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Comment by breadwinner | Hacker News Reader

There was a viral post on this topic recently: https://old.reddit.com/r/thebulwark/comments/1ljbvtw/hottest...

But ... the whole reason Trump got elected is the fact that the electorate has split into us-vs-them group identities, he works through polarization. And although this post captures how one group (let's call it the "internet generation") feels about the world, it's probably not helping with polarization.

You have to admire, in fact, how smart Trump is. Look at the central "problem" according to that post:

"But see, not everybody was thinking that Hillary Clinton was an alien, that global warming was a Chinese hoax and that what America needed most of all was a plywood wall stretching from Texas to California. Only the stupid people were"

Holy crap this is polarizing. AND WE DON'T EVEN DISAGREE ON THESE. These sort of statements are the exact opposite of what we need to defeat Trump. Because no, this is NOT a difference between "smart" and "dumb". If you abstract just a little bit ...

Hillary Clinton is an unpopular war hawk. Would you like her as president? I wouldn't, just about the only big positive I see in her is that it's long past time for a female president. But please: not her. She IS an alien in that I don't know who this woman represents. Not me, certainly, and I frankly don't see or know any group that she does represent. I'd MUCH prefer AOC, but frankly, I'd prefer Nikki Haley over her.

"Global warming is a Chinese hoax". This is the one I would most describe as "dumb". But ... not really global warming policy has not worked for 50 years. This is, of course, not a reason to give up on it, but it probably is time to change course bigtime. And, sorry, the protests about global warming ... are equally dumb as Trump's (made-in-china) MAGA caps.

"what America needs most ... wall stretching from Texas to California". Obviously "dumb" Americans like this because life has become ever more difficult and immigration (specifically pressure on the job market and housing market) is a huge and growing problem. Trump only gets points because he does something.

The ("our") internet generation is getting old. Perhaps not dying yet, but we are not young anymore. And the train has definitely left the station: nobody's growing up to be internet generation anymore. The only thing that is happening to the internet generation is that people are leaving it. Not in great numbers. Not yet. But we'll only be shrinking from 5 years ago forward. Yet another reason to find a way to agree with Trump's electorate.

I feel like these viewpoints (I hope) represent "the internet generation". My conclusion is Trump got elected because he convinced me and the "real Americans" that we disagree. We don't. These are superficial, not worth having a fight over and CERTAINLY not worth having a president like Trump over.

maybe he's just the cancer and we're the ones who have been ingesting the poison all along (doing nothing about income inequality, social and financial mobility, a sense of civic duty, the courts not bringing him to justice, etc etc). That doesn't change the fact that you excise the cancer with extreme prejudice otherwise it kills you.

You can't "excise the cancer" of Trump's voters, and that isn't the goal. My first point is that we shouldn't do that. These are normal people just like you and me. That they can live, have a job, and participate in discussing the future of America is a great thing. A good second point is if we try to just cut them out, we'll lose, because the "internet generation" shrinks while their generation grows. And a third point is that Trump is anything but a champion of "real Americans", so putting a wedge between those two is very doable.

My excise comment was more about Trump and poor-exploiting-rich-people like him that feign care for structural ills but run and act in a hostile autocratic xenophobic and populist way.

I like to think that people voted for him despite his policies on immigration and others because they thought this idiot real estate mogul turned reality TV star was an actually competent business person and yet …

The man failed at selling steaks in America, casinos, ran fraudulent universities, stole from veterans in charity money … the list is nigh infinite.

This is because you attack the symbol that they're proud of, rather than pointing out the policies. The problem is that the democrats are doing the same, like the blog post this is about.

The problem isn't Trump, and it certainly isn't Trump voters, it's the policy. Trump is nothing but a tasteless symbol of failure. But if someone wants a bust of him on an altar, who fucking cares?

The problem is that we AREN'T discussing policies. We aren't discussing whether cutting medicare is good or bad, we're discussing whether all democrats are terrorist lovers, and all republicans are dumb broke versions of uncle scrooge.

Yeah i literally said “maybe he’s the cancer”…

Some voters are unwilling to see truth. Some are so high on their own supply of confirmation bias they can’t be swayed. Every idiot praying their legislator votes for the big beautiful bill but is dependent on Medicaid is voting irrationally - but because Trump told them to they will.

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