Seriously, what the f*** is keeping Donald Trump in this presidential race?

tetranomos , 1 hour ago (edited 1 hour ago)

1. metacognitive myopia explained why people didn’t/couldn’t update their beliefs about the existence of “weapons of mass destruction etc”.
2. dogwhistling the threat of sexual revolution “comrade kamala” (i.e., he’s implying hypocrisy when he doesn’t understand what lenin’s use of the term “prostitute” meant).
3. playing the fool until you can’t (i.e., making his base feel insightful and “seen” as playfully serious, homophilically/mimetically charismatic; e.g., his base feels like their inference-making is being promoted based on linguistic sympathy through the aura of charisma).
4. from (3) somewhere in his administration they’re letting the would-be “fool” base do the grunt-work and creating cover; see “Optimal Team Formation Under Asymmetric Information”.

Sam_Bass , 1 hour ago

The repuglicans that need to keep him out front so they can shovel their shit out of sight

towerful , 1 hour ago

A technical reason is because he has been a president before

Tikiporch , 2 hours ago

Winning, or perhaps losing, is existential to Donald Trump. If he loses, he will most certainly have to face down his legal issues.

Chocrates , 2 hours ago

Why is he still in the race or why are his supporters?

For him I think it’s obvious. Narcissism and the fact that he has a lot of federal crimes in the courts that he can stop when he is elected.

His supporters are more complicated. He pretty decently still owns the GOP so even if they are getting cold feet, they don’t seem to have a plan to overthrow him. I feel like they are planning on just stonewalling for 4 more years and then try to win the next one and cut the checks to the billionaires then.

I got nothing on his base though. I haven’t understood them for 10 years now. Not sure I ever will.

DarkCloud , 2 hours ago

Part of the checks cut get reinvested in the propaganda that gets more checks cut. It’s a whole corrupt system, as attested to by this list of think tanks backing someone like a Jordan Peterson:

reddit.com/…/jordan_peterson_and_the_think_tanks/

…you can research most rightwing media and personalities and make lists and connections (some if Trump’s for instance run through Roy Cohn, the original red scare and the mafia for instance).

It’s likely the same for some leftwing individuals to. It’s the reproduction of this culture, and the economic loops that perpetuate the toxicities of the current systems.

…and it will keep going long after Trump is gone.

Lenny , 2 hours ago (edited 2 hours ago)

Either lack of critical thinking or driven by greed.

You get the top to vote for you by ensuring they keep and/or increase their riches. That’s done by immediate things like tax cuts, or other long term strategies like cutting environmental protections and reducing the role of gov’t, allowing businesses to rape the planet and abuse their workforce as hard as possible to increase profits.

As for the rest of his supporters, the “MAGA” crowd, they’re kept in line by keeping them stupid, allowing you to more easily feed them propaganda and influence their emotions to fit your needs. Religion teaches them to be subservient from an early age and take a back seat to a higher power, whether that be god or the charismatic talking head at the alter or on tv, all the while leeching as much money from them as possible without leaving them totally destitute. This helps explain why conservatives/religious turds continue to attack early education (less chance of them learning to think critically and question things), school lunch programs (hinder brain development), libraries (access to other ideas/beliefs), sex education and abortions (keeping those accidental pregnancies from being stopped, thereby ensuring the already uneducated and poor families continue to have kids they cannot support financially and give a good education to). It’s all very sinister when you look at the whole picture. It’s why I detest religion, not so much the concept and practicing of religion, but how evil men have turned it into a weapon, and exploiting the very people they pretend to care about. A lot of the evil they push is all done under the guise of religious beliefs/freedoms.

dhork , 7 hours ago

Many Conservatives have been conditioned to stop looking for facts and believe what the TV tells them. Trump admitted as much during the debate. When challenged on the cat thing, he dismissed the reporter’s research and said that he believes it because he saw it on TV. His voters will, too.

Roger Ailes was Nixon’s media consultant during Watergate, and the lesson he learned was that if the media was on Nixon’s side, he could have gotten away with it. Ailes went on to run Fox News. That is no accident.

MimicJar , 5 hours ago

It’s honestly madness.

The former President, running a multi-million dollar campaign, with access to the best information in the world, has nothing to say but rambling “but the TV said, but the TV said!”

Just an absolute fool.

dhork , 5 hours ago

But he’s always been like this. He had the world’s largest intelligence apparatus at its service, but didn’t believe what they said when it contradicted what his buddies Vlad and MBS told him.

MimicJar , 4 hours ago

Oh I agree, you just want to believe that even the world’s stupidest person could eventually learn something. It’s not like this is a case of him being deliberately obtuse, which we often see, he truly believes his own nonsense.

Aviandelight , 4 hours ago

My mother in law who’s a staunch Republican told my husband that she shouldn’t have to learn anything new at her age. This is the type of people we’re dealing with. They are willfully and spitefully ignorant.

ShepherdPie , 3 hours ago (edited 3 hours ago)

People eat that shit up because it’s they same way they’re fed all their propaganda too. They think Trump is just like them and not some NY socialite.

DarkCloud , 3 hours ago

Conservatives who are capable of good quality research, and honest self-reflection barely exist because those two qualities often destroy their affiliations to modern conservativism as it stands today.

So some become neocon-neoliberal hybrids, others become economic Libertarians or Fascists in sheeps clothing, but most, are just as they seem - people who feel betrayed and shut out by the prevailing liberalisms of the day (often personified in the form of an ex-wife, ex-boss, or minority on the street), and it’s something they don’t want to investigate or research honestly.

In fact, most conservatives of this “follower” ilk, are deeply and psychologically invested in their sickness, in maintaining their “honest dogma” as it explains past traumas and the state of their lives in easy and convenient ways.

Get them together in groups and it becomes a self-reenforcing system. Self-propagating. It’s a self-sustaining set of problems and problem mindsets.

Some for conspiracy theorists, gets to be a real problem when they get a platform too.

tiefling , 7 hours ago (edited 7 hours ago)

It’s simple. Bigotry and greed. Trump plays to people’s fears that “others” will soon have the same rights they do while also assuring his rich handlers that he will make them richer. He’s convinced the poor to cut off their nose to spite their face.

Conservatism is a mental illness, it can’t be defeated with logic and reasoning

InternetCitizen2 , 7 hours ago

it can’t be defeated with logic and reasoning

YouTube channel Knowing Better made a video about the Seventh Day Adventist. Basically the same conclusion.

BackOnMyBS , 6 hours ago

Found it! It’s almost 3 hrs long, so you know what that means: a glass of wine, your favorite easy chair, and of course, this YouTube video streaming on your home system. So, go on, and indulge yourself. That’s right, kick off your shoes, put your feet up, lean back and just enjoy the rational documentary. After all, knowledge soothes even the savage lemming.

Banichan , 6 hours ago

Offspring?

BackOnMyBS , 6 hours ago

Yeppers, peppers! 🫑

tburkhol , 6 hours ago

Have an updoot, Offspring-fan.

Zachariah , 4 hours ago

Have an updoot, recognizer of Offspring-fans.

DogPeePoo , 6 hours ago (edited 4 hours ago)

FOX “News” has effectively divided, conditioned and massaged Republicans for decades to regurgitate the message disseminated by Rupert Murdoch through their favorite flavor talking heads (Bill O’Reilly, Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham, and more recently Greg Gutfeld and Jesse Watters).

They went from ‘Russia bad’ in the 1980’s to ‘Russia good’ and ‘America had it wrong’. The viewers lack critical thought under scrutiny and regurgitate the talking points of their favorite broadcasters.

shalafi , 4 hours ago (edited 4 hours ago)

Yep, I lay the majority of our political insanity on Fox’s door. Look, we all know they’re the GOP’s propaganda arm, but how many of you have actually watched a good bit?

I was stuck with a week of it during the Snowden revelations. In the space of an entire week, I didn’t hear a single word on what was worldwide news. Stunning, and I still can’t explain it, but it happened. Point being, a lot of the lies are in what they don’t say. Early afternoon of 01/06, not a blip on the website. (Which BTW, is far more sane than the TV version.) I checked the wayback machine and FOx reported nothing until hours after kick off. I presume they prayed it would blow over or at least die down. Imagine the spin control behind the scenes! Hell, even Tucker Carlson pleased with Trump to make a sane statement and cut it off.

After hearing “Obama” thousands of times, over and over and over, I was sick of him! The whole time my friend’s step-mom was screaming at the screen, “The KKK ought to do their got damned JOB!” These people sat in their armchairs 24/7 (never saw them go to their bedroom), smoking weed and watching nothing but Fox. We tried to put on a movie or another show exactly twice and it promptly got switched back.

One time I was stuck with Fox at the doctor’s office, some kind of round-table show going on. A metric showing black people doing better under the Obama administration came up, something about pay I think. One of the hosts slams his fist of the table and shouted, “Obama’s a RACIST!” Constantly listen to crap like that and you are, eventually, getting brainwashed.

DarkCloud , 3 hours ago

It’s not conservativism, conservativism has been captured by think tanks funded by oil and banking billionaires. They’re framed conservativism, gutted it, and replaced its insides with Libertarianism (and sometimes technocratic fascism), as that’s what gives them the lowest taxes, the most corporate welfare, union busting capabilities, and defends their wealth accumulation most efficiently.

They’re not good members of society, this is demonstrated in Trump’s fascism (which is based on Roy Cohn’s fascism). It seeks to destroy society, the nation, and government.

Emerald , 3 hours ago

Constantly attacks marginalized groups.

That’s a feature, not a bug

EdvinYazbekinstein , 3 hours ago

There’s a lot of reasons people have already mentioned, but I’ll add this.

Your applying logic and reasoning to people who are illogical and unreasonable…

radix , 7 hours ago

If the race were between The Literal Devil ® and Jesus Christ (D), the vote total would be 45%-55% just based on the letter they choose to run after their name.

Policy doesn’t matter when people base their entire personality on their political party identification.

dhork , 7 hours ago

Jesus was a socialist Jew. We had one of those run for President, too, but couldn’t make it past the Democratic primary.

MeekerThanBeaker , 7 hours ago

But see how evil he looks…

/s

Birdy Sanders

I_Has_A_Hat , 6 hours ago

If you completely forget everything about Bernie; who he is, what he’s done, how he speaks, everything; he does look like a CEO who would lay off half his staff for a discount on a sandwich. But thats more because he’s an old white guy in a suit and they all look like that

Feathercrown , 6 hours ago

He has joyful eyes

OpenStars , 6 hours ago

Wanting us to become fiscally responsible, like not get into new wars into we’ve paid off previous ones? i.e. pay less money to the rich via the Military Industrial complex?

Wanting to tax the wealthy?

Wanting to redistribute money to take care of the poor?

Yeah, obviously evil indeed 😂 (from the POV of “I got mine, now I’m pulling up the ladder🪜”).

HeyThisIsntTheYMCA , 5 hours ago

needs more puppies and rainbows

vaxhax , 5 hours ago

He got my first D primary vote… but NOT MY LAST.

lath , 6 hours ago

Jesus is a Mexican name. Check mate.

dwemthy , 5 hours ago

Like the real Jesus would run as a Democrat. At least with the Devil you know where you stand! /s

OlinOfTheHillPeople , 5 hours ago

Closer to 50/50 with the electoral college.

Today , 3 hours ago

And it pisses me off that people will vote for the dipshit because he’s an R, but i would vote for a half-dead horny toad on the other side.

circuitfarmer , 4 hours ago

At one time it would have sounded like a conspiracy theory, but you don’t get here without a massive disinformation campaign.

Trump’s supporters have been so programmed to accept everything he says at face value or, in some cases, just to ignore what he actually said in favor of the party’s updated spin. In all cases, they believe it is impossible that he could do any wrong, so any semblance of incongruity or poor leadership or any negative aspect of Trump at all must be due to lies of his opponents – even if that means the entire system would have to be rigged against him to an extremely unlikely degree.

The last time the world saw these tactics used to such an extreme extent and with such success required a widespread campaign of so-called “denazification” after a very prolonged war.

DarkCloud , 3 hours ago

The left have been asleep at the wheel since 2014 (this is the smaller of the two problems), and centrist neoliberals will not wake up because they’re inculcated into the systems that keep them asleep at the wheel (this is the larger of the two problems, and likely includes establishment leftists like Kamala).

It’s the problems of “the one dimensional man” where we can’t even think outside of the systems we know to be the problem… and most people don’t even make any serious efforts to try to.

barsquid , 5 hours ago

In 2010 a group of unelected theocrats decided that billionaires can put however much money they want into propaganda. That’s on top of the most widely watched media in the nation already being a billionaire’s propaganda.

They have used this power to terrify their voting base into action. Their voting base are fear-addicted racists who willingly allowed themselves to be brainwashed.

ivanafterall , 3 hours ago

Yep. There were literal meetings on Capitol Hill between Republicans and billionaires planning to buy the failing newspapers for more propaganda reach. I was invited and my then-boss attended.

Blackout , 6 hours ago

Hatred of brown people and Adderall

ivanafterall , 2 hours ago

1. Yes, 2. Huh?

hperrin , 3 hours ago

Racism and cult mentality.