• AFK BRB Chocolate@lemmy.world
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    6 months ago

    I remember once of my coworkers saying, “I hear what you’re saying about Trump having issues, but I feel like we need to try something different, and the president doesn’t really have that much power anyway, so there’s not much he can do.”

    Now he passionately hates Trump and tries to avoid any conversation about Trump voters because he was one.

    • Drag it thru daGarden
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      6 months ago

      Honestly, I thought trump running for president was the funniest thing ever. There was no way the idiot would win and at least the political season would have a clown to laugh at. I could not have been so wrong by Nov. I mean he made his announcement for candidacy descending a golden fucking escalator. From there he never stopped being a beyond parody asshole born from corporate America…and to this day I cannot really grasp how he became that popular. Although, I have strong feelings that much of it is born out of reaction to Obama’s presidency

      • AFK BRB Chocolate@lemmy.world
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        6 months ago

        I’m so completely with you. I was maybe a tiny bit less surprised because I have a coworker why travels a lot across middle America and he said he heard a lot of people talking about needing a change and Trump being a “man of the people” (which is objectively insane to say). I agree with you, though: a lot was in reaction to Obama, especially to having a black president.

        • Catoblepas@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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          6 months ago

          It being immediately post-Obama and Trump being the only candidate willing to be insanely overly racist basically sealed him in as the Republican candidate. There is a large portion of white America that could not cope with a black man being president, much less for two terms. They had basically a decade where they were getting more and more riled up by every right wing talk show can you can imagine. Satan himself would have been elected if he dropped a hard R n-bomb on TV.

        • PRUSSIA_x86@lemmy.world
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          6 months ago

          As someone from and currently still living in middle America, Trump winning wasn’t surprising in the least. Part of me still blames the Democrats and “coastal left” in general for not paying enough attention to what has been going on here over the last thirty years. There was a time when these states could have become a bulwark for leftism with the right campaigning and political tactics, but by ignoring and culturally minimizing them it guaranteed that Christo-fascism would take hold. Ultimately though, people’s choices are their own, it’s just not worth it anymore and my husband and I are moving to New England in August and never looking back.

      • Optional@lemmy.worldOP
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        6 months ago

        You really shouldn’t discount the role of russian propagandists and hackers. They were synchronized at the perfect moment in time when the boomers lost they damned minds and started posting insane screeds on the interwebs.

        • Drag it thru daGarden
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          6 months ago

          The democrats did this themselves too. How delusional do you have to be to go all in with HRC. Bernie would have won and that scared the Neolibs and the DNC too much

          • Cryophilia@lemmy.world
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            6 months ago

            Lol yeah no. Bernie didn’t have the numbers. Bernie Bros just only ever speak to other Bernie Bros so they don’t realize that most Dems wanted Hillary. There’s this weird fantasy that Bernie had broad support and he just didn’t.

      • SwingingTheLamp
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        6 months ago

        I keep reading comments from people who cannot grasp how he became popular, so I keep flogging this article: What Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin and Viktor Orbán Understand About Your Brain It’s not precisely on-point, but it’s the only one I’ve seen in the popular media to even start to address the issue.

        TL;DR: It’s not a conscious, rational decision to support him. It’s a hijacking of the fight-or-flight reaction to fear and resist facts.

    • barsquid@lemmy.world
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      6 months ago

      At least he is sane enough to regret it, unlike massive swaths of dimwits across the country.

    • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
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      6 months ago

      Eight years of Obama telling everyone his hands were tied because of Congress and the Courts and the states and public opinion and the need to win the next election cycle.

      Trump comes in like a wrecking ball, giving his goon squad cover to do anything they pleased. And after four years of that, we were convinced Presidents are powerful after all.

      Then Biden steps into office and the President can’t do anything again.

      • AFK BRB Chocolate@lemmy.world
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        6 months ago

        Right, because Republicans only care about getting their way and Democrats try to play by the rules and tradition. It gets pretty frustrating.

        • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
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          6 months ago

          Democrats try to play by the rules

          They hide behind the rules, any time their donors don’t want something to happen.

      • Killer_Tree@sh.itjust.works
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        6 months ago

        If they have no problems with impropriety, blatantly breaking established norms and laws, and getting impeached a couple times, a President can do quite a bit!

        • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
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          6 months ago

          The right to impropriety, blatantly breaking established norms and violating laws is reserved to state governments under Dem Presidents.

          Getting impeached a couple times is still on the table, through.

    • BonesOfTheMoon@lemmy.world
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      6 months ago

      Someone I know who voted for McCain because she said “liberals don’t care enough about individual rights” went psychotic on her Republican friends when he was elected. I asked her if she understood if voting for Sarah Palin laid the ground work for this and she unfriended me.

        • BonesOfTheMoon@lemmy.world
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          6 months ago

          No, but I thought she was obnoxious because she used to talk about how it was ok for pharmacies to not dispense birth control because of religious beliefs, and liberals could damn well just go to another pharmacy, so I can’t really say I’m sorry.

    • assassin_aragorn@lemmy.world
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      6 months ago

      He has my respect. It takes a lot of courage and humility to recognize that you were completely wrong and stand in opposition.

      He shouldn’t about conversations about Trump voters. He should be proud he isn’t one any longer.

      • KeenFlame@feddit.nu
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        6 months ago

        It does take a lot of stupid to ever vote for a clearly destructive president and it just should be a permanent stain on your soul if you do that to others

        • assassin_aragorn@lemmy.world
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          6 months ago

          I don’t disagree, but recognizing your mistakes and trying to undo them is admirable. What is better, to be born good, or to overcome your evil nature?

          He can never undo voting for Trump and it sounds like it still haunts him today. He recognizes he was an idiot for doing so though and wants to fix it. What more can you ask of someone who has already made a mistake?

          • KeenFlame@feddit.nu
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            6 months ago

            I am a champion of giving second chances. It’s just so incredibly stupid to vote for a fully realised psychotic narcissist that I get mad when I think about how it even happens

            • assassin_aragorn@lemmy.world
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              6 months ago

              I getcha. That’s how I feel about women who were formerly pro life and now realize the horrors of abortion being bad. I’ll welcome them to their face and say I’m happy they’ve come around.

              But privately I’m just seething at them. What the fuck did they think would happen?

    • Optional@lemmy.worldOP
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      6 months ago

      Yeah. My co-worker pissed his vote away on johnson because he bought into the Clinton derangement propaganda. Still hated trump, but ensured trump would win. He doesn’t like to talk about it either for some reason.

      • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
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        6 months ago

        he bought into the Clinton derangement propaganda

        Clinton was a bad candidate. Her time at Sec State gave us a slew of foreign policy bungles. Her time in the Senate under Bush Jr was even worse.

        That’s why she got upset by Obama in 2008. People rightfully didn’t trust her to run the country, even from within her own party. She was so unpopular that she nearly lost to a socialist junior senator from Vermont in her second attempt.

        If we could have just left the office vacant from 2016 to 2020, that might have been a better move for the country.