Question for Trump supporters

I think Okeechobee and Gator7_5 are really close. I think that most of it can be pinpointed to one comment. It was the basket of deplorables clinging to guns and bibles.
Once that came out - immediately 50% of the country were split. You can't offend that many people without repercussions whether you believe it to be true or not.
After that, every issue got positioned from the basket of deplorable viewpoint. Then comes the civil war statue removing, men playing women's sports and any number of things that could have been solved with dialog.

 

this is a woefully misguided view

1. virtually everyone who votes in the US is either an immigrant or the descendant of immigrants & no 1 in their right mind would call US voters monolithic
2. If pubs dropped the MAGA socialist nonsense/culture war freakouts & went back to pretending to be conservative, that message would appeal to a lot of folks including immigrants

 

I like more about Trump’s economic policies than I dislike. I’m a never Trumper for other reasons. If you only want me to focus on the aspects of his economic policies I dislike…

- I am not a fan of the $8.8 trillion in new borrowing he signed off on.
- I am all for tax cuts, but if Congress then Trump pass further tax cuts in the next 24 months I think the Fed will have to reverse expected decreases in rates coming in Sept. I would take lower interest rates with current tax rates.
- I’m pro trade and his tariffs sound as scary as the stuff passed before the real Great Depression.
- His idea to kick out all illegal immigrants (from a purely economic perspective) would hurt our economy. I’ve been on the board of directors of companies in Alabama where we tried to do the right thing and follow E-verify to a T. It is really hard to fill out a full labor force without immigration (but obviously I favor legal immigration and the border is a real issue).
- Inflation is extremely, extremely complicated and I was lucky enough to take a macroeconomics class under a former member of the Board of Governors of the Fed when I got my MBA. All I learned was that to truly comprehend inflation and solutions you have to dedicate your life to that endeavor due to all the moving parts. Economist who look solely at inflation say Biden’s policies handled it better than Trump’s would have.

Most importantly, he is a volatile person which isn’t good for the economy. I don’t even know what his economic policies are. I know project 2025’s are. I actually believe Trump when he says he hasn’t read those policies and doesn’t care what the other Republicans are saying.

 

These proposals are byproduct of the last 12 out of 16 years of White House control by the Democrats. All of the moderate or decent ideas have already been rolled out, so they don't have anything fresh that doesn't sound insane. Just another reason Trump will win. The country has a habit of letting each party have a crack at it and it's the GOP's turn.

 

I don't think it is misguided. Assimilation is important. Making sure they assimilate constitutional and American values is important. People who have a pulse and just walked across the border do not necessarily possess that.

The Democrats are social engineering the electorate so that its composition will support their agenda. I really do believe they want to take us in a direction the electorate as currently composed would never agree to.

If immigrants here are not properly assimilated, they could vote to make us more like Venezuela or China. There is no magic wand that makes them vote differently just because they walked across the border.

The process a legal immigrant has to go through to become a voting citizen of this country is important. They need to learn about our history. They need to learn about our values. They need to know what the Constitution says. They need to know what the Declaration of independence says. And living here a certain amount of time before they are allowed to vote helps with that assimilation process.

Granting a bunch of people voting rights who have not assimilated is essentially the same thing as setting up voting locations at embassies in Beijing, Tehran, Venezuela for their citizens to vote in our elections. That would be an outrage, and what you are talking about is not too far off from that.

 

First of all most Trump voters have not been brainwashed by the liberal media. Trump's morals are no worse than the liberals that are screaming about his cheating and lies. The press goes on about how Trump is a liar and the followers sing it over and over. Never seem to remember all the lies Biden has been caught on over his 40 years of making stuff up.
Of course people like Bill Clinton got a pass from the libs. but Trump is terrible because he cheated on his wife. Lets dig deep into every one of the politicians and see who has the high ground. There have been plenty of stories over the last few years about how Kamala worked her way to where she is.
From what Kamala has not done in the last four years and what her boss's will have her do the next four I don't think the country could survive having her as President. As far as Trump goes he is by far the best choice to run this country in my opinion.

 

I’ve stopped talking religion and politics in public and pretty much listen to others. Haven’t posted in here for a while. To add to the list,,, ‘whether right or wrong’ the boycott of chick-fil-A was seen as an attack on Christianity as was the baker issue. I’ve heard it mentioned numerous times.

 

They quote Trump when he lies. It's not up to the press to not quote him, it's up to trump to stop lying.

 

Never say never, but it is hard to imagine at this point. As long as there is a smorgasbord of media alternatives to cater to whatever pet belief system one has, I don’t see how it gets better. There may be brief moments where the population is mostly unified due to a crisis but it breaks down quickly due to this hyper partisan media.

To clarify, I don’t fully blame the media. I blame misinformed voters and consumers of media who are making these media choices. Same with politicians - they are a reflection of what we want.

My fear is the *solution* will be a government controlled media, within a more authoritarian style government. That could be the right or the left.

Constructive debate is near impossible. People aren’t even agreeing on the basic fact sets. Facts that are contrary to one’s preferred belief system are immediately dismissed.

As to Trump, in this thread and elsewhere many supporters will say he is better than the alternative in spite of his flaws. I can’t speak to any particular poster but the fact is right now he is the overwhelming favorite of republicans. In the the primary there were all flavors of alternative republicans, all of which had less baggage than Trump. But they chose Trump.

I don’t think it is coincidence that political message boards pop up on college football forums. Politics has become a sport, and is not unlike the rivalry and sometimes even hatred of a Florida vs Georgia. From that perspective Trump is appealing because he trolls the other side and makes his side feel better about themselves, which is a sad state of affairs.

Some will say “but both sides” - and to a degree that is true, and there are a lot of positions on the left I routinely criticize. However comparatively Democrats still seem more practically functional. Coalescing around Biden in 2020 as pragmatic electable alternative and running him out in 2024 when it was obvious he was just too old to serve any more. Is it possible that with the right candidate Democrats could fall pretty to a Trump like personality? Sure it is possible, but I think it is in the nature of conservatives to rally around authority figures who express strong opinions. Maybe from attending church and listening to preachers/ministers, etc. For years AM talk radio, which is a format that just never worked for liberals.

I appreciate your attempt to deep dive on this. I hope I am ultimately wrong. I am one who considers himself and voted Republican up until around 2003, so I have a bit of perspective from both sides.

 

My TL;DR answer: open primaries; beyond that...

People need to pay more attention to politics than to their favorite sports teams and/or other vices. Have to reel in the extreme folks on either end of the spectrum. You have people that disagree with ideas that are labeled with hateful labels and then counter-responses with a similar effort. This is what dominates our political discourse in many arenas. Reasonable people tend to venture less into the mud pit because they see no hope for progress (and that's no excuse, in my view).

"Opposing DEI" doesn't equate to racism. Instead, ask people what they mean both by why people are in favor of DEI and why people are against it. Same goes for abortion bans. There's no doubt common ground on what may or may not be acceptable. More than likely these things boils down to implementation. The fact is, we should all want people to be treated fairly, it's important to have two-way discussions on what that actually look like. Watch out for the people that only want to tell you how you should think. The fact is, we should all want there to be fewer unwanted pregnancies, it's important to have two-way discussions on what that actually looks like. Again, watch out for the people that only want to tell you how you should think.

Same goes for things like immigration, taxes, foreign policy, etc. Quit treating people that disagree with you as unreasonable monsters, whoever they are and however they think, they are a part of us and we need to figure out a way to work together. It's up to the reasonable people to call out the unreasonable ones (and at least for areas where I might consider myself somewhat reasonable), it's too often easier to just avoid the fray. I do less calling people out here than I used to, but will do it in other arenas; and I welcome anybody calling me out for any views that I have that may come off as unreasonable. I think this forum serves for a sounding board and perhaps just purely entertainment for some folks.

It's somewhat unbelievable to me how much Fox News and MSNBC constantly bark extreme party rhetoric. People sit and watch this stuff all day long and it skews their perspective of reality. Next thing you know, we're too busy looking past the absurdity of "my side" and focusing on the perceived absurdity of the "other side."

Go GATORS!
,WESGATORS

 

I am seeing this a lot - using hypocrisy on the other side to excuse and rationalize just about any negative behavior. One would think there would be some comparative relativism but obviously not.

 

I think this thread pretty much answers the OP question.

Typical Dim Blasts 80 Year Old Man, He's in Critical Condition, Over Yard Sign

 

A very thoughful and extremely reasonable request in ediquit for this forum.

 

True but my photo was a serious answer.....For close to 10 years now the left has thrown every lie and exaggeration they could come up with to drag him down and he stands up to all the lies and kangaroo courts. He doesn't fight back for DJT he fights back for the USA.

 

To what ends?

 

are all these former employees brainwashed too? each and every one of them republicans that he handpicked

 

And ranked choice voting.