Seriously, they are both former military, my dad was in for like 30 years, how do they like the drunk secretary? I get that he saw combat, but being in combat doesn’t automatically make you qualified for… well anything except therapy and medical care.
I’ve got a former military buddy who is all about Pete because “he’s not gonna let the fatties and the faggots fuck up our military anymore.”
Nevermind that the navy has been called gay since their inception, or that muhreens have zero self discipline outside of a military situation, or that the air force has run more drug than most cartels, it’s the “fatties and faggots” that are the problem.
I always knew my buddy was dumb, but it took that conversation for me to figure out that it went all the way down to the core of who he was as a person.
I’ve got a couple dumb friends/colleagues too but just change the subject when they mention politics
Yeah, lot of bigots are self aware enough to try to hide their hatred and point to other things when it comes to making what they support more palatable to those who might not be. They aren’t complete idiots like some immediately assume which is why they have been underestimated by the opposite side and gained such huge traction and seen increasing success.
Even the dumb ones don’t try to show the full extent of the bigotry, since they know there are still some in society who resist such ideologies despite growing embracement of it.
I mean how does theoreticallyconservative small government folk support a real estate trust fund baby who openly take bribes, is building himself a castle, and floods the streets with masked, unmarked, paramilitary. Oh and constantly breaks the laws of the land put out by the forefathers along with a whole ton of other laws?
Rapes little girls too.
I mean they can choose to not believe that but trump has them make viral videos of his goon squad. Sure its edited to make them look tough I guess but its hard to disbelieve they are there and maybe just maybe look at the first person cell phone videos that are all around showing how aweful they are.
Your parents are siblings, right?
I’m guessing they consume a lot of Fox News or similar? Propaganda works.
There’s a good chance that they’re stupid and hateful
Two character traits that are often celebrated in 'Murica rather than being condemned
they are synergy with each other, hateful people are often very stupid people.
Because he’s ever so pretty?
It’s easy to win over weak people.
30 years in the military and a shitty person? Man that is so weird, how could it be?
They watched him on FOXnews, thought he was “cute”, about like a Sajak or a Kardashian. So why not put him in charge of the world’s most lethal military?
Party of suckers and losers.
Your parents are bad people
It’s possible.
I’m more likely to say anyone who writes others off as bad people from a 1 dimensional, 3rd party anecdote is not an exemplar of “good people”. But that’s just me.
I guarantee you, they’re bad people who support this guy because they believe he will protect or further their wealth somehow.
Well, bad the way Edmund Povensie was bad while under the guile of the White Witch, or the way the Little Mermaid was bad (i.e. poor ) at seeing through the sea hag’s hard sell.
No he’s a pretty blatant fascist, and they’re goddamn adults, not literal children against a literal witch
My dad’s a literal rocket scientist (just recently retired from JPL) and also a devout MAGA disciple and FOX News viewer. Human beings are just not sophisticated enough to deal with a trillion-dollar propaganda machine on their own. I don’t know what the solution is, and we don’t seem to have one so far, except to FO after the viewership FAs and elects autocrats and billionaire bro oligarchies into power.
Some of us are able to acquire electoral savvy and vote defensively, but a lot of us are too preoccupied or too exhausted from work and vote on vibes, to dire consequence.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wernher_von_Braun
Or sometimes engineers are fucking fascists because they like fascism
I feel ya with this, but to paint this as black and white is to miss important nuance.
They’re deluded. As such, it’s an error to see them as evil in the same way that it is to see a person that’s high on meth and dangerous or schizophrenic and hostile as being evil.
They’re no less dangerous, don’t get me wrong, but to see them as bad is, I think, a critical misunderstanding of what’s going on here that leads people to think like this.
I didn’t say evil, I said bad people.
If propaganda can convince you to hate people just because of where they’re from, you’re not a good person.
Now, if you realize you were a bad person and work on being a good person, you can become one. If you know what you’re doing is bad and have no desire to change, then you’re evil.
And none of those are immutable qualities.
Yeah you’re right. I shouldn’t have used the word evil.
I would urge you to examine how propaganda has affected everyone.
Like other posters have said, probably the best choice OP can make is to actually talk to them and maybe not use lemmy for answers.
At this point, I’m not seeing much daylight between the two.
Yeah. It’s hard. It’s been hard for me too.
I’m teaching my kids as I learn for myself; it’s critically important that you not dehumanize people and seek understanding and strive to be compassionate.
I’ve also known people that have voted for trump 1st term to be good people for long enough that I see it as valuable to deeply interrogate the process by which they came to be such as they are now. For me, at least, it feels lazy and dishonest to flatly dismiss them as bad. Even trump 2 voters, I can see that they, nearly all, were submerged in a propaganda machine designed to break people.
Are some of them sociopathic monsters? You bet! Society needs protected from them.
I see the groupthink on both sides as the most dangerous thing though. The manipulation (of all sides) as the enemy. The dismissal of human life as the root problem. Most especially when profit is placed over people, but also when it’s done by either side.
My concern is that dehumanization plays into their hands and I see the dehumanization as a direct path to violent conflict. They want violence because it would free them to use the insurrection act as a means to their ends.
So, to bring it full circle, seeing them as bad and evil and unworthy of compassion or even dialogue plays directly into their hands.
Not bad per se, more very misinformed and very influenced dare I say manipulated, just sad yeah
I don’t make a distinction between the two. If you make a mistake, you made a mistake. If you keep making mistakes, and never learn from them, and insist that you don’t make mistakes then you are a bad person.
These are not children without life experience, they are adults who have seen, and experienced, and learned, and been corrected, and have still chosen evil.
easy. he’s a white republican man.
Your parents are not nice people. It happens, my parents were not nice people.
i have a bro thats leaning joe rogean, trump alot, just because hes consuming alot mma material, plus is those typical gymbros.
My parents care on the micro level, where it applies to people they directly know, but have no ability to show empathy on the macro level and it breaks my heart.
dude even Dick Cheney clears that bar
god this feels so accurate
The modern “conservative”. So self-centered that they only give a shit about something when it affects them. They wear this lack of empathy as a badge of honor.
They’re shitty people
Are they white? Do they have an aversion to non-white people? Do they make enough money to materially benefit from the Trump era tax policies? Yes to any 2 and you’ve got an answer, no to all 3 and I’m as stumped as you are.
