Your Trump-Supporting Family/Friends/Colleagues - Did 1/6/21 Change Any of Their Views?

Many already have been.

 

There's definitely a segment of Trump's base that used to be Democrat. The blue collar workers.

Trump's removal of environmental protections have definitely had a positive economic impact on their lives (while a negative one on the environment).

There's also a segment that say they are against corruption & lobbyists. And despite all evidence to the contrary think Trump has reduced corruption in Washington. The drain the swamp people.

 

I read that story and it's both bizarre and sad. She basically went from someone who was posting cute animal pics to stories about how Hillary Clinton is drinking the blood of children overnight.

 

has the removal of those regulations actually had any beneficial economic effect or is that merely the justification given while having no basis in reality?

 

Also this story from the New Yorker. It shows that much of Trump's most die hard supporters aren't supporting him based on ideology and certainly not loyalty. The story about Valeria Gilbert in NYT who had been a supporter of the Green Party and voted for Jill Stein 2016 only to become a disciple of Q because of an online community this guy wasn't political but became a Proud Boy out of a sense of community.

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/01/18/a-palm-beach-proud-boy-at-the-putsch

A Palm Beach Proud Boy at the Putsch
Bobby Pickles, a purveyor of far-right T-shirts, joined the horde of balding dudes in dad jeans at the Capitol, because Donald Trump, he says, is “like punk rock.”

As federal law-enforcement officials consider investigating the President’s role in instigating the deadly assault on the Capitol last week, they may want to check in with a heavyset ex-punk rocker who calls himself Bobby Pickles. Last Thursday, Pickles, the president of the West Palm Beach branch of the Proud Boys, described his experience of the uprising over the phone from Florida, where he runs a shop that sells T-shirts bearing such sayings as “Trump 2020: Because F^(K You, Twice.”

At the age of forty, Pickles, whose real name is Piccirillo, is a bit old to call himself a “boy.” But, along with thousands of bearded and balding men in dad jeans, he headed to Washington to take part in what he called “kind of a last hurrah for Trump, who put so much on the line for us.” Asked whether he was among those who rampaged through the Capitol, Pickles said, “No comment.” Then he noted, “I’d never been to the Capitol before—and I have now!”

Before January 6th, he said, the Proud Boys, who are known for their misogynist, racist, and anti-Semitic views, had “no organized plan” that he knew of to storm the building. Pro-Trump chat groups had been ablaze with incendiary talk for weeks. But, he said, “the Proud Boys were just marching around the city before this started.” As Trump addressed the rally, Pickles and his crew stopped for some halal chicken and rice. “We couldn’t really see the President, so we were listening on our phones,” he said. “And when we heard him say, ‘Go to the Capitol,’ we all were, like, ‘Yeah!’ It wasn’t a direct order, like a Mafia boss. But it was, like, ‘Go to the Capitol’!” So directed, Pickles and his group began marching. Trump had made it sound as if he, too, planned to march to the Capitol to stop Congress from certifying Biden’s victory. Instead, he retreated to the safety of the White House.


At the Capitol, the scene turned chaotic. “It happened in the moment. There was just so much momentum,” Pickles recalled. “We felt compelled to storm the Capitol. There’s nothing rational about it when you’re caught up in something like that.” He kept his phone’s video camera on through the ensuing hours of occupation. “I felt like a war correspondent,” he said. (Pickles hosts a podcast.) “We were trying to smash the cops to get in,” he added. “This old dude on top of a cranelike thing in the middle of a big stand, who had a bullhorn, was saying, ‘Come forward! Come forward!’ ” An older woman urged the rioters on, calling them “patriots.” “She was funnelling people in through the windows,” Pickles said. Nearby, “a dude with tattoos all over his neck and face” smashed glass.

Pickles found the media’s suggestions that police hadn’t mounted a serious challenge insulting. “It wasn’t easy!” he said. “We were hit with pepper spray and tear gas. They were trying to keep people out. But we were rushing them.” As if to demonstrate the group’s valor, he exclaimed, “Someone got shot. And someone got hit with a pepper ball in the cheek! It left a big hole. And someone got hit in the eye.” (This he found particularly scary, he said, because “one of my grandfathers had a glass eye, and it’s my biggest fear.”)

Pickles acknowledged the unfortunate optics of a group that claims to be devoted to law and order ransacking a federal building. “I know it looks hypocritical on our end, because of the whole B.L.M. thing,” he said, referring to Trump’s slurs against Black Lives Matter protesters. “But if you seriously believe your country’s getting taken over by fraud, you’re going to get nuts.” (Pickles can be seen online wearing a shirt saying “Kyle Rittenhouse Did Nothing Wrong,” about the suspect in a double murder of B.L.M. protesters.)

Pickles has a comfortable relationship with nihilism. He is happy to discuss his criminal record for grand theft (cashing a forged check) when he was eighteen, and his days as “a juvenile delinquent.” “I grew up in the punk-rock scene,” he said. “And Trump was like punk rock. It’s, like, anti-establishment.” He attended the University of Florida, where he was an English major and a liberal. “I’ve taken basket weaving and read about the Black prison experience,” he said, with a snicker. (In his shop, Fat Enzo’s, murals of Mark Twain and Hunter S. Thompson share wall space with Huey Long.) He explained that after his father died, in 2015, he sought out new male camaraderie. The Proud Boys filled a vacuum. He claims to have joined not because they are a hate group (as designated by the Southern Poverty Law Center) but because “they were seeking something.” He said, “I came to the realization that Trump was awesome, and that I had been brainwashed.” From right-wing podcasts and YouTube, he said, he has learned that “the pandemic is a scam,” and that “we live in an inverted dictatorship run by the Deep State and globalists.”

Still, Pickles claims to be rattled by what happened at the Capitol. “A lot of people were talking crazy stuff,” he said. The mood among his fellow-insurrectionists was “getting to be a bit like that movie ‘Casino,’ where Joe Pesci plays Crazy Nicky. If you beat him with a fist, he’ll come back with a knife. And if you beat him with a knife, he’ll come back with a gun. And if you get him with a gun, you better kill him, because he’s going to come back and kill you. It’s kind of like that in Washington, D.C., now. Things are escalating. I hate to see what happens next.”

 

I mean it created more jobs in the industry.
Before covid there was a very low unemployment rate.

Imo
Dems do need to do a better message to say they will retrain younger workers in that industry & just pay out the old ones into retirement. At like 50-60% of their wage.
I believe you just have to look at what Germany did to see the playbook.

 

What evidence is there that the removal of regulations created more jobs? I can see how it might have increased the profits, but companies haven’t been sharing increased profits with their blue collar workforce nor have hired more because of more money in their coffers.

My point is that lower regulations just pass off the external costs of these businesses onto the community (via using tax money to pay for the harms caused by lack of regulation).

As far as Democrats offering retraining, they have and will again. But as long as people buy the talking point that Democrats are anti-business, it’s hard to get the enough people into government who will fulfill that offer.

 

Thread

 

Read this short thread. I can relate. Heard the same wordings also - “you just wait”. Just sad.

 

crazy how quickly and dramatically the radicalization occurs

 

And Manson didn't knife or shoot anyone.

 

Bunker b**** trying to outdo Cave b****

 

She’s not alone too Trump supporters are still expecting things to suddenly change. The latest is that Biden won’t be in office long. Just saw a Trump supporter posting “I give it 6 months.”

 

Can you give examples?

Not calling you out I am genuinely curious.

 

I have noticed this as well and it actually makes me think Biden has a chance to calm things down its like they want to ignore him and just focus on AOC, Kamala and Pelosi.

If he continues the unity theme I'm starting to think he might have some converts.

Even the hardcore Trumpers seem to have grudging respect for Biden and the worst they say if he is just a tool of the left.

 

There is always something new. This new thing will happen > It didn't happen > repeat.

The unwillingness to look back and consider why the last surest thing didn't happen while the newest thing will surely happen is just mind numbing.

 

I'm also seeing a lot of "he's dumb as bricks and has dementia" commentary from conservative leaning individuals. Not seeing as much of that respect. Also the do a lot of whataboutisms with Biden in that they will say Biden is more racist than their guy because of the 1994 crime bill.

 

Despite these delusions, Ms. Gilbert — a self-described mystic who has written four books, with titles like “Swami Soup” — mostly struck me as a New Age eccentric who could use some time away from screens. She disdains the mainstream media, but she agreed to be profiled, and we kept in touch.
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These used to be "Coastal Eccentrics" on the left, who would dabble weird **** like putting eggs in vaginas or magnet rings. Gwenyth Paltrow capitalized on this "soulless-to-soul full" excess with her company, Goop.

Anti-vaxxers originally sprang from the left who took (now debunked) research that sounded similar in principle to Rachel Carson's (not debunked) "Silent Spring" and caused them to question the mercury inside vaccines and even dental filling.

So anyone trying to find a continuum on the political spectrum will be sorely disappointed.

You can't pinpoint crAzY on the right or left. It's more like a coffee stain you can't rub out.

In a sense, they're manifestations of a reality rife with paradox and narratives (a dreaming reality) made whole by the digital world.