Perhaps Trump isn’t the problem. Perhaps the problem is that 74M Americans voted for him. | From the editor
https://www.silive.com/opinion/columns/2024/03/trump-isnt-the-problem-the-problem-is-that-74-million-americans-voted-for-him-from-the-editor.html
37 comments
The fact that half of this country is filled with uneducated racist hillbillies has always been a problem. That is nothing new.
Trump is the problem AND 74M Americans voted for him allowing the problem to fester. It takes 2 to tango.
The press just can’t say it.
No reason it can’t be both.
His very public racism and hate gave permission for these people to come out of the racist closet.
Maybe the problem is generations of undiagnosed mental issues and as a culture we are too scared to even consider that notion?
Perhaps the problem is the lack of critical thinking skills being taught in our failing education system? Perhaps its the fact that parents don’t have time to actually be with their kids and teach critical thinking skills because they are doing other things?
One third of America needs cult deprogramming that they don’t feel they require and thus will never seek.
Their brainwashing includes a desire to punish those who don’t march in goosestep to their ideals.
A susceptible percentage of the zombies have been radicalized to the point of being willing to undertake violence to achieve this objective.
Right now that percentage is very small but even one one-thousandth of one percent of them is *740 willing terrorists.
There’s a lot of damage they can do should Trump ask them to and we’ve seen what can happen if Trump asks people to undertake violence on his behalf for even a few hours.
It can be both, trust me.
That being said, anyone expecting the country to go back to normal once he’s gone is going to be disappointed. Now that we’ve had one Trump, we’ll have others just as bad or worse. We’ve got about 30% of this country that wants an authoritarian dictatorship. They want it very badly because they want the right groups punished and feel that people like them, the ‘right people’ will be lifted up.
They’re going to keep wanting that, and democracy, decency, and our public discourse be damned. All those years when we were trying to topple foreign governments, I suspect we were going about it the wrong way. We should have just exported Fox News.
I’ve kind of been of this mindset from the beginning. The people that voted for him wanted a racist carnival barker. Trump blurs the line between entertainer, fascist and politician. The people that voted for him voted for him because they like the spectacle that he brings, not because he’s a good politician or has the makings of a good politician. Trump knows this which is why he continues to act out in batshit crazy ways. He needs attention and his base wants to be entertained while having their racist views affirmed.
I think that only a tiny percentage of those folks voted for him because of his racist and fascist tendencies.
I think the vast majority of his voters live in the alternate reality of the right-wing media ecosystem – and so they’ve been heavily indoctrinated against Democrats.
Tell me if this sounds familiar: “Sure, Trump took away fundamental human rights and tried to overthrow the government and is corrupt and cheated on all his wives and represents everything that the Founders and Jesus hated, but …. at least he’s not a Democrat!”
Stupid is as stupid does.
We’re 8 years into this mess and just now coming to this conclusion?
Lol. It’s not the crocodile that is to blame, it’s their teeth. Gtfoh. It’s BOTH
Trump is not the disease. He is a late-stage symptom of a disease that is killing its host, the GQP.
you can have two problems at the same time
Thanks FOX News
The problem is that the 74 million people that voted for him live in a propaganda fueled echo chamber that presents a fact free alternative reality. There was a time when Republicans and Democrats disagreed on policies but generally agreed on the facts. That is no longer the case
I agree for the most part. The existence of heroin is a problem, but the fact that so many people are doing heroin is the real problem that needs to be solved. Heroin isn’t going anywhere.
Trump is such an obvious conman who only cares about himself. He wouldn’t piss on his supporters if they were on fire. He is unironically selling bibles and talking about how much he loves God yet everyone knows he is the least religious POTUS in modern history. He has cheated on every one of his wives, including the current one with a porn star while she was at home with their newborn. Imagine the worst political scandal of anyone’s career and Trump calls that “Tuesday”.
It’s shocking that millions of Americans blindly follow him and hold him to no standards whatsoever. And while they let Trump get away with literally anything, they hold Biden to every traditional standard. And they truly don’t see themselves as hypocrites.
It’s like seeing a preacher with a flashy suit and a giant pompadour strutting around on a TV screen. Your first thought is to laugh at the ridiculousness of it all. Then it hits you that he’s only on TV because people are actually sending him money. Likely a ton of money. How could there be that many clueless people?
The other day I had a longtime co-worker who I really respect insist that Trump “loves America”. It was such a dumb statement that I didn’t even know how to reply. I think I said something like “Trump loves himself” and left it at that.
And then I had another MAGA co-worker (who I don’t respect as much) insist that Ivermectin has been proven to treat COVID but “we’re not allowed to say it because it makes Trump look good”. I said I honestly don’t pay that much attention now that we’re post-COVID, but I understood it does not work against COVID. He insisted that was proven that to be false. After our talk, I did some research and quickly learned he was full of shit. Every study I found clearly stated there is zero evidence it treats COVID. I actually couldn’t even find a single study that backed him up. But he only listens to extreme right wing media.
Turns out, when one of your country’s 2 political parties prioritizes making people dumber, poorer and angrier, it becomes pretty easy for a snake oil salesman to get ahead.
Americans have to come to terms with the fact that if a clean-cut, well-spoken, self-controlled fascist leader showed up and appealed to Republicans with Jod, guns, and bigotry, we would become a fascist dictatorship overnight. It’s only Trump’s blatant and obvious personal deficits that keep enough people away that we have a chance at saving democracy for a few more years.
It’s both
You mean his basket of deplorables? Yep..
Voting for donald trump is not a matter of personal opinion that we need to understand and respect.
Its an intellectual and moral failure as a human being that we need to reject and scorn.
You are a bad person and a stupid person if you cast your ballot for donald trump.
.. and that perhaps there is an entire media infrastructure selling then open fascism with zero consequences
In other words: Do you blame the clown for being a clown, or blame the people buying tickets to the circus?
The problem is a non-stop torrent of propaganda, funded by an incredibly small number of people, with no concern for or need for profitable success in the free market, combined with a populace that lacks the education and critical thinking skills, or **intellectual curiosity**, to see through it.
At some point in this country, probably around the 1980s, we made “knowing things” some stupid thing that nerds do and we’re reaping the consequences of that.
This. Hitler without his base would have just been a failed art student with a lousy attitude and a stupid mustache. Trump just a narcissistic flim flam man.
Hate is always there. As well as racism, fascism, homophobia and all its other cousins. Just waiting for someone to rally behind and people too complacent to fight back.
Cults require two parties. It’s a symbiotic relationship.
Exactly, Trump would just be another looney looking for attention if tens of millions of deviants didn’t support him. Hillary was right, a huge chunk of this country are deplorables.
40 years of cuts to public education have had thier desired effect
Are we still calling them “Americans” after they have tried (and will try again) to dismantle our Democracy?
Trump is the biggest symptom sure but they feed off each other into a loop that spirals down into theocratic authoritarianism.
They’re both the problem. You have Confederate sympathizers mostly in the rural US who are often religiously backwards who are still mad about 1864 and this “(liberal) yankee gub’ment”. Who now drone on and on about “government is the problem” and we should let the states control themselves in their entirety.
Which is ironic considering they love “big government” in your bedroom and in your reproductive life.
*When the courts and the government protect your constitutional individual liberties….they hate that. When the government extends and autocratic fist and authoritarian rule based on their dogmatic moral order and agenda, that’s great to them.*
The Constitution is a pain in their ass and they know the way around that is by packing the courts…..and they’re succeeding.
Trump eventually will die… Those 72 million americans are gonna be around and they gonna have children to pass their proud racist bigoted ideas to.
Trump is a diversion from the wealthy doubling their wealth and power in the past few years. People suckered into the smaller battles are missing the bigger war! 😳
This is what I’ve been saying for 8 years. Trump is a symptom of a much larger issue
Between 4 and 6 Million of them will be dead by November, most in Red States, so expect about a million of them to not be voting.
As I said last 4 times this wast posted: It’s both. Trump is surely a symptom of the problems in America, but at the same time he’s an empowering and emboldening force for their behavior because *no one* actually holds the clown accountable.
For the people, of the people, by the people…but the people are stupid.