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Why I Will Never Abandon Trump
Lately there’s been a lot of talk among pundits on what it would take for Trump’s base to abandon him. For me, the answer is: nothing. I feel I must support Trump, regardless of what he does, because I fear what would happen if he got impeached. That’s not to say I don’t criticize Trump from time to time. But said criticism has no bearing on my generic support for him.
Ever since World War II, American elites have tried to build this narrative that democracy is about impersonal public policy, not power/status competition between groups. If you believe that policy is all that matters, than of course there won’t be any consequences to impeaching Trump, certainly not for his base. He’ll just be replaced by Pence, and things will go on mostly as they have before.
This is completely absurd. Trump’s base is socially vulnerable, much more so than I think any of us want to admit. Impeaching Trump would be a complete disaster. At the very least we would see a rash of suicides. The discrimination working-class white people face could intensify, especially in employment. The nihilism that’s been growing in the middle and upper middle classes for 50 years could start to spiral out of control. And that’s before we get to the rioting which, let’s be honest, would be intense.
If you don’t believe me, just look at what happened to Christians after the Supreme Court legalized gay marriage. Liberals went on a judicial jihad to persecute them. The status of Christians fell so low that the courts actually ruled that Trump’s travel ban’s prioritization of religious minorities was unconstitutional. Yes, Christians are dying en masse in Middle Eastern countries, but apparently we can’t do anything about it because, well, the First Amendment prohibits it. Go figure.
Elite coups have consequences. Politics is not a dispassionate fight over public policy, but a struggle between groups. The consequences of impeaching Trump would be just too dire for me to abandon my generic support for the man, and I don’t think there’s anything Trump could that would change that.
Published in General
This is accurate. A large part of the income distribution moved upwards.
My Grandfather was a member of the lower middle class. He never completed high school and went to work on the family farm during the depression. Gramps was drafted, eventually, and did a couple of years in the military pre-Korea and then came home to Green Bay, WI.
He got a job at the paper mill and worked there for 30 years before he retired, having never completed high school and only getting up to parts room manager because he was an ornery cuss who wouldn’t be taught and thought that book-learning was incompatible with practical knowledge.
I remember him telling me when I was a boy about how horrible the management was at his company… how they took all the money for themselves and did nothing to earn what they were getting – Grandpa was a lifelong Democrat who would have been in line with Bernie Sanders as near as I can tell, even though he was a devout Roman Catholic.
So, I think I know a thing or two about the attitudes that can sometimes permeate the lower-middle class and their prejudices against “the rich.”
As much as I loved my Grandfather, we disagreed bitterly about some of these things, and I can only attribute it to “class differences” which he had with his own children. It was impossible to explain to him that Democrats were the party of abortion. “That was something Republicans wanted!” he bellowed at me once. Such was life dealing with a man who was actually irrational at times.
You’ll have to pardon me if I don’t feel like I and most of the people whom I know within my “class” conform to the laundry list of stereotypes that you’ve provided above, but it does give me some things to contemplate.
I should note that I don’t extrapolate the bigotries which my Grandfather had to other members of his class. They do have some dysfunctions, but I try to treat people as individuals first, not as members of groups.
We know that the Vice-President has some personal rules about what parties he will meet or associate with outside the presence of his own wife. I don’t think he has these rules because of some lack of trust or that he would need to lie about the what goes on at the meetings. The different slants and interpretations and the idea of whether or not an encounter even qualifies for mention in an interview is why. What is seen is in the eye of the beholder. In my view, a meeting in no way represents a relationship exists, and I think I could easily fail to mention a meeting that had no significance to me.
Care to elaborate? I mean, like you said, my health doesn’t allow me to do jobs like washing dishes. And besides, I found plenty of work to do; my problem was getting paid for it.
If I only had one data point to work off of I wouldn’t extrapolate either.
Do tell, how many data points do you have? And how do you know that these people are the way they are? How are we supposed to trust that you have somehow perfectly speculated (and thus guessed correctly) into their minds?
You are condemning thousands, if not millions, of people as being cold and careless to say the least. The evidence had better meet the crime you are indicting them of.
This thread reminds me why as soon as the SJW menace recedes the republican party is dead.
Are you saying it is not dying now?
Is there a Ricochet out there for Conservatives, now that the Trumpkins are taking over it as they took over the Republican Party? I continue as a member only for the sane podcasts, not for the increasingly unhinged member feed.
I worked for an appraisal management company — the business type didn’t even exist before Dodd-Frank, so obviously no one had degrees in what we were doing. The job entailed taking calls from banks regarding appraisals they wanted done, calling appraisers to find one willing to take the appraisal, calling appraisers to verify appraisals were coming in on time, and performing quality control on the completed appraisals. The only specialized training they were interested in were current or former appraisers, and they only needed a couple of them on staff. I also worked for Citibank doing process control work, and a fair number of my colleagues only had high school diplomas. They’d started with less skilled labor like taking customer service calls and gradually worked their way to positions with more responsibility.
If you’re really willing to hustle, most insurance companies are constantly recruiting new agents, but bear in mind that you’ll have to get various licenses (though they’re not that expensive) and find clients. Likewise, banks and mortgage companies are good options for sit down jobs where they’re willing to hire and let people work up. You may not want to humble yourself to secretarial work, but that’s a place where good customer service skills and basic life skills like typing and filing can take you a long way. No, it’s not prestigious computer programming work, but without student loans to pay off or a huge family to support, it’ll keep a roof over your head and food on the table.
They are just another walking dead national institution.
Yes. It’s called Ricochet.
There are plenty of conservative, libertarians, and other assorted Trump-skeptics here on Ricochet. That’s why it’s so … lively. If everyone agreed, the conversations here wouldn’t be as interesting.
Yes. You obviously can use a keyboard and know how to write. Find a way to make money doing that.
Lots of issues when you look to purify like this. Before Trump, the Republican Party had in the fold many conservatives, at least in my view of that term, but that fact yielded few federal elected politicians who performed conservatively when sent to Washington. Arizona is good example in my opinion. John McCain and Jeff Flake are two senators who pretend to be conservative. Then there are those elected Republicans who don’t even pretend to be conservative like Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski. None of these Republicans are Trump supporters but they have done much more than Trump to strip the Republican Party of its conservative bonafides. Then you have the really cool dudes like Mitch McConnell who call themselves conservative but rarely stand up to be counted on. I think you need to do a lot more thinking and explaining if it is your contention that the Trump supporters are the ones who have removed conservatism from the Republican Party or Ricochet.
There’s only one problem with this formulation: Those Senators whom you are calling out (correctly) are much closer to Trump ideologically than they are to, say, the Freedom Caucus.
Then, you have the perplexing and irritating faux principle position of a Rand Paul who votes in such a way as to belie his bellicose conservative rhetoric.
I like Rand Paul’s behavior than moves away from requiring libertarian perfection. I think if there weren’t those Obamacare Republicans (Collins, Murkowski, and a couple of others), there would be a bill Paul could vote for. Trump is not ideological, that’s the problem in your formulation.
Everyone has an ideology. Even if they are terrible at explaining, like trump.
Thank you for your elegant compliment for most of your fellow members. s/
You are welcome to take a shot at explaining Trump’s ideology. Most well-meaning people of any substantial ideology favor all to be able to have needed healthcare. We differ on how to best approach this. I tend not to view as conservative an approach that turns it all over to Washington. Favoring such an approach is not my view of conservative. These Obamacare republicans (Collins, Murkowski, Moran, Portman) misled their constituencies by voting several times to repeal Obamacare, campaigning on that, and now reversing themselves.
1 ) I fail to see how pushing for everyone to have mandated healthcare or healthcare coverage is a conservative thing to do, I would argue it to be inherently left wing.
2 ) The current bill to “repeal and replace” is obamacare lite, if repeals and replaces little while maintaining the terrible program and shifting responsibility of it onto themselves. Thus any Republican that voted to repeal, not replace, obamacare in good faith is not changing their position but rather not walking into a trap.
3 ) trump’s ideology is relatively speaking a secular nationalist (and because he is a nationalist he is a collectivist). This is why trump supports protectionism in his rhetoric and has been skeptical of NATO, trade, and NAFTA (which are predicated on international cooperation). This means that when analyzing issues trump tends to look at American producers, specifically factory industries, when analyzing economic issues and sees trade as a form of war between nations when he observes failing American industries.
Its also why trump tends to ask for the short term gains whenever considering diplomatic actions. What will make America appear strong (drop the tomahawks on Syria or move a carrier group towards Korea) is what trump seeks.
Now you might be surprised why I said trump is secular but if one looks at trump’s actions both currently and during the campaign trump hits on religious faith and religious issues very little. You will see him mention it in certain speeches (Poland), but overall it is rare (which probably explains some of its potency when it is actually used). On social issues such as transgender bathrooms and homosexuality trump has either been supportive or quiet. Aside from having Mulvaney cut out funding for planned parenthood for one year (its discretionary spending so it can be brought up in the future) trump has done little to advocate and advance conservative social values. Given this lack of action it is quite apparent that trump is socially speaking secular (and I didn’t even need to bring up his statements on women or his multiple marriages).
4 ) Ultimately this means that trump can in some cases come to conservative end goals (like leaving the Paris Peace Accords for example or defunding pp) but overall little has gotten done (from pushing his agenda to actually nominating people to various federal agencies) during what is supposed to be his honeymoon period and that is probably a result of trump’s serious and literal ignorance of public policy and insatiable appetite for attention on twitter.
I agree. I only said that any well-meaning American, my view, would favor all Americans having access to healthcare, not necessarily in a mandated form.
A large part of the slowdown here, much of which would move in a conservative direction, is the Russia theater, the Schumer obstruction of appointments, and the healthcare repeal fail.
trump has indulged the Russian investigation repeatedly and although schumer has been obstructive most positions have not even received appointments from trump (schumer cannot obstruct what is not moving). But even with schumer’s obstructionism trump has failed to lead his own caucus on multiple issues and that speaks directly to his own failures.
I think the Russia hysteria in the media and from the Democrats far exceeds Russia related activity from President Trump, who I assume you will never credit since you insist on disrespecting his role chosen by the American voters. The appointment numbers belie you statement. Recent numbers comparing President Trump and President Obama’s first term show a close to equivalent number of nominations after a given period in office with Obama’s confirmations at about 3 times those of Trump’s with Trump’s being obstructed by Democrats where Obama’s were not obstructed.
The President made some statements today on Obamacare repeal that look much like he is calling out those Obamacare Republicans who previously voted for repeal, promised repeal in their re-election campaigns, and have recently reversed their positions. We’ll see what happens. President Trump is doing much better for conservatives than a great many of the Congressional Republicans who try to make us all believe they are conservative.
Mr. Trump is not one of the popular kids. It is as simple as that; anyone who grew up playing left out instead of right field and who was a mind in a jock’s world recognizes that. (In fact, I think that the OP (if I’ve guessed correctly that acronym) comes very close to saying that in his autobiographical moments if not under the hood of his original premise.) Mr. Trump was wealthy and sufficiently strong-willed to act like a popular kid (see the Billy Bush tape) but he’s not. He will never measure up to his nominal allies any more than a President Pence (no matter how he might acquire the office) will ever measure up the the media as currently constituted. But he’s a Republican. And Republicans don’t support their own in the manner of Democrats. And so we squirm. But ya know? He’s. Not. Hillary. Could we not give that fact a bit of deference? Because if we can’t do that, worse will follow. It’s still a binary choice.
For a “left out” kind of guy, he’s done pretty well as an adult. I am not sure about his childhood. You could be correct. The NT’s absolutely abhor the binary reference to Hillary. I don’t really care though. I agree with you 100%.
Aggression alert…
Are you really saying here, on a public forum, that you are anti-witch?
Where, exactly, do you get your Witchist beliefs from?
How do you sleep at night?
And my witch ancestors were hanged and also crushed by stone in the 1690’s.
So do not go there…
This comment I love.
It would be informative to provide some basis for this assertion. It appears a very weak approach to dealing with others including allies, but especially adversaries. Seems a little utopian.
I wouldn’t think that a statement reinforcing one of the planks of the Decalogue would be anything other than anodyne.
I think it is helpful to have some understanding of different forms of lying we are dealing with in the political environment we are addressing. President Trump’s propensity to exaggerate, use hyperbole, and have extreme starting points for negotiations are effective elements of his persuasive techniques, far less toxic,in general, than the deception employed by most of our elected representatives for their personal advancement and the fake news distributed by the media for political purposes. So, yes, I do think it reasonable to take exception to your lumping all these forms of lying together as if the toxic effects are equal. We are not yet living in our promised heavenly world.
Sorry. I don’t buy this.
Saying that it’s okay because he lies the right way instead of the wrong way just doesn’t work. Because he doesn’t just lie the right way. Donald Trump is a habitual liar. He lies constantly, about everything.