The excellent radio program This American Life on their show today tried to understand how it is that the voters who identify as Republicans seem, in this election, to have ditched all their traditional concerns about small government, less regulations, and lower taxes and replaced it with an overwhelming concern about stopping the immigration of Mexicans and Muslims and how this change is threatening to split the party apart.
Their producer Zoe Chace tried to get into the heads of the people in the party by going to their meetings and talking to them. She focuses a lot of attention on a community in St Cloud, Minnesota that has been extremely hostile to the arrival of Somali immigrants and she looks at how wildly erroneous information, such as that when the size of a Muslim population in a community exceeds 10%, Sharia law is imposed on everyone, spreads and is believed, stoking fears among white people.
The program lasts about an hour. I found it completely engrossing.
It’s kinda stalinist the way dissenters from hillary are pathologised. Supporting war with russia is ‘normal’.
This is appropriate — 6 charts that show where Clinton and Trump supporters differ.
the voters who identify as Republicans seem, in this election, to have ditched all their traditional concerns about small government, less regulations, and lower taxes and replaced it with an overwhelming concern about stopping the immigration of Mexicans and Muslims
Because that “small government” and “less regulation” stuff is just propaganda. Once you’ve got a population that has swallowed your propaganda, you just tell them “supreme leader now says ‘hear this'” and give them new propaganda.
The issue isn’t that they’re “republicans” it’s that they’re “suckers at the more gullible end of the distribution” Their traditional concerns are whatever they’re told their traditional concerns have always been. We have always been at war with EastAsia, Germans have always been our friends, Chinese are now our enemies, Muslims are bad, etc.
And that reminds me of something else:
(copied and pasted from a boingboing comment thread about an IRS scammer)
I’ve been sort of wondering, why don’t counter-Trump articles emphasize how utterly dishonest he is; how he so easily reneges or cheats on agreements and contracts. Why would his behavior be any different as President?
While I suspect that his committed base would ignore it like someone deep into a 419 scam would make excuses to keep trying, it might sway those wavering. But is anyones still wavering at this point?
And last, and perhaps least,
a poemdoggerel:Pump and dump
Pump and dump
That’s all you get
From Donald J. Trump
Don’t be a chump
Don’t be a grump
Don’t trust the word
of Donald J. Trump
Owlmirror@#4:
how he so easily reneges or cheats on agreements and contracts. Why would his behavior be any different as President?
They already assume he’ll be the most corrupt president, ever. And that doesn’t bother them.
After all, Trump has demonstrated over and over that he’s fond of taking money from his left pocket and putting it into his right pocket. Imagine how he’d be able to do that as president. His followers simply lack imagination because they’ve been indoctrinated to trust leaders.
Peter Thiel explains it well. . . very recently. Google it learn something.