This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
-
Shaming.
-
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
-
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
-
Recruiting for a cause.
-
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
-
Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
-
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
-
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
-
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
There is a theory, you just don't like it.
In fact I find this criticism unsettling because Trump's love of tariffs is about the only position of his that is purely ideological. The man is a mercantilist, campaigned on mercantilism, told everybody of his fondness for McKinley and his policies in multi hour podcasts, has openly held this opinion since long before his first presidential bid and somehow people still think he's a headless chicken running around without an agenda.
At some point I'm going to have to start assuming people just don't listen to him.
I think that many of us thought that he was just saying it to get swing state votes and that he wouldn't actually do it. After all, he has a long track record of saying that he will do things and then not doing those things. Oops. I forgot that he also has a track record of, sometimes, saying that he will do something and then going ahead and actually doing it.
More options
Context Copy link
Trump was largely talked out of his worst ideas during his first term, so peoplr were accustomed to the idea of taking him "seriously, not literally". This term, we seem to be getting an unadulterated version that is both ill-conceived and embarrassingly executed, a sharp contrast to, for example, the successful TCJA of first term.
More options
Context Copy link
I actually don't think they do, aside from little quips that are (accidentally?) designed to be repeated memetically.
I would imagine most people form their opinions of Trump following marching orders from their news outlet of choice. If Trump has a truly nuanced take, I'm not sure if it will ever make it past the initial polarization filter of Fox News, Reddit, etc.
More options
Context Copy link
He's prone to lying (and unserious, unnecessary lying at that) and people feel they have to sort of piece together what they think he means this time.
The things Trump says are sufficiently horrible that SOP for his supporters ever since 2016 has been saying "Take him seriously, not literally" and calling out people who take him literally as TDS sufferers. And now he is in power his opponents who are not doomposters have been using the same approach as cope. The only people for whom "Trump is just as bad as he says he is" is a comfortable thing to believe is the minority of his supporters who are straightforwardly malignant, and professional Blue Tribe doomposters.
Trump said he would blow up the global economy with tariffs. His opponents said he would blow up the global economy with tariffs. His non-retarded supporters said "Lol TDS - of course he won't actually do that." He is now blowing up the global economy with tariffs, and his non-retarded supporters are split between the ones still claiming that he doesn't mean it and this is a madman strategy negotiating move (and repeating his lies about the tariffs other countries impose on the US in order to do so) and the ones trying to reverse ferret into "Actually blowing up the global economy is good."
The model "Trump is as bad as he claims to be, but the damage was limited in the first term because of GOPe moles in the administration" has an increasingly good track record of making correct predictions. But most people don't want to make correct predictions, they want to appeal to readers. And right now everyone who can read wants to believe that Trump is not as bad as he appears to be - so there is a lot of demand for theories where Trump does not mean what he says.
The TDS was 'He's a FASCIST like Hitler who's going to put leftists in concentration camps and he's a Russian agent and he's a christian white nationalist who's going to re-enact A Handmaiden's Tale in real life for giggles'. Trump's view on trade got obscured by all the other stuff, which is a shame because that's a much more interesting conversation.
EDIT: It's true that Trump also genuinely has a habit of saying stuff he doesn't mean seriously, like locking up Hillary Clinton.
I suspect you was serious about that but that he actually listened when people tossed out the arguments against it (like "we dont do that so they don't do it to you").
Now it seems like they defected anyway... but I do believe in his original intent on that one.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
The fact that after decades of this being the most important issue for the Western proletariat, left wingers still have no ability to wrap their heads around the fact that yes, they do want to blow up the GLOBAL economy, and have wanted to so do ever since it threw their jobs away to China, is immensely frustrating.
Trump's first win was all on preventing NAFTA and building the Wall. And a decade was spent coping that it was about white rage, actually.
How many times do the proles have to vote for economic nationalism before you understand that they're not going to let themselves be replaced by foreign labor and would rather destroy everything because at least then their enemies also suffer?
Wasn't it more like "preventing the TPP"?
In his debate against Clinton he famously said "NAFTA is the worst trade deal maybe ever signed anywhere, but certainly ever signed in this country."
But good catch, I did misspeak, in that it was preventing the TPP and repealing NAFTA, but the point about his general ideological opposition to free trade still stands.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
The problem is that the proles seem to be voting for stupid forms of economic nationalism. Realistically, Trump's tariffs are not going to do much to help the proles. What would help the proles a lot more are things like mass housing construction and cheaper healthcare, which are barely even parts of Trump's program.
I sympathize with people's desire for economic nationalism, but there are probably much more effective ways of doing it than whatever Trump is doing. It's unfortunate that the Democrats and progressives threw away their cachet with the working class by turning into snobby, wimpy elitist scolds and that as a result, there is currently basically no serious and influential political movement that is based around doing economic nationalism in an actually effective way. Right now, Americans more or less just have the choice between the Democrat mainstream, on the one hand, which delivers occasional wins to the working class but is also firmly committed to neoliberalism... and Trumpist economics, on the other, which promises economic nationalism but increasingly seems batshit crazy to me when I look at the actual implementation details.
Remember Occupy Wall Street? Remember Bernie being sidelined?
There's a reason Trump has become the only game in town. And it's not because people organically decided that they liked him better than a large number of other nationalist offerings. Neolibs made quite sure it was either them, or the joke candidate. And didn't really think people would vote for the joke candidate.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
As I said, a substantial minority of Trump supporters are straightforwardly malignant. "I don't care any more, I just want to watch the world burn so other people suffer as much as I did" is a perfectly comprehensible response to imagined (or even real) oppression, although not a creditable one, or a platform anyone could win an election on if they were clear about what they were doing.
I do not think "the Western proletariat" is a unitary actor, or that they support right-populist parties by supermajority. To the extent that the views of working-class Trump supporters are visible, they voted for Trump in 2024 to get cheaper eggs, not $20/hr non-union assembly line jobs.
In any case, tariffs are a tool and not a policy. The signals about what policy Trump is trying to achieve with tariffs are, to be polite, confused, but looking at the administration's policies in the round, I do not see any evidence at all for "bring back the type of union manufacturing jobs the 1950's economy was built on". I do not see much evidence for "bring back manufacturing" - we know what a manufacturing-focussed industrial policy looks like and how it uses tariffs because most countries have been pursuing one most of the time from the Age of Exploration through to the Bretton Woods Era. Critically, the tariffs vary by product type (with the highest tariffs on manufactured consumer goods) much more than by country of origin.
Nobody voted for Trump because of eggs, everybody voted for Trump because of 20 million foreigners (probably more), including 10 million let in with close to zero vetting in just the last administration.
Migration is the single most important issue in the US and Europe, and you can tell by watching the French and German election results, where the supposedly different parties reliably line up into anti-migration and everybody else.
Trump is anti-migration, which is what allowed him to bulldoze his way through establishment republicans in 2016, and I have no explanation but providence to explain that the chart that saved his life is the one charting the insane increase of entries during the Biden administration.
Very much agreed - the culture war is about culture, not economics. And immigration is the most important social issue in basically every rich country. But neither the narrative nor the teams has changed on immigration since it first became an issue, which was well before Trump came down the escalator to take advantage of it.
Conventional wisdom is that the reason why Trump got 49.8% of the vote in 2024 instead of the 46.7% he got in 2020 is something to do with economics, and if you ask the minority of voters who care about economics more than culture, they talked about prices and not jobs - unsurprisingly, given that the Biden economy was doing just fine on jobs and low-end wages.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Then you're simply haven't paid attention to any significant political event in the West for the last two decades and I don't know what to tell you. Who do you think is voting for all those far right parties in Europe? Why do you think Brexit happened?
If your answer to those is thought terminating clichés about either racism, some nebulous social media influence or people being too dumb to figure out what's in their interest, you're actively choosing not to understand what's going on.
See this is exactly what I'm talking about. You are in a bubble so your only experience of those people's discourse is the memes you and they exchange against each other about eggs and the price of gas. But you see, proles don't actually make political decisions solely on the back "I did that" Biden stickers.
What they see is that they live in a country that largely sees them as superfluous non competitive relics and look for any politician that isn't an active enemy of theirs.
Donald Trump may be totally unable to implement his economic views correctly, but he's a friend, not an enemy. And that class of people can count their elite friends on one hand, so naturally they'll fall in behind him.
You're welcome to call that spite if you want, but the fact is you can't buy friendship with slightly cheaper eggs.
My friend, you are huffing WAY too much internet. Trump won because a bunch of normies were tired of everything being too expensive and the incumbent administration looked like a bunch of boobs. If he fucks the economy into the toilet in ways that affect a regular person the GOP will 100% get utterly brutalized in the midterms, and Trump will spend the rest of his presidency dodging impeachment attempts and accomplishing nothing.
You are drastically, drastically, DRASTICALLY overestimating the electoral relevance of based right-wing resentment-mongers. They exist, but they've never been anything but part of the GOP base and they ain't shit without the normies who just vote for the opposition whenever they feel bad about the economy.
What about the onshoring that is absolutly not going to happen because building new factories requires more time than these tariffs could ever be expected to last? (IE 4 years tops and more likely two years if the Republicans do badily enough in the midterms)
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
20-25% of the population in most countries - which is not enough votes to include a supermajority of the proletariat for any standard meaning of the term "proletariat".
The right-populist parties that are doing significantly better than that - most obviously PiS in Poland and Fidesz in Hungary - aren't focussed on bringing back manufacturing jobs. PiS is talking about bringing back farm jobs in a country that was 20% agrarian within living memory. Fidesz is conventionally right-wing on economics (as is Reform in the UK and the AfD in Germany). And of course both parties, like other right-populist parties, focus on cultural issues over economic ones in their campaigning.
Because retired people voted 2:1 in favour of it. Age was a stronger predictor of how people voted in the referendum than social class. If we define "proletariat" in the orthodox Marxist sense of people who have to work for other people in order to eat, the proletariat voted 55-45 for remain.
Given your response to @sohois, we don't disagree that the culture war is primarily about culture, not economics. And we don't disagree that you can carve out a demographic that does show supermajority support for right-populist parties that is in some sense more "proletariat"-like than the demographic of Motteposters. But if you are using the word "proletariat" to exclude working-age women, which you need to do if you want to make "The proletariat supports right-populist parties" a useful generalisation, you are using the word in a non-standard way. But that is an argument about the meaning of words. Where we have a substantive disagreement is about the economic views of right-populist voters.
If you look at:
then the conclusion you come to is "bring back assembly line jobs" is only a major right-populist cause in the US, and probably only because Trump made it one. The best economic right-populist message in essentially every European country is "we will protect the welfare-state-for-the-old by cutting white-collar government employees and welfare for immigrants" - i.e. it isn't about jobs or the private sector economy at all. The second-best message is "enviro-loonies are destroying your lifestyle", which could be about manufacturing jobs, but in practice turns out to be about domestic energy consumption (including private car use). The main time "enviro-loonies are destroying jobs" was a winning election message was around the Dutch nitrogen crisis, and the jobs were farm jobs.
There are right-populists with libertarianish economic policies. There are right-populists with agrarian economic policies. There are right-populists with what used to be mainstream centre-left economic policies. The common thread is that they promise to preserve the welfare-state-for-the-old and that they blame immigration for the inability of the centre-right to do so - not that they want to bring back manufacturing jobs.
I have actually done the work of politics - if you are running for office, or doing field work for someone who is, you can't avoid speaking to the sort of older socially conservative voters who are the traditional core vote of right populist parties. (I am aware that some countries have an new right-populist constituency among male Zoomers, but the UK isn't one of them and I got out of active politics before the Zoomers were old enough to vote). These people also exist in my extended family. And guess what - if you let them talk about policy, they mostly talk about crime and immigration. And when you do hear something about economics, 2/3 of the time it is a variant of "how can we afford X when we can't afford Y" where X is something that is perceived as benefitting foreigners, and most of the other 1/3 is about how much more expensive things are than they used to be. You don't have to take my anecdotes on authority - the point I am making is that I have lived experience of doing politics, and it is consistent with the data.
"Friend" is what you call someone who is on your side based on shared values - i.e. it's about culture, not economics.
This has been a message in right-populism since Bush, at the very latest.
More options
Context Copy link
Maybe I'm the one in a bubble, but my experience of talking to this sort of people involves quite a lot more specific complaints about outsourcing and the disintegration of the industrial base. Then again I am French and most of the paupers I know are as well, so that colors my view quite a bit. But I did connect with people from other countries in the West and insofar as they fit this sociological mold, they seemed to have similar complaints, if expressed in less Marxist terms than what you'd find in France.
In any case, I appreciate you jumping to the interesting question here which is indeed what economic policy right-wing populist people actually support, given that your description of their messaging is broadly accurate.
I think that unlike what you're saying "we will protect the welfare-state-for-the-old by cutting white-collar government employees and welfare for immigrants" and "enviro-loonies are destroying jobs" are absolutely something that can be reduced into a coherent ideological economic policy.
And that's pretty self evidently that of economic nationalism.
The general narrative goes like this: the globalist elites passed free trade agreements and setup international trade unions to allow themselves to profit from arbitrage between every country and get the cheapest ressource and cheapest labour for their enterprises, in doing so they detached themselves from the bonds of national loyalty that previously locked them to the lower class of a given country and instead started to rule together on the entire world. Nationalists obviously view this as a betrayal, and moreover the generalization of migration as another way to further globalist interests through arbitrage again, with the added benefit of dissolving any remaining bonds of loyalty among populations by creating a multicultural free for all where the institutions that held nations together (Family, Religion, etc) are systematically destroyed in favor of ever more atomized alienation. Even things like environmentalism fit into this narrative as yet another assertion of domination where the interests and moral fads of those global elites come at the expense of the local native.
Moreover, the divide also maps onto that general opposition between cities and the countryside, given that the global elites almost exclusively live in large international metropolises whilst the local natives are most concentrated in suburban and countryside areas.
I'm not sure whether you'd call this political ideology cultural or economic, but in some sense that doesn't really matter. That constituency is real, and it's growing.
And the somewhat diverse economic policies you list can all be explained within that context, as pragmatic adaptations to the needs of the local constituency colored by the local nationalist tradition.
No, it's what you call someone who is on your side.
I suspect this is very much a country-to-country issue. When you live in a small country with a high income that is basically forced to be dependent on trade (not having all that much in the way of natural resource apart from lots of timber and some minerals), anything but basic-level protectionism is a dead issue, perhaps unless it's the whole of EU doing it. France is bigger and has former colonies it can still tap into and a general do-it-yourself culture insofar as political economy goes, it can afford to be protectionist in a way that Finland can't.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
People that don't like immigration.
Immigration.
Insofar as we're doing a class analysis, that's about exactly what I'm saying.
Not saying the cultural aspects don't matter at least as much, but we're talking about economic policy here, after all.
I'm not sure this really maps to right-wing growth in Europe. Le Pen's economics are close to Trump in her economic nationalism, but Farage is an old school libertarian who wanted to make the Brexit campaign all about opening up free trade outside of the EU. Meloni has retreated pretty quickly into bog standard neoliberalism. Can't comment on Wilders or the AfD, but there's nothing to suggest that wider right wing movements are an economic protest
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
That’s too bad because proles are the ones who will suffer the most from a trade war. Rich people can afford a car that’s 20 percent more expensive but proles can’t
Since voters typically vote based on pocketbook issues I predict this will be devastating for republicans once reality sets in. Maybe a few midwestern townies that already liked Trump will be happy at least
That's true. And they don't care.
People have been making this argument as if it's convincing since the beginning of globalization. We know the poor always suffer more. But they're also not stupid, so using that fact to extort them into annihilation is not going to work.
No amount of "you're voting against your interest" is going to convince Joe Schmoe that losing his jobs to foreigners at home or abroad is a good thing because his eggs and car payments are marginally cheaper.
PMCs need to take a hard look at themselves and understand that it is they who want cheaper goods at the expense of their compatriots, not their compatriots who stupidly want to hurt themselves, because they're stupid.
Was the price of goods not one of the most important issues in the 2024 election? Proles voted overwhelmingly in favor of lower prices.
They absolutely are stupid. Proles are the people who walk into Best Buy and drop $900 on a brand new laptop with a Celeron and 720p screen, split into 96 monthly payments with 10% interest from Affirm. Proles buy a $70,000 truck that gets 15 mpg and then complain about gas prices. Proles see lower prices as the solution to all their problems, because they can't imagine not consuming every dollar they earn on stupid crap. And the lower prices are, the more crap they can consume. They are attempting to vote in their own interests, they just don't understand what their interests are.
No, we don't. I want to protect the environment, even if it raises prices. I want $10/gallon gas. As a PMC, I'm willing to pay more because the amount I consume now is already well within my budget.
More options
Context Copy link
Imma have to stop you right there. Wasn’t unemployment at record lows until recently? Who’s lost their jobs and remained unemployed?
The rate has been back to 2008 levels and trending up since 2022 when it made a low after the Covid spike.
But broad rates are useless to measure what we're talking about here, since they take into account everyone and not just the endemic lower class population. Not to mention how cooked something like an Unemployment metric is and how people tend to fall out of the long term category.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Unemployment, real median (and lower quintile) wages, AND inflation were all good in Trump's first term pre-COVID. This tariff policy is going to wreck all of that, and Joe Schmoe will be convinced that he definitely doesn't want more of THAT.
Trump won a second term because the economy did well in his first one — but the opposition spent so much mana crying wolf on his fairly reasonable and normie-Republican first term that they’re unable to stage effective opposition when the wolf comes as a wolf.
Yes, and they're still doing it, making fun of the default tariff on uninhabited islands instead of attacking the big tariffs on major trading partners.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Or they don't believe it. This is also my struggle with accelerationists on the left : I get the idea, I just doubt that they actually have internalized how bad things can get, and how long they can stay awful.
Even bad times for Americans are better than a lot of places. And, as the most powerful country, Americans have reason to think that if they simply got rid of the suckers and losers the whole thing could just pick up again.
If the Democrats came to them with a total surrender on immigration in exchange for ending this tariff game, do you think they'd take it?
You know what I'm not sure, but it's mostly down to the fact this scenario has happened before and the Dems reneged on their promises.
That said social nationalism of the Danish variety has worked very well politically. So if someone from the left proposed something like this adapted to more small business oriented American sensibilities, I think that would prove tremendously popular, actuallly.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
The amount of time spent on using Trump's trade policy as the reason why he's horrible was approximately zero. Probably because it would make his opponents look schizophrenic or sociopathic.
Ok bro, so are you taking that bet about Trump's third term, or not?
Right, it's been mostly about how he's a fascist or how taking down DEI is evil or taking down government organizations that have turned into permanent patronage machines is evil or how he shouldn't expel gang members from the US or a million other things he's doing that either are actually good or at least are normal bad politician things only declared unprecedented because Trump. Some of his dumber economic ideas (like no tax on tips) his opponents instead adopted.
If the Democrats had credibly run on better economic policies, it would have been a very different election, but also a very different Democratic party.
In Trump's first term, he did pretty well economically. Big corporate tax cut, and while his tariffs were still dumb there was usually some sort of reason behind them. Sometimes he even got the concessions he claimed he wanted. This new tariff structure is just ruinous, to everyone.
I'm no sure it's such a hot idea either, but the victory lap was unwarranted, imo.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
All I could think reading @faceh's post here was "so basically the situation is that, if you report on the ridiculous things Trump does or says constantly, you will lose credibility if he's only lying (or constrained), as opposed to him losing credibility for continually saying things that would be alarming under other presidents?"
This doesn't justify lies by media figures, who didn't help themselves. But it is a questionable incentive structure.
Trump benefits from comparison to every other politicians' SOP.
Trump says many things that are false. Other major politicians say many things that are false, and very, VERY often lie by omission. Its generally accepted that they don't have a theory to operate under other than "say whatever I need to in order to get re-elected."
Trump is the one whose statements get treated as critical emergencies and as a practical matter people notice when the media keeps declaring emergencies that never actually materialize.
Your credibility for going after Trump relies on you also going after other politicians, including those on your team, with comparable enthusiasm.
I'll remind people that media credibility was heading to the toilet BEFORE Trump arrived on the scene. It dropped below half in 2005.
So as much as people want to make this a problem about Trump, its a problem that plagues our whole political/media complex and it does seem appropriate to point out that obsession with Trump's behavior is probably the result of dysfunctional thought processes. I don't think I've ever actually used the term "Trump Derangement Syndrome" towards anyone, though.
Politicians are driven by survival. But they can also be idealogues. I don't think it's that simple
Maybe because Trump is a path-breaking president? I mean, wasn't that the appeal? He doesn't follow the rules or do the things people usually do. The reaction should differ.
Would most other politicians start off arguing about the size of the crowds at the inauguration? Especially so directly? Like, you can leak some stuff to friendly journalists . Trump just had his press secretary fighting people over it.
Even if normal politicians didn't give a hoot about things like the markets or the stability of the rules-based liberal international order they either pretend or talk about it a certain way. If we're cynical, they believe election depends on it (presumably because the media will tear them apart and the public will assume that someone so uninhibited and lackadaisical in speech would also be so in deed), so they squeeze their statements through a filter of committees and precedent to not scare the hoes.
Trump deliberately broke with that and added his own particular brand of unhinged behavior. That will be notable and alarming and you can't always tell when a notorious bullshitter is bullshitting or if he's really going to double down and whether he'll actually follow through or be worn down. Take tariffs or trade: the same statement in 2016 and 2025 have different chances of being implemented, but a person who thinks it's an awful idea has reason to be alarmed. How do you cover this guy without that element?
Hell, even this year, his policy bounced between tariffing countries and then pulling back. At least a few reasonable people may have believed he wasn't actually going to fight it to the max and was negotiating against for some new USMCA thing.
The media has cut down plenty of figures for dubious reasons. Sometimes it even harms Democrats (why is Al Franken not in politics anymore? It was a silly situation).
There's a long-term problem there. But Trump is also a problem of his own.
The media blew a lot of powder on essentially partisan issues, because the mainstream media has a partisan lean. Immigration restrictionism wasn't a threat to the Republic.
Keeping politics within a certain window was conflated with defending the right to have politics as such, a European fascination that everyone would be better off without.
That was an unforced error. Lying about things like "very fine people" was an unforced error.
But Trump legitimately said and said weird, unhinged things for reasons that people still find hard to divine (I don't think we ever settled on a consensus about his master plan for Canada) and it can't all be put on the media. Maybe Trump is just dysfunctional?
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
It’s been apparent to me for years and years that the vast, vast majority of opponents to Trump & Trumpism have little to no theory of mind when it comes to their political enemies. Sometimes even proudly so, boasting of their ignorance from the rooftops as if it grants them high status.
They fail the intellectual Turing test over and over because of the iron information bubble they’ve built for themselves, and even when they leave the physical bubble to places like this where open Trump support isn’t instantly banned / siloed / throttled / etc, often the bubble still exists in mind. Even now after the walls have come down in social media and the censorship has cooled, even if only relatively.
Many are incapable of simple listening, not even to speak of comprehension. It’s too late, They’re Not Going To Make It, and they have no idea what’s in store for them.
Sad!
This is not much more than a "boo my outgroup" with "vast, vast majority" used as the thinnest of veneers over an absolute generalization.
Undoubtedly there are many people who fit your description, but "My enemies are soooo dumb, and they're all gonna get what's coming to them" isn't adding anything valuable to the discussion. Keep that to your own bubbles.
More options
Context Copy link
This is true but Trump also just has a personality cult.
Trump drags the party to where he is, based on his own idiosyncrasies. It's not just Democrats who failed to fully account for this. The entire Bulwark-class of the GOP are outsiders now for a reason. Many Republicans took stances against Trump only for him to double down and forcibly bend the base and party to him (he was attacked for the Access Hollywood tape in a way that seems far less likely today for people who want to stay in the party).
The number of people who think Canada is an enemy has risen...purely amongst Republicans. If you had asked people before the election about it, they would hardly have cared. I've seen even skeptical media figures (who're presumably more invested in politics) suddenly start caring about Canada and a trade deficit they never mentioned as a meaningful Trump priority beforehand.
Trump flips on TikTok? No issue. How exactly do his stated plans for Gaza fit in with the "no wars, no foreign entanglements" thing? We'll figure it out.
Part of it is that your enemies exist in a bubble but part of it is also that the most mercurial man in politics is the only one with a bully pulpit and ability to swing his base apparently.
That may be partly true but tariffs are something he’s literally been talking about since like the 80s. This particular issue should have been the least surprising of anything he’s ever talked about.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link