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I have yet to see a "seemingly intelligent and sane" person that voted for Trump. Intelligent and sane people want him out.
Yazata
Valued Senior Member
In some cases other people's political views aren't so stupid or insane. Labeling them such is just a way of justifying refusal to seriously consider them. Life is a lot easier that way. (That's what (Q) was doing in the posts immediately above.)
But mostly, I think that our political views are less a matter of intelligent thought than they are a matter of emotion, emotion driven by self-interest and by a sense of social solidarity with some group that we identify with and hatred for those we perceive as enemies. We imagine ourselves as a member of a beleaguered community and tailor our views to conform with the views of that community.
So blacks seek solidarity with other blacks out of self interest, and hence gravitate to what they perceive as black politics, the politics of their chosen community. Gays. Feminists. And (inevitably) "white nationalists".
This is why society is growing more fragmented by the day and why Western civilization may well be doomed. There are no longer any ideas, values or symbols that everyone in a culture shares that draw everyone together in common cause. The goal seems to be to eliminate broader cultures entirely (in favor of... what?)
So absent a larger community that everyone can belong to and identify with, everyone grasps with white-knuckled intensity to their narrower tribal identity.
Identity politics.
Because that's easier than accepting an uncomfortable truth (the US deficit, the loss of US supremacy, climate change, an unpopular bill that passes etc.)
Expertise is not synonymous with lack of personal interests and concerns outside the restrictions of job performance and practice. That only pertains to intelligence-related activities carried out by machines, which are absent a "life" and concerns extending to the future safety and prosperity of a family/community.
Political diversity and its raucous passions[*] result when the "sanity" and "quietude" of single-party and personality-cult authoritarian states doesn't apply (PRC, NK, etc). IOW, when different ideologies and thought orientations are allowed to overtly and fervently compete.
Accordingly, a rivalrous environment arises not unlike that of commercially competing businesses promoting themselves. The latter domain, however, is arguably regulated by some degree of preventive and civility-inducing standards (locally depending) -- whereas (again contingent on era/location) such for political engagement and propaganda may be lax.
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[*] Passions may be evident in hyper-managed motherlands, but they're usually orchestrated -- like the wailing and gnashing of teeth when Kim Jong-il died or the nationalistic posturing of residents on the sidelines of military parades. Regardless, there are no significant, deeply contrasting perspectives to publicly argue with (apart from venting wrath upon any fabricated Goldstein facades and extraneous bugbears). It is ultimate adult daycare, where the caretakers both heavily constrain the behavior of their dependents for the sake of society's welfare and sodomize them for control refinements.
Yes, but we've given both Biden and Trump a chance (Biden was Vice President) and we've seen through mountains of evidence that Biden is certainly not stupid or insane, but Trump is both. They've already proven themselves.
Oh, that's just reflex. For years, if not decades, the Republicans have routinely accused the democrats of everything underhanded or ill-advised that they themselves had done or were doing. That's how you could tell that thousands of dead people voted for trump and that the mail-in vote will be somehow corrupted in republican-controlled states.
No, "we" don't.
The reflexive projection of hatred unto others, in particular, characterizes a defined political faction of Americans. Most people are not significantly motivated by hatred, and have to apply intelligent thought to recognize the role of hatred in others.
Imagining themselves belonging to a beleagured community is another characteristic of a defined faction of Americans, and not a universal or even majority characteristic.
Most Americans are also capable of considering the interests of others, not only themselves, and acting in solidarity with people who belong to other social groups to advance those non-self interests.
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Seattle
Valued Senior Member
Since that makes no sense, that's probably not the most accurate interpretation of events.
It might be closer to the truth to say that there were some who voted for Trump that weren't that bright and that anyone who thought Trump was a great guy might be insane. Those seem to be the ones who go to his rallies.
Many people who voted for Trump just didn't want Hillary and were tired of the other Republican candidates. There were many people who were Republican and who didn't vote for him in the primary but after he became the candidate voted for him because he was the only choice for them.
I know people who rationalize their choice by the appointments to the Supreme Court that he could make and those who figured business would go on as usual with Trump and weren't so sure with Hillary. Some thought Hillary was more likely to get us into war.
I don't/didn't agree with any of that except that business may go on as usual if he doesn't completely wreck the country in the process. In other words, I'm for anyone other than Trump but you don't have to be stupid or insane to vote Republican.
Since Reagan you do have to be racially bigoted and very ignorant.
Very ignorant.
That's easier for the stupid and insane.
Seattle
Valued Senior Member
It's stupid and insane to think that there are enough stupid and insane people to elect a President.
Ya, no bad presidents have ever been elected, anywhere.
Two things about that. First, there are folks even here who aren't really considered stupid or insane, yet still haven't figured out Trump. And secondly, it's friggin hilarious that those stupid and insane people have a stupid and insane president leading them and the smart and sane people can't do a damn thing about it. The stupid insane people have the smart sane people but the short and curlys.
exchemist
Valued Senior Member
This makes a lot of sense to me.
Hillary Clinton does seem to have been disliked by a lot of people and even from the UK I can see why. She seemed to me to radiate entitlement. From what I gather, quite a few people thought Trump probably wouldn't be that bad, especially if he had the wit to surround himself with capable people, as Reagan did. Unfortunately, though he did get some very good people on board, he soon fell out with them or they resigned in disgust (my favourite example being when Rex Tillerson pointedly did not deny that he had described Trump as a "fucking moron"
). Trump has turned out to be every bit as narcissistic and megalomaniac as some of us feared, so it quite quickly ceased to be a joke, whether for the US or the rest of the world.Good thing nobody does, then.
There are enough racially bigoted and very ignorant white Americans to elect a President, of course. That's documented fact, with at least seven demonstrations citable from the post WWII elections plus poll results from the upcoming one.
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No it doesn't. Read it carefully. It doesn't add up - for example, why would personal dislike of Clinton lead an intelligent and informed (or even just sane) person to vote for Trump? That kind of explanation works for only a few scattered and unusual voters - not 63 million white people with above average incomes and all the advantages of American citizenship.
The missing factor - absolutely necessary to explain the behavior those dim excuses were invented to cover ass for - is racial bigotry and/or racism in practice.
There simply isn't anything else sufficient and supported by evidence.
That is nonsense, of course.
The Trump voters don't think he's been bad at all. He's been what they voted for, and they approve of his Presidency - they want at least four more years of the same.
Meanwhile, anyone who thought Trump would surround himself with "capable people" (as Reagan most definitely did not - what are you thinking?) would fall into the stupid and/or crazy category.
Rex Tillerson was the CEO most responsible for Exxon's handling of the discovery of AGW (the company launched a propaganda effort to deny and discredit what their own in-house research had discovered and verified , apparently to enable a head start and commercial advantage at exploiting the Arctic thaw). He also took a pass on supporting impeachment, opposing Trump's demolition of various valuable agencies Exxon regarded as nuisances, and revealing what he certainly knew of Trump's Russian attachments.Unfortunately, though he did get some very good people on board, he soon fell out with them or they resigned in disgust (my favourite example being when Rex Tillerson pointedly did not deny that he had described Trump as a "fucking moron"
He consciously and willfully betrayed the people of his country for personal and corporate money and power, to be brief.
Then he signed on with Trump's administration, with the explicitly recognized role of furthering its agenda by riding herd on Trump's loose cannon propensities - the agenda itself was fine with him, see; Trump's major flaw was not his fascism, but rather the threat to it posed by his vulgarity and flagrancy of corruption. They were (and are) worried about blowback and backlash from his style, not the demolition of American democracy that is his agenda.
If that is your idea of a "very good person", then your similar labeling of Reagan's pack of racial bigots, sociological lunatics, economic whackjobs, and sadistic warmongers makes a certain amount of sense, but it would be disappointing.
My guess instead is that after thirty plus years awash in American propaganda feeds you have forgotten what Reagan's administration was like. As a prod to your memory, may I suggest a review of Reagan's "Star Wars", including its contracting and foreign policy role - focusing on the role of the "very good people" that put that operation in motion. Then compare the contracting and role and "very good people" around Trump's Mexican Wall.
Republican=Trump; Trump=Republican.
exchemist
Valued Senior Member
You are not engaging properly with what I said. If you can't do that, I'm not going to waste time arguing with you about it.
Yazata
Valued Senior Member
https://twitter.com/ElijahSchaffer/status/1300290897922453504
The question in the OP was why do otherwise intelligent people behave like we see in the video in the link above. It's a legitimate question, It is the same question that we might ask about what motivated the Nazis, the Marxists and before them the French revolutionary Terror and many more examples.
The answer appears to be that intelligent people aren't always motivated solely and dispassionately by their intelligence (whether real or imagined). Oftentimes a person's intelligence only enables that person to try to justify unjustifiable things. Things that are motivated by far more elemental psychological motives.
One of the most notable things about those motives is how they are accompanied by an incredible sense of self-righteousness. The Nazis felt it, the Marxists felt it, those who burned heretics in the Middle Ages felt it - and the 'woke' feel it today. The righteousness of one's cause justifies any excess committed in its name in bringing it to fruition.
Every issue is moralized and turned into a matter of Good vs Evil. Hence any attempt to understand one's opponents and to address their concerns becomes a compromise with evil and itself evil. So enemies aren't to be won over, but are only pop-up targets to be silenced.
Life reduced to a first-person-shooter video game.
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