The aversion to reading is always a red flag for me. Reading is a pillar of human intelligence.
They'd be mad if they could understand anything that wasn't Facebook memes and bad email chains.
I don't find reading books appealing. But I do look up things I am curious about and read few news articles I come across. Reading a book isn't the only way to gain knowledge but if they aren't reading/learning about anything then that's a problem.
I thought this was always obvious. His whole appeal was 'he says it like it is' and 'he's brave enough to say what we're all thinking'.
That's why scandals didn't affect him, he never pretended to be virtuous like most of the other Republicans do.
A third of people in any society have authoritarian tendencies and will vote for the strong man 'that will set everything straight', and it's always a failure of mainstream politicians that allows these people to get into power (either by not motivating the other 70% to vote for their project, being too divided, or by going into a coalition with that party).
Details are confusing. These people like "I'll fix all your problems" with no actual substance, and then when their problems are not solved, they like hearing "it's the ~~Jews~~ Immigrants fault".
Solutions are not even desired by these people, just a scapegoat for all their woes.
Yeah, it's not about solutions. It's about punishing the 'other'. Deflecting from the actual source of everyone's economical backsliding (the billionaires skimming money off every part of economic activity).
He really is an accurate representative for his base: the worst scum sucking garbage alive.
MAGA is popular for the same reason other nationalist, fascist movements have risen over the course of modern history: as a response to Capitalist decay. MAGA isn't popular for genetic reasons, intellectual inferiority, or other reasons like that, but as a common class interest. All of the descriptors in the OP are consequences of the driving factor of class interests, not the drivers themselves.
Fascism is most often represented as an alliance between the Petite Bourgeoisie and Bourgeoisie proper, driven by the Petite Bourgeoisie, as monopolization of Capital results in competition becoming more and more difficult, and the Petite Bourgeoisie faces Proletarianization. To prevent the Petite Bourgeoisie from joining the Proletariat in solidarity, the Bourgeoisie proper turns their hatred against the Proletariat and Lumpenproletariat.
What does this all mean, in practical, American terms? Small business owners, landlords, ie the "middle class," is shrinking in power, so the Small Business Owners are aligning with billionaires like Musk and Bezos against immigrants, workers, unhoused peopled, gender/sexual minorities, women, ethnic minorities, and more.
How do we fix this? Grow the Petite Bourgeoisie and restore their position? Absolutely not! That's when fascism is established. Trying to "turn the clock back to the good old days" results in dramatic reductions in worker rights and a solidification of power.
What we need to do is establish Socialism. A victory of the Proletariat, a folding of the large monopolist syndicates into the public sector so they can be centrally planned for the public good, rather than privately planned for profit, is the way forward. This is the way to escape fascism's rise. This is the way to defeat MAGA.
I recommend reading the book Blackshirts and Reds, fascism's irrationality has rational, material origins, that can be understood and defeated, and it isn't in the "marketplace of ideas."
They don’t like to read more than a couple of sentences.
Honestly I wonder how much reading comprehension they struggle with. Like the average reading level is 8th grade, if that iirc. I swear they drop out as soon as there are big words cuz they get pissed they can't understand. People that lean left are clinically shown to be more* (not not) open minded, and I imagine are the ones going and googling when they don't know or have someone right there they trust to explain.
It's an emotional thing. They base their beliefs about how the world works based on what makes them feel better about themselves. Everything else is just backtracking from the conclusion to find a justification for it. And anything that doesn't fit that narrative gets thrown away or ignored.
And the main reason they're not happy is that they got left behind by the evil fucks they keep voting for. It's beyond maddening.
My daughter calls them trumpy grumpies and I thought it was a good name.
I'm never happy and it didn't turn me into a MAGA dipshit. I don't think I'm even an asshole most of the time or at least I try not to be.
Maybe you should blame others more, especially foreigners, liberals, and education. Your problem is that you’re not blaming the right people.
I think the larger thing lacking is two-fold.
Perspective. These people lack the ability to look at the world objectively and outside themselves to see the larger picture of where they fit in the world. They are unable or unwilling to comprehend anything remotely complex.
Empathy. They are unable or unwilling to walk a step let alone a mile in anyone's shoes but their own.
On 1, someone pointed out to me that a lot of people who are susceptible to MAGA are people who don't know what it is to be an expert on something.
They don't have PhDs and MDs and JDs in their social or peer groups. They assume everyone's knowledge of complex things is as superficial and uncertain as their own; literally they do not recognize the difference between things stated as fact versus things stated as opinion. Their day-to-day practice, as far as anything complex, is to let their emotions rule; practice makes perfect.
The thing they exercise most is their amygdala, and that's why conservatism causes an enlargement of the amygdala.
The moment you understand that MAGA is the party of hate is the moment you understand this election. It explains both Islamic and Latino support for Republicans. They were betrayed by Democrats, and are willing to let the rest of us hang for it. I hope selling out for the center Republicans was worth destroying the demographic coalition.
It's the dixiecrats after we took the one thing they loved: Jim Crow and their ability to be superior to anyone who isn't white.
We even dared to elect a black person president over them, they will NEVER forgive us for that, it went against everything they believe in.
You don't understand, to them this is justice for our unimaginable crimes against them, we took the only thing they had in life.
Would be kinda funny to double down and elect a black woman next. Bet they would just love that.
My wife is Indonesian Muslim, hates Kamala for what we're doing in Palestine and told me not to vote for her. I'm still voting for Kamala but man that was a hard conversation I never would have expected. Seems like the military owns everything these days
I am so, so glad Democrats have finally woken up to the fact that Republicans are not just misinformed Democrats. There's no amount of facts we can throw at them to make them stop being terrible people. They're not going to suddenly go "oh my God, I was wrong!" This is who they are.
My take is that with Harris courting endorsements from many formerly rank-and-file Republicans, this drives the point home. If anybody is still confused that Trump's party is VERY different from what the Republican Party used to be, the Cheney's endorsing her should settle that. Anybody still unconvinced is wilfully ignorant at minimum.
If anybody is still confused that Trump's party is VERY different from what the Republican Party used to be, the Cheney's endorsing her should settle that.
And then you have the braindead .MLs who argue that awful people supporting the normal candidate over the fascist means we really need to rethink our support for the normal candidate 🙄
they are selfish.
That's where all of those symptoms stem from.
selfish greed.
I've gotten a disturbing number of messages on grindr from men that are hard core right wing, yet are on a gay dating app. The level of hate, ignorance, and cognitive dissonance is unprecedented. And it's all fueled by highly addictive apps, and pumped at unimaginable scales thanks to AI.
I hate to say it, but I think this really is the end.
Many of them started in camp 1 and entered camp 2.
my (lifelong republican) aunt and uncle were trump haters in the 2016 primaries. but of course they voted for him in the election because Hillary is literally the devil, and once he won they were all in.
I need to ask my parents, cuz last I heard around June my dad had snapped out enough to at least to say he was considering not voting for the first time ever in a national election. There's an ironic push for ranked choice style options moving forward now thanks to our state Republicans trying to revert back to caucuses and pissing a bunch of constituents off by having us vote to ban other options
A lot of conservatives are authoritarians that value group cohesion above most everything else. Going against the group feels bad in a deep way, I think, so all sorts of justifications will be made to stay with the group.
Honestly, as far as I'm concerned that's a form of stupid. Kind of funny given the boomer cliche of "If your friends jumped off a bridge, would you jump off too?". It turns out yes, a lot of people would.
One of the lawyers that defended a handful of J6 insurrectionists said they would give them a reading list to help them understand on a general level what any of the legal charges they faced concerned or what the consequences could be, or just how government worked, and because this was ''you need to read this before trial so you can ACTUALLY have a chance of getting a plea deal or even a dismissal if you can actually convince a judge you now grasp what you did and how bad it was, and you're super duper sorry'' some actually read them. And they came out of it going ''oh... I've been lied to and manipulated into doing very illegal shit by a political party that knows it can no longer win elections and needs to do very illegal shit to retain any level of power'' and similar thoughts.
But yes. If they instead acquired a smidge of curiosity and interest in worthwhile pursuits they would probably stop being garbage ass people. Maybe we need to make reading cool? Possible dinosaurs reading on posters. That's what got me reading.
They don't like to read
I argue that's the issue right there.
Reading only headlines will get you there quickly. But headlines are click bait and insufficient.
I recall seeing a study on the demographics of who actually reads articles and MAGAs were among the most that did not read.
A lot of them feel betrayed/wronged by the system, or by lleft leaning/progressive politics.
That's why they don't mind Trump's wrongdoings. They see things like his felony mugshot and think "he's been betrayed and attacked by the system just like me!"...
...a lot of it is emotional for them, and it's a difficult mindset they're unlikely to leave behind.
Still at least it's a better ratio than in places like Israel, where the vast majority of the population are far-right (many of whom are conspiracy theory inclined, particularly when it comes to the assassination of their former PM Yitzhak Rabin).
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