They didn't exist in the public debate to begin with. Social media opened that up. We're realizing just how negatively impactful a village idiot with a megaphone the size of a city block can be.
My point being maybe you think 95% of MAGA-hats are off their rocker, and Trumpism taken as a whole is grossly misguided. I don't really disagree. But is it possible that there's some core nugget of wisdom to take away. Something, perhaps that your current worldview is glossing over.
Instead of just writing off the political beliefs of literally half the people in America, maybe we should really be super certain that we make a genuine attempt to understand where they're coming from.
At worst, we've wasted some time talking to idiots. But my guess is if we make a good-faith and honest attempt to find the best and brightest Trumpists out there (instead of just smugly dunking on the dumbest trolls on the Internet), that maybe, just maybe there may be a kernel of truth underlying their ideology.
The reason? I don't think that sort of person voted for Trump because of the idea of Trump or a cult of personality. They simply got duped and there are better solutions to their problems.
The folks that stormed D.C. are too far gone at this point.
Depends how you define supporter. He’s received support from some smart, cynical and extremely nasty people; he serves their agenda, one way or another. But they’re not fans; they’re probably privately pretty contemptuous of him. The Mercers would be an obvious example.
If by supporter you mean the people who believe him about the election being stolen and so on, there are no smart people in that category. There are smart sociopaths who don’t believe him but go along with the idea, of course.
Public debate is fine, but we are watching a huge population of people absurdly follow this man in his birthday suit. People so easily "persuaded" deserve the (non violent) pushback they get.
It takes a child to point it out, because everyone else is bought in to assuming the king couldn't be so foolish, so they must be mistaken.
What these disastrous last 5 years have proven is that people will refuse to acknowledge the obvious truth as long as there's a plausible lie they prefer.
Now the parties, or at least their supporters, can't agree on the past and present truth of what's happening in the country.
When there's no common agreement on what basic truth is, you can't expect agree on policy to address the problems we face.