She put my recent thoughts into words: they simply can NOT admit that they were wrong about Trump, especially since they've curated their new identity around him.
After all, many sacrificed their family life on the altar of Trump. If you make a stand for bigotry that's so rancid it drives your kids to sever contact, you have to believe it's in service of something higher or else come to grips with your own moral failings. I know which one I believe is more likely.
It's the rotten core of the anti-intellectual ideology that the right has been pushing for decades.
This. I can't solve this, and neither can any other individual person.
It will take a wide spread implosion, but they've got a resilient ecosystem that will just switch messianic figures out once Trump is no longer able to hold public sway.
Anti-intellectual theology as well. "God and Country" evangelical churches from the smallest to the largest find it absolutely crucial to brainwash their congregations against higher ed and critical thinking.
True. I think we're fortunate in that anti intellectualism (and just plain old stupidity) is less common on the left, and tends to be more harmless when it is there.
"...the first rule of MAGA is to never, ever, under any circumstances, admit that liberals might be right about something."
People in cults stay in them for the same reasons. So many times, they were told they were wrong, that they couldn't take the embarrassment of making such a mistake.
Maybe MAGA people need to be coddled a bit. Tell them that Trump changed towards the end. They were right, but he betrayed them in the end. Something else should be tried. Many of these people are dangerous in the mental state their in.
Maybe. But this just kicks the can down the road. They'll do the same shit with a new messiah figure as soon as they find one that can string two words together and make them feel like they're virtuous for their hatred.
Mollycoddling them is what caused the problem in the first place. They need to be forced to accept responsibility for the choices they made even if it hurts them. Them entrenching themselves out of embarrassment is a moral failing on their part, not ours.
The only solution is the California model: vote them into powerlessness. They'll never change. Just leave them to their impotent rage while the rest of us move on.
It was never, ever, about "economic anxiety". It was about hurting the right people, and they didn't care if they had to suffer too as long as the right people suffered
He pretended to want to help them during his campaign. They fell for it and just ignored all facts and evidence since. Doubt they're going to see the light.
Clinton was right about everything. In 20 years its going to be really hard to explain why she wasn't the obvious choice who should have won by a landslide
People were more concerned with a Democrat being likeable, after decades of character assassination, while they didn't care that the republican was a criminal, and also foreign interference and an FBI that was paralyzed by biased agents and management fear of appearing biased, actual outcomes be damned.
It was a perfect storm of regressive misinformation and every individual with the ability to stop the train wreck trying to cover their own asses and pass the buck instead.
I'm sure that will be something people in 20years understand. She didn't campaign well enough so we elected a narcissistic sociopath who bragged about grabbing women by the genitals and then fucked our country into fascism.
Everything is a bit of a stretch. She was certainly wrong about how she ran her campaign. Poisoning the well in the primary worked out so fucking well for her. It was her turn, she earned it. No reason to convince the voters to show up by campaigning, or creating a platform people were excited about. Just say how bad Bernie is, then how bad trump is a few times and hide.
Yeah, the DNC clearing the field for her looks really bad in hindsight. A lot would be different if Biden had run in 2016 when the whole Bidenbro phenomenon was really popular.
And how many years are we talking here? It’s been 7 years since the party chose the known sexual predator to be the face of the party, and most of them still love him now that he used that choice to commit a bunch of crimes and betray our country.