Well, that’s a little harsh. Many of us know or are related to hopeless trumpians and after getting over our bewilderment at their confused state, we can certainly add up lots of reasons why they have gone astray.
For some, it’s pure racism and ethnocentrism. For others, it’s a shallow understanding of principles and how government works. For a few, it’s a pragmatic acceptance that they need a conservative to sign the bills put in front of the executive, and any puppet will do, no matter how flawed. For a lot of them, once they’ve made up their minds and chosen their enemies (libruls), they double down on the stupidity, because there’s a certain comfort in feeling you’ve got all the answers. A lot like religion.
Most Americans do not really follow politics and couldn’t even name their representatives, federal or local. They pay attention to TV news and want the concepts presented like advertising, in easy-to-swallow sound bites. They hear trump is doing great things, “shaking up Washington” and fulfilling all his campaign promises. They really don’t want any more details than that. All politicians are crooks and it’s all too complicated to understand. Fox exploits this ignorance and laziness.
The Trump era is defined as the period in which an utterly incompetent, unqualified, and dangerously stupid hack is only the second-worst nominee. Or actually who knows, at Stephen Moore-Herman Cain levels of idiocy it’s a Sophie’s Choice of stupid.
I, on the other hand, can rarely resist a wise ass remark.
According to the vehement defenders of a certain geriatric case whose entire Senate career was a mediocrity, if most of the public weren’t around to rememberPapa Doc, the Ton Ton Macoute, and the grotesquerie of Baby Doc, and who watch Lou Dobbs, Kudlow & Kramer and Maria Bartiromo, and Stephen Moore for their hard economic news, they will not be persuaded that this is necessarily a bad thing.
I agree. Most people are low information voters. I, myself probably fit into that category in the years after Reagan was elected and I was so appalled that I basically had to stop paying attention. I always voted Democratic, but I absorbed myself in my career and started paying attention again in the last eight years or so.
I was mostly referring to elected Repubs and others in positions of power, like this senator, or one of Trump’s lackeys like KellyAnne or Barr, or Clarence Thomas. They’re truly vile and know what he’s all about and are ok with it so long as they get theirs. They are quite literally the worst of us, morally.
As for the followers, yeah, there’s more “diversity”. Some fit my description above, but many, perhaps most, are the low-info clueless types you mentioned, many resentful of elitist libs like us who they think keep putting them down–by expecting them to, gasp, type a complete sentence without a spelling or grammatical error, or be able to name the three branches of guvmint. They’re just…what’s the word…stupid.
There’s also the fundies, gun nuts, nativists, etc. But it’s mostly some combination of belonging to a backwards and provincial mono-culture that excludes and fears anything unfamiliar, ignorance, subnormal intelligence, projected self-loathing, and the usual nasty human qualities like egomania, greed, selfishness, racism, sexism, intolerance, etc. They’re a glorious salad bowl of all the worst qualities of humanity rolled into one political party.
Sorry if I’ve insulted people you’re related to, are friends with or otherwise like and care for, but nothing in what I wrote is untrue. Even the “best” of them are pretty dim and ignorant, and their excuse is that they don’t know any better and lack the cognitive ability to fix that. It’s not my job to be charitable here.
This was really one of my favorite political clips of all time. First he blanked, then he questioned the interviewers hoping to make it look like “I’m just trying to make sure we’re talking about the same thing” but actually trying to get them to tell him what the hell happened re Libya since he only had the vaguest clue, then after a long rambling delivery of pure ad-libbed BS about how he didn’t agree with how Obama handled it, and Obama had screwed it up – admitting at the end that he didn’t actually know if Obama had screwed it up, or if he’d have done it any differently. A real masterpiece.
Match this with ‘why did the Republicans abandon him?’ and we’ve detected an internal boundary separating Trump from the political apparatus that usually supports him.
It’s entirely about loyalists with Trump. And to some degree it’s working, or they’re doing exactly what Trump hired them for anyway. Mnuchin won’t hand over tax returns, Barr is covering up the report.
Qualifications, schmalifications. That’s why guys like Trump hire family members a lot also. Loyalty is everything.
