Sure my parents voted for Trump in 2016 and 2020. They are definitely not racist or stupid. However voting for Trump is like voting for George Wallace. It's obviously the morally wrong choice. Millions of perfectly nice southerners convinced themselves otherwise, but they were wrong and history did not judge him/them kindly. The moral disengagement and cognitive dissonance is through the roof with Trump voters. They know he's morally degenerate and his policies reflect that, but they will find any sliver to justify their vote.
My anecdotal evidence is much the same. I was driving down a long farm road in rural Iowa and saw more Harris signs than Trump signs. Trump is going to win the county I live in, but no one wants to associate themselves with him anymore. They are going to vote for him and pretend they didn't 10 years down the road.
I think there will be more people "secretly" voting for Trump than the other way around. In my industry, I see a lot of people (basically everyone) openly supporting Kamala. Can't even remember anyone openly supporting Trump. But I suspect that a lot of the "silent" people will vote for Trump.
I did notice last weekend when I was up in the reddest part of MN clusters of Harris signs. I still saw more Trump signs including a Trump shop but it was surprising to see a decent amount of Harris signs in a part of the state they not only is very red but also is anti Walz with a lot of issues with Walz over mining and other issues. On the flip side was in Minnetonka an affluent suburb of minneapolis and saw several Trump signs. This was a suburb that has gone Democrat in the last few elections. One thing I haven’t seen throughout MN is Royce White signs. I’ve only seen three. One in a suburb, one in Minneapolis, and one a billboard being towed by a truck.
We have a pretty even heated sheriff race going on down here and those signs litter all the intersections.
On the main subject. I don’t believe all or even most Trump supporters are racists. I do believe they are primarily driven by unease of a changing society and culture along with primarily relying on limited info sources.
I think that is racism? Racism isn't a inherent trait of humans in terms of genetics or brain chemistry. Racism consumes people when they are isolated with their media sources and the people they interact with daily with a insular lifestyle. If you view racism as an effect of conditions these people have experienced through targeted propaganda they are bombarded with then you don't have to attach a moral claim to it. Yes most Trump supporters are racist but that doesn't make most Trump supporters "evil" because their racism is a product of the media they consume and not being around people who are different than them based in circumstances out of their control like being born and raised in a isolated rural community.
Hoo boy, I don't know how sure I'd be about that in terms of our innate wiring and responding to humans positively when they look like our parents, etc. I'm not saying innate biology should excuse anything, but one thing I like about Christianity is the idea of "original sin," meaning (to me) that our factory settings are pretty flawed and we need to work on ourselves, more or less constantly, or else we act like an overgrown, slovenly, hateful man child (just to take one orange example).
Let me rephrase that "racism isn't inherent". I think the concept of feeling more safe and accepting of people that resemble you is a very "lizard brain" part of the human psyche. The pattern recognition, the natural tribalism... These aspects are very human. They are very natural. My main point is that the outward racism you see in the MAGA movement is a result of media propaganda weaponizing those intrinsic aspects of humanity towards groups of people who might live insular lives that aren't a fault of their own like being born and raised in a very homogenous rural community. My point is if I was raised in that type of environment and exposed to AM radio, right wing social media algorithms, cable news and hardly ever interacted with people outside my race, ethnicity religion etc I'd probably also be openly racist and defending Trump now.
Your description fits some Trump supporters but again not all. Racism in terms of believing that a particular group is inherently inferior I don’t think fits that description.
Vance is right. Kind of hard to "heal the divide" when you have just called everyone who doesn't support your candidate a racist/fascist/Hitler.
He should tell his running then not to threaten to use the military against his domestic political opponents.
I don’t see anything there about going after Republican politicians Trump named specific politicians.
And a very reactionary thought process including the idea that the government can be run like a business. If someone in the government boondongled like I see every day in corporate America, voters would have a fit.
