BREAKING: Trump insists he's never read "Mein Kampf". (But apparently didn't say anything about audiobooks and movies). Actually, I don't have difficulty with the idea of Trump never having read it. It's not written at a third grade reading level, after all.
@lauren Right but that's one of the big reasons why I would reject all of these notions that Trump is particularly comparable to Hitler.
From issues of rhetoric to understanding of the world in general, Trump is just not that capable.
His third grade reading level, and his inability to vomit out coherent lines of thought, means he's just not nearly somebody managing the same sort of campaign.
@volkris The difference is social media. It fills in most of Trump's gaps in terms of effectiveness to his base. Hitler of course had to operate without the Internet -- though he did have IBM.
@lauren Right but it means that since different people are projecting different messages onto Trump's rhetorical vomit, on one hand he's not in control of it, and on the other different people are filling in different messages so there isn't a single coherent position being proposed.
That makes an enormous difference!
@volkris I don't think it makes much difference, because Trump is operating in a cult of personality context -- his actual positions even vis-a-vis how different people are representing them publicly, don't really matter to most of his base.
@lauren I think it makes all the difference because if we focused on and reported on what an empty suit of a loser Trump is, it would really deflate him among his supporters.
Even if we focused on how his own supporters don't agree about policies, even that would unmask him for being such an empty shell of a person, since his own supporters don't agree about the positions that he's taking.
I mean, for example, just highlight how half of his supporters are isolationist and the other half are capitalist and that alone would really undermine his support as his own supporters would have to grapple with those contradictory stances that he supposedly stands for.
It makes all the difference that Trump's base is so fractured but they are effectively unified by the way we talk about them.
And that's the thing: If we talked about Trump more honestly (or, better, didn't talk about him at all) then he would completely fail in the political arena as he deserves to.
Trump's enemies are basically his best friends at this point, their rhetoric pumping him up and making him anything even approachable to an electable candidate.
@volkris Nothing. Nothing! would shake away most of Trump's base (let's say 30% of the population). You need only see the interviews with his supporters to see that the alternate realities (and I emphasize the plural there), surrounding him are such that each supporter sees what they want to see and rejects anything that doesn't fit that framework. Perhaps even more to the point, many of them are very happy with what he did during his presidency, and would be thrilled to see him go even further. His inconsistencies, immorality, all that stuff, don't matter to most of them. It's purely transactional, that's why he has such overwhelming support from mainstream religious persons, even though most of them will admit he doesn't actually meet those standards himself.
@lauren so I think the most important thing you got wrong in your comments is when you say that they are very happy with what he did during his presidency.
They're not.
They are very happy with what they were misled into thinking he did during his presidency, a bunch of things that didn't actually happen, in particular a TON of promises that he made that he didn't keep.
So what we should be doing is highlighting that he broke his promises, that he was such a loser, that he let his own supporters down. But unfortunately for whatever reason Trump opponents are more excited about pretending that the guy was some kind of success, talking about things he supposedly did do, which only builds them up to his base.
Trump supporters are not happy with what he did during his presidency because he didn't do what he said he was going to do. They are happy with these lies about what he did, though.
And that gets back to my point:
It's really easy to defeat Trump. You just have to be honest, point out to the capitalists that the guy is being an isolationist, and point out to the isolationists that he's being a globalist. On his record he stands no chance of ever holding political office again.
And so many of his voters are open to noticing that.
Unfortunately that message, again the real one, the one based on fact, is not playing any significant role that I've seen in US discourse.
Instead we let the guy say coffeffve or whatever that was, and we let it go instead of pointing out what a loser he is.
Trump had a terrible track record but Democrats seem too busy trying to build him up as a evil villain than to point out to Republicans that he let them down.
@volkris It's purely a semantic difference. They're happy with his time as president. Whether or not they have an accurate perception of what he actually did, the time taken as a block of years was they believe good for them. There's no point trying to convince them of anything. They will simply ignore it, say the claims are false (along with the moon landing and state ballot counts and evolution). They cannot be moved.
@lauren I have a lot of reasons to believe that's not the case.
On one hand there's the academic polling showing that Trump voters disagree with each other, and that's what I tried to emphasize before, if you point that out you immediately create a rift in his support base.
But mainly the thing I want to emphasize is, he was not a very successful president. And Democrats only prop him up with his base by acting like he did all of this stuff. When he really didn't. Democrats (by which I mean Trump opponents, whatever word you want to use) only give more fuel to his fire by talking about him as if he was this great mover and shaker that might return. No, he was a jerk who didn't know how anything worked and so he screwed up left and right and failed to keep his promises. THAT'S his story that we should be talking about, if we want to talk about him at all.
If not for Democrats' fluffing Trump would not be on the stage in any significant way today.
I know so many Trump voters. I've read the academic literature. And really the only thing that might be propelling him into winning a new election is his enemies that keep his voters focused on things other than his policies and track record.
Trump's actual record is that of an absolute loser without any broadly acceptable policy stance.
Unfortunately, very few people are looking at that as they are focused on all this other nonsense, so he gets to skate.
@lauren but that's not what the literature shows, and it's not what my experience interacting with Trump voters or listening to mainstream conservatives show either.
Okay you're talking about the emotional attachment, but in my experience and from what I see in the literature that's not what Trump voting is about.
His appeal is largely based on projections of reality, of policy, of what people think he is really doing as president, not pure emotion.
And so if you correct the record that does have a big impact.
@volkris We're not getting anywhere. I disagree with you. You are arguing the reality of his presidency, I am arguing the emotional attachment to him by his base, which is utterly removed from that reality. It's that simple.