I was going to fisk this article on liberal “understanding” of that strange beast, the Trump voter, and the effort to change such voters’ minds. But then after I had read it, and while I was contemplating what to write, I read some of the comments.
At the time I looked at them there were over 4,000 and I only read the first 100 or so. But it was such a truly and deeply depressing experience that I decided to skip writing about the article for the most part and just reproduce some of the comments.
The following ones are not unusual but are instead are instead very typical of what I saw, a never-ending barrage of unyielding contempt, arrogance, rage, and disgust leveled at both Trump voters and for the liberal author who was trying to talk to them. Every now and then there was a slightly less truculent comment to the effect of “well, maybe a few Trump supporters are simply misguided and we in our infinite wisdom might be able to penetrate their abysmal ignorance and help them come over from the dark side,” but those were very few and far between compared to the others.
I suppose the only encouraging thing might be that commenters at the WaPo are a selected bunch of fairly intense partisans. But the hatred expressed was exceptionally chilling.
First, though, here are some excerpts from the article itself, to give you a flavor of that:
“Whatever crimes [Trump] commits, his supporters will be loyal to him,” one buddy wrote on Facebook. “Unwelcome but important fact to face,” the otherwise great writer David Frum tweeted. “Trump absconding with the country’s highest secrets – storing them unsafely – and then lying about returning them – SHOULD have upset his … supporters. It didn’t. If anything, the latest Trump scandal has strengthened Trump’s hold, not only on his core support, but on the broader GOP.”
But is this true? The rapidly forming consensus that Trump’s voters wouldn’t be moved reminded me of many moments over the last six years. Nearly as soon as Trump took over the presidency in 2017, those who dislike him characterized each revelation about his misbehavior — his lies about immigrants, the border wall and the size of his inauguration crowd; his take on white supremacists (“very fine people”); his refusal to accept the 2020 election results; that bonkers time he presented a National Weather Service map that had been adjusted with a Sharpie — as the thing that, finally, ought to turn his fans against him, but also the thing that, bafflingly and heartbreakingly, would not.
The idea, such commentators hold, is that support for him constitutes a religious fervor akin to that of cultists who, when their guru is disrobed, only become more devoted…
I have relatives who voted twice for Trump. I talk with them often. And in conversations, I’ve found them deeply confused and disturbed by the recent events at Mar-a-Lago. They’re troubled by the alleged pilfering of classified documents, by the possibility that Trump’s lawyer lied for him and by the fact that any defense of Trump now has to rest on the claim that he’s stupid.
These are people who blew off early Trump lies as either minuscule or necessary. But they’ve been worn down over time…
It would be too bad if the narrative that Trump’s voters are unreachable hardened completely. Looking back at the polls that supported arguments about Trump’s invulnerability is an odd experience, because many of them just aren’t that dispiriting. If 6 out of 10 Trump voters said they’d never lose confidence in him, 4 out of 10 thought they might. There’s a lot of uncertainty and ambiguity in what Trump’s supporters think, even room for persuasion; they’re less uniform than we like to believe. But we might have to change our minds about them if they start changing theirs. Whether we’re prepared to do that is an open question.
And now let’s turn to a sample of the comments:
the fact that any defense of Trump now has to rest on the claim that he’s stupid”
. . . is a true statement, underlying his most disqualifying attribute – among others, too numerous to squeeze into one sentence – for the job of POTUS.
No matter, he belongs to jail.
That he is seriously supported by the GOP is only a testament to the thoroughly corrupt nature of most members, which is no news.
That he is not dismissed by the general population as a lunatic psychopath is a symptom of the wave of madness of American voters gone insane.
The headline caught my attention… I never knew Trump voters had a mind. I’m still not convinced.
The evidence is plain. Trump brought out the most and the second most voters _ever_ for a Republican presidential candidate. His voter base _increased_ after watching his train wreck of a presidency. His candidates are winning in primaries across the nation, and the majority of Republicans now believe in his facially stupid election lies. The author of this story is Charlie Brown trying to kick the remorseful family Republican football as if she can’t remember Lucy pulling it away some hours/days after Jan 6th. The evidence is clear here. We are dealing with a modern mass hysteria formed on the basis of powerful new technology that completely democratizes communication and “truth” in a political system uniquely flawed in ways that make it possible for the minority to wield so much power via geography. Republicans are in a fear spiral, and the momentum is just too strong for most people to escape. They are going “over the cliff” with Trump, and the only reasonable strategy left for reasonable Americans is to try and outvote those lunatics until they find somewhere else to project their hatred and fear.
In the case of Trump, we’re talking generations that have been “groomed” by the GOP to mistrust government, see liberals as “takers,” socialist degenerates, etc. They’ve been taught to believe lies to the point of voting against their own self-interest on a host of issues. The Big Lie and Trump as victim are just the culmination (for now) of that habituation. Somebody quits the bottle or the crack pipe down every day, but most don’t.
I wouldn’t dismiss the neuroscience so glibly. The studies I’ve seen look pretty persuasive to the effect that there are differences. How closely they map to a subjective thing like ideology, I think is still TBD, but it would help to explain what we see. Pro-science liberals should be OK with the idea, but it also conflicts with the broad notion that we’re not defined by our biology, e.g. race, gender etc. It’s troubling because it conjures up excuses for the worst historical abuses of various groups. Under a fascist regime, the idea that some future no contact brain scan could determine loyalty to the leader is scary indeed. It’s probably not something you want a liberal regime to have either. Of course, Google probably already knows anyway – another reason to be worried about big data and who controls it.
It’s almost certainly not one factor, but more nature+nurture. I think it may be more the GOP nurturing fascist enabling insanity than the nature of their voters, even if they’re predisposed to it. Maybe the fever’s about to break, but I wouldn’t bet on it.
The absence of generosity Trump embodies resonates with many. Be really cheap, mean and greedy – take the chumps. Money: I want my share – all of it.
Democrats were not in the least “humiliated” when Trump won in 2016, we were ENRAGED that Putin and Comey and Roger Stone were able to throw the election to such a tremendously unfit con man. Without losing a single Russian soldier (not that that would keep him up at night) Putin crippled our democracy and installed a useful idiot as president who always gave Putin whatever foreign policy would help Putin the most.
the Trumplets are stupid, scared, resentful. They are spoiled children.
During the last large scale fascist movement, it took utter military defeat in a World War to convince the “true believers” to seriously consider that they might have been wrong. I’m not optimistic that it will be any easier this time.
I think everyone is tired of the “we need to help conservatives while they plot on how to unalive us” rhetoric. The constant parade of media swearing that conservatives and Trump supporters weren’t militant racists, but were “economically anxious” has left nothing in the tank 6+ years on.
Many of us are deeply saddened at how so many on the right have been brainwashed to support leaders who will lead them over the cliff, and are desperately hoping this is just a temporary madness for their sake and for ours. But whether it’s temporary or not, it’s a huge danger to our democracy and we need to take some kind of action.
I suspect the author wants to believe Trump’s followers can still be persuaded because the other options are so hard to accept: 1) we lose to them and our country becomes a autocratic theocracy; 2) we crush them like Sherman on his march to through Georgia; 3) we split up the country and go our separate ways. Frankly, I think the third option is the best one. Not good, but better than the others.
We are in the early stages of an outright civil war, and we need to pull our collective heads out of the sand, face that fact and decide what to do about it. Hoping and waiting for a few more people to leave the cult isn’t really a viable option at this point. We’ve been doing a version of this since this country was first formed, and while some great progress has been made, those opposed to the Enlightenment values this country was founded on have only become more entrenched in their opposition.
Because #3 is geographically impossible, I vote for #2.
Even if they were, finally, to admit that Donald Trump is flawed, too flawed for their continued support, his followers would not change their basic ideology. They would not, could not become “more like us.” Their loyalty would simply shift to another right-wing politician who shares (or pretends to share) their fears, biases, and hatreds and their desire to remake the US in their image: white, Christian, and conservative. Pols such as Florida Governor Ron DeSantis and Texas Governor Greg Abbott know this, which is why they are going over the top trying to out-Trump one another in their statements and policies. Removing Trump himself from the equation, while it might prevent a reprise of his craziest and most criminal behaviors while in office and afterward, would not secure our democracy or the rights of women and racial and sexual minorities, nor would it end the constant barrage of false claims about immigrants, the Black Lives Matter movement, discrimination against white people, or rampant election fraud. The men vying for the Republican presidential nomination have added to those grievances the teaching in public schools of a race-inclusive rendition of US history (which they falsely label “Critical Race Theory”); school and public libraries’ inclusion of books about racism and LGBTQ-related subjects; and the idea of the “great replacement” — that liberals encourage immigration for the purpose of replacing the white, Christian majority in the US with people of other races and faiths who will change the character of our nation and vote for Democratic candidates. If Trump’s supporters should abandon their idol and instead back one of his imitators, the Trumpified Republican Party will present no less danger to the gains that have taken decades to achieve for women, members of BIPOC communities, and sexual minorities or to the survival of our democracy.
Our democracy.
