It’s a personality cult to them. Whatever Trump says is good they think is good. It’s pathetic, I remember when republicans used to at least have an ideology.
I figure by now we've all seen the polls purporting to show that Democrats are "less tolerant of opposing viewpoints" than Republicans. That Republicans are more willing to have Democratic friends than vice versa, stuff like that.
Maybe it's just that Democrats take their convictions more seriously on average, as this poll would suggest. It's easier to overlook an ideological disagreement if your opinion on that disagreement is so malleable.
Hence why the "hurr-durr, what if Bill Clinton's in the Epstein files?" retort never works. There are politicians we're more fond of, but none we're slavishly devoted to.
Republicans have different moral compasses but that doesn't mean they have no morals. They score lower on things like empathy but higher on things like loyalty. They're more willing to keep friends with different political beliefs and think it's insane to cut people out over politics if neither person has demonstrated disloyalty to the other. Likewise they don't solidly commit to ideas, but rather to people. What they say (or the symbols they use) is often a demonstration of loyalty rather than conviction.
It's also why one of the worst things they can call a politician is a RINO. Disloyalty is often a worse crime than bad policy.
If an American disagrees that "... all men are created equal...", they are inherently disloyal, regardless of how good of a hang they may or may not be in their personal life. A person who continues to demonstrate loyalty to someone that has expressed, with both their WORDS, and [ORDERS|ACTIONS] that he does not think that "... all men are created equal...", is also inherently disloyal to the nation. Regardless of how good of a hang the guy is, how much he personally makes you laugh, how special and above everybody else he makes you feel - if you at no point, while following this person, ever have any qualms in your mind raised as they conspire against your brethren and seek their utter deprivation, if you witnessed such a thing and just laughed contemptuously "Heh, I'm good, I've got me and mine", and, while this was ongoing, you did not object, and continued to mindlessly follow, like a lemming, you are disloyal. Did they manipulate you into it? Doesn't matter. You should've known better. You should've been paying attention. Providence dislikes it strongly when you don't do that.
Your loyalty to your own, ephemeral pleasure should not override the clear knowledge of your eyes that that this person in a position of a power, who you are contributing to, is implementing through institutions under their control that all men are not created equal, if you laugh along while they attempt to irreparably scar and deform the Kingdom of God, such that it never be, what it must be - you are disloyal. It was your Duty to be on guard here, and you were off having fun and laughing pleasantly. At the very moment the Republic needed you, you were absent at your post. How can such a Being be called "loyal"? Loyal to wickedness. Loyal to pleasure. Loyal to the world. Sure. Personally, my favored brand of loyalty is loyalty to Providence.
Sorry, there are transcendent matters at play here that cannot be reduced to a social scientists cute little tests pretending to measure precisely the scale of virtue. They cannot really do that.
Yep. Folks on here really need to read Haidt's The Righteous Mind to understand that the right does have values motivating their reasoning. I don't agree with them, but they aren't the result of evil or stupidity or anything like that. There's been plenty of criticism of TRM and its methodology, but I think it provides a nice gateway for taking the moral concerns of the other team seriously, without having to agree with them.
That said it's when views on stuff like this switch overnight they are totally open to criticism, as is blind leader followership (even when it's clear the following has more to do with an endorsement of the leader as a mirror for one's values rather than his specific actions).
All they need are a couple of post hoc justifications from conservative media and they will immediately fall in line. They are the most unquestioning group of people. I live in a red state and know plenty of conservatives and I genuinely haven't found one that questions their own party.
I kinda get Peronism now. The entire concept was hard for me to wrap my head around but it's clear that Trumpism is American Peronism.
The battle for the "undecided" middle was never about policy. The undecideds have policy preferences that are completely all over the place and make no sense.
The persuasion battle is now defined by whether you can get them to culturally envision themselves as part of "you". That they can see themselves in your vision of "us" in a fight of "us vs. them".
You're taking Peronism as a snapshot in time and ignoring its entire context Peronism is ideologically amorphous and has flipped multiple times. It is surprisingly hard to pin down ideologically.
Studies have been done on this. They do have beliefs. Their moral compass is just different. While things like empathy (for outgroups) tend to be lower they value things like loyalty a lot higher. They don't necessarily hold sincere beliefs or care about the greater good. But they do care about demonstrating loyalty to their group.
In fact, it's not wrong to say that those on the left value loyalty very little. Which is why they always seem more disunited and so easily turn on incumbents like Biden or Kamala.
This makes sense. It's why for example, if a Democrat suddenly came out and started using racial slurs and parroting the rhetoric that would make a 50s Birmingham policeman blush, his fellow Democrats would throw him under the bus and fully denounce him. Reasonable debate, dissent, and deviation from the norm is acceptable, but something like that would be so antithetical to their values that it couldn't be accommodated.
It's a genuine challenge of political organisation Non-right wing voices need greater value for loyalty - and if that's not to leaders, then to ideals and principles. That's harder to do than loyalty to leaders, and it requires more discipline and attention to detail day to day. It also demands being prepared to fight for it.
Everything I've read about Nazi Germany has supported the conclusion that they were able to go to such lengths because of the number of Germans who considered loyalty the greatest good and treason the greatest evil.
That's Jonathan Haidt's model. It's just a typology
Besides, we are rhetorically just doing the blame part of the rhetorical game of praise and blame.
But they do care about demonstrating loyalty to their group.
They care about asserting the supremacy and status of their group over others, sure. In America, though, in order to be properly "loyal", a requirement is to believe that "all men are created equal". I don't believe that anybody who disagrees with that statement of God can plausibly be called "loyal".
I'd like to point out that Jonathan Haidt's typology is imputed - ie, he has some tests which supposedly are supposed to impute the true, actual, or real of the possession of these virtues in their subjects. That's fair, there are more concepts in social science defined in such a way than you can sneeze at. But I refuse to limit my conception of the abstract virtue of loyalty to those imputed by Jonathan Haidt's tests. Jonathan Haidt (and social scientists in general) completely miss out on transcendent and specific factors that don't fit into their model. Like the fact that I, as an American, am loyal to a specific Constitution, written by God, and that it's my everlasting Duty to protect it and see the fruit of its Vine grow, until Kingdom Come.
Yeah, I'm not a fan of the general sentiment on this post. Every person's political identity is a combination of hard and soft preferences and beliefs. Political elites can influence soft preferences and beliefs fairly easily (e.x. progressive democrats were open to the ACA, even though it wasn't the system they preferred), but they have a much harder time influencing hard preferences and beliefs (pro-2nd amendment and pro-life/pro-choice voters would fit into this group). MAGA have pretty soft preferences in most areas, including foreign-policy, but they are pretty inflexible in others, such as immigration.
He did after the Vegas shooting and backed off, just this week he also told the GOP to ease up on abortion and he’s getting hammered for that albeit mostly privately
To me, it shows that MAGA is less an ideology and more a media ecosystem. The MAGA and MAGA-adjacent folks are getting a full court press from legacy media and social media on what their new marching orders are and responding accordingly. Unfortunately, I think that apparatus is going to persist even after Trump is gone.
That’s what’s crazy about this. If Trump just decided to like be not evil, and take reasonable positions, he could end up getting like a supermajority because his followers will endorse whatever he says. Democrats would be screwed if he wasn’t so morally reprehensible.
Republicans figured out a way to hijack religious indoctrination for their own needs. Just as God, Jesus, or your local fire and brimstone preacher is always right, so is God's divinely ordained representative on earth. That's why there's so much overlap between the most toxic types of Christians and Republicans.
There's a few, but they all have their tail between their legs at the moment. Think David Brooks or anyone that PBS Newshour is still inviting on their show for a Republican viewpoint. They know their current party is not conservative in any manner, but they can't break free from the cult as a matter of pride. Brooks likely knows he'd have no audience if he broke from the Republican party, since it's too late for him to be embraced by liberals.
Is it not a defining feature of a cult of personality that the sole determinant of what is right is whether or not the personality at the center of the cult has said what is right
this shouldnt be a surprise. trump was not at all anti war during any of his campaigning or during his first admin. people just assumed it because he said the right words to imply that
ultimately, what made republicans refrain from openly supporting intervention was the perception that interventions fail. as soon as one succeeds, of course they go back to openly supporting it
(for anyone wondering how "improve" and "worsen" could both increase for Democrats, it's because the chart doesn't show a line for the "neither/usure" option)
Obviously this doesn’t necessarily make Trumpism a form of fascism, but this aspect is very close to the delegations of all matters of ideology to Hitler and his closest advisors.
When are people going to wake up. They don't care about issues, they care about power. As long as "their guy" is in power, most of them don't really care what they do.
Hate to be that guy, but anyone got a URL to the YouGov page for this? I searched high and low and could only find things sort of along these lines. Best match I got was someone on Twitter.
https://preview.redd.it/l1f9231dq7cg1.jpeg?width=797&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=d3df72f59b48b50ed96adf9dd5fbe24f4a8433e9
Literal NPCs
Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia
Something peace president
Something Something noble prize
Hmm
It’s a personality cult to them. Whatever Trump says is good they think is good. It’s pathetic, I remember when republicans used to at least have an ideology.
Lemmings
It’s just a very rapid reversion to the mean for Republicans. It took 20 years of wars that weren’t going well to move them to where they were.
Lmao. The 30% jump in republican ‘improve’ responses in the last 2 weeks. New MAGA software update must’ve been rolled out
I figure by now we've all seen the polls purporting to show that Democrats are "less tolerant of opposing viewpoints" than Republicans. That Republicans are more willing to have Democratic friends than vice versa, stuff like that.
Maybe it's just that Democrats take their convictions more seriously on average, as this poll would suggest. It's easier to overlook an ideological disagreement if your opinion on that disagreement is so malleable.
We commit to ideas. They commit to leaders.
Hence why the "hurr-durr, what if Bill Clinton's in the Epstein files?" retort never works. There are politicians we're more fond of, but none we're slavishly devoted to.
Not only do democrats not care, Bill Clinton doesn't either. He has openly called for everything to be released.
If there’s a politician difficult to shame with public revelation of his sexual acts Clinton is certainly one of them.
Reminder that his approval ratings improved when the Lewinsky scandal happened.
Republicans have different moral compasses but that doesn't mean they have no morals. They score lower on things like empathy but higher on things like loyalty. They're more willing to keep friends with different political beliefs and think it's insane to cut people out over politics if neither person has demonstrated disloyalty to the other. Likewise they don't solidly commit to ideas, but rather to people. What they say (or the symbols they use) is often a demonstration of loyalty rather than conviction.
It's also why one of the worst things they can call a politician is a RINO. Disloyalty is often a worse crime than bad policy.
If an American disagrees that "... all men are created equal...", they are inherently disloyal, regardless of how good of a hang they may or may not be in their personal life. A person who continues to demonstrate loyalty to someone that has expressed, with both their WORDS, and [ORDERS|ACTIONS] that he does not think that "... all men are created equal...", is also inherently disloyal to the nation. Regardless of how good of a hang the guy is, how much he personally makes you laugh, how special and above everybody else he makes you feel - if you at no point, while following this person, ever have any qualms in your mind raised as they conspire against your brethren and seek their utter deprivation, if you witnessed such a thing and just laughed contemptuously "Heh, I'm good, I've got me and mine", and, while this was ongoing, you did not object, and continued to mindlessly follow, like a lemming, you are disloyal. Did they manipulate you into it? Doesn't matter. You should've known better. You should've been paying attention. Providence dislikes it strongly when you don't do that.
Your loyalty to your own, ephemeral pleasure should not override the clear knowledge of your eyes that that this person in a position of a power, who you are contributing to, is implementing through institutions under their control that all men are not created equal, if you laugh along while they attempt to irreparably scar and deform the Kingdom of God, such that it never be, what it must be - you are disloyal. It was your Duty to be on guard here, and you were off having fun and laughing pleasantly. At the very moment the Republic needed you, you were absent at your post. How can such a Being be called "loyal"? Loyal to wickedness. Loyal to pleasure. Loyal to the world. Sure. Personally, my favored brand of loyalty is loyalty to Providence.
Sorry, there are transcendent matters at play here that cannot be reduced to a social scientists cute little tests pretending to measure precisely the scale of virtue. They cannot really do that.
Yep. Folks on here really need to read Haidt's The Righteous Mind to understand that the right does have values motivating their reasoning. I don't agree with them, but they aren't the result of evil or stupidity or anything like that. There's been plenty of criticism of TRM and its methodology, but I think it provides a nice gateway for taking the moral concerns of the other team seriously, without having to agree with them.
That said it's when views on stuff like this switch overnight they are totally open to criticism, as is blind leader followership (even when it's clear the following has more to do with an endorsement of the leader as a mirror for one's values rather than his specific actions).
All they need are a couple of post hoc justifications from conservative media and they will immediately fall in line. They are the most unquestioning group of people. I live in a red state and know plenty of conservatives and I genuinely haven't found one that questions their own party.
The rants I got from my MIL from 2022-2024 about Ukraine, WW3, not getting involved with foreign affairs….
She was the first to celebrate the bombing of Iran and the strike on Venezuela.
Ask nicely a couple of times that you would like to avoid talking about politics and then when she inevitably doesn't do that light her ass up.
Not a cult BTW
They have no beliefs
I kinda get Peronism now. The entire concept was hard for me to wrap my head around but it's clear that Trumpism is American Peronism.
The battle for the "undecided" middle was never about policy. The undecideds have policy preferences that are completely all over the place and make no sense.
The persuasion battle is now defined by whether you can get them to culturally envision themselves as part of "you". That they can see themselves in your vision of "us" in a fight of "us vs. them".
The idea that voters vote with their pocketbook was always nonsense, but especially now. It’s all about culture.
No, it is not. Peronism is basically just a left-wing party in the 21st century.
Ironically this sub's darling Milei Is the one who has government officials wearing "MAKE ARGENTINA GREAT AGAIN" hats.
You're taking Peronism as a snapshot in time and ignoring its entire context Peronism is ideologically amorphous and has flipped multiple times. It is surprisingly hard to pin down ideologically.
Believing that voters know or care about the economy in earnest has always been the biggest problem with Neoliberals seeking office
Hatred is a belief. They have that.
It's a feeling. Beliefs require actual thought.
Studies have been done on this. They do have beliefs. Their moral compass is just different. While things like empathy (for outgroups) tend to be lower they value things like loyalty a lot higher. They don't necessarily hold sincere beliefs or care about the greater good. But they do care about demonstrating loyalty to their group.
In fact, it's not wrong to say that those on the left value loyalty very little. Which is why they always seem more disunited and so easily turn on incumbents like Biden or Kamala.
In a sense the left more values loyalty to the cause, while the right values loyalty to the group, it's a fundamentally different type of loyalty
Correct. The moment anyone goes against the morals that I believe are correct I have no problem turning against them.
This makes sense. It's why for example, if a Democrat suddenly came out and started using racial slurs and parroting the rhetoric that would make a 50s Birmingham policeman blush, his fellow Democrats would throw him under the bus and fully denounce him. Reasonable debate, dissent, and deviation from the norm is acceptable, but something like that would be so antithetical to their values that it couldn't be accommodated.
It's a genuine challenge of political organisation Non-right wing voices need greater value for loyalty - and if that's not to leaders, then to ideals and principles. That's harder to do than loyalty to leaders, and it requires more discipline and attention to detail day to day. It also demands being prepared to fight for it.
Everything I've read about Nazi Germany has supported the conclusion that they were able to go to such lengths because of the number of Germans who considered loyalty the greatest good and treason the greatest evil.
That's Jonathan Haidt's model. It's just a typology
Besides, we are rhetorically just doing the blame part of the rhetorical game of praise and blame.
They care about asserting the supremacy and status of their group over others, sure. In America, though, in order to be properly "loyal", a requirement is to believe that "all men are created equal". I don't believe that anybody who disagrees with that statement of God can plausibly be called "loyal".
I'd like to point out that Jonathan Haidt's typology is imputed - ie, he has some tests which supposedly are supposed to impute the true, actual, or real of the possession of these virtues in their subjects. That's fair, there are more concepts in social science defined in such a way than you can sneeze at. But I refuse to limit my conception of the abstract virtue of loyalty to those imputed by Jonathan Haidt's tests. Jonathan Haidt (and social scientists in general) completely miss out on transcendent and specific factors that don't fit into their model. Like the fact that I, as an American, am loyal to a specific Constitution, written by God, and that it's my everlasting Duty to protect it and see the fruit of its Vine grow, until Kingdom Come.
Believing you should be in charge at all costs is a belief.
Not necessarily, following whatever the leader says even if it is conflicting with previous positions has been done before: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F%C3%BChrerprinzip
The real test of this would be if Trump advocated for more gun control or for a more secular state
Vaccines were one of the few times Trump got any real pushback.
... And he folded like a flip phone
(after getting his own vaccine, of course)
Trump could probably nuke Texas and the maga cult will find a way to point out why it was a good thing
The real test would be if he opened the borders.
And the thing is, I bet he could pull it off. Something about wanting to exploit cheap labor to make our country great again, they'd eat it right up.
“Maid visas”
Yeah, I'm not a fan of the general sentiment on this post. Every person's political identity is a combination of hard and soft preferences and beliefs. Political elites can influence soft preferences and beliefs fairly easily (e.x. progressive democrats were open to the ACA, even though it wasn't the system they preferred), but they have a much harder time influencing hard preferences and beliefs (pro-2nd amendment and pro-life/pro-choice voters would fit into this group). MAGA have pretty soft preferences in most areas, including foreign-policy, but they are pretty inflexible in others, such as immigration.
He did after the Vegas shooting and backed off, just this week he also told the GOP to ease up on abortion and he’s getting hammered for that albeit mostly privately
"Absolute power" has always been an elusive thing. Hitler and Stalin could not make any order and expect to remain in power.
This is very blackpilling but also very useful for the Dems to know:
Dont bother purity testing Dems on what issues will or wont appeal to median/Trump voters.
Focus on attacking the image of Trump as a competent strongman rather than explaining obvious flaws in his logic.
I'm an isolationist; I sit isolated in a nice office in a federal building and nobody asks my opinion.
I like the neoliberal NPC meme where the chip doesn't change the substantive part of the statement just the argument used
Actual sheep
My copium is that this is a good thing since it makes it less likely MAGA will survive once trump is gone
Until the next idiot strings them along.
Whoever it is, it sure as shit won't be Vance
Let's hope they are an idiot.
I don’t know, everyone who isn’t Trump seems to be a complete charisma vacuum.
And it is charisma that wins you the US presidency. With very limited exceptions.
I thought that about COVID denialism. The fact that the evil electorate didn't decline was proof I was wrong
To me, it shows that MAGA is less an ideology and more a media ecosystem. The MAGA and MAGA-adjacent folks are getting a full court press from legacy media and social media on what their new marching orders are and responding accordingly. Unfortunately, I think that apparatus is going to persist even after Trump is gone.
Worst pluribus episode
[deleted]
Keep going I’m close.
That’s what’s crazy about this. If Trump just decided to like be not evil, and take reasonable positions, he could end up getting like a supermajority because his followers will endorse whatever he says. Democrats would be screwed if he wasn’t so morally reprehensible.
Put trains and H-Marts everywhere and you got my vote
No taco trucks on every corner?!? SPLITTER!!!
I mean, it makes perfect sense if they're reactionaries.
Barely a blip for independents and democrats, but a meteoric rise for republicans. Jesus it really is a cult for them.
Republicans figured out a way to hijack religious indoctrination for their own needs. Just as God, Jesus, or your local fire and brimstone preacher is always right, so is God's divinely ordained representative on earth. That's why there's so much overlap between the most toxic types of Christians and Republicans.
There are those who are interested in politics because they have thoughts and beliefs about the world around them, and then there are Republicans
Are there modern Republicans really interested in politics as a field of study? Or just politics as a team sport and naked tribalism?
There's a few, but they all have their tail between their legs at the moment. Think David Brooks or anyone that PBS Newshour is still inviting on their show for a Republican viewpoint. They know their current party is not conservative in any manner, but they can't break free from the cult as a matter of pride. Brooks likely knows he'd have no audience if he broke from the Republican party, since it's too late for him to be embraced by liberals.
https://preview.redd.it/wamgskvu79cg1.jpeg?width=992&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=f93a37105ffae10a32a76624004e197296eb8aac
I dropped this in the DT but it seems appropriate here. This was specific about Maduro and they did the same flip flop.
Yah it’s from the same article I tried to post here but mods wouldn’t approve it
Is it not a defining feature of a cult of personality that the sole determinant of what is right is whether or not the personality at the center of the cult has said what is right
this shouldnt be a surprise. trump was not at all anti war during any of his campaigning or during his first admin. people just assumed it because he said the right words to imply that
ultimately, what made republicans refrain from openly supporting intervention was the perception that interventions fail. as soon as one succeeds, of course they go back to openly supporting it
(for anyone wondering how "improve" and "worsen" could both increase for Democrats, it's because the chart doesn't show a line for the "neither/usure" option)
Imo that’s a common aspect in fascism.
Obviously this doesn’t necessarily make Trumpism a form of fascism, but this aspect is very close to the delegations of all matters of ideology to Hitler and his closest advisors.
Remember back in 2017?
When are people going to wake up. They don't care about issues, they care about power. As long as "their guy" is in power, most of them don't really care what they do.
lol they are never beating the allegations
Just straight up fucking embarrassing
Hate to be that guy, but anyone got a URL to the YouGov page for this? I searched high and low and could only find things sort of along these lines. Best match I got was someone on Twitter.
Pseudo-economic Fanfiction
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