I was at the April 5th rally and there was a lot of negative attention on Trump of course. He was the focus of the anger.
But I kept on thinking, he’s just doing what he said he was going to do BEFORE the election.
It’s not as though he tricked people into voting for him and then is doing something completely different.
So why don’t we protest against his voters not the politician who is their mouthpiece?
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I was at the April 5th rally and there was a lot of negative attention on Trump of course. He was the focus of the anger.
But I kept on thinking, he’s just doing what he said he was going to do BEFORE the election.
It’s not as though he tricked people into voting for him and then is doing something completely different.
So why don’t we protest against his voters not the politician who is their mouthpiece?
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1% Trump.
1% the people surrounding Trump.
98% the people who didn’t vote to stop him
He is doing what he said he was going to do. Blaming Trump for this is like blaming a rattlesnake for biting you after you chose to pick it up and try to pet it.
50/50.
Trump is just what end stage Americanitis looks like.
100% and 100%.
Trump is a narcissist and authoritarian. The people who voted for him are also grown adults who could have chosen at any point to stop supporting him, yet they willfully stick their heads in the sand.
I blame all his voters for being in the mess we’re in, as well as the ones who voted third party or abstained. Even if he was always going to win the electoral college vote, it’s embarrassing how he also won the popular vote.
100% on the people.
We have a civic duty to be informed and to make informed decisions. We have a duty to make our elected officials accountable to their actions. We have a duty to care for everyone in the country.
The American electorate has failed at this since basically the beginning of America. It’s only recently to where the consequences of this has truly begun to destroy the country. Society’s ignorance will be it’s downfall. Trump said what he was gonna do to the federal government. Republicans have been clear that they want the destruction of the federal government to nothing more than, effectively, a national defense force.
Nobody who voted for them, has any right to be upset now. They’re doing exactly what they said they would.
Trump is 100% to blame for his actions, and his voters are also 100% to blame for voting for those actions.
Personally I’d say it’s 100% on the voters. That’s the great burden of democracy – that the voters are responsible for what the government does.
I think there is actually a split between the rest of the lot and tariffs. While I agree he talked about tariffs in the past, he was never very specific, and people (including me) were pretty convinced this would be more like a special spice he would use, rather than the defining economic policy of a generation. I think this is why if you look at his polling, there is a relatively sharp split happening in the last few days. (https://www.natesilver.net/p/trump-approval-ratings-nate-silver-bulletin) a move to about 45% approval rate. So pretty much losing the vast majority of the swing voters that gave Trump the election.
I am not sure blame is the right framing, but it is disappointing that such a large percent of our country is pretty ok with a pretty xenophobic and cruel framing. But zoom out on our country’s history and you wouldn’t be as surprised.
I personally blame everyone who did not vote for Harris including family members. But I do blame trump the most as he is the one doing it all or allowing it to be done.
Trump is a symptom of the moral rot within America. He is the result of and standard bearer for it. There are emotional justifications and denials that a large number of Americans make for him and themselves to pretend the moral rot is nonexistent. But, it exists and Trump has exposed all of it openly for anyone willing to look at it. I blame those who know better and chose him anyway more than those who have always been foolishly blind and easily deluded.
I’d say:
25% – foolish MAGA living in a blind propaganda bubble
50% – everyone who knows what is happening, who he is, and actively chose destruction (this includes flip flopping Republicans, anti-anti-Trumpers, knee-jerk anti-Democrat independents, third party voters on both the right or left who knew their vote would help Trump win, etc.)
25% – Trump
Is protesting Trump’s voter base enough? Is it time for more drastic measures?
I may get downvoted for this but here’s my take:
Rural areas are media vacuums. Rural people get news from social media as a result. Social media is an algorithm, it learns what you hate and makes you angry, and shows you more of it because it drives up user engagement. It doesn’t have to be true information.
People cannot be blamed for decisions they came to based off of false information. It is really hard to tell the difference between fake and real in a world where satire is no longer obvious.
Those who support trump because of the things they heard that are true- as in, they know the insurrection was an attempt to overthrow democracy and they don’t care, or they know he’s racist, sexist, and a rapist and like him because of that- they can be protested against because they have all the information but voted for him because they are really fucked people.
The concept of blame at a population level doesn’t even make any sense. At that scale, what’s moving people are broad level social, cultural, technological forces. Nobody’s steering the bus when you talk about tens of millions of people. You can blame your weird aunt for voting for Trump; you can’t blame white women writ large for voting for Trump.
So I used to be very much of the belief that Trump is a symptom and the Republican party is the actual disease (I still feel this way about his first term), but I’m starting to feel that Trump is more of a catalyst than I was originally giving him credit for and a lot of people have successfully risen in prominence in the Republican party because of his success that wouldn’t have, and a lot of those people are actually worse than the people who would be there otherwise and he does bear a greater responsibility for that than simply benefiting from the ecosystem that the larger conservative movement had built prior to his entering politics.
Protesting voters tends to be counter productive is why people are not doing it.
I would put most of the blame on the Republican apparatus starting in the 60s that built a machine that radicalized their base. That’s their media and their elected officials and their donors.
Trump supporter are next but they are basically just indoctrinated by propaganda.
Then are the lazy voters.
Equal. And some left over for the supreme court. Electorate let themselves either be duped or are fully aligned with his malice, SCOTUS pulled down some of the guardrails, and Trump is just being Trump. Scorpion and frog.
I blame that entire establishment, starting with the party members, the congressmen, senators, lawyers, PR teams and financial backers. The average voter is being brainwashed and will just do whatever they are told.
I attribute the most blame to right-wing propaganda outlets and Republican politicians who work hand in hand with them to brainwash citizens into thinking conservatism is good for them. Which is to say that I blame the voters very little because I think they basically lack agency due to their brains being mush from decades of propaganda. Just like I wouldn’t blame a child for acting exactly how their parent has always taught them to act.
That being said, some Republican voters actually engage with the other side and get some information from outside the conservative media sphere. Those people I blame wholeheartedly, because they should know better.
i blame the voters, trump is doing what he was voted in to do. he said these were his plans, he’s acting on his plans. i can’t fault him for doing what he was voted in to do even though i highly disagree with nearly everything
Ultimately the vast majority of the blame goes to Trump himself and his allies, and the right wing propaganda machine that’s deep into post-truth.
But sure, I also think it’s ridiculous that people somehow still don’t know objective facts that have occurred and will deny them. People are choosing not to do even the bare minimum to be informed. They won’t even do a fucking search and will just listen to whatever bullshit meme gets posted.
There’s plenty of blame to go around. I also think Bernie Sanders and the progressive movement he created specifically to attack Democrats, the party pushing massive reforms, during a fascist takeover deserve more blame than most average people. But yeah, no one else is truly responsible for Trump’s actions but Trump, and his allies in power.
I might get downvoted to hell but as someone who voted for Harris & knew he would be bad- I still didn’t think he would be THIS bad. Granted I didn’t pay too much attention to his rhetoric so maybe if I had followed him more that I would’ve known but I still feel a little shell shocked by his actions.
I totally blame the people that voted for him. They did a stupid thing for stupid and evil reasons. This is all their fault.
Sorry man, lots of “MAGA” are tricked and taken advantage of.
If any of them get over themselves and take off their red hat they can help us fix this up again – and sorry mate, the queers are gonna have a place too. As well as the poor. Any country of origin will be permitted to help rebuild this decimated working class.
That said, they better stop listening to the likes of Janine Pirro (who will never, ever, ever fuck them or do whatever it is that turns them on about her so much) who says crap like: “i don’t care about my 401k! This is genius in action.”*
*makes 3 million a year
**husband pardoned by Trump 1.0 (right before he ducked out the door
And he is so lucky. So very lucky that our opposition does not lampoon his every move on social media (as he did to Biden – Biden never had a day away from his sick lies and angry base).
He’s constantly lying, while accusing everyone else of lying too. He told the truth about his plans for retribution and being a dictator, and they thought it was all talk. Then he lied about planning to implement Project 2025 and they believed him. It’s classic propoganda, designed to confuse and ensnare. I don’t blame people for falling for tactics that have worked for centuries. It’s more important now for the poor and working class to come together, which history tells us is the only way to oust an authoritarian. It will become clear who was manipulated and who knew exactly what they were voting for.
Some vocabulary clarifications:
It’s both, and we are.
Stop picking at nits and go do something actually useful to organize against the BS.
I blame myself most of all
They’re the same thing. Trump and people voting for Trump both equally participated in this destruction.
I place the blame on a broken system that disincentivized embracing complexity and nuance over the last 250 years. Building silos, eliminating third spaces that allowed people to see one another, online echo chambers. History is a wave, Trump is a figurehead surfing it, but it swelled and we collectively were incapable of figuring out why at the time.
Don’t get me wrong, I abhor Trump and am absolutely disappointed in his followers but I don’t place a full blame on them, I place it on the systemic problems that exist in the system.