"Democrats are fueled by hate, anger, intolerance, and violence. Thank God for Republican sanity, civility and tolerance. Democrats will rue the day they brought assassination, lawfare, banning presidential candidates, and anti-American politics to the forefront."Email from a Trump-supporter this week
I learn by hearing from Trump supporters.
My correspondent writes that Republicans are sane, civil and tolerant, in contrast to Democrats.
In the view of Trump supporters, they are the little guys and victims in the great national political drama. The entire culture -- the "establishment" -- consisting of the global economy, the mainstream news, TV and Hollywood, the system of education top to bottom, plus the levers of government -- the whole shebang -- are part of Democratic-controlled groupthink.
That establishment groupthink oppression is bi-partisan, which is why Trump needed to make a wholesale change in the GOP. I attended a GOP convention in New Hampshire in October of 2023, when the GOP nomination was up for grabs. I saw all the candidates up close and listened to a broad set of GOP activists. Theoretically, candidates like Mike Pence, Nikki Haley, and Chris Christie were viable alternatives to Trump -- Trump without the warts. Not so.
Pence is not an understudy to Trump. He was not the cleaned-up, noncriminal, non-graft, non-adulterous, non-insurrectionist, Christian version of Trump. Pence is the opposite of Trump.
Pence, along with Reagan, both Bush presidents, Dole, McCain, and Romney, are the old establishment, the America that isn't great, the one that paid unnecessary respect to the wrong people. The old GOP leaders accepted laws and norms. That defined "conservatism." Trump is different. Trump is a rebel. He smashes those laws and norms because they were tacitly part of the oppression. The old order didn't protect and reward normal White guys and their wives, good Christians.
Trump is stomping on the symbols and policies of the old order. Stop wind and solar projects. Erase monuments to civil rights. Fire Black leaders in government, the military, and the universities. Cancel medical research grants. Question vaccinations. Stop the slow-motion, checks-and-balances process-dominated government. The establishment respected the wrong people: foreigners and immigrants. It respected diversity, and "diversity" is just part of the groupthink that benefits everyone except people like my correspondent.
Isn't Trump a world-class provocateur, a name-calling, divisive leader? Isn't he the prime example of un-civil intolerance? In a Trump-supporter's mind, not at all. He didn't really summon people to D.C. to overturn an election and incite a violent riot. He didn't really grope women, defame women, lie to banks, pay hush money, take papers home and hide them and lie about hiding them, or conspire to replace electors with fake ones. Those things didn't happen. People say that only because he was being picked on by the establishment and its fake-media tool. Whatever he did was just self defense from the oppressors, not wrong, and therefore not real.
Republicans' sharp rejection of Mike Pence is the best "tell." Pence is a "good boy." Trump opposes the good boys. And since the good boys are oppressors, Trump is sane, civil, and tolerant when resisting them.
Are things really that terrible and oppressive for my correspondent? Where's the beef?
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| From the 1976 movie "Network": "I don't have to tell you things are bad. Everyone knows things are bad. . . . I'm mad as hell and I'mnot going to take it anymore." |
He does have a grievance. He is a White male from rural southern Oregon. A backwater. The world is passing these places by. They vote bright red. It isn't just Hillary Clinton who called him deplorable. Modern sensibilities about who is a legitimate, respected American are changing out from under him. The world is passing him by, too.
[Note: I had a guest post last week from Alan DeBoer, a local businessman, former mayor and state senator, and civic philanthropist. With help from ChatGPT, he wrote describing resentment of elites that he thought explained populist Trumpism. But, to avoid confusion or conflation of the two posts, let me note that the correspondent I quote today is not Alan DeBoer.]
[Note: To get daily delivery of this blog to your email go to: https://petersage.substack.com. Subscribe. Don't pay. The blog is free and always will be.]
14 comments:
The criminal thinking “Victim Stance” seems in play on this analysis. It is the other people, thing that is at fault, not them. Trump and his supporters operate from this position as do many prison inmates. It is viewed as a very unhealthy viewpoint in terms of rehabilitation.
The only thing that will change this viewpoint is consequences.
Recent events only highlight our nation's epidemic of mental illness. THE AMPED UP RHETORIC IS A DESPERATE ATTEMPT TO DISTRACT, ONCE AGAIN, FROM THE EPSTEIN SCANDAL. THE VICTIMS HAVE FOUND THEIR VOICE AND THE PRESS ARE UNCOVERING ALL OF MAXWELL'S LIES THAT EARNED HER A CUSHY CELL. THIS ISN'T GOING AWAY. A TIPPING POINT IS FAST APPROACHING.
Look at the blizzard of denigration, scorn, and contempt directed at white males by liberal mainstream culture.
Look at how dad is always portrayed as a clueless fool in mainstream videos and movies. Look at the use of the phrase “toxic masculinity“ and ask yourself if there would ever be a phrase like “toxic femininity” or “toxic blackness.“
Look at who is the target for reverse discrimination in affirmative action policies.
“We are crapping all over you because history,” they say. If you are guilt-ridden enough, you accept the abuse. If you are more psychologically healthy than that, you raise the middle finger.
Trump is a giant orange middle finger.
(And for those of you wondering, I have never voted for Trump. He’s too random and irresponsible for my taste. But I understand the feeling)
Ah yes, the giant orange fraud, racist, traitor, sex abuser and pathological liar. If I could understand the appeal, I'd be worried
It's really funny that the American people ...which you call "duh Right" have been all over this for most of a decade now, and you just heard of it 5 minutes ago, and now your obsessed.
Little too little, little too late
Have you come to any conclusion as to whether COVID came from the WUHAN LAB?? .... or is that just BATshit crazy?
The fact that you don’t understand the appeal should worry you more. Because, to quote Bob Dylan, you know that something’s happening here, but you don’t know what it is, do you, Mr. Woke?
Covid came from the Wuhan lab? Shut up, racist! 😀
That's Right, Mikey, don't you just HATE HIM? Don't you just HATE All who voted for him. Stoke that HATE buddy...
I guess 'validation' is the gold coin of the realm these days. Who knew? Not me. But I'm learning.
Males in dresses seek validation from women, demanding we pretend they are women just like us. It's the reason they don't want to use a 'Gender Neutral' single-user toilet, as provided for them at the Capitol, but instead staged a male invasion of the Ladies room. Filmed for Tiktok, of course.
I don't know that I'm seeking validation, but I can say that I'm fed up to the eye-teeth with the Be Kind crowd telling me I must accept mixed-sex locker rooms, while at the same time they've created a new slur just for white women. I'm a Karen now, courtesy of the professionally kind and tolerant.
I've just watched a TikTok video of a white man chastising another liberal commenter for crying over the death of Charlie Kirk. The white man talks about being part of a marginalized group, out here living it every day -- this white man has assigned himself as marginalized and oppressed because he grew his hair out and put on a dress. This is a g**da##n farce. But it is the serious position of the liberal left.
A white man can shed his privilege and oppressor status by putting on lipstick. See, for example, Charlotte Clymer, liberal influencer. Clymer got a working-class restaurant manager fired for asking Clymer to use the Men's room. Then the coastal elitists wonder why the working class doesn't vote for the political party that adores Clymer. The coastal elite have invented one more way for ordinary people to get fired from their jobs.
Trumpers and groypers have adopted all the oppressor/oppressed lingo and made it their own. Why should this be a surprise?
Among Americans below age 25, whites are no longer a majority. But if people take note of the fact that America is becoming a white minority country, they are called Nazis and fascists and conspiracy theorists. Kinda guaranteed to make people feel like a beleaguered minority.
I will note that I've never voted for Trump; he's a con man who steals from his workers and contractors and that is lower than slimemold behavior in my book.
The Irish and the Italians were once looked down upon and discriminated against. Now they are “white.“
Pretty soon, Hispanics are going to turn just as white, and the left’s dreams of demographic triumph over America will once again be stymied.
👍🇺🇸‼️
No hate here; just love of country. I hate seeing my democratic republic degenerating into autocracy.
The conspiracy theorists are the dimwits who swallow nonsense like the Great Replacement theory and want to make America white again. Trump's working on it.
Sorry to put you on the spot there Mr. Trigoboff as you are one of the few even keeled comentors to Peters unbalanced neurotic propaganda against the "other", but your "I don't know" post always bugged me because you are smarter than that, especially since we all know the truth now. Truth ultimately always comes to Light. It's truly eye opening when you see all who hiss and scurry from the light.
And to My little pal Mike, Now you admit that we are a REPUBLIC. Thats a start.
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