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this post was submitted on 03 Aug 2023
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As a conservative, this is mind boggling to me. In my head I think it's just a far right crazy conspiracy theory, but between this and the huge amount of support trump gets, I'm just baffled. I'm on the west coast, and none of my friends or family still support Trump or are election deniers.
Maybe the mid west republicans are just 100% trumpers? It's wild.
MAGA is basically like a religion out here. They avoid any information that contradicts their belief system and gravitate towards media that reaffirms it. The constant drumbeat of whataboutism coming from trump, fox news, AM radio, etc really has poisoned their brains. Support of trump, embrace of his lies, and hatred of his "enemies", has become their entire identity.
Back when Trump was President, a friend of mine (who's a Trump supporter) was arguing with me about whether or not Trump said something.
I did what I always did and checked Google. I quickly found a video of Trump saying the thing and sent it to my friend. He replied that it was fake news.
My friend wasn't claiming that the video was actually faked or taken out of context. Instead, he was saying that it was fake news because it was hosted on CNN's servers. He didn't care what the content was, just whether it was on a right wing outlet's server or not.
You could have Trump come out and say it to him directly and he wouldn't believe it anyways. Your friend chooses to believe what they believe the way a fanatic believes in their delusions. It only serves to reaffirm their belief structure, and nothing else. If Trump pulled a 180 tomorrow, these people would simply claim that he has been brainwashed or that he's a paid imposter, or anything else.
This isn't so much a mystery, but more of a reaping of what was sown.
Right Wing media sources such as Breitbart and Fox News, have been nurturing many lines of thought, mostly in order to fire up the conservative base, versus providing useful information.
When you want your base to be an angry mob, and spend considerable resources to keep them angry, ill informed, but likely to vote, this is what you get.
This is a well trained response.
In light of seeing your fellow conservatives move farther right (and thus, kinda push the definition of the body of conservative beliefs farther right), on what grounds do you still identify as conservative? What does being a conservative mean to you?
They love him in the southeast. I'm in VA which is purple and not even in a rural area, and he has tons of support here.
I was behind a truck the other day with a decal covering the back window stating the following:
"Me and my homies would have been stacking bodies by now. -- George Washington"
They're fucking crazy and they're everywhere around here. It makes my blood boil.
Even just north of y'all in Western MD where I recently vacated from, there are plenty of nutters. MD is seen as a pretty blue state but that's mostly just Baltimore and Montgomery County balancing out the crazy in the rest of the state. The more rural parts of the state are still full to the brim of your typical Trump wackos.
I suspect conservative people like yourself no longer identifying as Republican may be a factor.
I have a couple former republican friends who are still very conservative, but aren't trumpers and voted libertarian or independent last election.
They do still have a bit of distrust around Jan 6th and criminal allegations because, well, they avoid looking into them deeper, so don't know who to trust. But they're not foaming at the mouth.
It's not just a mid-west thing. I'm in the PNW and I've yet to meet a Never Trumper republican.
Yup,
Strangest thing to me is that I know quite a few Asians that immigrated here that are super Trumpers. I just can't even grasp how.
Also, interestingly enough, I also happen to work in a very right leaning field, and the majority of the republicans here have been very quiet since the Jan 6 incident. There was only one who was pretty outspoken about it, and he quit recently.
Just based on Queens, NY, I think the republicans in NYC capitalized on some of the things Democrats “beat around the bush” or avoided talking about. The Asian American population in NY is very anti-crime, and the dems perceived inaction on Anti-Asian Hate created an opening some I think local republicans capitalized on. Even the current mayor is a former cop.
Now, how they got to be die-hard Trumpers is not something I understand. He did, after all, cause Asian Americans a-lot of grief with his whole “China Virus” BS during the pandemic..
Might be the same reason why Mexicans vote for Republicans as well. As a Mexican I've observed that there's plenty of racism and misogyny still going about, especially among the religious and ignorant crowd.
They cross the rope bridge going over the Rio Grande and then cut the rope once they're across. The amount of hate I've seen Mexican immigrants direct at Mexicans trying to immigrate is mind blowing. So it's no wonder that they flock to the republican party.
Asians tend to be extremely conservative, particularly Chinese immigrants. They grew up in an authoritarian world, and view the progressive policies of the West as antithetical to their own. They don't care if Trump is a racist, or blames them for the Kung Flu, because he represents their views on what a government should be.
Yep, they're still flying Trump flags and hanging Trump signs in the areas of Oregon outside the larger cities.
I am pretty liberal, but I have a-lot of family members who are republican and live in the midwest and they feel like they’re in the same boat as you.
I do have to wonder where he gets all his support.
He gets his support from the belts. Bible Belt and Rust Belt.
The Bible Belt I can believe, though I am not sure about the Rust Belt. It may have been true in 2016, but I think the 2020 election paints a different picture.
When I think of the Rust Belt, I think of places like Detroit, Cleveland, Buffalo, Milwaukee, Pittsburgh and St. Louis. Of those cities, it seems only Missouri is hardcore republican (despite St. Louis’s and Kansas City’s best efforts). Michigan seems to have swung pretty left (though there are definitely still red areas), Pennsylvania voted blue and Wisconsin is on the verge of undoing a-lot of republican gerrymandering. Ohio looks like a red-leaning mixed bag, but it doesn’t strike me as a republican bastion.
Granted, most of these are major battleground states with both parties in almost equal numbers, but their conservative populations don’t seem to be anymore Trump-oriented than other states.
It's baffling to me, every poll I see like this I'm just confused and sad
Yeah, it is very disheartening to see. I still remember going back and watching previous debates before Trump, and they were all so civil! Even in the most heated moments, the candidates were actually discussing ideas and policy!
I cannot wait for Trump to fade away from the political scene. It’s just so sad to see how he turns everything into a debate about him.
I live in NY as does my father. He was a die hard Trump supporter until a few months ago when he switched to DeSantis - though he might have switched back to Trump. I try not to talk politics with him.
As recently as last year, he was telling me that the Republicans were going to impeach and remove Biden and Kamala and install Trump as President again. I pointed out that the House could definitely impeach, but removal would take two thirds of the Senate - a number the Republicans couldn't possibly reach. (This was before the midterms.) My father responded that the Democrats would vote along with the Republicans.
Yes, my father honestly believed that the Democrats would decide to ditch a Democratic President and Vice President so that Trump could come back to power. He was willing to make a bet that this would happen. I didn't take the bet only because I knew he'd either deny ever making the bet or would try to gaslight me what the bet actually was about.
Maybe now. The Republicans in my family left the party after 2016. Granted, they're still on my shit list for voting against LGBT stuff but at least they've recognized the error of their ways.
Coming from the southeast, definitely still a lot of Trump banners and bumper stickers, though less so now. I expect them to be more common as the election gets closer.
Hard to call it far right anymore. Conspiracy theorists and hate are more or less the norm in conservative circles, so far as I can tell.
I don't think they're conservative. I think republicans have given up on being conservative, and just now fight culture war and spend as much if not more than the dems.
I've been trying to be diligent about not conflating republicans and conservatives anymore, they haven't been conservative in awhile. Republicans have been overwhelmingly blindly following Trump, conservatives haven't.
Most midwest Republicans are actually populists, and populism is step one on the track to fascism. They have been used and abused by large corporations killing off local economies and greater macroeconomic forces which have determined that their labor is no longer worth a living wage. It's quite sad actually, but at this point the damage has been done. There's nothing left for reasonable people to do but get out.