ndawg

He says things that piss off liberals. That’s about it.

Yes, and I hope my post didn't come across that way. Trump and his supporters have had zero psychological development past early adolescence. They're morons, but they like a lot of the same things. For example, engaging in violence and then blaming the victim. (i.e. DARVO) Thus, regardless of whether they actually believe these preposterous absurdities, I believe they enjoy them, and can't wait to employ them. And ultimately, I think we'll be the fools in the end if we fixate on how stupid anyone would have to be to believe these ridiculous things Trump says. It's far more useful for us to consider that their support for what Putin is doing is a tell that they'd like to also do the same thing.

Trump supporters love to support outlandish, preposterous statements, and for good reason. The rest of us balk at them, and wonder, "how could anyone be so stupid as to believe this bullshit?" It's not about "truth." It's never been about truth. What Trump is doing with this "peacekeepers" bit is speaking in a code. It's a very crude code, of course, but it gets the job done. Allow me to break the code: "It's okay to engage in violent offenses if you claim that it is the victim who is in fact violent, and you're violating them to keep the peace." Trump's supporters want to engage in violence. When it comes to harming people, specifically people of color, like the ones south of our border, these people are super down. Trump knows this and does his best to let them know he's got their violent interests in mind whenever he can. So when they share Trump's support for Putin's "peacekeeping" initiative, they're signalling to one another their mutual desire to apply this same rationale to justify their violence. They love the idea, for instance, of showing up to polls in minority communities just to brandish their guns menacingly. "Just doing my patriotic duty to protect the elections," they'll say, in another form of this same code. Here's another statement that seems preposterous to all of us evaluating through the lens of truth: "Jan 6th was legitimate political discourse." It's a code. Again, nothing sophisticated -- I promise there are no laser beams shooting out of my eyes. It's just an in-crowd's shared use of language by to deliberately distort the truth to anyone from the outside looking in. They're going to use violence to get what they want, and then they're going to use their code language to provide cover and give it a veneer of normalcy. Just like Putin is doing now. So Trump isn't just polishing Putin's knob here. Neither is Tucker Carlson. This isn't just about these people supporting Putin/Russia. This is also about everyone on board the Trump train uniting around the blueprint for how they're going to try to get away with violence in the United States. Trump has taken everything he's learned in five decades of getting away with white collar crimes, and wrapped it all in a gift for his army of ignorant, hateful idiots. Perfectly cool. Perfectly normal.

You realize that you're admitting that your position is indefensible here, right? When all you feel you need to do to justify your position is simply cite your biased read of public sentiment on a message board five years ago, you have absolutely nothing. Zilch. Your position doesn't stand on its own, it depends on a subjective characterization of the opinions of others. I can't even imagine what it'd be like to be so intellectually unfit that I thought I could trot out my subjective interpretation of message board sentiment as a defense for my own point of view.

And this sort of rhetorical concession shouldn't even be needed if we were having a discussion with someone in good faith. The real world outcomes of continuing to support the GOP are obvious. Support for the GOP amounts to a desire to end of the Great Experiment altogether - even if you "agree" with their "ideas."

My favorite part about this is how Incredulity thought, “finally after years of pretending to ignore the libtards reminding me of the utter moral bankruptcy of my party on a daily basis, now I finally have an excuse to go on the attack again.” This is it, folks. This is his moment. Finally, for a brief period of time, there’s a news cycle that conservatives like him believe actually reclaims the intellectual and moral high ground they lost when they sold their souls to the fat orange bastard. How adorable.

This is the core of it, to me. Projection of guilt. America sent three white men to the moon in 1969. There is room in most of our minds for the tension between two notions at odds with one another — that the mission was a legitimate American triumph, and that women and people of color faced tremendous and unfair obstacles if they wanted to participate in that endeavor. This is just one example of our complex history where most of us see the bad and the good. Trumpkins, on the other hand, cannot hold intellectual tension in their minds. They need to feel absolute unambiguous certainty, even if that means they have to resort to replacing that tension with utter contradictions. Contradictions are other people’s problems, not theirs. So, they’ll cry reverse racism all day, and then they’ll go edit out all the racism out of our history books. They just want to live in a world that unwaveringly reveres them. To admit to a single flaw would shatter their entire fantasy. We are seeing as much racism as we saw in the 50s, only now the white supremacists as a group have learned how to operate covertly as a group while maintaining plausible deniability for each individual — and that denial has sustained itself for so long that most of the supremacists don’t even recognize which side they’re on. All that comes out of their mouths is pure projection, the guilt of the subconscious mind. It’s fucking sick.

Identity can be a real bitch.

Right above this post, @TwiceHorn asked you some legitimate questions. Why don't you direct your attention to the posters here who are providing you the "real discussion" you're seeking?

To be more specific, I think he's someone who has never developed any measure of self awareness. When he gets an impulse telling him, "hey this chart makes Biden look bad, I'm gonna go post it on Surlyhorns," most of us in that same circumstance would stop and ask ourselves, "wait, I realize that I'm highly motivated to agree with the inference that this chart begs me to make. Maybe I should look it over once more before sharing it triumphantly."

A friend of a friend whose family manages a huge equity fund told me once that all the hedge funds recruit self professed Marxists out of school because they have the most accurate understanding of how capitalism actually works in the real world. Not fully sure if it’s an exaggeration, of course, but I find it amusing.

I find it entirely unsurprising. Trump wants to annihilate anyone who opposes him. His base wants to annihilate the left. Since Trump is a Republican, they both want the exact same thing, and will remain in perfect alignment in perpetuity. That's it. That's all there is to it. I personally don't even think Republican voters spend much time future tripping about gaining permanent control of our federal government. That's a consequence of annihilating the left, and these people don't think about consequences. They have absolute constancy of purpose on winning the war against the left. Nothing else is a priority to them. When these people say "elite," they mean the left. Trump is not an elite to them, because he's not part of the left. If you press them on this contradiction, they'll come up with a bullshit non sequitur like "he's of their class, but he's one of us." They're utterly uninterested in having a rational, internally consistent world view. They want to beat the left into submission. Notice how Trump uses terms like RINO and "gone woke" to describe Republicans who stand up to him. Trump categorizes every Republican who pushes back against Trump as now part of the left. Now Liz Cheney is on the "left' to them. Why? Because they include her in the category of people whose power and influence they wish to completely annihilate. Trump's base is happy to let Trump decide who he wants to expel from their ranks, because he's giving them the war they want. This is why there are really only two outcomes that are possible. Blood, or the left surrendering. *phew* okay I need to get back to work.

Based on 2020’s results, how do you figure the votes aren’t there among the “more standard Republican types and independents?” There is some conjecture at play either way, because we don’t know how these voters responded to Jan 6, but I think it’s a safer bet to count people who voted for Trump over Biden 2020 as Trump voters in 2024.

Ted Cruz, the guy who casually mentioned a few days ago that, yeah, if the GOP wins the house in 2022, they'll probably go ahead and impeach Biden. For something. Whatever it is. Yeah, that Ted Cruz.

I don't tend find the psychology of Trumpers all that complicated when I encounter it. We live in a time where people who don't ever grow up out of adolescence are still inculcated with enough examples of adulthood from television and movies that they more or less develop the ability to act the part. So, their acting job is sufficient to convince most of us that they are "normal" adults, and we're all busy with our own lives so we don't pay much attention anyways. But behind the scenes, they spend their entire adult lives hanging on to the adolescent view of themselves as the center of the universe. When a conspiracy fantasy comes along that offers them a once in a lifetime role of being a soldier in an army that's saving "western civilization," it presents their ego with a good enough and more importantly *realistic* opportunity to be special and noble that they're happy to share center stage with everyone else who is in the same boat as them. They're children in grown up bodies. But, I've only seen a few handful, so I could obviously be wildly extrapolating from a small sample set...

It's such a stunning bit of accidental self ownage, too. I look at that poster and I see 10 guys all ready to sniff the sphincter of greatness, because they know what greatness takes.

It really seems like you can boil down the modern GOP to one basic underlying premise: all of the people who can actually do any work are long gone, so the only position they can feasibly take on literally any systemic issue is inaction. They're not even good at rationalizing inaction anymore; they just repeat their tired covers of the same old hits that were written by the last generation of conservatives, like "the free market can fix it!" and "the left is just using the issue to scare you in to their agenda!" The fact that they are sent to Washington to pose as lawmakers in this bullshit theater does mean they need to offer the public something vaguely resembling an agenda they actually intend to accomplish. Bigotry seems to be the only agenda that any pack of idiots can successfully deliver, which I think explains its appeal to them. These narcissists deny climate change instinctually because their underdeveloped psyches can't actually solve problems. Their bigotry stems from their incompetence... among other things, of course, such as their envy of anyone who is actually successful in life without having to pretend.

True, but the “okay, so this thread got bumped and now everyone is quoting the guy I ignored omg what stupid shit did he say this time” vibe is real here.

I'm a sucker for stories about psychologically broken people. In particular, I found the co-dependence of the two characters to be really fascinating. It's wasn't just about a guy being bamboozled by his therapist. In the end, it was about two people who mutually supplied something different to one another, that made the other whole. And the lack of self-awareness of Dr. Ike was really well done... he doesn't ever show any signs of being aware of his own narcissism. His rage comes infrequently and always quickly dissipates, and you get the sense that because he's so good at manipulating, he seldom really needs to really leverage his nasty side, and so he likely isn't even aware he has one. You can really believe that his internal dialog, for the most part, is that of an upstanding therapist: thoughtful, observant, and genuinely compassionate. I have to give Paul Rudd props for being able to shift his expression subtly and effortlessly whenever his focus diverts to his vices. It's easy to hate the guy, but the uncomfortable truth is that we all have our moments, and I think what made the show work is that as crazy as the events that unfold really are, we can still see ourselves in these crazy characters.

So, Deming’s ghost for WR coach? Wonder if he can be a volume recruiter, too.

This brings to mind Asimov's famous quote:

That first paragraph sort of implies that people are consciously thinking about the ramifications of their actions. I don't think that's the case. Imagine, for a second, that Trump summoned the GOP's leadership to a private meeting in secret. Now imagine he told them he will sink the party -- something he absolutely has shown a willingness to do -- if they don't make sure he "gets the votes he needs" when he runs in 2024. What would the GOP do? Faced with a choice between losing their power, and giving in to Trump's demands for an engineered electoral victory in 2024, I pinky-swear-promise that the broader consequences would not factor in to those people's decision. And hypothetical secret meetings aside, Trump has taken every opportunity to present that dilemma to the GOP. Get him the votes, or he will destroy it all. He's actually done it all in plain view of the public, it's just been too shocking for most people to accept, so they reassured themselves. "It can't be this bad." It's every bit that bad. American democracy is not being destroyed by design. It's crumbling because it's moral foundation has eroded. The character and integrity needed to sustain its structure is gone. You saw it not only with every GOP vote against both impeaching and removing Trump, but also the way the GOP representatives conducted themselves during the investigation proceedings. You saw it with the way that their propagandist news outlets actively distorted and obstructed their audience's view of the truth.

I’ll throw in my prediction for how the right explains Trump’s Epstein flight. JFK Jr was actually the pilot, and he and Trump were having a secret “mile high” meeting over the Atlantic, where they were planning a big event that timed Jr’s return to the spotlight with a batch of top secret arrests of Dems and high ranking RINOs. Unfortunately, som dem high ups (led by Schiff) caught the scent, so Trump played 4D chess and laid down this smokescreen, including doctored images of Trump with Epstein, to throw the left off their trail.

American Christianity: “Jesus died on the cross to own the libtards.”

Wait, everyone knows that the basic tenets of firearm safety are inapplicable to an actor using a firearm prop, right? Right?