What I Heard from Trump Supporters

> “I, too, worry about the dishonesty. His relationship with Russia, his relationship with women. His relationship with questionable financial matters. These all worry me and were they to continue I would lose all respect.”

All that stuff was covered extensively during the election. There's no reason for it to be a different analysis now. This is a rationalization of regret, it's not the result of a new decision-making process.

Basically, that person, like many I suspect, voted for Trump out of protest. They didn't think he would win, so it was safe. Well, it wasn't.

I think this is important. Among the many problems with PC is this:

When you exclude an idea from discussion, you don't eliminate that idea. You drive it underground into an echo chamber where it gathers strength and resurfaces later.

Censorship -- even of a soft de-facto variety -- creates the impression that your position is weak. The censored idea starts to develop the mystique of a forbidden truth. You can see this very obviously in the whole "red pill" thing. In the original Matrix film, the red pill was a metaphor for forbidden knowledge.

An analogy would be to the war on drugs. Forbidding drugs makes them alluring and cool and creates a drug subculture. Forbidding discussion of nationalism, race, and gender has made race nationalism and gender determinism into forbidden, cool ideas that mark one as a holder of privileged secret knowledge.

On another note:

I know a number of Trump supporters. Here's what I have heard:

(1) Economic concerns are an issue. One person said (paraphrasing) "He's against outsourcing. He could eat a baby on live TV and I'd vote for him. I'll vote for Satan if he'll do something about outsourcing."

(2) A lot of Trump supporters I know just hate the system and wanted to cast a "fuck you" vote. They don't love Trump per se but hope he'll do a lot of damage to the existing international financial and political order.

(3) A lot of people hate globalism, or at least globalism the way it's turned out. It's viewed as a path to corporate feudalism. These folks hope Trump will set back globalism and restore national sovereignty.

(4) Some people just hate the Clintons and blame them for the 2008 crisis (repeal of Glass-Steagal) etc., so they voted against Hillary more than for Trump. Some also hate the Clintons for taking the nomination from Bernie Sanders. I know a few Sanders voters who voted Trump.

If you're not familiar with this term, White Fragility is a state in which even a minimum amount of racial stress be- comes intolerable, triggering a range of defensive moves. These moves include the outward display of emotions such as anger, fear, and guilt, and behaviors such as argumentation, silence, and leaving the stress-inducing situation.

http://libjournal.uncg.edu/ijcp/article/viewFile/249/116

[edit: Can someone explain why this comment is being downvoted?]

Take climate change, regardless of its truth or not, if you treat people that are skeptical or reject it as if they are idiots not worth your time, eventually they're just going to embrace it as part of their identity. Same thing where if we call most of middle america racists for voting trump, I think we'll get just that. You're already getting called racist, even if you don't fit the bill, after a while you probably stop caring.

Just seems like a bit of a natural human response. An example: as someone that grew up in "flyover country" the overall view that the east and west coast tend to have on the middle of america is rather appalling at times. I think both sides need to have a bit of self reflection on how far into the abyss they've gazed and how much of their alleged rivals worst behaviors they've internalized.