I really appreciate Andrew's candid account of his own family. And I don't blame him for not laying the blame on his MAGA family members...after all, they're family.
But if we're being intellectually honest, you can't blame Trump while excusing his voters. Trump didn't become President (twice) in a vacuum. People voted for him. And to the extent that they were manipulated, on some level, they allowed the manipulation to happen. They're not innocent victims. They have free will, and they used it.
I can understand people voting for him in 2016, and to a certain extent also in 2020. But anyone who voted for him in 2024 knew exactly what they were getting, and that’s what they wanted. I mean, for crying out loud, the man gave a bj to a microphone in front of a crowd of thousands. By that time he had been exposed as a serial, incurable liar, con man, cheat, and misogynist. He cozied up publicly to white supremacists. He had been convicted on 34 felony counts of fraud. He had been found liable for what the court itself called rape. He led an armed insurrection against the United States of America.
So no, no quarter for anyone who voted for him in 2024 — they voted for him because he promised them he was going to make life miserable for any group they hated, and they cheered that. They were more excited about exacting revenge for their perceived victimhood than they were about any attempt to allow them to improve their lives. The fact that these despicable people have families does not excuse them.
I guess that's where I get hung up. They voted for hate, and I don't see how that isn't obvious. And when you plant seeds of hate, you get a hateful harvest. And here we are, as predictable as math. And nobody is going to say "I'm sorry I voted against Americans." So where do we go from here?
Regret as in, they are unhappy Trump supporters or have actively turned against him? Because I’m betting they are still the same shitty people, they are just mad at Trump, but they’d vote for him again.
But did they vote for Trump all three times or two out of three? Are the MAGA?
It does make a difference. Most MAGA are hopeless. True believers. It's the other voters who took a chance again for whatever reason who can be turned.
I blame the mainstream legacy media to a great degree. Despite his own words, despite those of former members of the first admin who warned that this time there would be no guardrails, the voters who went for Trump refused to believe. "Oh, it's all bluster, just Trump being Trump. It'll be just like the first four years, and we survived that, right?" That was the thinking for so many non MAGA voters who put him over the top. Instead of educating themselves, they just go with their gut and what they "believe." And their beliefs are reinforced by a media that has done nothing but sanewash him over the past decade and continues to do so. The abysmal pieces in the NYT about whether he was "breaking norms" just reminded me how bad their political reporting is. (As if I need reminding.)
If they feel that way now, it's because their Messiah has in some way come to bite them on their personal ass. I welcome all into the tent but forgiveness will take a long, long time.
I once had very interesting neighbors who managed to accidently set their house afire on three (!) different occasions, the last time with pretty significant but repairable damage. Nice people with some quirky behaviors and a strange inability to anticipate that a plan might go awry.
Should I have waited for the flames to spread to MY house before thinking them dangerous idiots responsible for their own pain? During the third fire I was the neighbor who linked together four garden hoses so I could hit their roof from my water supply. Thereafter, I just kept a hose and sprinkler connected to each bib at my house so I could rapidly deploy four defensive streams. Strike four would have to be their problem.
"But I can’t abide by the schadenfreude-laden viewpoint that anyone who ever pulled a lever for Trump deserves whatever’s coming to them as a result. The fact is that this political moment is immiserating good people. I don’t blame them for that. I blame him."
IMHO you can't just say something like this without explaining it. Let's leave aside the negative connotations of schadenfreude (i.e. the opposite of grace) and just call it something like blaming those who voted for Trump. Why are those Trump voters not to blame? Did they have no agency? Are people not responsible for their voting choices and the causes/people they support financially? Do people not bear at least minimal responsibility to try to sort truth from fiction? Are people not responsible for making basic human judgments about the trustworthiness and competence of individuals who want to lead them?
If you want to say that those good people don't deserve EVERYTHING that is happening to them, that they could not have anticipated the range and depth of Trump's evil policies, ok, I suppose one can make that argument with a straight face. But saying that they bear NO responsibility for what is happening to them? That seems to me to be absurd on its face and at the very least you owe your readers an explanation/analysis for that assertion.
Andrew's grandmother was conned. Was she conned because she really wanted that $2000 check, the easiest way to con people? I don't think so. She was conned for the same reason she doesn't read Andrew's writing. She has been taught and trained over decades to reject evidence that the oligarchs don't care about her and just want her money.
What does it say that Andrew’s own grandmother doesn’t believe what Andrew says about Trump? These people are beyond saving and not worth the time and effort. Folks that set aside their morals and ethics for family are why we are in the fucking place. Stop giving family a pass. Stop taking away their agency. They voted for this and we are still showing up to help them? No! Boot straps granny. Boot straps.
I don't know what showing up to help them means. Scams like the one Andrew described are supposed to be illegal, but I guess we don't think Republican officials are subject to the law anymore.
Because we’ve seen Republicans are not bound by laws. Do we think that Trump is going to go after his own? No! Besides, this is what Andrew’s granny wanted. She gave Trump $10 despite all of what he represents. Those getting fleeced DESERVE this. MAGA voters deserve to lose it all because they decided their desire to be bigots and racists mattered the most.
Trump is a symptom, not a disease. Trump and Trumpism are the predictable outcome of the GOP as a whole letting racists/xenophobes, misogynists, and conspiracy cooks into their party without denouncing any of those ideas for the better part of 50 years. From Reagan until present, the GOP brought the Limbaugh fans, the Buchanan fans, and the Alex Jones fans into their movement and never said a bad word about any of those "thought leaders" (I hesitate to call them that). Welp, when you usher the folks with these beliefs into your party they eventually become a block, and often that block becomes a core on a long enough timeline. We're at the part where they've become the core, and it's because republicans for the last 50 years have refused to denounce the radical views of their voters. They grew the alligator in the bathtub, and now it's grown big enough to eat their movement. I cannot stress enough how predictable this all was, and how much of the blame lays at the feet of old school conservatives who welcomed this kind of thing into their party and didn't say a peep about it. "No enemies to the right" is not a new thing, it's been happening for 50 years now and Trumpism is the end result.
I like his framing (paraphrasing) "I will not be pressured into presenting purity tests onto voters" when asked to take on the groypers, etc. I can't imagine a dem politician ever responding like that when asked to confront the antisemitic elements within their party.
I agree with your timeline. 41 years ago as I was being driven to the hospital to deliver my second child, the car radio news was celebrating the birthday of Ronald Reagan. I was aghast to realize my baby would share a birthday with that sunny-faced evil destructionist.
I would bring back Sarah’s Republican triangle of doom. The voters, the politicians and the entertainment winged of the media echo system are bringing everyone down.
I'm not sure I agree with this. If we win the midterms in 2026 and the presidency in 2028, it will be because some folks who voted for Trump will vote Dem. Others will stay home. There are many Trump voters who are truly evil people, but others are deluded, misguided, or misinformed.
I admit that "With malice toward none and charity for all" didn't work out so well, but I'm not sure vengeance would have worked out better
To be clear, I'm not calling for vengeance. But I'm also not one to blame a cult leader while excusing their followers. People who buy snake oil, by and large, are already in the market for snake oil. They're just waiting for someone to come sell it to them.
I agree with you and came here to write this exact thing. Andrew’s family and friends have zero excuse. They had a great resource in Andrew who they all chose not to listen to.
They did in fact vote for exactly what is happening to them now. The really difficult part is that the consequences of their vote are also impacting the rest of us.
I’ll save my sympathy for those who didn’t vote for all of this and are truly being hurt by it.
and what we really need in the next few years is 60 votes in the senate. If we want something like a set of Trump acts to make the worst parts of the Trumpist authoritarian project illegal (like giving the insurrection clause of the 14th amendment teeth or reigning in the president's use of emergency powers), then the Dem's need to win senate seats in places like Iowa.
This is a key point that tends to be brushed aside by pro-democracy advocates who feel the need to point fingers. What's more important: Winning enough elections to reform American governing institutions or feeling morally superior?
We don’t need 60 senators; we need 50 committed senators and the presidency and then eliminate the filibuster, which gives minority control. Make DC a state, pass abortion rights, pass voting rights, ban gerrymandering, add 4 Supreme Court justices, make a Democrat the head of the FBI, and stop the bipartisan nonsense.
I’m waiting for the articles advising Trump supporters to “understand” the other side. I’ve lost count of the number of articles I’ve encountered over the years, imploring that I should try to understand MAGAs. I understand them, I truly do. Most of the ones I know are as mean spirited as Trump himself.
Yep. I see exactly what those who call themselves Republicans really are. It’s really simple. They are racist bigots who at best want to protect pedophiles and at worst are pedophiles themselves. This is who they are. It is who they have always been.
Pedophilia also plays a huge role in my recent awareness of a movement called “deconstruction” by young women who were raised within very dominating religious communities. (I think that’s what deconstruction is; I need to look it up more deeply than YouTube videos.). Those communities denounce female sexuality, while making use of it with girls too young to resist. It’s hypocrisy on a despicable scale, and shared by MAGA ideology.
I have a brother who voted for Trump. I cannot understand why. My brother is extremely smart and well-read. And yet, here we are. All that my other brother and I can come up with is that he, like our mother, is a black and white thinker. But that does not completely explain what he sees in this guy.
Let's look at them like addicts who need to shed their victim complex and make amends for what they have created. Until then they are nothing but dry drunks.
Absolutely and unequivocally true. Responsibility is not binary. That Trump takes a share of the blame is obvious. But that those who cast ballots for him also take a share of the blame is equally obvious--if only by virtue of the plain fact that tens of millions were not so beguiled, and that is very, very hard to conjure any unambiguously kind, generous, or thoughtful motive for pulling the lever for him. His appeals always come back to fear, anger, jaundice, vengeance, or bias. Yielding to those appeals is absolutely NOT innocent--literally, that is, "without guilt."
Remember, the changes in laws allowing the consolidation of media has a lot to do with this. RW billionaires bought up local television, radio, and newspapers in small markets, or the chains that supply them with info. Suddenly they went from balanced reporting and news to one sided lies and propaganda that is then reinforced by their pastors in the pulpit, especially if they are conservative or evangelical Christian. And it's been going on for forty years. It's been drilled into them that Dems are evil and the GOP are the salt of the American earth standing for traditional values. Which makes it hard for Dems to break through in all those red spaces, especially in the South and Midwest.
And they used their free will not once, but TWICE to vote for an openly racist, misogynistic, mean spirited traitor. We all know the aphorism; “Fool me once shame on you, fool me twice shame on me”.
Yup! Those ADULTS chose this Andrew. Boomers and Gen X chose this for America. They chose this for their children. The two generations who benefited the most from the American order pulled up the ladder and told the rest of us to get fucked. I will enjoy the schadenfreude and will make no apologies for doing so. May the voters have the day they voted for. That includes my own MAGA father.
Oh, c'mon, Jeff. A lot of young men, of all races, crossed over to vote for Trump last time. He couldn't have won without them. And where are all the young people at the protests? Generation bashing goes both ways. Don't think like a bot.
So? Unless their immediate family, why should you not treat them as you would an ex-friend who has sold their soul to the devil? What’s so special about a blood connection?
I was struck by Andrew’s piece. Not just the anecdotes about his relatives, but also the part where he mentions that he doesn’t understand the Strum and Drang this causes in other families. My friend, you’re a heterosexual white male. Of course it isn’t going to cause a lot of angst for you. This isn’t about identity politics, it’s the simple fact that the vast majority of Trump’s culture war battles will not affect you in a meaningful way. The reason why it causes strife in so many other families is that victims of such policies have to deal with advocates of the administration boasting in their faces.
Yeah, it's a bit different when you're part of the other half of the country that has lost significant control over medical decisions and bodily autonomy, and then you go to Christmas and have to deal with the relatives being anti-vaccine or anti-pasteurization because **they** need to control what goes into **their** bodies, while at the same time opposing half of standard medical practice for pregnant women.
Sure, straight white males are not at the top of the target list, but suggesting they are unaffected by the nightmare we're currently experiencing kind of assumes they're all unfeeling psychopaths. As Andrew points out, even Trump-supporting old white dudes can be worried about their sons and nephews being radicalized by Nick Fuentes. Andrew makes it clear that he's not keeping silent for the sake of peace but actually talking to his family about his work and views. I think the fact that the uncle brings his concern about Fuentes to Andrew is evidence that there's some real dialogue happening. If we want to cast it in terms of white male privilege, I'd say he's using his privilege for good.
100% agree. Also scares the hell out of me that they discuss their nephew being radicalized with all the detachment of watching a Netflix documentary. Then throw up their hands like ‘I dunno what to do about it’ like it was innocuous as getting a piercing he didn’t like or suddenly being into making craft beer.
THIS. I cannot deal with the moral relativism in treating pro-fascism, misogyny, bigotry, etc. as “just another lifestyle choice”. I broke ties with a friend from college who didn’t vote for Trump in 2024, but also didn’t vote for Harris, whom he called a “vapid pantsuit lady”. He was preening himself for his good judgement in not voting at all when I said that you find Harris to be equivalent to a grifting, lying, convicted felon shows me you no longer have any moral spine.
I'm not disputing that. I'm just saying that waving away the conversations Andrew describes as irrelevant because he's in a somewhat protected demographic seems unfair. We're all in this together. Fascism comes for everyone eventually. Andrew gets that. He's obviously trying to help his family understand it, if only by staying in relationship with them and being honest about where he stands.
Fascism does come for everyone. These people were repeatedly warned and chose it anyway. Now, I’m supposed to throw my arms open and accept them before they have even shown contrition? No, I don’t think so.
No one has to do anything they don't want to do. I'd sure never ask a vulnerable person to make nice with relatives who condemn their very being. I wouldn't ask anybody to tolerate hateful bullshit. I certainly won't put up with it, nor will I tolerate it in my presence. If being with MAGA family is unbearable, then it's right and good to stay far away.
On the other hand, if I — a relatively privileged white woman who knows the MAGA demographic well — can engage with people and create some space for them to consider another perspective, why would I not do that? This idea that somebody needs to do a dance of contrition before I can deign to talk to them feels weirdly controlling to me. If their eyes are eventually opened in such a way that they feel regret, I'm glad for them, but their conscience is their business. I'm just trying to stay human.
It’s not asking for a dance for them to admit they were wrong. What you choose to do with the MAGA folks in your life is obviously your business, but this isn’t about talking to them. This is about sympathizing with them when the consequences of their actions come back to bite them in the ass. This is about who gets our grace and our acceptance. I’m more than willing to show grace and accept people who admit fault. Those who would go back and make the same decision in 2024 deserve neither from me. Lastly, acknowledging that straight white men are the least affected group and therefore he doesn’t see a great deal of strife isn’t ignoring that they are affected. It’s stating the fact that they are LEAST affected.
Maria, I got goosebumps reading THAT…. At 89, and a young kid growing up in a housing project in Bayveiw Terrrace, CA (San Diego) and my Dad helping to design and make airplanes in one of the aircraft companies (1941-1949) and then moving to Ft. Worth, TX.. knowing NOTHING about ‘Jim Crow’, segregated schools, back of the bus…. And a very active LIBERAL mother (originally from Moosejaw, Sask., Canada) Voter for Harry Truman… I was reasonably aware… and then, quite shocked with Texas…. It was NOT outa the movies…. And I was a 13yr old wondering????
So, we are, and have been, and I hope, will continue to do ‘our own due diligence’ in whatever way we are able…..
Maria, unless I am missing something, I can't find where Andrew states that he tells them they are being taken advantage of. He wanted to tell his Grandma she wasn't being scammed, but he doesn't write what he did tell her.
In the case of the Uncle he doesn't state what they "discussed".
I nthink Andrewq is a good egg, but assigning acts to him that aren't in evidence.....
This, imo, is why we are we are, becasue people couldn't be really honest when it mattered.
That’s one big reason. Another is that many of us had it drilled into us as kids “if you just sit there letting other people say that kind of thing, then you’re no better than they are.”
Yeah imagine going $300,000 in debt to pay for medical education, going into public health, hearing family after family reject vaccines for their vulnerable kids, and constantly hearing that I'm not doing my job to prop up the Caucasian birth rate by both a branch of the "infotainment" media, but also the sitting VP.
My life choices are diametrically opposed to what MAGA values. Sure, I can go make small talk for a few hours...but what kind of real relationship can I have with people who think are opposed to education, opposed to public health, opposed to vaccines, opposed to me having a marriage where I'm in equal footing with a partner, think my job is "caring for illegals and parasites" and criticize my financial situation (solid middle class house, beater car, net worth still very much negative). Sorry for the rant, but I just can't relate to most of my relations.
Among much!, the feeling of actually having a ‘conversation’! With ‘US’ readers!!! Weird and wonderful! And the feeling that ‘we’ ARE! And…. however hard with members of family, ‘blood and chosen’. That you did and we do….
- The vast majority are nominally Christian so they don’t care if other religions are discriminated against.
- The vast majority are straight, so they don’t care if the LGBTQ+ community is discriminated against.
- The vast majority are citizens or legal immigrants, so they don’t care if illegals are expelled, even if they have been here for decades or were brought here as children.
The common thread in the above is that half of Americans are apparently selfish and don’t care about anyone other than themselves, their families, and their friends.
I’m a heterosexual white male, and it does cause strife in my family—indeed, it has caused strife from advocates of the administration boasting in my face.
One lovely relative crowed that I would be “fired” after Trump became my boss, way back in 2016. Needless to say, we haven’t spoken since.
I think Andrew avoids the strife because of the nature of his relationship with most of his family—Though he works for a “liberal” publication, they choose not to take that personally, and he reciprocates.
Even in my family, it varies from relative to relative. My uncle, a Republican last I checked, simply chooses to be philosophical about his Trumpism and its conflict with others in our family.
My stepdad, by contrast—whose first political conversation to me revolved around the notion that “Obama hates white people”—does not. 😕
Andrew: "But I can’t abide by the schadenfreude-laden viewpoint that anyone who ever pulled a lever for Trump deserves whatever’s coming to them as a result."
Andrew's a far kinder man than me. Which, on some days, isn't hard to be. I've recently come to a horrifying realization: I want Trump exactly where he is for the next three years. Why? Because in my view, it is necessary for the people who voted for him to experience the full consequences of their choice. I would argue many of these voters made a corrupt bargain with Trump: they would overlook the moral turpitude, rank corruption and the authoritarianism in exchange for a "better economy". These voters willingly ignored Trump's 50+ year history of screwing people over when making that bargain, and in doing so brought shame and reputational damage to the United States that'll linger long over Trump shuffles off his mortal coil.
So, yes, "good people" will suffer over the next three years. But at the end of the day, people are responsible for their decisions, and the difference between me and the median MAGA is I understand that every decision has intended and unintended consequences. It is time, far past time, that the great and good American people learn this lesson the hard way. The worse, the better. No impeachment. No Twenty Fifth Amendment. None of that. I want uncut, pure, ultra-high octane Trump for the next three years. Give the voters what they voted for, cranked to 150 dB. And maybe, **just maybe**, the people who voted for him will realize that giving a narcissistic sociopath the nuclear codes isn't a great idea.
Tim, I think you may be a kinder person than I am. I still suspect that the people who say it’s all about the economy may mean it, but even though it isn’t nice to say they have longed for liberal tears. People who aren’t very nice suspect that nobody else is either. What I long to see is shame more than pain.
You are asking a lot. Fear was a big factor in Felon Trump’s rise. Right wing-nut media was alive and well long before he came along. Can’t tell how many articles I read articulated fear above everything. Charles Krauthammer wrote an article advising middle class people to beware that the lower classes were coming for them and what they have. Kinda forgot that it was the upper class manipulating them. If scaring the voters got us into this mess, will scaring them further get us out? I just read an article that predicts the MAGA element of the GOP to emerge stronger without Trump. Just what we need, The Tea Party on steroids. Don’t want to sugarcoat what the voters did. Just don’t know what solution will work. That’s what people should be debating; what will work. The one thing anybody should take from “The Scarlet Letter”, is that what the town did to Hester Pryme didn’t work.
They won't learn. They'll try to learn, but their churches and other moral leaders will pull them back into the abyss. FOX will tell them exactly what to say. They are no longer citizens, they are consumers. As long as they can consume free content all day, they'll go along to get along.
Tim, any thoughts on what will be left after four years of unadulterated MAGA? I likely won’t be around, but I dread the kakistocracy left for my children and grandchildren. I have no solution but do have an immense sadness for the consequence.
I have instincts in your direction; let them have it good and hard. But the suffering could possibly be world-ending. The door to slowing the impending climate disaster just closed in November 2024. Nuclear annihilation feels closer than when I was under my desk in third grade. This Trumpian turn is about much more than a devastating economy. It feels cataclysmic to me. To the MAGAs, it’s The Rapture. We get no choice in their religious cruise to Heaven.
"But I can’t abide by the schadenfreude-laden viewpoint that anyone who ever pulled a lever for Trump deserves whatever’s coming to them as a result. The fact is that this political moment is immiserating good people. I don’t blame them for that. I blame him."
Amen. The "leopards/faces" trope is forbidden at my table. These are good folks for the most part, salt of the earth: and they're not the first good folks in history to have been desperate enough to fall for a slick line of patter by a snake-oil salesman.
They are good people who despite knowing everything we knew about Trump even in 2016, pulled the lever for him multiple times? Sorry, you don’t get to walk away from the consequences of your choices.
You're assuming they knew "everything we knew about Trump even in 2016."
People who spend a lot of time following politics simply fail to understand how many people DON'T spend a lot of time following politics, don't go deep into the weeds, don't perceive or understand or parse every intonation and nuance.
While you're scanning the latest news reports for more evidence of outrageous lies and cruelties and assaults on democratic norms, they're living their lives, only hearing vague generic references to cutting crime, cutting prices, making us safe. They're not hearing those ugly nuances and embracing them.
Right, but they still have to answer for their choices in 2020 and 2024. I am sorry, but if you are going to vote for the guy who incited an insurrection, I’m not going to shed tears when the appetites of the crazies turn to you.
I get it and agree, to a point. For me, though, it's not schadenfreude I am feeling. Rather it's disappointment and worry for the country and our self-government. I listened this weekend to the first part of Sarah's Focus Group replays with Anne Applebaum, where Ms. Applebaum talked about the need for an informed citizenry to fight autocracy. We've recently seen the clip from The American President where he talks about 'Democracy being hard' and 'advanced citizenry.
So yes, I certainly have empathy for people getting overrun with fund-raising messages, some of which are scams. And I understand humans are prone to snake-oil salesmen. But, when they've voted for this three times as I assume Andrew's family has, I'm afraid we can at least say that they fall into the "some of the people all of the time' group" and I'm afraid I'm out of empathy.
Our problem with MAGA is here to stay, because we tolerate a massive propaganda media network, in the name of filthy profit. Everything in the U.S. is profit based, even prisons.
I really am questioning this. My elderly uncle, not understanding that the coordinated sites he is reposting on FB, spews very clear toxic falsehoods with vehement anti Muslim rhetoric, easily debunkable claims about Obama, Biden & most Dems, and fabrications about any policy ever enacted by a Dem. My uncle fails to realize that he is the tool used to dramatically increase talking points of folks who will benefit at my uncle’s expense. But my uncle can READ the vile screeds he is reposting - what is he even thinking, what is my cousin who champions his “shares” thinking?
He's a good person (deep down) who behaves immorally.
Who we are and how we behave are two different things.
How we behave has to do with ethical education, not merely cognitive education.
Today, the GOP is installing neofascism in the US. That has been decades in the making.
Fascism always needs to brainwash an important minority of a country into hating The Other, if it wants to have SOME support among "we the people".
It's why historians have shown that it can only be installed in societies that already suffer from a "spiritual" crisis (a crisis in understanding how to lead a meaningful life, based on moral values, whether religious or not). In the US, most forms of Protestant Christianity have become entirely hollowed out. At best, their morality comes down to merely judging everyone. Very often, however, they are war machines cultivating hatred and anger 24/7.
The left, unfortunately, responded to this (and the rise of social media, as Jonathan Haidt explains in "The Coddling of the American Mind") by inventing "DEI trainings" and "safe spaces"... inside school campuses, which stiffened real debates and REAL ethical training even more.
Today, the GOP's Heritage Foundation ordered Trump to use those DEI training facilities (as an op-ed in the NYT today also shows) to impose even more censorship.
The problem is at the level of society, I'm afraid. And it was definitely created by GOP neoliberalism which, after all, already claimed from the very beginning that "democracy and capitalism are incompatible".
Neoliberalism was invented to destroy the New Deal. At first, some of its founders still believed in democracy, but from the beginning, they confounded "regulated capitalism" and "dictatorship". Today, 80 years later, their takeover of the GOP is complete, and fascism is being installed in the US. All done by mostly well-intentioned but morally quite illiterate people...
A quibble with the last part of your comment. I would say that the current GOP is not at all controlled by neoliberals, but by their opposites.
Neoliberals like free markets, free trade, and globalization, for example. The current GOP hates it. Trump's protectionist instincts and conviction that tariffs are the ultimate economic cheat code are not remotely neoliberal. His centrally managed economy approach to things, where business deals and trade deals all go through the president (if you bribe him enough), is a completely different economic approach.
There are people here who are repeating every awful thing they've ever heard about Trump voters; allowing for no possibility of decency or redemption, insisting that THEY are all vile bigots and racists and awful people who are fully on board with every evil aspect of Trumpism, and that no kind words may be spoken about them; while WE are virtuous and good and sanctified and all fine things.
These days most of us live in a bubble, an US versus THEM bubble. It's cozy in our bubbles, but it doesn't do the country any good for us to stay there.
It’s not things they have heard about Trump voters. It’s the things Trump has said he wants to do and these people willingly cast their ballots for him. Apparently now, I’m just surrounded by children who are no longer responsible for their actions and choices. I should just coddle them as they endlessly make the pro active choice to make the lives of their fellow citizens miserable.
“It's cozy in our bubbles, but it doesn't do the country any good for us to stay there.”
How about replacing the word “us”with “them?” Why is it always liberals and urbanites that are supposed to “reach out“ to the others but not vice versa?
willoughby, a few hours ago I replied to your original post and while I liked what you and Andrew said, I disagreed with you. Now, a few hours later, I am reading all sorts of replies coming from all sorts of different places and wow, just wow. You made me think today, and obviously, you did the same to many others and for that I thank you and am very happy that we are on the same side, even though we do not agree on every individual plank. Thank you and happy new year to you and your family.
ALL human beings are, deep down, "good people". They all want to be happy and suffer less, they all, in their own way, care about their loved ones and country.
That's not the issue here.
What is happening today is the work of a neofascist GOP. As Kamala Harris said, this has been DECADES in the making, and NOT by Trump. Trump is merely their clown in chief, distracting us all from the real debates we should be having.
I recently commented to a truly religious friend, “This isn’t politics anymore; we are face-to-face with evil”. It has to be said, because the stakes are very high.
Willoughby, the way we find out who are good folks is to watch what they do from this point forward. Yes they have been blinded by the scammers, but will their pride and tribal loyalties allow them to admit they have been duped. My guess is that the position taken by the religious leadership and by local politicians will be crucial.
Didn't some wise pundit say that people who have been conned - whether it's by a religious group or a political group, are very hard to convince they've been conned, because it's harder to believe that you were conned than it is to admit to being conned. Nobody wants to think they were stupid.
There's an old saying (often incorrectly attributed to Mark Twain) that “It's easier to fool people than to convince them that they have been fooled.”
It becomes particularly difficult to open up people to a new way of thinking or to persuade them to examine their own assumptions if you're so committed to punishing them, to expressing your contempt for their delusion, to attributing the worst possible motives to them, that you cannot allow for the possibility of redemption.
KMD, you just said it you must be very wise. Of course it’s really about not wanting to give up power for this sort of person. They will wiggle and pivot, cast blame everywhere and still can’t admit anything unless it is a path to a new share of power.
I hope that people might develop some awareness of how/why they have been susceptible to Trump's con game.
What part of their experience caused them to accept Trump's relentless blaming of "others"-people of color, affirmative action, immigrants as the cause of their economic or social woes?
It wasn’t Trump convincing them. I am a firm believer that people will latch on to whatever political party, or politician, that conforms to their world view. My parents were bigots, as are my husband’s parents. They tried to raise bigots. My parents failed with me. My husband is having a hard time believing his parents are bigots. It doesn’t conform to his world view.
Some of Trump's vocal supporters are highly educated and not stupid at all. They were not duped into supporting him. They decided that his worldview and objectives align with theirs.
I know someone who claims to dislike Trump because "he's immoral," but he thinks Democrats are always worse because they're "socialists" and they encourage immorality and they kill babies and they give free stuff to illegals. He gets very angry if I say anything to suggest that this administration's policies are harmful and its actions are unethical.
I think the anger is partly over having to face the evidence that the "conservative" party may not be the moral one after all. But he loves the mass deportation - even if it sweeps up people here lawfully, including a veteran with two Purple Hearts. When I mentioned that story, I initially saw a bit of sympathy for a fellow combat veteran, until this guy realized that I was criticizing the Trump administration. And then the rage started up.
Sometimes I wonder what would happen if I asked such a person to "persuade me." I don't see those relatives often enough to try it, but my suspeicion is that we'd get two layers down - "what constitutes socialism" - and then there'd be a meltdown.
This advice to understand the other side is a one-way admonition, repeated with depressing and predictable regularity in the “liberal” media. I guarantee it’s not an issue in right wing media.
I want to feel like this but I am angry. Angry at people who hear Trump and believe him. Angry too at Fox News et al .... Tired of exaggerated Patriotism. Tired of all of them.
Oh, Fox News definitely has a lot to answer for!! As I've posted before, the only couple we are friends with who are Trumpers have Fox News on from the time they get up in the morning, until the time they go to bed at night.! They are well meaning folks who are just comfortable in their fact free universe, I guess. We avoid political discussions with them at all costs!
Appreciate the goodwill at the heart of yours and Andrew's view on this. It says something positive about both you. But I can't stand that rationalization and couldn't disagree more. 100% of the people who voted for Trump did so with clear eyes regarding what they were signing on for. They thought he'd only hurt people they hate but not them. Their regret only comes to pass when they feel the harm in their own lives. Excusing them of that accountability just infantilizes them. They may not be evil down to their soul. But they definitely deserve to feel the pain that comes with the consequences of their actions. There are millions of people who didn't make that choice that are feeling even more pain and are much more worthy of our empathy.
loveAndrew and willoughby, you make an excellent point, and it is most likely the correct one, and yet. These good people have agency. They really can say no to the snake oil but have simply refused to do so, and with each passing day it will become harder and harder to walk away. When their own miserable logical conclusions come, it will indeed be what they voted for, and our job will be to help those we love pick up the pieces.
Hoo boy, not the "salt of the earth" trope again. Most Trump supporters are well-off older white people who live in small towns and suburbs. They're not Dust Belt farmers.
Why are they so desperate? I don't get it. Angry White males are doing better than anyone while they yell about why we should have no rights. Why are they desperate and we have to be their doormats, always and forever, world without end?
Perhaps because these angry white men choose to watch Fox News, listen to Joe Rogan, Alex Jones and other charlatans who prosper by promoting conspiracies and lies.
I tend to sympathize with Sarah on this point. I think lots of people are, willfully or naturally, ignorant about their electoral choices and they are going to need to experience pain in order to consider a change; unfortunately a lot of innocents will also feel that pain. So i prefer targeted pain that can change voting behavior while avoiding the most catastrophic kinds of pain, especially that accruing to non-Trumpies and the most vulnerable.
BS.. sorry the majority of Trump supporters I know aren’t innocence. The revil in the cruelty and are constantly pissed off about one thing or another…
I admit to feeling a touch of schadenfreude myself because it seems to me simply human satisfaction at seeing those who have visited injustice on others have some of it blow back onto them. Justice vindicated. And the Bible is full of cries for justice. I just try not to let it mutate into a desire to inflict revenge.
I am here for everything Andrew said and all the comments in response. Including the critical ones.
This is probably the most personally salient topic for me of everything the bulwark covers. (Which obviously reflects my privilege.)
It is just really hard for me to keep my mouth shut around people who endorsed this. I want them to feel all the shame and embarrassment that I believe is warranted. I want them to know that I’m really struggling to let any of it go.
I’m tempted to tell them that I might never respect them the same again. That we don’t share nearly as many values as I thought. Or that their moral compasses are so fundamentally broken that I can barely comprehend it. Or perhaps all of these things.
So I really vacillate between (1) wanting to be honest about just how painful and hurtful this has been and (2) trying to muster the courage to “hold the door open” for any of them to change their minds.
And since I have small children and many younger nieces and nephews (and have for much of the past decade), I have mostly interacted with the kids during family gatherings rather than take either of those two paths.
This really resonates with me. My entire family is MAGA. They are fully aboard the Trump train and will tell you that any negative thing about what he or the admin is doing is either fake news, a witch hunt, or that Biden/Obama was 100 times worse. I hate their politics and at times I have hated them. They are also my family. So I spent Christmas Eve with them and had a great time and focused on the things that I do have in common with them.
But I also know that I will never reapect any of them again, nor will I feel particularly bad when the consequences of their votes eventually bite them.
I feel all of that, at least among the older folks in my extended family.
They don’t treat me poorly. I don’t treat them poorly. It’s not estrangement.
And yet it has taken a long time to process the grief associated with what the relationship used to be. I had so much respect and admiration for these folks.
It’s not so much because of Trump or MAGA. Rather it’s that Trump/MAGA revealed that what may have once seemed like small differences of opinion now seem like signs that we operate in almost entirely different moral universes.
I have certainly changed. I don’t dispute that. But I severely underestimated how much my own evolution would impact such relationships.
I began to diverge from my family, especially my mom during the Iraq War, when I vehemently disagreed with Bush's War on Terror and she was all in. I also moved to Chicago shortly after and have spent 20 years living in a world that my family truly does not even know exists, and which radically altered the politics of my 20s. I understand that I see the world differently then they do in large part because of where I live. But I also can see that my family has some deep seated beliefs and opinions that are not just uninformed but vile and reprehensible to me. And that is hard to reconcile.
Thank you for sharing! You’ve been at this a lot longer for me. But I totally resonate with the deep-seated opinions and beliefs, some of which touch on the vile and reprehensible (though most of my folks don’t come at that directly).
I was actually all-in on invading Iraq. That was a major point of agreement with me and my extended family in the early aughts, but that actually sowed the seeds for my deconstruction politically and theologically that ultimately spurred a lot of this friction within my family.
Mark, your comments mirror my thoughts and family experiences during the MAGA times. As others have wrote here, this simmering hatred of Democrats, liberals, socialists, and other scapegoats is right in our faces now. Family relationships and gatherings are either a place to do battle or find a peaceful alternative. Backing off though does come with a cost: loss of respect for a loved one’s cult following of an obvious amoral, hateful felon.
So many people that I love have been formed to see everyone on the left side of the political spectrum as bad or even evil.
They would say they have been discipled by Jesus. But in reality right wing media has been doing much of the heavy lifting in terms of shaping their view of humanity.
Old joke with numerous authors and versions, but now repurposed for this conversation:
A backpacker is traveling through the countryside when it starts to rain. He decides to wait out the storm in a nearby pub. The only other person at the bar is an older man staring at his drink. After a few moments of silence the man turns to the backpacker and says:
"You see this bar? I built this bar with my own bare hands. I cut down every tree and made the lumber myself. I toiled away through the wind and cold, but do they call me Greggor the bar builder? No."
He continued "Do you see that stone wall out there? I built that wall with my own bare hands. I found every stone and placed them just right through the rain and the mud, but do they call me Greggor the wall builder? No."
"Do ya see that pier out there on the lake? I built that pier with my own bare hands, driving each piling deep into ground so that it would last a lifetime. Do they call me Greggor the pier builder? No."
"But ya fuck one goat.."
(At least most of the "TRUMP!" flags have disappeared from this neighborhood. Shame and embarrassment indeed.)
I'm sorry Andrew, I vehemently disagree. Every person who voted for and continued to support Trump, despite years and years of evidence of his moral depravity, bears responsibility for what has happened to America. They all had a choice. And they chose to embrace cruelty, racism, and greed at every turn. No one with a shred of character or integrity could support Trump (especially post January 6.) But here we are. And now they will reap what they have sewn.
" It’s clearer than ever to me that that damage is extensive and pervasive and will outlast him by years. But I can’t abide by the schadenfreude-laden viewpoint that anyone who ever pulled a lever for Trump deserves whatever’s coming to them as a result. The fact is that this political moment is immiserating good people. I don’t blame them for that. I blame him."
Trump? One single man would be responsible for the fact that a neoliberal GOP turned into a neofascist one?
Not all the neocons who built Fox in order to spread fake news 24/7?
Not the Heritage Foundation and its theocratic Christian Nationalism?
Not the neofascist tech billionaires who finance SO many careers of neofascist Republicans these days?
Not Mike Johnson, who as GOP Speaker of the House, claimed that he sees it as the job of Congress to "codify" the executive orders signed by the president (and clearly NOT written by him, most of the time, nor his ideas), which is the exact opposite of what the US Constitution says?
Not Vance? Not Bondi? Not G.W. Bush,, who made GOP voters embrace lies at the highest level?
After all these years, you're only willing to blame the only guy who was never for real in the first place, namely Trump?
Let's not forget Newt Gingrich, who because he was pissed off that Bill Clinton gave him a seat in the back of the Presidential plane returning from a trip to Israel, shut down the entire government! Now there's another petty, petty man for you.
Gingrich, contrary to Trump, was a real ideologue and one of the main GOP leaders who installed the habit of lying and betraying the GOP voter base and cultivating hatred.
So yes, Trump didn't invent any of it. It was carefully created, step by step, by many GOP "leaders", decade after decade.
six months ago I was in an argument with a MAGA brother in law. It started as a seated conversation and then turned to raised voices and then he even stood up and got even more voicterous screaming actually. I don't treat him the same as before. It's the women's rights, human rights, limits on other abled people issues I can't get past but more so his reaction to my opinions.
He probably (at least subconsciously) felt like you were attacking his very identity, the core beliefs that make him who he is. Lashing out at you is not surprising in that circumstance, but not excusable, and you are smart to avoid him or at least avoid any conversation that might incur his wrath again.
I don’t have any MAGA family members, and manage to avoid them out in the wild. So I read accounts like yours, and Andrew’s piece today with fascination. I honestly think I would avoid family gatherings if it entailed sharing food with MAGAs. But since I don’t have to make that choice, it’s unfair of me. Which explains my fascination. I am definitely in the minority; judging from my media consumption most people wrestle with this conundrum.
There is of course a line between Mr, Egger’s grandmother and MTG. You can call it naïveté if you want, but yes, your grandmother has been taken in, and it is not just the unwanted solicitation for donations. As MTG has realized the loyalty and might I add the money flows only one way. At some point people have to understand they’ve been taken for a ride and the end point was never going to be a good one. Until people get to that point and start, like MTG, making their calculations based on those realizations, nothing will change. Good people can make bad decisions that harm them, but they have to learn from those decisions. As much as I may not like or trust MTG, she is demonstrating a capacity to learn which is more than can be said for much of MAGA and even *moderate* GOP left in the Party.
If your cousin is noticing an uptick in antisemitism, I can pretty much guarantee that is the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the underlying racism: I wouldn’t want to hear what these people havre say about African Americans or Hispanics.
Yep. She's in that age range where all her right-leaning male classmates are inundating themselves with man-o-sphere swill and edge lord social media and podcasts. This is the future of the Republican Party. The next generation will drop the elephant for a Pepe the Frog.
She’s a bit older than those troglodytes so has more memories of a different era. If you look at her life, she doesn’t seem to stick with anything for very long. If those guys are the future of the Republican Party, hie many women are going to stick around to find out how things turn out?
I still don’t trust MTG’s “conversion”. She broadcasts her “Christianity” a bit too much. And she is a known attention seeker. I hope to be proven wrong.
Oh she’s an attention whore alright. I don’t really trust her, and she seems to flight from thing to thing. But she is capable of self reflection on some level which is more than can be said for most of MAGA.
"The fact is that this political moment is immiserating good people. I don’t blame them for that. I blame him." Whether you meant "moment" or "movement" the result is the same.
"He" is as much to blame for their falling for his gobbledegook messaging as the attendees of PT Barnum's Circus were, who were there because PT knew that there was one born every minute. "He" was never anything but a Snake Oil Salesman who knew how to spin a yarn that would catch anyone gullible enough to listen to him promise to "take on the system" and "tell it like (he wants them to believe) it is".
I am not trying to "shame" or "blame" the victims, but at some point you need to open your eyes and watch out for yourself. Admittedly, for some, perhaps many, that point comes too late. But, ultimately, it was their choice to do what they did, perhaps by not looking at the fine print, perhaps because it all sounded so good, perhaps because they never expected "Him" to be like that, although his entire history leads to no other conclusion.
My 86 year old Dad bought a horrible Trump watch, it looks like the cheap arm weight it is. Why won't you wear your classy Citizen watch I ask, it's not as shiny he says. I want to cry.
Obviously, Andrew isn't confronted by truly horrible people in his family, like the young neo Nazis he describes. Some of us aren't so lucky. Our feelings are more complicated and severing relationships does makes sense. Sorry, I'm not feeling sorry for terrible people, family or not.
In addition, none of the examples Andrew shared are suffering any consequences whatsoever, including economic problems that trump's orders (the guy simply doesn't have 'policies') are causing some of the poorer people in this country. I don't doubt for one second that all of those people would vote for trump a fourth time if given the chance, based just on the information here.
I have friends and family who have been and continue to be conned by Trump and the grift regime and I too might call them "good people." Fact is, every con plays to the larceny in the heart of the victim. These people straight up have some repenting to do. I'll do my best to help them see how they've been victimized and who the real target of their anger should be but the rest is up to them.
Hey Andrew! Having lived in Cedar Rapids for my formative years, I am always amazed how Iowa is sometimes a weird connective tissue to all sorts of stuff. Especially since none of my current social circle can tell the difference between Idaho, Iowa, and Ohio.
I tend to agree with you, a lot of my sympathy is religious or spiritual. We need to practice compassion, it's a skill, a muscle, and it needs training and exercise. Part of what made Christ's message so radical was that he admonished his followers to love even our enemies. If we are thinking about Christmas, we ought to be thinking about how we go about loving folks in Trumpland who are in the FO part of FAFO.
Also, there's an extremely cynical political reason to not just gloat over folks in Trumpland getting a comeuppance for voting for Trump, and that's that you need a good number of these people to vote for Democrats in 2026 and beyond. It's a lot easier to get votes from people by treating them as human beings worthy of respect.
I agree in theory, but does MAGA really want Christian love and kindness? Those are the emotions they need, but do they understand that. If anything Trump/MAGA had brought to light the radical Rambofication of American Christianity which started without Trump, but has accelerated with his rise to power. I am unlikely to agree with MTG’s view of Christianity, but she does seem to believe it is more than ‘Onward Christian soldiers marching as to war’. This is the part I struggle with as much of MAGA appears to be built on rejection not acceptance. For there to be some sort of *healing* or moving past MAGA, there will have to be some acceptance from their side.
As for the 3 states you mention, I hold out much more hope for Iowa, and then Ohio before Idaho. Northern Idaho is beautiful country, but it was home to the Neo-Nazis before they started to go mainstream.
Agree on the states! I mention them mostly because now, living on the east coast, I routinely meet people who have no knowledge which state is which. They are very different in many ways, including as pickup prospects for Democrats.
For love of enemies, I'd think this is less about what they need and more about what we need. We don't need to agree with them, or coddle them, per se. We need only to maintain compassion for them. I personally don't believe in the death penalty, for example. That doesn't mean I think that those convicted of an otherwise capital offense should be unaccountable for their crimes. Just that they don't ever stop being human beings of equal moral worth or less worthy of our compassionate concern, regardless of what they did in the eyes of society or the law to deserve punishment. So, someone can both (1) deserve punishment and (2) still require our compassion. At least, in a certain religious/spiritual/philosophical worldview.
For the pragmatic and calculated move of welcoming Trumpists back into the fold without requiring flagellation beforehand, that's way less about what anyone needs or deserves, and more about getting more votes in competitive places as a matter of pure political mechanics. Do they *need* to come to some acceptance on their side to pull the lever for a Democrat in 2026 or 2028 or 2030? I'd like to see it, you'd like to see it, but all that needs to happen in reality is for them to fill in the correct bubble. Even if they do that for deeply unsatisfying reasons, that'll still get the blue team closer to 60 votes in the Senate.
I agree with you on the death penalty. I don’t know how many will vote Democratic, but I will take splitting votes and a crack up of MAGA. Those who will vote for Democratic candidates, and I hope they will, are those whose life journey allows for growth.
Well-articulated as usual, Andrew. Boy, do I see this on a daily basis in my small town. I don't hate these people, but I do vehemently disagree with them. Most I've known all my life -- they aren't bad people, at all, in fact they are mostly terrific souls.They bought the BS, hook, line, and sinker, and don't know what to make of it now. They are getting quieter by the day because their lives have not improved at all, in fact, it is going the other way. Pity is my overwhelming emotion for many of them, not anger.
Excellent bit of writing, Andrew. I have several friends who supported Trump three times; none of them--none--voted for him expecting what happened this year. (The deportations in particular. One elderly lady from East Germany is so terrified she won't leave her house, even to go to the doctor.)
These folks thought they were getting a pro-business, financially savvy president. And what they read didn't include the warnings about latent authoritarianism--although even if they had read it, I'm not sure they'd believe it. There's just too much talk about fake accounts, fake comments, deluded liberals and so on.
Those friends are horrified. They were lied to, as somebody said here on the Bulwark. That's all. They heard talk that was meant to drive their vote, and it did, and now they're staring at the nightmare that resulted.
"I have several friends who supported Trump three times; none of them--none--voted for him expecting what happened this year."
My brother falls into this camp. When he told me he thought he was going to get a repeat of Trump 1.0, I told him that was a failure in analysis. And apparently trying to overthrow the government to stay in office isn't a red line for Trump's voters.
January 6 is really the red line for me. People who voted for Trump (ie, my entire extended family) have no excuses. The man they voted for actively cheered on a riot in the US Capitol. I don't care if his policies gave everyone in the country an extra 20K a year tax free, he actively supported hindering the peaceful transfer of power. And then spect another 5 year lying about it. I can be civil to these people. I can even love them. But I honestly will likely never forgive them or respect them.
"I can be civil to these people. I can even love them." You're a better person than me. I took an oath to support and defend the constitution. I've cut out of my life anyone who voted for him in 2024.
I learned long ago that people who hold strong political views will never be swayed by any analysis. In fact arguing can have an opposite effect. What I now say is regardless of one's political leanings, DJT has no morals, zero ethics and is a pathological lier. That may not be convincing. But at least I feel good saying it.
While I think we are all a bit surprised at how much damage has been done in such a short time under Trump 2, no one can say this wasn’t foreseeable. Trump basically campaigned on doing the exact things he’s doing. It’s not like this was some sort of hidden agenda. Anyone who voted for him and now says they didn’t expect this is either lying or willfully ignorant.
Sorry Andrew, but this is on the voters, including members of your family as well as mine. Yes, I blame Trump, but after 10 years of this, I do not accept the argument that people didn’t know what they were voting for.
I do think what we've been experiencing these past ten months is the result of a failure of imagination from literally everyone except Stephen Miller and Russ Vaught. We knew it was going to be extremely bad - much like JVL, I believe it has actually been far worse than even us TDS radical left lunatics anticipated. 2024 Trump voters rationalized by saying Trump I wasn't so bad (tell that to the million people who died of COVID, but their mileage may vary from mine) and rationalized their vote that it would be much the same. Failure of imagination truly across the board. It was telegraphed to everyone that this time would be meaningfully different, they just didn't want to believe it, thusly did not.
Lol Jan 6, the extortion of Ukraine, the history of sexual predation, birtherism, and a shitty response to COVID weren’t enough to convince them not to vote for him?
My closest relatives - the ones I speak with most regularly - have fortunately seen things as I did from the start: We recognized that Trump is a sociopath, grotesquely selfish, conspicuously devoid of ethical qualities. We understood that whatever he promised in policy was less consequential in the big picture than his exceptionally bad personal character - and that his wretched character would inevitably move in the direction of bad policy.
I really appreciate Andrew's candid account of his own family. And I don't blame him for not laying the blame on his MAGA family members...after all, they're family.
But if we're being intellectually honest, you can't blame Trump while excusing his voters. Trump didn't become President (twice) in a vacuum. People voted for him. And to the extent that they were manipulated, on some level, they allowed the manipulation to happen. They're not innocent victims. They have free will, and they used it.
I can understand people voting for him in 2016, and to a certain extent also in 2020. But anyone who voted for him in 2024 knew exactly what they were getting, and that’s what they wanted. I mean, for crying out loud, the man gave a bj to a microphone in front of a crowd of thousands. By that time he had been exposed as a serial, incurable liar, con man, cheat, and misogynist. He cozied up publicly to white supremacists. He had been convicted on 34 felony counts of fraud. He had been found liable for what the court itself called rape. He led an armed insurrection against the United States of America.
So no, no quarter for anyone who voted for him in 2024 — they voted for him because he promised them he was going to make life miserable for any group they hated, and they cheered that. They were more excited about exacting revenge for their perceived victimhood than they were about any attempt to allow them to improve their lives. The fact that these despicable people have families does not excuse them.
I guess that's where I get hung up. They voted for hate, and I don't see how that isn't obvious. And when you plant seeds of hate, you get a hateful harvest. And here we are, as predictable as math. And nobody is going to say "I'm sorry I voted against Americans." So where do we go from here?
Yet I have encountered the odd 2024 Trump voter who now regrets it. Strange but true.
Because the evil is now way more openly brazen than in Trump 1.0. But it was always fairly obvious to people with critical thinking skills.
Yep, I think so too.
Amen Sister!
Regret as in, they are unhappy Trump supporters or have actively turned against him? Because I’m betting they are still the same shitty people, they are just mad at Trump, but they’d vote for him again.
But did they vote for Trump all three times or two out of three? Are the MAGA?
It does make a difference. Most MAGA are hopeless. True believers. It's the other voters who took a chance again for whatever reason who can be turned.
I blame the mainstream legacy media to a great degree. Despite his own words, despite those of former members of the first admin who warned that this time there would be no guardrails, the voters who went for Trump refused to believe. "Oh, it's all bluster, just Trump being Trump. It'll be just like the first four years, and we survived that, right?" That was the thinking for so many non MAGA voters who put him over the top. Instead of educating themselves, they just go with their gut and what they "believe." And their beliefs are reinforced by a media that has done nothing but sanewash him over the past decade and continues to do so. The abysmal pieces in the NYT about whether he was "breaking norms" just reminded me how bad their political reporting is. (As if I need reminding.)
If they feel that way now, it's because their Messiah has in some way come to bite them on their personal ass. I welcome all into the tent but forgiveness will take a long, long time.
I once had very interesting neighbors who managed to accidently set their house afire on three (!) different occasions, the last time with pretty significant but repairable damage. Nice people with some quirky behaviors and a strange inability to anticipate that a plan might go awry.
Should I have waited for the flames to spread to MY house before thinking them dangerous idiots responsible for their own pain? During the third fire I was the neighbor who linked together four garden hoses so I could hit their roof from my water supply. Thereafter, I just kept a hose and sprinkler connected to each bib at my house so I could rapidly deploy four defensive streams. Strike four would have to be their problem.
I think after 3 episodes, my thought would have been, it’s time to move.
Responded myself before seeing this post. FWIW:
"But I can’t abide by the schadenfreude-laden viewpoint that anyone who ever pulled a lever for Trump deserves whatever’s coming to them as a result. The fact is that this political moment is immiserating good people. I don’t blame them for that. I blame him."
IMHO you can't just say something like this without explaining it. Let's leave aside the negative connotations of schadenfreude (i.e. the opposite of grace) and just call it something like blaming those who voted for Trump. Why are those Trump voters not to blame? Did they have no agency? Are people not responsible for their voting choices and the causes/people they support financially? Do people not bear at least minimal responsibility to try to sort truth from fiction? Are people not responsible for making basic human judgments about the trustworthiness and competence of individuals who want to lead them?
If you want to say that those good people don't deserve EVERYTHING that is happening to them, that they could not have anticipated the range and depth of Trump's evil policies, ok, I suppose one can make that argument with a straight face. But saying that they bear NO responsibility for what is happening to them? That seems to me to be absurd on its face and at the very least you owe your readers an explanation/analysis for that assertion.
Andrew's grandmother was conned. Was she conned because she really wanted that $2000 check, the easiest way to con people? I don't think so. She was conned for the same reason she doesn't read Andrew's writing. She has been taught and trained over decades to reject evidence that the oligarchs don't care about her and just want her money.
What does it say that Andrew’s own grandmother doesn’t believe what Andrew says about Trump? These people are beyond saving and not worth the time and effort. Folks that set aside their morals and ethics for family are why we are in the fucking place. Stop giving family a pass. Stop taking away their agency. They voted for this and we are still showing up to help them? No! Boot straps granny. Boot straps.
I don't know what showing up to help them means. Scams like the one Andrew described are supposed to be illegal, but I guess we don't think Republican officials are subject to the law anymore.
Because we’ve seen Republicans are not bound by laws. Do we think that Trump is going to go after his own? No! Besides, this is what Andrew’s granny wanted. She gave Trump $10 despite all of what he represents. Those getting fleeced DESERVE this. MAGA voters deserve to lose it all because they decided their desire to be bigots and racists mattered the most.
Trump is a symptom, not a disease. Trump and Trumpism are the predictable outcome of the GOP as a whole letting racists/xenophobes, misogynists, and conspiracy cooks into their party without denouncing any of those ideas for the better part of 50 years. From Reagan until present, the GOP brought the Limbaugh fans, the Buchanan fans, and the Alex Jones fans into their movement and never said a bad word about any of those "thought leaders" (I hesitate to call them that). Welp, when you usher the folks with these beliefs into your party they eventually become a block, and often that block becomes a core on a long enough timeline. We're at the part where they've become the core, and it's because republicans for the last 50 years have refused to denounce the radical views of their voters. They grew the alligator in the bathtub, and now it's grown big enough to eat their movement. I cannot stress enough how predictable this all was, and how much of the blame lays at the feet of old school conservatives who welcomed this kind of thing into their party and didn't say a peep about it. "No enemies to the right" is not a new thing, it's been happening for 50 years now and Trumpism is the end result.
And JD Vance has no intention of kicking them out now.
I like his framing (paraphrasing) "I will not be pressured into presenting purity tests onto voters" when asked to take on the groypers, etc. I can't imagine a dem politician ever responding like that when asked to confront the antisemitic elements within their party.
Trump ripped off the mask of respectability of the Republican Party. Reagan and the Bushes groomed the Republicans for Trump.
I agree with your timeline. 41 years ago as I was being driven to the hospital to deliver my second child, the car radio news was celebrating the birthday of Ronald Reagan. I was aghast to realize my baby would share a birthday with that sunny-faced evil destructionist.
ooof
I would bring back Sarah’s Republican triangle of doom. The voters, the politicians and the entertainment winged of the media echo system are bringing everyone down.
Algorithms.
I'm not sure I agree with this. If we win the midterms in 2026 and the presidency in 2028, it will be because some folks who voted for Trump will vote Dem. Others will stay home. There are many Trump voters who are truly evil people, but others are deluded, misguided, or misinformed.
I admit that "With malice toward none and charity for all" didn't work out so well, but I'm not sure vengeance would have worked out better
To be clear, I'm not calling for vengeance. But I'm also not one to blame a cult leader while excusing their followers. People who buy snake oil, by and large, are already in the market for snake oil. They're just waiting for someone to come sell it to them.
That is why con man are con man. "Their is a sucker born every minute" as P T Barnum once said.
You got that right!
I love this analysis.
I agree with you and came here to write this exact thing. Andrew’s family and friends have zero excuse. They had a great resource in Andrew who they all chose not to listen to.
They did in fact vote for exactly what is happening to them now. The really difficult part is that the consequences of their vote are also impacting the rest of us.
I’ll save my sympathy for those who didn’t vote for all of this and are truly being hurt by it.
and what we really need in the next few years is 60 votes in the senate. If we want something like a set of Trump acts to make the worst parts of the Trumpist authoritarian project illegal (like giving the insurrection clause of the 14th amendment teeth or reigning in the president's use of emergency powers), then the Dem's need to win senate seats in places like Iowa.
This is a key point that tends to be brushed aside by pro-democracy advocates who feel the need to point fingers. What's more important: Winning enough elections to reform American governing institutions or feeling morally superior?
We don’t need 60 senators; we need 50 committed senators and the presidency and then eliminate the filibuster, which gives minority control. Make DC a state, pass abortion rights, pass voting rights, ban gerrymandering, add 4 Supreme Court justices, make a Democrat the head of the FBI, and stop the bipartisan nonsense.
Yeah, this turning the other cheek is a real trial.
I’m waiting for the articles advising Trump supporters to “understand” the other side. I’ve lost count of the number of articles I’ve encountered over the years, imploring that I should try to understand MAGAs. I understand them, I truly do. Most of the ones I know are as mean spirited as Trump himself.
Yep. I see exactly what those who call themselves Republicans really are. It’s really simple. They are racist bigots who at best want to protect pedophiles and at worst are pedophiles themselves. This is who they are. It is who they have always been.
Pedophilia also plays a huge role in my recent awareness of a movement called “deconstruction” by young women who were raised within very dominating religious communities. (I think that’s what deconstruction is; I need to look it up more deeply than YouTube videos.). Those communities denounce female sexuality, while making use of it with girls too young to resist. It’s hypocrisy on a despicable scale, and shared by MAGA ideology.
Yes JF come to think of it all the maga's I know are msaT's too.
I’m unfamiliar with that acronym; I looked it up and mostly got “master of science and technology” which I’m pretty sure isn’t your point . . .
I think he means to quote you regarding MAGAs: "mean spirited as Trump"
He never said it would be easy.
Ok but I seem to recall something about roses and piano's Linda.
Trump supporters are adults with agency over their choices.
My thoughts as well. They made the choice to join it because it offered them the chance to let out their demons.
I have a brother who voted for Trump. I cannot understand why. My brother is extremely smart and well-read. And yet, here we are. All that my other brother and I can come up with is that he, like our mother, is a black and white thinker. But that does not completely explain what he sees in this guy.
I'm curious. Did you ask him why? (I can understand if you didn't; not a judgment question here).
Your brother is a racist bigot. That is why they voted for Trump. Stop pretending you don’t see it, the signs are there.
Let's look at them like addicts who need to shed their victim complex and make amends for what they have created. Until then they are nothing but dry drunks.
And one is liable for their own actions. Responsibility, what a concept!
Absolutely and unequivocally true. Responsibility is not binary. That Trump takes a share of the blame is obvious. But that those who cast ballots for him also take a share of the blame is equally obvious--if only by virtue of the plain fact that tens of millions were not so beguiled, and that is very, very hard to conjure any unambiguously kind, generous, or thoughtful motive for pulling the lever for him. His appeals always come back to fear, anger, jaundice, vengeance, or bias. Yielding to those appeals is absolutely NOT innocent--literally, that is, "without guilt."
Remember, the changes in laws allowing the consolidation of media has a lot to do with this. RW billionaires bought up local television, radio, and newspapers in small markets, or the chains that supply them with info. Suddenly they went from balanced reporting and news to one sided lies and propaganda that is then reinforced by their pastors in the pulpit, especially if they are conservative or evangelical Christian. And it's been going on for forty years. It's been drilled into them that Dems are evil and the GOP are the salt of the American earth standing for traditional values. Which makes it hard for Dems to break through in all those red spaces, especially in the South and Midwest.
And they used their free will not once, but TWICE to vote for an openly racist, misogynistic, mean spirited traitor. We all know the aphorism; “Fool me once shame on you, fool me twice shame on me”.
Yup! Those ADULTS chose this Andrew. Boomers and Gen X chose this for America. They chose this for their children. The two generations who benefited the most from the American order pulled up the ladder and told the rest of us to get fucked. I will enjoy the schadenfreude and will make no apologies for doing so. May the voters have the day they voted for. That includes my own MAGA father.
Oh, c'mon, Jeff. A lot of young men, of all races, crossed over to vote for Trump last time. He couldn't have won without them. And where are all the young people at the protests? Generation bashing goes both ways. Don't think like a bot.
“… after all, they're family.”
So? Unless their immediate family, why should you not treat them as you would an ex-friend who has sold their soul to the devil? What’s so special about a blood connection?
I was struck by Andrew’s piece. Not just the anecdotes about his relatives, but also the part where he mentions that he doesn’t understand the Strum and Drang this causes in other families. My friend, you’re a heterosexual white male. Of course it isn’t going to cause a lot of angst for you. This isn’t about identity politics, it’s the simple fact that the vast majority of Trump’s culture war battles will not affect you in a meaningful way. The reason why it causes strife in so many other families is that victims of such policies have to deal with advocates of the administration boasting in their faces.
Yeah, it's a bit different when you're part of the other half of the country that has lost significant control over medical decisions and bodily autonomy, and then you go to Christmas and have to deal with the relatives being anti-vaccine or anti-pasteurization because **they** need to control what goes into **their** bodies, while at the same time opposing half of standard medical practice for pregnant women.
THIS!!!
Sure, straight white males are not at the top of the target list, but suggesting they are unaffected by the nightmare we're currently experiencing kind of assumes they're all unfeeling psychopaths. As Andrew points out, even Trump-supporting old white dudes can be worried about their sons and nephews being radicalized by Nick Fuentes. Andrew makes it clear that he's not keeping silent for the sake of peace but actually talking to his family about his work and views. I think the fact that the uncle brings his concern about Fuentes to Andrew is evidence that there's some real dialogue happening. If we want to cast it in terms of white male privilege, I'd say he's using his privilege for good.
100% agree. Also scares the hell out of me that they discuss their nephew being radicalized with all the detachment of watching a Netflix documentary. Then throw up their hands like ‘I dunno what to do about it’ like it was innocuous as getting a piercing he didn’t like or suddenly being into making craft beer.
THIS. I cannot deal with the moral relativism in treating pro-fascism, misogyny, bigotry, etc. as “just another lifestyle choice”. I broke ties with a friend from college who didn’t vote for Trump in 2024, but also didn’t vote for Harris, whom he called a “vapid pantsuit lady”. He was preening himself for his good judgement in not voting at all when I said that you find Harris to be equivalent to a grifting, lying, convicted felon shows me you no longer have any moral spine.
That’s recent. But we have a decade of bullshit to look at and know that they are the least affected.
I'm not disputing that. I'm just saying that waving away the conversations Andrew describes as irrelevant because he's in a somewhat protected demographic seems unfair. We're all in this together. Fascism comes for everyone eventually. Andrew gets that. He's obviously trying to help his family understand it, if only by staying in relationship with them and being honest about where he stands.
Fascism does come for everyone. These people were repeatedly warned and chose it anyway. Now, I’m supposed to throw my arms open and accept them before they have even shown contrition? No, I don’t think so.
Maybe contrition starts with "Have I been scammed?" or "Your cousin is starting to worry me" or "I'm seeing a lot more antisemitism."
I’m going to need much more than that to believe that these people are contrite.
No one has to do anything they don't want to do. I'd sure never ask a vulnerable person to make nice with relatives who condemn their very being. I wouldn't ask anybody to tolerate hateful bullshit. I certainly won't put up with it, nor will I tolerate it in my presence. If being with MAGA family is unbearable, then it's right and good to stay far away.
On the other hand, if I — a relatively privileged white woman who knows the MAGA demographic well — can engage with people and create some space for them to consider another perspective, why would I not do that? This idea that somebody needs to do a dance of contrition before I can deign to talk to them feels weirdly controlling to me. If their eyes are eventually opened in such a way that they feel regret, I'm glad for them, but their conscience is their business. I'm just trying to stay human.
It’s not asking for a dance for them to admit they were wrong. What you choose to do with the MAGA folks in your life is obviously your business, but this isn’t about talking to them. This is about sympathizing with them when the consequences of their actions come back to bite them in the ass. This is about who gets our grace and our acceptance. I’m more than willing to show grace and accept people who admit fault. Those who would go back and make the same decision in 2024 deserve neither from me. Lastly, acknowledging that straight white men are the least affected group and therefore he doesn’t see a great deal of strife isn’t ignoring that they are affected. It’s stating the fact that they are LEAST affected.
Maria, I got goosebumps reading THAT…. At 89, and a young kid growing up in a housing project in Bayveiw Terrrace, CA (San Diego) and my Dad helping to design and make airplanes in one of the aircraft companies (1941-1949) and then moving to Ft. Worth, TX.. knowing NOTHING about ‘Jim Crow’, segregated schools, back of the bus…. And a very active LIBERAL mother (originally from Moosejaw, Sask., Canada) Voter for Harry Truman… I was reasonably aware… and then, quite shocked with Texas…. It was NOT outa the movies…. And I was a 13yr old wondering????
So, we are, and have been, and I hope, will continue to do ‘our own due diligence’ in whatever way we are able…..
Maria, unless I am missing something, I can't find where Andrew states that he tells them they are being taken advantage of. He wanted to tell his Grandma she wasn't being scammed, but he doesn't write what he did tell her.
In the case of the Uncle he doesn't state what they "discussed".
I nthink Andrewq is a good egg, but assigning acts to him that aren't in evidence.....
This, imo, is why we are we are, becasue people couldn't be really honest when it mattered.
That’s one big reason. Another is that many of us had it drilled into us as kids “if you just sit there letting other people say that kind of thing, then you’re no better than they are.”
Yeah imagine going $300,000 in debt to pay for medical education, going into public health, hearing family after family reject vaccines for their vulnerable kids, and constantly hearing that I'm not doing my job to prop up the Caucasian birth rate by both a branch of the "infotainment" media, but also the sitting VP.
My life choices are diametrically opposed to what MAGA values. Sure, I can go make small talk for a few hours...but what kind of real relationship can I have with people who think are opposed to education, opposed to public health, opposed to vaccines, opposed to me having a marriage where I'm in equal footing with a partner, think my job is "caring for illegals and parasites" and criticize my financial situation (solid middle class house, beater car, net worth still very much negative). Sorry for the rant, but I just can't relate to most of my relations.
Among much!, the feeling of actually having a ‘conversation’! With ‘US’ readers!!! Weird and wonderful! And the feeling that ‘we’ ARE! And…. however hard with members of family, ‘blood and chosen’. That you did and we do….
On that note:
- The vast majority are nominally Christian so they don’t care if other religions are discriminated against.
- The vast majority are straight, so they don’t care if the LGBTQ+ community is discriminated against.
- The vast majority are citizens or legal immigrants, so they don’t care if illegals are expelled, even if they have been here for decades or were brought here as children.
The common thread in the above is that half of Americans are apparently selfish and don’t care about anyone other than themselves, their families, and their friends.
I’m a heterosexual white male, and it does cause strife in my family—indeed, it has caused strife from advocates of the administration boasting in my face.
One lovely relative crowed that I would be “fired” after Trump became my boss, way back in 2016. Needless to say, we haven’t spoken since.
I think Andrew avoids the strife because of the nature of his relationship with most of his family—Though he works for a “liberal” publication, they choose not to take that personally, and he reciprocates.
Even in my family, it varies from relative to relative. My uncle, a Republican last I checked, simply chooses to be philosophical about his Trumpism and its conflict with others in our family.
My stepdad, by contrast—whose first political conversation to me revolved around the notion that “Obama hates white people”—does not. 😕
Andrew: "But I can’t abide by the schadenfreude-laden viewpoint that anyone who ever pulled a lever for Trump deserves whatever’s coming to them as a result."
Andrew's a far kinder man than me. Which, on some days, isn't hard to be. I've recently come to a horrifying realization: I want Trump exactly where he is for the next three years. Why? Because in my view, it is necessary for the people who voted for him to experience the full consequences of their choice. I would argue many of these voters made a corrupt bargain with Trump: they would overlook the moral turpitude, rank corruption and the authoritarianism in exchange for a "better economy". These voters willingly ignored Trump's 50+ year history of screwing people over when making that bargain, and in doing so brought shame and reputational damage to the United States that'll linger long over Trump shuffles off his mortal coil.
So, yes, "good people" will suffer over the next three years. But at the end of the day, people are responsible for their decisions, and the difference between me and the median MAGA is I understand that every decision has intended and unintended consequences. It is time, far past time, that the great and good American people learn this lesson the hard way. The worse, the better. No impeachment. No Twenty Fifth Amendment. None of that. I want uncut, pure, ultra-high octane Trump for the next three years. Give the voters what they voted for, cranked to 150 dB. And maybe, **just maybe**, the people who voted for him will realize that giving a narcissistic sociopath the nuclear codes isn't a great idea.
Tim, I think you may be a kinder person than I am. I still suspect that the people who say it’s all about the economy may mean it, but even though it isn’t nice to say they have longed for liberal tears. People who aren’t very nice suspect that nobody else is either. What I long to see is shame more than pain.
You are asking a lot. Fear was a big factor in Felon Trump’s rise. Right wing-nut media was alive and well long before he came along. Can’t tell how many articles I read articulated fear above everything. Charles Krauthammer wrote an article advising middle class people to beware that the lower classes were coming for them and what they have. Kinda forgot that it was the upper class manipulating them. If scaring the voters got us into this mess, will scaring them further get us out? I just read an article that predicts the MAGA element of the GOP to emerge stronger without Trump. Just what we need, The Tea Party on steroids. Don’t want to sugarcoat what the voters did. Just don’t know what solution will work. That’s what people should be debating; what will work. The one thing anybody should take from “The Scarlet Letter”, is that what the town did to Hester Pryme didn’t work.
The Tea Party was a rehearsal for MAGA.
They won't learn. They'll try to learn, but their churches and other moral leaders will pull them back into the abyss. FOX will tell them exactly what to say. They are no longer citizens, they are consumers. As long as they can consume free content all day, they'll go along to get along.
Tim, any thoughts on what will be left after four years of unadulterated MAGA? I likely won’t be around, but I dread the kakistocracy left for my children and grandchildren. I have no solution but do have an immense sadness for the consequence.
I’m curious about that, too.
Thank you.
I have instincts in your direction; let them have it good and hard. But the suffering could possibly be world-ending. The door to slowing the impending climate disaster just closed in November 2024. Nuclear annihilation feels closer than when I was under my desk in third grade. This Trumpian turn is about much more than a devastating economy. It feels cataclysmic to me. To the MAGAs, it’s The Rapture. We get no choice in their religious cruise to Heaven.
This 👆
And Democrats should not rescue people from their own bad choices.
"But I can’t abide by the schadenfreude-laden viewpoint that anyone who ever pulled a lever for Trump deserves whatever’s coming to them as a result. The fact is that this political moment is immiserating good people. I don’t blame them for that. I blame him."
Amen. The "leopards/faces" trope is forbidden at my table. These are good folks for the most part, salt of the earth: and they're not the first good folks in history to have been desperate enough to fall for a slick line of patter by a snake-oil salesman.
They are good people who despite knowing everything we knew about Trump even in 2016, pulled the lever for him multiple times? Sorry, you don’t get to walk away from the consequences of your choices.
You're assuming they knew "everything we knew about Trump even in 2016."
People who spend a lot of time following politics simply fail to understand how many people DON'T spend a lot of time following politics, don't go deep into the weeds, don't perceive or understand or parse every intonation and nuance.
While you're scanning the latest news reports for more evidence of outrageous lies and cruelties and assaults on democratic norms, they're living their lives, only hearing vague generic references to cutting crime, cutting prices, making us safe. They're not hearing those ugly nuances and embracing them.
Right, but they still have to answer for their choices in 2020 and 2024. I am sorry, but if you are going to vote for the guy who incited an insurrection, I’m not going to shed tears when the appetites of the crazies turn to you.
None of Trump’s evil was hidden. None.
I get it and agree, to a point. For me, though, it's not schadenfreude I am feeling. Rather it's disappointment and worry for the country and our self-government. I listened this weekend to the first part of Sarah's Focus Group replays with Anne Applebaum, where Ms. Applebaum talked about the need for an informed citizenry to fight autocracy. We've recently seen the clip from The American President where he talks about 'Democracy being hard' and 'advanced citizenry.
So yes, I certainly have empathy for people getting overrun with fund-raising messages, some of which are scams. And I understand humans are prone to snake-oil salesmen. But, when they've voted for this three times as I assume Andrew's family has, I'm afraid we can at least say that they fall into the "some of the people all of the time' group" and I'm afraid I'm out of empathy.
Our problem with MAGA is here to stay, because we tolerate a massive propaganda media network, in the name of filthy profit. Everything in the U.S. is profit based, even prisons.
I really am questioning this. My elderly uncle, not understanding that the coordinated sites he is reposting on FB, spews very clear toxic falsehoods with vehement anti Muslim rhetoric, easily debunkable claims about Obama, Biden & most Dems, and fabrications about any policy ever enacted by a Dem. My uncle fails to realize that he is the tool used to dramatically increase talking points of folks who will benefit at my uncle’s expense. But my uncle can READ the vile screeds he is reposting - what is he even thinking, what is my cousin who champions his “shares” thinking?
He's a good person (deep down) who behaves immorally.
Who we are and how we behave are two different things.
How we behave has to do with ethical education, not merely cognitive education.
Today, the GOP is installing neofascism in the US. That has been decades in the making.
Fascism always needs to brainwash an important minority of a country into hating The Other, if it wants to have SOME support among "we the people".
It's why historians have shown that it can only be installed in societies that already suffer from a "spiritual" crisis (a crisis in understanding how to lead a meaningful life, based on moral values, whether religious or not). In the US, most forms of Protestant Christianity have become entirely hollowed out. At best, their morality comes down to merely judging everyone. Very often, however, they are war machines cultivating hatred and anger 24/7.
The left, unfortunately, responded to this (and the rise of social media, as Jonathan Haidt explains in "The Coddling of the American Mind") by inventing "DEI trainings" and "safe spaces"... inside school campuses, which stiffened real debates and REAL ethical training even more.
Today, the GOP's Heritage Foundation ordered Trump to use those DEI training facilities (as an op-ed in the NYT today also shows) to impose even more censorship.
The problem is at the level of society, I'm afraid. And it was definitely created by GOP neoliberalism which, after all, already claimed from the very beginning that "democracy and capitalism are incompatible".
Neoliberalism was invented to destroy the New Deal. At first, some of its founders still believed in democracy, but from the beginning, they confounded "regulated capitalism" and "dictatorship". Today, 80 years later, their takeover of the GOP is complete, and fascism is being installed in the US. All done by mostly well-intentioned but morally quite illiterate people...
A quibble with the last part of your comment. I would say that the current GOP is not at all controlled by neoliberals, but by their opposites.
Neoliberals like free markets, free trade, and globalization, for example. The current GOP hates it. Trump's protectionist instincts and conviction that tariffs are the ultimate economic cheat code are not remotely neoliberal. His centrally managed economy approach to things, where business deals and trade deals all go through the president (if you bribe him enough), is a completely different economic approach.
There are people here who are repeating every awful thing they've ever heard about Trump voters; allowing for no possibility of decency or redemption, insisting that THEY are all vile bigots and racists and awful people who are fully on board with every evil aspect of Trumpism, and that no kind words may be spoken about them; while WE are virtuous and good and sanctified and all fine things.
These days most of us live in a bubble, an US versus THEM bubble. It's cozy in our bubbles, but it doesn't do the country any good for us to stay there.
It’s not things they have heard about Trump voters. It’s the things Trump has said he wants to do and these people willingly cast their ballots for him. Apparently now, I’m just surrounded by children who are no longer responsible for their actions and choices. I should just coddle them as they endlessly make the pro active choice to make the lives of their fellow citizens miserable.
“It's cozy in our bubbles, but it doesn't do the country any good for us to stay there.”
How about replacing the word “us”with “them?” Why is it always liberals and urbanites that are supposed to “reach out“ to the others but not vice versa?
willoughby, a few hours ago I replied to your original post and while I liked what you and Andrew said, I disagreed with you. Now, a few hours later, I am reading all sorts of replies coming from all sorts of different places and wow, just wow. You made me think today, and obviously, you did the same to many others and for that I thank you and am very happy that we are on the same side, even though we do not agree on every individual plank. Thank you and happy new year to you and your family.
ALL human beings are, deep down, "good people". They all want to be happy and suffer less, they all, in their own way, care about their loved ones and country.
That's not the issue here.
What is happening today is the work of a neofascist GOP. As Kamala Harris said, this has been DECADES in the making, and NOT by Trump. Trump is merely their clown in chief, distracting us all from the real debates we should be having.
Not sure that “all” people are good deep down. Psychopaths exist. Trump is one, IMHO.
I recently commented to a truly religious friend, “This isn’t politics anymore; we are face-to-face with evil”. It has to be said, because the stakes are very high.
Is psychopathy a conscious, volitional choice?
This is a GREAT observation.
Willoughby, the way we find out who are good folks is to watch what they do from this point forward. Yes they have been blinded by the scammers, but will their pride and tribal loyalties allow them to admit they have been duped. My guess is that the position taken by the religious leadership and by local politicians will be crucial.
Didn't some wise pundit say that people who have been conned - whether it's by a religious group or a political group, are very hard to convince they've been conned, because it's harder to believe that you were conned than it is to admit to being conned. Nobody wants to think they were stupid.
There's an old saying (often incorrectly attributed to Mark Twain) that “It's easier to fool people than to convince them that they have been fooled.”
It becomes particularly difficult to open up people to a new way of thinking or to persuade them to examine their own assumptions if you're so committed to punishing them, to expressing your contempt for their delusion, to attributing the worst possible motives to them, that you cannot allow for the possibility of redemption.
KMD, you just said it you must be very wise. Of course it’s really about not wanting to give up power for this sort of person. They will wiggle and pivot, cast blame everywhere and still can’t admit anything unless it is a path to a new share of power.
I hope that people might develop some awareness of how/why they have been susceptible to Trump's con game.
What part of their experience caused them to accept Trump's relentless blaming of "others"-people of color, affirmative action, immigrants as the cause of their economic or social woes?
It wasn’t Trump convincing them. I am a firm believer that people will latch on to whatever political party, or politician, that conforms to their world view. My parents were bigots, as are my husband’s parents. They tried to raise bigots. My parents failed with me. My husband is having a hard time believing his parents are bigots. It doesn’t conform to his world view.
Some of Trump's vocal supporters are highly educated and not stupid at all. They were not duped into supporting him. They decided that his worldview and objectives align with theirs.
Exactly. Why would Trump have to convince people to be bigots? Their parents and churches convinced them long ago.
I know someone who claims to dislike Trump because "he's immoral," but he thinks Democrats are always worse because they're "socialists" and they encourage immorality and they kill babies and they give free stuff to illegals. He gets very angry if I say anything to suggest that this administration's policies are harmful and its actions are unethical.
I think the anger is partly over having to face the evidence that the "conservative" party may not be the moral one after all. But he loves the mass deportation - even if it sweeps up people here lawfully, including a veteran with two Purple Hearts. When I mentioned that story, I initially saw a bit of sympathy for a fellow combat veteran, until this guy realized that I was criticizing the Trump administration. And then the rage started up.
Sometimes I wonder what would happen if I asked such a person to "persuade me." I don't see those relatives often enough to try it, but my suspeicion is that we'd get two layers down - "what constitutes socialism" - and then there'd be a meltdown.
This advice to understand the other side is a one-way admonition, repeated with depressing and predictable regularity in the “liberal” media. I guarantee it’s not an issue in right wing media.
I want to feel like this but I am angry. Angry at people who hear Trump and believe him. Angry too at Fox News et al .... Tired of exaggerated Patriotism. Tired of all of them.
It isn't exaggerated patriotism. It's xenophobia and racism.
Whatever it is, I am not inclined to give them the benefit of the doubt.
Oh, Fox News definitely has a lot to answer for!! As I've posted before, the only couple we are friends with who are Trumpers have Fox News on from the time they get up in the morning, until the time they go to bed at night.! They are well meaning folks who are just comfortable in their fact free universe, I guess. We avoid political discussions with them at all costs!
They firmly believe that only Fox tells the truth. All other media are “arms of the Democratic Party.”
How can you still be friends? Hats off to you, I guess. I couldn’t abide that.
“Patriotism” and “Christianity” are now tools of oppression and legitimizing violence.
Appreciate the goodwill at the heart of yours and Andrew's view on this. It says something positive about both you. But I can't stand that rationalization and couldn't disagree more. 100% of the people who voted for Trump did so with clear eyes regarding what they were signing on for. They thought he'd only hurt people they hate but not them. Their regret only comes to pass when they feel the harm in their own lives. Excusing them of that accountability just infantilizes them. They may not be evil down to their soul. But they definitely deserve to feel the pain that comes with the consequences of their actions. There are millions of people who didn't make that choice that are feeling even more pain and are much more worthy of our empathy.
loveAndrew and willoughby, you make an excellent point, and it is most likely the correct one, and yet. These good people have agency. They really can say no to the snake oil but have simply refused to do so, and with each passing day it will become harder and harder to walk away. When their own miserable logical conclusions come, it will indeed be what they voted for, and our job will be to help those we love pick up the pieces.
Hoo boy, not the "salt of the earth" trope again. Most Trump supporters are well-off older white people who live in small towns and suburbs. They're not Dust Belt farmers.
Why are they so desperate? I don't get it. Angry White males are doing better than anyone while they yell about why we should have no rights. Why are they desperate and we have to be their doormats, always and forever, world without end?
Perhaps because these angry white men choose to watch Fox News, listen to Joe Rogan, Alex Jones and other charlatans who prosper by promoting conspiracies and lies.
I tend to sympathize with Sarah on this point. I think lots of people are, willfully or naturally, ignorant about their electoral choices and they are going to need to experience pain in order to consider a change; unfortunately a lot of innocents will also feel that pain. So i prefer targeted pain that can change voting behavior while avoiding the most catastrophic kinds of pain, especially that accruing to non-Trumpies and the most vulnerable.
I need proof that they are "good folks for the most part." Because their votes say otherwise.
BS.. sorry the majority of Trump supporters I know aren’t innocence. The revil in the cruelty and are constantly pissed off about one thing or another…
I admit to feeling a touch of schadenfreude myself because it seems to me simply human satisfaction at seeing those who have visited injustice on others have some of it blow back onto them. Justice vindicated. And the Bible is full of cries for justice. I just try not to let it mutate into a desire to inflict revenge.
You wouldn’t say it to them directly but you might be thinking it.
I am here for everything Andrew said and all the comments in response. Including the critical ones.
This is probably the most personally salient topic for me of everything the bulwark covers. (Which obviously reflects my privilege.)
It is just really hard for me to keep my mouth shut around people who endorsed this. I want them to feel all the shame and embarrassment that I believe is warranted. I want them to know that I’m really struggling to let any of it go.
I’m tempted to tell them that I might never respect them the same again. That we don’t share nearly as many values as I thought. Or that their moral compasses are so fundamentally broken that I can barely comprehend it. Or perhaps all of these things.
So I really vacillate between (1) wanting to be honest about just how painful and hurtful this has been and (2) trying to muster the courage to “hold the door open” for any of them to change their minds.
And since I have small children and many younger nieces and nephews (and have for much of the past decade), I have mostly interacted with the kids during family gatherings rather than take either of those two paths.
This really resonates with me. My entire family is MAGA. They are fully aboard the Trump train and will tell you that any negative thing about what he or the admin is doing is either fake news, a witch hunt, or that Biden/Obama was 100 times worse. I hate their politics and at times I have hated them. They are also my family. So I spent Christmas Eve with them and had a great time and focused on the things that I do have in common with them.
But I also know that I will never reapect any of them again, nor will I feel particularly bad when the consequences of their votes eventually bite them.
I feel all of that, at least among the older folks in my extended family.
They don’t treat me poorly. I don’t treat them poorly. It’s not estrangement.
And yet it has taken a long time to process the grief associated with what the relationship used to be. I had so much respect and admiration for these folks.
It’s not so much because of Trump or MAGA. Rather it’s that Trump/MAGA revealed that what may have once seemed like small differences of opinion now seem like signs that we operate in almost entirely different moral universes.
I have certainly changed. I don’t dispute that. But I severely underestimated how much my own evolution would impact such relationships.
I began to diverge from my family, especially my mom during the Iraq War, when I vehemently disagreed with Bush's War on Terror and she was all in. I also moved to Chicago shortly after and have spent 20 years living in a world that my family truly does not even know exists, and which radically altered the politics of my 20s. I understand that I see the world differently then they do in large part because of where I live. But I also can see that my family has some deep seated beliefs and opinions that are not just uninformed but vile and reprehensible to me. And that is hard to reconcile.
Thank you for sharing! You’ve been at this a lot longer for me. But I totally resonate with the deep-seated opinions and beliefs, some of which touch on the vile and reprehensible (though most of my folks don’t come at that directly).
I was actually all-in on invading Iraq. That was a major point of agreement with me and my extended family in the early aughts, but that actually sowed the seeds for my deconstruction politically and theologically that ultimately spurred a lot of this friction within my family.
Mark, your comments mirror my thoughts and family experiences during the MAGA times. As others have wrote here, this simmering hatred of Democrats, liberals, socialists, and other scapegoats is right in our faces now. Family relationships and gatherings are either a place to do battle or find a peaceful alternative. Backing off though does come with a cost: loss of respect for a loved one’s cult following of an obvious amoral, hateful felon.
I think you touched on something key here, John.
So many people that I love have been formed to see everyone on the left side of the political spectrum as bad or even evil.
They would say they have been discipled by Jesus. But in reality right wing media has been doing much of the heavy lifting in terms of shaping their view of humanity.
Old joke with numerous authors and versions, but now repurposed for this conversation:
A backpacker is traveling through the countryside when it starts to rain. He decides to wait out the storm in a nearby pub. The only other person at the bar is an older man staring at his drink. After a few moments of silence the man turns to the backpacker and says:
"You see this bar? I built this bar with my own bare hands. I cut down every tree and made the lumber myself. I toiled away through the wind and cold, but do they call me Greggor the bar builder? No."
He continued "Do you see that stone wall out there? I built that wall with my own bare hands. I found every stone and placed them just right through the rain and the mud, but do they call me Greggor the wall builder? No."
"Do ya see that pier out there on the lake? I built that pier with my own bare hands, driving each piling deep into ground so that it would last a lifetime. Do they call me Greggor the pier builder? No."
"But ya fuck one goat.."
(At least most of the "TRUMP!" flags have disappeared from this neighborhood. Shame and embarrassment indeed.)
lol 😺
I’m feeling a little guilty for enjoying my laughter so much!
I'm sorry Andrew, I vehemently disagree. Every person who voted for and continued to support Trump, despite years and years of evidence of his moral depravity, bears responsibility for what has happened to America. They all had a choice. And they chose to embrace cruelty, racism, and greed at every turn. No one with a shred of character or integrity could support Trump (especially post January 6.) But here we are. And now they will reap what they have sewn.
Right on, and they must reap. Otherwise we just rinse repeat and end up a fascist state.
" It’s clearer than ever to me that that damage is extensive and pervasive and will outlast him by years. But I can’t abide by the schadenfreude-laden viewpoint that anyone who ever pulled a lever for Trump deserves whatever’s coming to them as a result. The fact is that this political moment is immiserating good people. I don’t blame them for that. I blame him."
Trump? One single man would be responsible for the fact that a neoliberal GOP turned into a neofascist one?
Not all the neocons who built Fox in order to spread fake news 24/7?
Not the Heritage Foundation and its theocratic Christian Nationalism?
Not the neofascist tech billionaires who finance SO many careers of neofascist Republicans these days?
Not Mike Johnson, who as GOP Speaker of the House, claimed that he sees it as the job of Congress to "codify" the executive orders signed by the president (and clearly NOT written by him, most of the time, nor his ideas), which is the exact opposite of what the US Constitution says?
Not Vance? Not Bondi? Not G.W. Bush,, who made GOP voters embrace lies at the highest level?
After all these years, you're only willing to blame the only guy who was never for real in the first place, namely Trump?
This country is truly lost.
Let's not forget Newt Gingrich, who because he was pissed off that Bill Clinton gave him a seat in the back of the Presidential plane returning from a trip to Israel, shut down the entire government! Now there's another petty, petty man for you.
Gingrich, contrary to Trump, was a real ideologue and one of the main GOP leaders who installed the habit of lying and betraying the GOP voter base and cultivating hatred.
So yes, Trump didn't invent any of it. It was carefully created, step by step, by many GOP "leaders", decade after decade.
Some men don’t like to be told “No”.
All those guys like Musk and Zuckerberg and Murdoch, truly blameless. We're ALL good people here, which is why we're doing so damn well.
six months ago I was in an argument with a MAGA brother in law. It started as a seated conversation and then turned to raised voices and then he even stood up and got even more voicterous screaming actually. I don't treat him the same as before. It's the women's rights, human rights, limits on other abled people issues I can't get past but more so his reaction to my opinions.
He probably (at least subconsciously) felt like you were attacking his very identity, the core beliefs that make him who he is. Lashing out at you is not surprising in that circumstance, but not excusable, and you are smart to avoid him or at least avoid any conversation that might incur his wrath again.
I believe so as well. I also think he hasn't had many challenge his beliefs before.
I don’t have any MAGA family members, and manage to avoid them out in the wild. So I read accounts like yours, and Andrew’s piece today with fascination. I honestly think I would avoid family gatherings if it entailed sharing food with MAGAs. But since I don’t have to make that choice, it’s unfair of me. Which explains my fascination. I am definitely in the minority; judging from my media consumption most people wrestle with this conundrum.
There is of course a line between Mr, Egger’s grandmother and MTG. You can call it naïveté if you want, but yes, your grandmother has been taken in, and it is not just the unwanted solicitation for donations. As MTG has realized the loyalty and might I add the money flows only one way. At some point people have to understand they’ve been taken for a ride and the end point was never going to be a good one. Until people get to that point and start, like MTG, making their calculations based on those realizations, nothing will change. Good people can make bad decisions that harm them, but they have to learn from those decisions. As much as I may not like or trust MTG, she is demonstrating a capacity to learn which is more than can be said for much of MAGA and even *moderate* GOP left in the Party.
If your cousin is noticing an uptick in antisemitism, I can pretty much guarantee that is the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the underlying racism: I wouldn’t want to hear what these people havre say about African Americans or Hispanics.
Yep. She's in that age range where all her right-leaning male classmates are inundating themselves with man-o-sphere swill and edge lord social media and podcasts. This is the future of the Republican Party. The next generation will drop the elephant for a Pepe the Frog.
She’s a bit older than those troglodytes so has more memories of a different era. If you look at her life, she doesn’t seem to stick with anything for very long. If those guys are the future of the Republican Party, hie many women are going to stick around to find out how things turn out?
Completely Agree!
I still don’t trust MTG’s “conversion”. She broadcasts her “Christianity” a bit too much. And she is a known attention seeker. I hope to be proven wrong.
Oh she’s an attention whore alright. I don’t really trust her, and she seems to flight from thing to thing. But she is capable of self reflection on some level which is more than can be said for most of MAGA.
"The fact is that this political moment is immiserating good people. I don’t blame them for that. I blame him." Whether you meant "moment" or "movement" the result is the same.
"He" is as much to blame for their falling for his gobbledegook messaging as the attendees of PT Barnum's Circus were, who were there because PT knew that there was one born every minute. "He" was never anything but a Snake Oil Salesman who knew how to spin a yarn that would catch anyone gullible enough to listen to him promise to "take on the system" and "tell it like (he wants them to believe) it is".
I am not trying to "shame" or "blame" the victims, but at some point you need to open your eyes and watch out for yourself. Admittedly, for some, perhaps many, that point comes too late. But, ultimately, it was their choice to do what they did, perhaps by not looking at the fine print, perhaps because it all sounded so good, perhaps because they never expected "Him" to be like that, although his entire history leads to no other conclusion.
Responsibility for one's actions, what a concept!
My 86 year old Dad bought a horrible Trump watch, it looks like the cheap arm weight it is. Why won't you wear your classy Citizen watch I ask, it's not as shiny he says. I want to cry.
Obviously, Andrew isn't confronted by truly horrible people in his family, like the young neo Nazis he describes. Some of us aren't so lucky. Our feelings are more complicated and severing relationships does makes sense. Sorry, I'm not feeling sorry for terrible people, family or not.
In addition, none of the examples Andrew shared are suffering any consequences whatsoever, including economic problems that trump's orders (the guy simply doesn't have 'policies') are causing some of the poorer people in this country. I don't doubt for one second that all of those people would vote for trump a fourth time if given the chance, based just on the information here.
I have friends and family who have been and continue to be conned by Trump and the grift regime and I too might call them "good people." Fact is, every con plays to the larceny in the heart of the victim. These people straight up have some repenting to do. I'll do my best to help them see how they've been victimized and who the real target of their anger should be but the rest is up to them.
Good luck!
“Help them see”? You’re probably familiar with Sisyphus from Greek mythology?
Hey Andrew! Having lived in Cedar Rapids for my formative years, I am always amazed how Iowa is sometimes a weird connective tissue to all sorts of stuff. Especially since none of my current social circle can tell the difference between Idaho, Iowa, and Ohio.
I tend to agree with you, a lot of my sympathy is religious or spiritual. We need to practice compassion, it's a skill, a muscle, and it needs training and exercise. Part of what made Christ's message so radical was that he admonished his followers to love even our enemies. If we are thinking about Christmas, we ought to be thinking about how we go about loving folks in Trumpland who are in the FO part of FAFO.
Also, there's an extremely cynical political reason to not just gloat over folks in Trumpland getting a comeuppance for voting for Trump, and that's that you need a good number of these people to vote for Democrats in 2026 and beyond. It's a lot easier to get votes from people by treating them as human beings worthy of respect.
I agree in theory, but does MAGA really want Christian love and kindness? Those are the emotions they need, but do they understand that. If anything Trump/MAGA had brought to light the radical Rambofication of American Christianity which started without Trump, but has accelerated with his rise to power. I am unlikely to agree with MTG’s view of Christianity, but she does seem to believe it is more than ‘Onward Christian soldiers marching as to war’. This is the part I struggle with as much of MAGA appears to be built on rejection not acceptance. For there to be some sort of *healing* or moving past MAGA, there will have to be some acceptance from their side.
As for the 3 states you mention, I hold out much more hope for Iowa, and then Ohio before Idaho. Northern Idaho is beautiful country, but it was home to the Neo-Nazis before they started to go mainstream.
Agree on the states! I mention them mostly because now, living on the east coast, I routinely meet people who have no knowledge which state is which. They are very different in many ways, including as pickup prospects for Democrats.
For love of enemies, I'd think this is less about what they need and more about what we need. We don't need to agree with them, or coddle them, per se. We need only to maintain compassion for them. I personally don't believe in the death penalty, for example. That doesn't mean I think that those convicted of an otherwise capital offense should be unaccountable for their crimes. Just that they don't ever stop being human beings of equal moral worth or less worthy of our compassionate concern, regardless of what they did in the eyes of society or the law to deserve punishment. So, someone can both (1) deserve punishment and (2) still require our compassion. At least, in a certain religious/spiritual/philosophical worldview.
For the pragmatic and calculated move of welcoming Trumpists back into the fold without requiring flagellation beforehand, that's way less about what anyone needs or deserves, and more about getting more votes in competitive places as a matter of pure political mechanics. Do they *need* to come to some acceptance on their side to pull the lever for a Democrat in 2026 or 2028 or 2030? I'd like to see it, you'd like to see it, but all that needs to happen in reality is for them to fill in the correct bubble. Even if they do that for deeply unsatisfying reasons, that'll still get the blue team closer to 60 votes in the Senate.
I agree with you on the death penalty. I don’t know how many will vote Democratic, but I will take splitting votes and a crack up of MAGA. Those who will vote for Democratic candidates, and I hope they will, are those whose life journey allows for growth.
“Compassion” for evil just doesn’t sit well with me.
Well-articulated as usual, Andrew. Boy, do I see this on a daily basis in my small town. I don't hate these people, but I do vehemently disagree with them. Most I've known all my life -- they aren't bad people, at all, in fact they are mostly terrific souls.They bought the BS, hook, line, and sinker, and don't know what to make of it now. They are getting quieter by the day because their lives have not improved at all, in fact, it is going the other way. Pity is my overwhelming emotion for many of them, not anger.
Excellent bit of writing, Andrew. I have several friends who supported Trump three times; none of them--none--voted for him expecting what happened this year. (The deportations in particular. One elderly lady from East Germany is so terrified she won't leave her house, even to go to the doctor.)
These folks thought they were getting a pro-business, financially savvy president. And what they read didn't include the warnings about latent authoritarianism--although even if they had read it, I'm not sure they'd believe it. There's just too much talk about fake accounts, fake comments, deluded liberals and so on.
Those friends are horrified. They were lied to, as somebody said here on the Bulwark. That's all. They heard talk that was meant to drive their vote, and it did, and now they're staring at the nightmare that resulted.
"I have several friends who supported Trump three times; none of them--none--voted for him expecting what happened this year."
My brother falls into this camp. When he told me he thought he was going to get a repeat of Trump 1.0, I told him that was a failure in analysis. And apparently trying to overthrow the government to stay in office isn't a red line for Trump's voters.
January 6 is really the red line for me. People who voted for Trump (ie, my entire extended family) have no excuses. The man they voted for actively cheered on a riot in the US Capitol. I don't care if his policies gave everyone in the country an extra 20K a year tax free, he actively supported hindering the peaceful transfer of power. And then spect another 5 year lying about it. I can be civil to these people. I can even love them. But I honestly will likely never forgive them or respect them.
"I can be civil to these people. I can even love them." You're a better person than me. I took an oath to support and defend the constitution. I've cut out of my life anyone who voted for him in 2024.
Trump 1.0 was a disaster that ended in a pandemic. I don't even know what to say anymore.
I learned long ago that people who hold strong political views will never be swayed by any analysis. In fact arguing can have an opposite effect. What I now say is regardless of one's political leanings, DJT has no morals, zero ethics and is a pathological lier. That may not be convincing. But at least I feel good saying it.
You and me both. 8 years of saying "I don't support Putin" meant nothing to anyone but me, but at least it was true and I felt good saying it.
While I think we are all a bit surprised at how much damage has been done in such a short time under Trump 2, no one can say this wasn’t foreseeable. Trump basically campaigned on doing the exact things he’s doing. It’s not like this was some sort of hidden agenda. Anyone who voted for him and now says they didn’t expect this is either lying or willfully ignorant.
Sorry Andrew, but this is on the voters, including members of your family as well as mine. Yes, I blame Trump, but after 10 years of this, I do not accept the argument that people didn’t know what they were voting for.
As Charlie Sykes so often says; "What that fuck did you think would happen"?
Where they get their “information” is a choice. Right wing media oozes malevolence.
I do think what we've been experiencing these past ten months is the result of a failure of imagination from literally everyone except Stephen Miller and Russ Vaught. We knew it was going to be extremely bad - much like JVL, I believe it has actually been far worse than even us TDS radical left lunatics anticipated. 2024 Trump voters rationalized by saying Trump I wasn't so bad (tell that to the million people who died of COVID, but their mileage may vary from mine) and rationalized their vote that it would be much the same. Failure of imagination truly across the board. It was telegraphed to everyone that this time would be meaningfully different, they just didn't want to believe it, thusly did not.
Lol Jan 6, the extortion of Ukraine, the history of sexual predation, birtherism, and a shitty response to COVID weren’t enough to convince them not to vote for him?
Are these friends horrified enough that they'd vote for Kamala - or not vote at all - if an election were held today? I think that's the true test.
Absolutely! It is what these voters will do that shows their commitment to a democratic government. This really is the final test.
My closest relatives - the ones I speak with most regularly - have fortunately seen things as I did from the start: We recognized that Trump is a sociopath, grotesquely selfish, conspicuously devoid of ethical qualities. We understood that whatever he promised in policy was less consequential in the big picture than his exceptionally bad personal character - and that his wretched character would inevitably move in the direction of bad policy.
But they deliberately chose misinformation. To partake regularly of right wing media is a sign of a hateful heart. There’s nothing subtle about it.