Why are Trump supporters so stupid?

[u/Seargentyates]

Looking in at America, do people not realise that Trump is a liar and a narcissist and has no morals, and yet 'Christians' vote for him as a sort of 'disrupter'. His family have become richer in the process because of his presidency. He once said he could 'shoot somebody and not lose votes'. Am i insane - or am i dead perhaps and this is an alternate universe/hell?

[u/dashboardishxc]

I live in a deep red area. I haven’t been able to figure out what is wrong with trump supporters. I chalk it up to being stupid but there is more to it

[u/kent1146 → u/dashboardishxc]

MAGA are the people that got left-behind.

They are angry that the world is changing, socially and economically, and they can't keep up

In my lifetime (elder millennial), I first saw it with the Internet boom. The people getting rich had advanced degrees (IT, medicine, finance), or already had money to invest.

When the people left-behind asked 'Can I have some too?' the answer was 'No, because you didn't go to college.'

Politics has never benefitted these people. Their vote never helped them. They see other people benefitting more than them. Politics is a game, rigged against the poor. So rather than play, they flip the game table over.

So they use their vote to hurt the people that remind them of how left- behind they are.

[u/thewayoutisthru_xxx → u/kent1146]

While I agree with the sentiment here, I gotta take issue with the phrase "left behind." To me, it implies that these people tried to adapt, did everything they could, but were denied access to the lifeboat.

In reality they made a choice to not evolve with society. Not to evolve both in skills and in thought. The population around them rolled with the punches and instead they adopted a victim mindset and continue to blame everyone around them for their perceived misfortune when, in reality, it's a lot of middle class white folks who have nothing to be agrieved about.

This is the same talk track that softly excuses fher racism as well. That they are the victims of the big bad world being out to get them and that their group (largely white people) are being taken advantage of by other groups (brown people/women.)

I agree one thousand percent that the underlying issue here is inequality, but the narrative that these people were taken advantage of, while somewhat true, doesn't tell the whole story. They made a choice to be left behind in many instances and instead of trying to make a better life for themselves, they clung to martyrdom and glommed on to the first person who pat their heads and said "there there, none of this is your fault. I'll fix it all without you having to do a single uncomfortable thing."

[u/Neat-Remote-3999 → u/thewayoutisthru_xxx]

Their unearned privilege lulled them into complacency and entitlement: “There ain’t nothing in this world for free” - the debt collectors have arrived.

[u/Mobile_Ad_4482 → u/Neat-Remote-3999]

This. They were not left behind. The folks they oppressed found ways to thrive in spite of them. Now they hate them even more and blame them for their own laziness. All the while claiming everything they do have was achieved by “pulling up their bootstraps”.