Who supports Trump?

[laripu]

Well, mostly white people. But not all white people of course.

 

This article in FiveThirtyEight shows that Trumps support among white people is mostly from those who attend church and those who have no university. See the graphic below.

The more you attend religious services, the less likely you are to support Clinton.

The more college you have, the more likely you are to support Clinton.

One would expect an atheist with a degree to vote for Clinton, and a person who goes to religious services regularly and hasn't had any college to vote for Trump.

These things aren't independent of course. University educated people are more likely to be atheist or agnostic and therefore less likely to attend religious services regularly.

 

[XavierOnassis]

When I went to college, I learned how to take notes.

Then I automatically started taking notes in church.

Every week,the sermon was the same. It was always the same 5% of the Bible that was mentioned.

After a year or so, I realized it was like watching Gilligan's Island reruns, except that Gilligan's Island had Tina Louise and better jokes.

So I quit watching Gilligan and going to church.

It bothered my mother, of course, but I was no longer living at home, so it didn't bother her so much.

[laripu]

So I quit watching Gilligan and going to church.

It bothered my mother, of course, but I was no longer living at home, so it didn't bother her so much.

 

My mother first told me about god when I was about 4. I was very skeptical. It was something you couldn't see, hear or smell: so very small and inconsequential. And it was supposed to be omnipresent and to have created everything: so very big and powerful.

 

Of course I didn't have those words in my head. I just had a feeling that my mother was lying to me, and I stopped trusting her. Whatever she told me after that, if I cared about it, I tried to think of ways to check it for myself. That made me read a lot. It also made me challenge her a lot, which made relations with her uncomfortable for a long time. It wasn't until my early twenties when I mostly stopped caring what she thought, that hings got better between us; and also I had moved out. My father was really a lot better: you could talk logically to him, and he reasoned; he was an intelligent man.

 

Anyway, never mind the various ancient books of religion: those are obviously not fact, which even the Catholic Church has admitted. What bothers me about faith (even independent of the books) is that it is essentially magical thinking: pray and god will fix it.

 

It's an abdication of responsibility. If we humans want something to be better, we have to do it ourselves.

 

And now a joke: "we damn well better to do it ourselves".

[bludog]

The under-educated tend to be vague about the facts and don't put much faith in them anyway ... Perfect for Trump's style. And regular church-goers, are used to putting their faith in charismatic leaders that regularly spout the incredible, with poise and confidence. They feel comfortable with Trump.

 

Bigotry, in the United States, has gradually become less acceptable and it's adherents, more alienated. Trump has changed all that by uniting them in common cause; Shunned no longer. And to lead them, is a bold-talking, unashamed bigot who is often the the whitest guy in the room.

 

Trump's appeal to under-educated white people with high church attendance, is based on making them feel better about themselves by giving them a false biological rationale that they are superior to darker people. Most of the white people he appeals to have not accomplished very much in life. Most of them, on some deep level, feel inferior. But no one can take their whiteness away; They were born with it. So Trump's legitimization of racism makes them feel more worthwhile and significant. It reinforces the illusion that their racial group is at the top of the biological heap.

 

As a showman and con-artist, Trump talks mostly in superficial generalities, excessively repeating himself. He constantly tells his followers the equivalent of "everything is going to be great", while specifying very little. He constantly implies, that, as the top group, his people will be favored under his presidency. Like most effective con-artists, most of his hateful, angry accusations of "the other" are delivered are in dulcet, soothing tones.

[Renegade]

Truth isn't what it once was. Here's an interesting article (http://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21706525-politicians-have-always-lied-does-it-matter-if-they-leave-truth-behind-entirely-art) that talks about how Trump has exploited voters' willingness to believe what feels right instead of actually checking facts. It's a long article, but here's how it starts:

 

"CONSIDER how far Donald Trump is estranged from fact. He inhabits a fantastical realm where Barack Obama’s birth certificate was faked, the president founded Islamic State (IS), the Clintons are killers and the father of a rival was with Lee Harvey Oswald before he shot John F. Kennedy. Mr Trump is the leading exponent of “post-truth” politics—a reliance on assertions that “feel true” but have no basis in fact. His brazenness is not punished, but taken as evidence of his willingness to stand up to elite power."

 

For me, this is a scary trend because it's not just Mr. Trump who treats the truth like an inconvenience. This behavior is not restricted to Republicans, or even to Americans. It seems as though we're entering a new dark ages where truth has no power. People are rabble, ruled by passion and easily controlled by demagogues.

[bludog]

 

The start of the present-day cult of ignorance.

[laripu]

Heh, heh, Wrong-old Ray-gun.

[Cecelia]

You know, i don't think I've ever encountered an intelligent Trump supporter. I know some Libertarians who are pretty smart--and they're voting Gary Johnson, even if he doesn't stand a chance.

[TheOldBarn]

There is a lot to be said for the inner voice inside oneself. I was always leaning towards equality, and at first, I was very unsure about policy. There's a lot of gray nuance out there I thought when I had what they call an uneducated mind.

Funny thing is, once I did get some education, I felt very much the same way, and it appeared to be even more pronounced, this nuance thing.

 

Then, I started to see the two major political parties were not that much different. Oh sure, there was the ballyhoo of social liberal/libertarian/conservative/religious sect woebegone strife and clarion call for total equality banter

that makes some people fear those unlike themselves so much that they go nuts and call it an infringement on their own rights to let a gay or lesbian marry, or say an atheist run for president shitake mushroom shit.

 

But not me. Nope. I didn't need to take any notes on any of that. I was always much more concerned with the efficacy of efficiency, how do we reach a sustainable economy far off into the future way past my own life time. That, I thought was the highest most redeemable goal any human could have. That, I thought could and will induce a whole lot of creative thought that would be worth all the time spent - sure, maybe I watched too many Little Rascal episodes at a young age... thinking anything was possible.

 

Peace!

[laripu]

You know, i don't think I've ever encountered an intelligent Trump supporter. I know some Libertarians who are pretty smart--and they're voting Gary Johnson, even if he doesn't stand a chance.

 

Gary Johnson himself presents as a dumb stoner. Anyone running for president ought to prepare himself by learning about other countries. Not only was he ignorant about Aleppo, he couldn't remember one world leader.

 

Not Trudeau of Canada, not Merkel of Germany, no-one. He was so unprepared, he looked like a middle-aged pot-head.

 

But he seems like a nice guy. I'd have him over and have a beer with him, but I wouldn't vote for him any more than I'd vote for Willie Nelson or Snoop Dogg.

[eclectic skeptic]

 

The start of the present-day cult of ignorance.

And also the dubious trickle down theory.

[XavierOnassis]

Reagan was an awful president, but a great actor. He fooled most of the people most of the time. I am that rarest of creatures, a 13th generation WASP, born in Missouri who worked as a Spanish professor in a "traditional Black" college for 33 years, I got my MA and PhD in Mexico and am the only person in my neighborhood who was born in the US.

In the 1980's, my college had us teaching in an un-air-conditioned classroom in Miami. For a year, I had to teach with a box fan holding the door open. Every 15 minutes, a military AF transport would wave from the Opa-Locka Airport carrying weapons and who knows what to El Salvador and Honduras and I would have to suspend my class because of the noise.

 

After a year, they got the AC working again. Reagan was sort of like a grandfather for a lot of White Americans back in Missouri and some in Miami as well. Somehow, they actually believed that a left wing government was a threat to the US. What they got was Mara Salvatrucha, a vicious street gang that still plagues Los Angeles and El Salvador. I remember visiting Honduras in the 1980's and it was a friendly rather peaceful; place, especially on the Caribbean coast. I was very fond of the old banana port town of Tela.. Now it is dangerous. All those weapons and all the support for the right wing militarists made a horrible mess of the place.

[XavierOnassis]

What world leaders as leftists would you say you supported if asked the same question they asked Gary Johnson? I can't think of any that are well-known, The PM's of Canada, Norway. Denmark, Sweden, and the Netherlands come to mind.

I cannot think of any political leaders with a libertarian bent. I have heard that Estonia is somewhat libertarian-ish. The PM is named Taavi Rõivas, and he belongs to the Reform Party. He lives with a pop singer (which I think indicates that he is not married) and speaks English, Russian, Finnish and of course, Estonian.

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taavi_R%C3%B5ivas

 

There are a lot of countries to keep up with, and I confess I am not that good at it. But unlike Gary Johnson, I am not running for anything.

[TheOldBarn]

So, let's look at government spending between Democrats and Republicans in the last say sixteen years.

 

What was more of a drain?

 

Benghazi, and private email server versus Iraq war, tax cuts for the rich (which was supposed to be a somewhat temporary measure), along with the Housing collapse and the bail out for the big banks?

What about the Medicare pharmaceutical bill rushed through by the Republicans verses Obama Care.

 

What about the Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act of 2005 versus the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform And Consumer Protection Act of 2010?

 

Do we really think invading Iraq and its aftermath (including the atrocities at Abu Ghraib) is equivocal to using our air power to support other NATO countries protect Libyan rebels from being decimated by Muammar Ghadifi's small airforce?

 

I'm sure we can look at inequities in any of the bills that were passed by either party and in the case of Libya both, but I do think the differences should be quite evident. As a corollary if you will, both parties did vote for the Resolution which allowed Bush to invade and use military power against Iraq if he deemed it to be so necessary. A bit of time transpired afterwards and Saddam had pretty much met most of the U.S demands. The final decision to go, no doubt, was up to only him!

 

Peace!

[TheOldBarn]

Oh, and I should say that neither did I much support Bill Clinton's moves - he was the New Liberal, or the Neo liberal. Some of his first actions, like allowing Gay people to be part of the military, and yes, Hillary's push for single payer healthcare. Both were squashed head on by the right. And Bill, the go along guy quickly demurred. Which is why I held not much respect for him.

 

Bill signed NAFTA into law, but it was a mostly all Republican plan from the get go. They ended up with a namby pamby don't ask don't tell law, and single payer quickly buckled by a lot of spending by the health insurance and pharmaceutical corps, with adds... that showed so called real people sitting down at the table trying to purse through what single payer might just do.

 

Single payer would have been absolutely fantastic had the citizenry not been so easily swayed. Many like myself remember all this just like it was yesterday. But for some reason facts just don't seem to be spoken much by the media and the politicians who under mind them all. It is so gigantically telling, and completely unbelievable all of this bull is to me. I mean that, I don't have to much go back and look it up. So many things stuck in my craw and pile up and it does kind of get easy enough to be bewildered now and then, quite a lot, I might add.

 

Peace!

[bludog]

tmagee: As you might have noticed, your post is now gone. You were asked to keep out of the Liberals Only Room once before. One more time and you will receive a nice little suspension. Got it?

[bludog]

bbblueyes: As you might have noticed, your posts here, are now gone, just like Conservative tmagee. You must have seen my warning to tmagee to stay out of the Liberal's Only Room. So I'm giving you the same warning as tmagee. Stay out of the LO Rm. If you post again, you will get suspended. Don't come back.

 

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[Zaro]

Who supports Trump ~ white trash

[laripu]

Who supports Trump ~ white trash

That's probably 30% of his support. And there are probably also plenty of people we might consider white trash that would never vote for Trump. He needs all the white trash vote, but he's probably only getting 75% of it.