After the shitshow in the Oval Office, I finally do unironically believe that he could actually walk down fifth avenue and shoot someone, and they’d still cheer for him and proudly declare it the victims fault.
>and shoot someone, and they’d still cheer for him and proudly declare it the victims fault.
except for those who happens to be that "someone" who got shot and immediately stops cheering then while getting very confused and sorry for themselves.
Watch the interviews with the Trump voters who got recently laid off by Trump & Douche, err... Doge.
In my experience people will vent and complain and then just return to the previous normal. In some cases it's still mentally 'easier' to go back than to reassess fundamental beliefs.
These anecdotes however are few and far between. With a federal worker there's pretty obviously "nowhere to hide the bodies" - Trump came in, fired a bunch of federal workers. If you were a fired federal worker, it's impossible to read that any other way.
With something less direct, like losing your job during a recession? There's still plausible deniability that it's Biden's fault, because headlines like "Economists suggest <thing Trump did> might have triggered a recession" is too abstract and far removed from their own lived experience.
We now have a potential deputy secretary of defense who is too scared to acknowledge the objective fact that Russia invaded Ukraine [1] because that gets people ostracized by their cult. We are fucked when government officials can't govern unless pretending the emperor is clothed. This is Salinist/Maoist levels of fuckery. They will happily lie to their sheep with a straight face knowing that they will lap it up as the truth.
I don't think it's inability to distinguish. At least for those in the public sphere, it's a willful disregard for facts entirely, because acknowledging facts would put them in opposition to the president, thus potentially setting them up to be banished by the party.
The last episode of This American Life[1] really nails it to the wall:
> The bully lie is different. It doesn't try to convince you. It doesn't present evidence. It just tells you to pick a side. So when the president said that diversity programs caused the plane crash over the Potomac, when he called the president of Ukraine a dictator without elections, he didn't lay out a set of facts to make his case. He wasn't interested in rebuttal.
> When he does this kind of thing, Masha writes, he's "asserting control over reality itself" and splitting the country into those who agree to live in his reality and those who resist and become his enemies by insisting on facts.
I think in addition to that, he has learned that his behaviour is rewarded with unprecedented social and media exposure and share of the social consciousness, and when all everyone talks about is Trump, it in some way legitimizes whatever he says by nature of choking out everything else. This has basically only escalated based on everything he has done so far in his second term. Even if whatever he said is dumb and doesn't work or he is wrong, it doesn't matter because that story is buried under the stories covering the 10 other outrageous things he has said since. Whenever he says something absurd, he is inviting everyone to join him in his reality, and everyone hops in.
I think institutional trust is too low, the media cycle moves too fast and people are too divided for facts to matter much in this environment.
I think the GP might have been referring to voters, I frequently hear from them how Republican economics are better because, allegedly, there is less spending ("allegedly" is doing a lot of work there - we all know how the national deficit trends between the two parties). Businesses across the country initially reacted very well to him coming to power, though that honeymoon is abruptly coming to an end.
> because acknowledging facts would put them in opposition to the president
Let’s be honest, both parties are doing these dances of hypocrisy. Stay-the-course Dems defending Biden and continuing to demonise both wealth and populism aren’t much better. It’s not as bad, blatant or personalised. But it’s there.
But adult Jesus says, "Whatever you do to anyone, you have done to me."
Fakeass Christians don't understand that means undocumented folks, non-white folks, non-Christian folks, women, and folks of other sexual preferences and gender identities.
"That which you do to the least of my brothers and sisters, that you do unto me." --Jesus of Nazareth
"Love your neighbor as yourself." --Jesus of Nazareth
The thing about the "No true Scotsman fallacy" is that the person does have to at least be a Scotsman, if that's what they're calling themself.
> folks of other sexual preferences and gender identities
Since Jesus was an observant Jew, who explicitly said that not a letter of the Mosaic Law would pass away, I don't think he would be support of sexual "preferences" and "gender identities". The Law pretty much placed everything except sex within marriage as out of bounds, and not only did Jesus uphold the Law, but he even upped the requirements from actions to unexpressed desires. For instance, the Law only required not committing the act of adultery, but Jesus said that even looking at someone lustfully was adultery. So I can't see Jesus being supportive, but rather saying "go and sin no more".
Actually, I think Jesus was rather opposed to people who had identities of any sort, since he called people to an identity in himself. He had the harshest words for the Pharisees, who had an identity of "holy". The prostitutes and tax collectors and other "sinners" that Jesus hung out with agreed that they were not keeping the Law and repented of it, but if you've got an identity (that is, it is what you define yourself by), by definition you aren't going to be repentant about it.
He also said, "There is much that you cannot bear now, but when he, the Spirit of Truth, comes, he will lead you into all things."
Love is the rule. The Great(est) Command(ment) of all.
And, Jesus, of course, manifested such love completely, so his saying, "go and sin no more" is love, but he wasn't throwing any stones (literally), only giving advice -- but very, very good and important advice, for sure. And he also did literally protect the adulterer from get stoned, and he was fulfilling the Law there, too.
What we do in our homes behind closed doors is our business and our business alone (unless we are harming another adult against their will (or harming a child), then we must carefully intercede as a society on behalf of the innocent).
Put more simply, we all have the free will to choose how to live according to our wishes, with those certain caveats and careful, compassionate discernment.
Absolutely, there are societal-level problems with sex outside of marriage, regardless of the genders of the people involved, but I'm pretty sure we are not authorized to intrude into someone's home life, except in extraordinary circumstances.
The Law's sole purpose is our happiness, and serves to guide us towards an ever more compassionate society. But societies also have the right to create rules for themselves, should their majority decide to set them into stone, so to speak. [Democracy is God's Will; the oppression of tyrrany is a form of evil.] I don't believe that intruding into someone's personal life outside of the public's view is ever in love's best interest.
Regardless, the rules for oneself are intrinsically on a different level and nature than those imposed by govt upon everyone, yet we must try to walk a very blurry line and make a dilligent effort to incorporate the Great(est) Command(ment) into our societies' laws and enforcement -- or failure, misery, and strife will be the result.
I, personally, wouldn't be comfortable punishing someone for what they do in the privacy of their own home, but I can't in any way claim that to be authoritative, it's just my sense of loving others and wanting them to be happy with the choices they make. My counsel would be to keep things simple and not let the vice of greed/lust dominate one destructively, for both their and society's well-being and happiness.
> He had the harshest words for the Pharisees, who had an identity of "holy"
Phuck the Pharisees, those worthless fools. They have sold their souls for a small price. They get all the reward they're going to get from their hypcritical proclamations. Their "identity of holiness" is an utter lie and is not worth a jot.
> if you've got an identity (that is, it is what you define yourself by), by definition you aren't going to be repentant about it
Well, everyone's stubborn until they're not. Everyone acts out of vice until they choose to learn how to be virtuous. Patience is the last perfected virtue (and few reach that lofty peak), and is required to be "pure in heart" as stated in that one Beatitude.
Thanks for your well-considered, thoughtful, and though-provoking response. I don't have all the answers on this very thorny problem here in 2025. I hope my reply makes sense, though it is surely the first time I've put serious thought into or words together on this topic in this level of detail/amount of rambling :-)
Peace be with you. Thank you for this conversation. I am at your service.
I'd call many of the non-Trump factions of the Republican Party conservative. But the current administration is far from that given their threats to the long-term allies, weakening NATO, and swift changes to the federal govt.
He is doing it right now. He cut the oxygen pipe to Ukraine(no financial support or weapons), and Europe are not going to do anything about it because they care about themselves and are weak ( except Germany, but that will be not enough).
His cult don't matter though. It's the 5-20% of Americans that don't consistently vote for a single party that matter. They've already been convinced that inflation was Biden's fault -- keeping the blame on Biden might be possible.
It's consistently voting for a single party that gets us into this trouble. I wish I had sane Republicans to vote for to squelch the corrupt politicians on the other side. They've all run for the shadows and let MAGA take over the party as if Animal Farm was a howto guide.
> They've already been convinced that inflation was Biden's fault
It was. Manchin was right. The MMT gang overstimulated the economy in ‘21 and then didn’t pass deflationary tax increases or spending cuts once the problem reared its head.
Government spending drove a material amount of inflation during the pandemic, but other factors contributed as well (expectations, supply chain dysfunction, corporate profits).
I disagree. We'd have Trump regardless. Prices are an excuse, these voters are voting their identity, their tribalism, and their bitterness.
Look no further than every interview with a regretful Trump voter: "I didn't think I'd lose my job." "I didn't they they would deport my family member." This is no different than "The only moral abortion is my abortion." Unless they are personally impacted by the policy, they vote their harmful belief system.
> “He’s not hurting the people he needs to be”: a Trump voter says the quiet part out loud
> these voters are voting their identity, their tribalism, and their bitterness
Agree for the Rust Belt not for swing voters who didn’t vote Trump in ‘16 and ‘20.
The history of inflation and electorates is my only evidence, this time may have been different, but I’d need to see something beyond anecdotes to conclude that when voters said the economy was their issue [1] they were lying.
I’d love to see a breakdown of these factors in tipping-point states if you have it.
I suppose a counterpart bias to conspiratorial thinking is taking as faith the wisdom of crowds. Perhaps this election was mass delusion and an argument for electoral restraint (which I’m sympathetic to).
But even if I concede that overstimulus didn’t cause Trump, I think it’s fair to say it did cause voters to blame Biden for inflation.
It's a good ask for obvious reasons. Let me chat with someone I know at Pew Research and see if I can provide anything material, and if not, what it's going to gather the data (if at all possible).
