I, for one am not going to let that happen.
 
ttwtt78640 said:
Hillary made many mistakes and, taken together, they cost her the election to a "reality TV star". Hillary ran as Obama 3.0 (minus his public speaking ability) in a pant suit with a bit of "debt free college" Bernie tossed in. Trump ran as the (populist?) outsider in a herd of (party loyal?) insiders.

I voted for neither of the major party candidates in 2016 and will likely vote third party again in 2020. If the 2020 demorat POTUS candidates don't split the Green New Deal (GND) up into its many (unrelated?) components (and put some policy details out for discussion/debate) then the one who distances himself/herself from the GND completely will win - simply because the rest will split the GND "whole enchilada" vote among themselves.
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In the end, Hillary and all her "mistakes" gained over 2.8 million more votes that Trump managed. It was NOT Hillary who cost herself the election but it was an outdated, anti-democratic mechanism from the 1700's that elected Trump. We should always be aware of that and never ever forget it.

In the end, the American people rejected Trump. It was the Electoral College - and one which failed to do its duty - that installed Trump.

And that was only possible with great assistance from Russia and FBI Director Comey. We must never forget that.

In no other nation on the face of the earth that elects it leaders would such a travesty have been possible.
 
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dobieg said:
*rolling eyes*


How 'bout we take some extreme subsets of your side to generalize everyone who is a liberal.


I would love to see a grownup conversation around here without all the over the top hyperbole but not a day goes by where it's not insinuated, suggested or just right out said that we are all a bunch of old white men racists, Nazis, fascists, women hating, Confederate loving trailer park trash with sum'mer teeth.


Honestly, how can't you expect us to fight back?
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But I have not applied the generalization to EVERYONE who voted for Trump?
 
lurchadams said:
What Motivates a Trump Supporter and Can Appeal to their Sense of Right and Wrong?.
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I think a big part of it is lack of familiarity with the world outside their farms or wherever it is they mostly live. If your only picture of a middle easterner is ISIS terrorists slicing someone's throat out, or your only picture of a Mexican is a poor desperate person trying to steal in to your country, or your only image of an African American is some scary looking guy taking drugs and stealing stuff, I can see how you could be so callous and general in your judgment.

I think if they got to know people from other parts of the world a little more (or even in their own country), or at least read some books, or saw some documentaries or movies from those parts of the world, these other people might become a little more humanized in their mind, and they might not be so quick or judge their fellow human beings so harshly and inhumanely. I think they are just too isolated in the heartland right now.
 
lurchadams said:
Really? What power motivated the GOP to support a racist pedophile for the US senate in AL?
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What motivates half the state of Virginia to still support a Democrat twice accused of sexual assault and 2 other Democrat elected officials accused of racism?
 
haymarket said:
In the end, Hillary and all her "mistakes" gained over 2.8 million more votes that Trump managed. It was NOT Hillary who cost herself the election but it was an outdated, anti-democratic mechanism from the 1700's that elected Trump. We should always be aware of that and never ever forget it.

In the end, the American people rejected Trump. It was the Electoral College - and one which failed to do its duty - the installed Trump.

And that was only possible with great assistance from Russia and FBI Director Comey. We must never forget that.

In no other nation on the face of the earth that elects it leaders would such a travesty have been possible.
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The EC rules of the POTUS election game are not going to change. Just as in the NFL - you can't use excess points from one game won during the season to claim to have "really won" another game that you lost by a close score. The team with the most games won, not the most total points scored, during the regular season wins the division.
 
dobieg said:
What motivates half the state of Virginia to still support a Democrat twice accused of sexual assault and 2 other Democrat elected officials accused of racism?
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Good question. I was talking to an African American I know from Virginia. He said that they have to find friends where they can. LBJ was famous for his racism and frequent use of the N word. But he pushed through the landmark civil rights legislation. You take what you can. The Virginia Democratic party has been very good to African Americans in this traditionally southern state. So if he was caught as a youngster doing blackface, they are going to be more liable to look the other way. If they got too picky, he explained, they would never get anywhere.
 
lurchadams said:
Really? What power motivated the GOP to support a racist pedophile for the US senate in AL?
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Are you seriously asking what powers a US senator has and how if there party is the majority how much more power they have than the minority party?
 
haymarket said:
But I have not applied the generalization to EVERYONE who voted for Trump?
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Who cares? You generalize the vast majority with your crap.


It's why we'll continue to hit back when we see so many on your side pull the same stunt.
 
Mongidig said:
Do they mention the influence of social media in this book? I get the feeling that things may have turned out differently if they had the internet back then.
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That's an interesting idea.

For reasons I still don't know I have been fascinated by the zeitgeist of the German people in 30s and early 40s. To this day I cannot comprehend how Hitler and his sheer madness could have motivated the average German. How could a nation even tacitly approve of the daily atrocities commited in the name of the 3rd Reich? The answers are not a simple ones.

One thing history does show us is that Hitler's brand of evil insanity gave lisence to some of the worst of German society to pratice their vile and twisted desires in full pubic view with little concern of public disapproval. Often in fact those sick bastards were rewarded and promoted for their inhumanity.

Goebbels was an evil genius. It could be argued that Goebbels is the father of modern mass manipulation. He was exceedingly good at his job. But Goebbels did not have any tool comparable to today's social media. Nor did the enemies of Nazi Germany.

Of course Goebbels appears in the book but Munich addresses Chamberlain's attempts to avert war with Hitler's Germany.

The book has given me a bit of a different and less harsh perspective of Chamberlain.
 
dobieg said:
What motivates half the state of Virginia to still support a Democrat twice accused of sexual assault and 2 other Democrat elected officials accused of racism?
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Can you provide me with the name of any relevant, national democrat supporting these guys, or is this just in your sweaty, fevered dreams?
 
haymarket said:
You are right Governess. It does not HAVE to be this way. But right now it is. And it will be until we flush Trump and his ilk from our system.

I would agree that all the Trumpkins are NOT vile people. But a whole lot of them are. A whole lot of them are the vile people described in that article. Those people exist and are very very real.

This is a war and it will be taken to its logical conclusion with one side winning.
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TheGoverness said:
This is a crap article. But then again, that's pretty much the only thing that comes out of Salon. This is just a bunch of ridiculous generalizations. For example, my dad is a MAGA supporter, although he's not as vocal about it as some people are. My dad is none of that crap. He's a good person, who I just happen to disagree with politically.

I think we need to stop with the blanket generalizations of large swaths of people. It's silly.
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I tend to agree with Haymarket. On father's day last year I had a pretty neutral political discussion with my dad without letting up about my newfound progressive Democratic ties. He was woefully uninformed about multiple Trump stories, parroted well known right wing propaganda, told me he liked Jesse Watters and Tucker Carlson, and didn't seem to know why Bill Oreally got fired. On Christmas my traditional conservative family discussed the banning of the song baby it's cold outside, clearly the most pressing issue of the Trump era. That conversation really opened my eyes about what my dad believes and why, and unfortunately made me lose a bit of respect for him. For this older forum members chewed me out and yelled at me for disrespecting my parents. When all I said was that he was uninformed, and that was a fact. Conservatives are not poltiicos, political analysts, or genuine media watchers. They can't even name regular public figures or popular new hollywood icons b/c who are these people? They go with whatever Trump says not only because they agree with him, but they think that his empire IS the ultimate American Dream. They could care less how he got it or what he did to achieve it. It is unfortunately quintessentially American.
 
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lurchadams said:
Great post until the end. Nope, I'm going to continue to call trump out and call out those who support his ****. If we don't stop calling him out, we run the risk of accepting his behavior as "normal". '

I, for one, am not going to let that happen.
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I'm not saying don't call him out. I'm simply suggesting that for those who at this point after all the disgusting bull**** he's done are still behind him that you might as well be beating your head against a wall. This thread seems to be trying to understand Trump supporters motives in order to form a more constructive solution to changing their minds. My solution is to help them understand that it doesn't matter who is right and who is wrong. What matters most is who will be affected by these decisions? Since it is a younger generation that will be the most radically impacted by these choices maybe it's time to start letting them decide these things for themselves. Whether they understand our choices or not doesn't matter. We want to make them, and we're going to make them. It's not a question of if, but a question of how long do we have to wait.

For my parents I want them to understand that if they continue to support this piece of **** then I will resent them to the day they die. Do they really want to go to their grave with the knowledge that their children are furious and disappointed with them? Remind them of a time when maybe their own parents got to a certain age where their ideas were kind of racist and ignorant and make them understand that is exactly how you see them today. Make them understand that forcing these ideas upon us is causing us to lose respect for them.

As Trump himself has said repeatedly..."if you want a good deal then you have to be willing to walk away." Show your parents that their support of this piece of **** has completely destroyed your respect for them and that you're embarrassed to even be around them anymore. Make them choose between Trump and their child.
 
ttwtt78640 said:
Attacking the other candidate's supporters (potential voters?) is always a bad move whether you stick to it or not.
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Do you know what the phrase "Divide and Conquer" actually means? Donald Trump's ONLY election strategy was to attack other candidates supporters. He preached to the choir all day every day, and just hoped that his choir was slightly bigger than hers. Hillary easily had the bigger choir, but by trying desperately to increase the size of her choir she turned off some of the members she already had.

ttwtt78640 said:
Trump used DC swamp dwellers, illegal immigrants, terrorists and criminals as his "boogie man" while Hillary used coal miners, gun owners and potential Trump supporters ("racist" American voters who were not yet Hillary supporters?) as her "boogie man" - a very dumb move.
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Only if you're talking to dumb voters. But what you've in essence highlighted is exactly why the core component of Fascism is Nationalism and racism. This is precisely why it is absolutely idiotic for anyone to believe that white people or Christians could ever be truly persecuted. The only way that a person could ever obtain enough authoritarian power within a country to persecute a group of people is if that group of people was made up of outsiders and minorities. So long as your boogie men are common citizens and part of the majority demographic you would never be able to garner enough support to do any real harm to them.

If Hitler had picked white Christian blue collar Germans as his scapegoat instead of the Jews he would have failed miserably and the masses in Germany would have never gotten behind him no matter how stupid they were.
 
ttwtt78640 said:
The EC rules of the POTUS election game are not going to change. Just as in the NFL - you can't use excess points from one game won during the season to claim to have "really won" another game that you lost by a close score. The team with the most games won, not the most total points scored, during the regular season wins the division.
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This is the only "game" where - when points are awarded for positive achievement - the person who gets the most points fails to win.

Second, since you gave me a sports comparison, allow me to do the same with you.

A father takes his son Little Jimmy to a NBA basketball game in Boston pitting their beloved Celtics against the hated Lakers .
In the first quarter the Lakers pull out to a 25 to 24 lead.
In the second quarter it is more of the same and the Lakers again outscore the Celts 25 to 24 and at halftime the score reads LA 50 and Boston trailing with 48 points.
In the third quarter the Lakers run up 27 points while the Celts put in only 22. At the end of three quarters the score is now LA 77 and Boston 70.
But in the fourth quarter the home team gets hot and outscores the Lakers 35 to 20 making the score Boston 105 and the Lakers only 97.

Little Jimmy is besides himself as they leave the area waving a Celtic pennant and is nearly jumping up and down that the home team won. But then dad explains that Boston did NOT win - they actually lost.

"How so", Little Jimmy asks.

Dad explains ...."the league wants teams to play hard every minute of the game rather than just turn it on at the end so each team gets one point for winning each quarter and one point for who has the most points at the end of the game. That gives LA three points and Boston only 2 and the Lakers win."

Little Jimmy cannot believe it telling dear old dad... "That is the dumbest thing I ever heard of. Every kid in America knows that if you outscore the other guy - your team wins."

Dad says - "Son, just wait until you learn about the Electoral College."
 
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haymarket said:
This is the only "game" where - when points are awarded for positive achievement - the person who gets the most points fails to win.
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No it’s not. If you get the most votes in a state you win that state. If you fail to recieve the most votes in a state you loose the state.
 
Chillfolks said:
No it’s not. If you get the most votes in a state you win that state. If you fail to recieve the most votes in a state you loose the state.
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We do NOT elect anyone as President of a state. You are elected President of the entire nation. How many votes you receive in a state should not matter compared to what the entire nation says.
 
Ikari said:
But without blanket generalizations, how are we to dismiss large swaths of people who don't think the same things with so little effort?
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Except the article does not dismiss Trumpists at all. It calls them a danger to our society which even Trumpists will freely admit. You can't deny they are supporting fundamental change in many ways. The most frightening of which is the support of authoritarianism and denial of facts. It is very fascist in nature. Every time I hear Trump say "I alone can do it" my blood curdles.
 
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dobieg said:
Who cares? You generalize the vast majority with your crap.


It's why we'll continue to hit back when we see so many on your side pull the same stunt.
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You clearly stated EVERYONE.

Quote Originally Posted by dobieg View Post
*rolling eyes*


How 'bout we take some extreme subsets of your side to generalize everyone who is a liberal.
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And you were wrong.
 
dobieg said:
I know it must just kill you that you can't keep the moral high ground because half of Virginia(the Democratic half) wants to keep the slimeball Democrats in power even though they're racists and rapists.

Ralph Northam resignation: polls show Virginians are divided - Vox
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Democrats will stay in power regardless. Elections have consequences. But is is funny how quickly you desert the "due process" you championed with Brett. I thought everyone is innocent until proven guilty in a court of law?
 
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