Article: Why Do So Many People Think Trump Is Good?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Department of Homeland does not understand that Puerto Ricans are US citizens. Wow. There is so much to be taught. Each day is filled with yet another embarrassing headline.

True but PRs have statutory citizenship which means their citizenship isn’t guaranteed by the constitution. If PR becomes a state that is a different matter. Unlike PRs, American Samoans and others are US nationals because they did not receive citizenship under a statute, yet they do have certain US protections.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The essay doesn’t really answer the question asked. It sort of dances around it.

Brooks still takes the conversation in an interesting direction. I think he is wrong that pluralism is the answer to the problem he identifies. At the end of the day, the morality and sacrifice of years past stretching into antiquity for the greater good was anchored to something people believed was real: The Glory of Athens or for the Glory of God and sanctification or even for the glory of baseball.

But, either way, all of those are anchored on in-group/out-group constructs. Which are fundamentally incompatible with pluralism. Brooks seems to suggest that he wants people to self-sacrifice for the greater good and be anchored to shared morality, but historically people have needed to believe in a cause greater than themselves for that. Pluralism sweeps away the foundation for belief. If everybody’s moral system is worthy of respect or confined to the private sphere than none can actually be true or be brought to the public sphere.

I agree with Brooks that we are not going back on pluralism and open society. But just as war and violence seems to be the fatal flaw of the moral systems of years past, perhaps the hyper individualism and moral relativism is the fatal flaw of the Enlightenment that cannot be corrected?

Brooks cannot answer the question because the reason good Americans vote for the loathsome Donald Trump is pluralism utterly failed. Brooks ends his piece calling for people to be "more willing to sacrifice some freedom of autonomy for the sake of the larger community." Why would people do that? A pluralistic society necessarily lacks shared values.

The promise of pluralism was adding diverse talent would create a rising tide to lift all boats. While Brooks and his ilk are quick to point out the "number (GDP) goes up," they are reticent to note median outcomes in many important areas have suffered immensely since the 1970s. If you make enough, you can solve these modern problems with money, but many (most?) Trump voters cannot use money they do not have so they vote for the Orange Clown. Trump promises them a return to a time when they could buy a home and send their kids to most public schools without worry. He won't deliver that, of course, but his promise is more than those people have gotten from politicians for generations. And that's why they love him.

[Anonymous]

I wonder how many MAGA eat up this kind of stuff or if they see it as the trolling it surely must be.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Gift link: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2025/07/trump-administration-supporters-good/683441/?gift=hIzDAuJOJsprB-h5XG3wQIhL8IgABi1khqcl8BzqM0w&utm_source=copy-link&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=share

Thanks for sharing. Great article giving an explanation of how weve fallen into two ditches. We are of course at the Fourth Turning so this should be expected.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I wonder how many MAGA eat up this kind of stuff or if they see it as the trolling it surely must be.

Sadly, and unbelievably, the MAGA I know eat it up. It’s absolutely wild that a grown adult can fall for this.

Imagine if we put memes of Hillary in a Tomb Raider costume all over the internet and thought we were serious people.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Same reason all the left thought Joe was sharp.

Except Trump actually gets things done, & doesn’t sleep all day.

Except Trump spends 60% of his days in unstructured “executive time” doing things like watching television, tweeting, and calling friends. The other 40% appears to be spent golfing.

And he does sleep during the day. He had a nice nap during the first day of his own criminal trial.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The essay doesn’t really answer the question asked. It sort of dances around it.

Brooks still takes the conversation in an interesting direction. I think he is wrong that pluralism is the answer to the problem he identifies. At the end of the day, the morality and sacrifice of years past stretching into antiquity for the greater good was anchored to something people believed was real: The Glory of Athens or for the Glory of God and sanctification or even for the glory of baseball.

But, either way, all of those are anchored on in-group/out-group constructs. Which are fundamentally incompatible with pluralism. Brooks seems to suggest that he wants people to self-sacrifice for the greater good and be anchored to shared morality, but historically people have needed to believe in a cause greater than themselves for that. Pluralism sweeps away the foundation for belief. If everybody’s moral system is worthy of respect or confined to the private sphere than none can actually be true or be brought to the public sphere.

I agree with Brooks that we are not going back on pluralism and open society. But just as war and violence seems to be the fatal flaw of the moral systems of years past, perhaps the hyper individualism and moral relativism is the fatal flaw of the Enlightenment that cannot be corrected?

NP — thank you for being the first poster who seems to have read the article! I think things will get so out of hand that new societies will form (possibly as new nations or reformed nations) with sets of agreed upon social contracts (morals/ethics) that will exist for a long time (how long, I’m not sure — a century? Two? More?). It won’t be recognizable to us. It’s like a continental shift is occurring and new continents are forming.

In other words, while I would like us to return stronger as a Union, I suspect we are going to see two or more unions form. These fractures are happening abroad too especially Europe. (I hope we can elect someone appealing who can transcend the existing two party tribalism.)

[Anonymous]

This line stands out to me:
But the moral relativism of the 1980s and ’90s looks like a golden age of peace and tranquility compared with today. Over the past 30 years, people have tried to fill the hole in their soul by seeking to derive a sense of righteousness through their political identities. And when you do that, politics begins to permeate everything and turns into a holy war in which compromise begins to seem like betrayal.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Same reason all the left thought Joe was sharp.

Except Trump actually gets things done, & doesn’t sleep all day.

This is a joke, yes?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I wonder how many MAGA eat up this kind of stuff or if they see it as the trolling it surely must be.

A president who said he hates half of Americans and trolls them, instead of offering compassion and $. Sad.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:NP. I despise the man, and think he is extremely harmful to the good of the nation, but correctly predicted his wins in spring of 2016 and again in 2024, so you know where I am coming from.

This is my take: Trump is popular because Trump gives room and structure for many people to reject quasi-religious beliefs that have been presented as fact, but are not fact, by the dominant new faith-based groups in our society (political groups). He allows space for heresy, and he does not apologize for his own heresies. In a world where the wrong words (e.g. heresies to the newly dominant religions) can and have caused people to lose jobs, friends, etc., this is enormously appealing. Trump says wrong words all the time.

The background of this is that with the decline in organized religions, we as a society have replaced organized religions with allegiance to political parties and ideologies. And with that religious fervor comes a religious fundamentalism that freely mixes fact with belief but presents that to the world as fact.

I actually believe that the sharp rise in mental health issues in young people is related to this dissonance. They have been presented with what are essentially faith-based beliefs as though those are fact, but not with the structures to deal with apostasy. The religions of old do the same (present faith as fact), of course, but they accompany those religious tenets with a structure to enable faith and manage heresy. So, a Christian child raised in a Christian household might reach teenhood and declare there is no God, but when that happens, churches have structures for managing that apostasy. A Catholic child might be sent towards the sacrament of Confirmation, a fundamentalist child might be encouraged to talk to a pastor who does a baptism, etc. I’m not saying that it’s not rife with abuse, of course, but just that there are organized structures for dealing with apostasy and a failure to believe what is faith as fact.

The religion of political movements doesn’t have any such structures, however. You’re just a heretic if you disbelieve, and cast out of the tribe. And both parties are asking people to believe a lot that’s effectively religious in nature as fact, without any organized mechanism for addressing doubts and skepticism.

Trump walked into this and what’s remarkable is that he’s such a liar, but he lives his own truths and gives space for others while doing that. That’s an extremely unusual political quality right now: both Democrats and Republicans demand belief allegiance from their leaders. Trump is perceived as rejecting orthodoxies, in contrast. And he never apologizes, never backs down from a perceived heresy, never gives an inch to the party monitors tasked with keeping political heretics strictly inline.

That’s what is appealing: he allows people to reject beliefs that the party priest classes have declared untouchable tenets. And that is a freedom of religious thought that Americans on all sides of the political spectrum crave. Hence, his popularity.

You talk about Trump as if he’s a refreshing antidote to the “religions” of the “party priests”, and yet the MAGA movement is one of the most cult-like, stubborn, impervious to facts, worshipping-of-Dear-Leader groups this country has ever seen. Some of them literally believe he is the second coming of Jesus. A PP in this very thread posted that he’s the “savior of Western Civilization”.

All he’s done is replace one form of orthodoxy with an even stricter authoritarian model. People who question Trump get excommunicated. There is no model within MAGA for dealing with apostasy.

Anyway, it’s hyperbolic and misleading to talk about political beliefs as religions. Religions are systems that relate humanity to spiritual or supernatural elements. Wokeness doesn’t fall under that umbrella, and neither does conservatism. It would be fairer to say “unfalsifiable belief system”, but all morality is unfalsifiable (the inverse of David Hume’s “no IS implies an OUGHT”). The difference is that people today are less accepting of the old justifications for hierarchy. The left wants to dismantle it, and the right wants to return to it.

The left wants no such dismantling of hierarchy. It wants to create a new hierarchy, one as oppressive but with different power structures in place.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:NP. I despise the man, and think he is extremely harmful to the good of the nation, but correctly predicted his wins in spring of 2016 and again in 2024, so you know where I am coming from.

This is my take: Trump is popular because Trump gives room and structure for many people to reject quasi-religious beliefs that have been presented as fact, but are not fact, by the dominant new faith-based groups in our society (political groups). He allows space for heresy, and he does not apologize for his own heresies. In a world where the wrong words (e.g. heresies to the newly dominant religions) can and have caused people to lose jobs, friends, etc., this is enormously appealing. Trump says wrong words all the time.

The background of this is that with the decline in organized religions, we as a society have replaced organized religions with allegiance to political parties and ideologies. And with that religious fervor comes a religious fundamentalism that freely mixes fact with belief but presents that to the world as fact.

I actually believe that the sharp rise in mental health issues in young people is related to this dissonance. They have been presented with what are essentially faith-based beliefs as though those are fact, but not with the structures to deal with apostasy. The religions of old do the same (present faith as fact), of course, but they accompany those religious tenets with a structure to enable faith and manage heresy. So, a Christian child raised in a Christian household might reach teenhood and declare there is no God, but when that happens, churches have structures for managing that apostasy. A Catholic child might be sent towards the sacrament of Confirmation, a fundamentalist child might be encouraged to talk to a pastor who does a baptism, etc. I’m not saying that it’s not rife with abuse, of course, but just that there are organized structures for dealing with apostasy and a failure to believe what is faith as fact.

The religion of political movements doesn’t have any such structures, however. You’re just a heretic if you disbelieve, and cast out of the tribe. And both parties are asking people to believe a lot that’s effectively religious in nature as fact, without any organized mechanism for addressing doubts and skepticism.

Trump walked into this and what’s remarkable is that he’s such a liar, but he lives his own truths and gives space for others while doing that. That’s an extremely unusual political quality right now: both Democrats and Republicans demand belief allegiance from their leaders. Trump is perceived as rejecting orthodoxies, in contrast. And he never apologizes, never backs down from a perceived heresy, never gives an inch to the party monitors tasked with keeping political heretics strictly inline.

That’s what is appealing: he allows people to reject beliefs that the party priest classes have declared untouchable tenets. And that is a freedom of religious thought that Americans on all sides of the political spectrum crave. Hence, his popularity.

You talk about Trump as if he’s a refreshing antidote to the “religions” of the “party priests”, and yet the MAGA movement is one of the most cult-like, stubborn, impervious to facts, worshipping-of-Dear-Leader groups this country has ever seen. Some of them literally believe he is the second coming of Jesus. A PP in this very thread posted that he’s the “savior of Western Civilization”.

All he’s done is replace one form of orthodoxy with an even stricter authoritarian model. People who question Trump get excommunicated. There is no model within MAGA for dealing with apostasy.

Anyway, it’s hyperbolic and misleading to talk about political beliefs as religions. Religions are systems that relate humanity to spiritual or supernatural elements. Wokeness doesn’t fall under that umbrella, and neither does conservatism. It would be fairer to say “unfalsifiable belief system”, but all morality is unfalsifiable (the inverse of David Hume’s “no IS implies an OUGHT”). The difference is that people today are less accepting of the old justifications for hierarchy. The left wants to dismantle it, and the right wants to return to it.

The left wants no such dismantling of hierarchy. It wants to create a new hierarchy, one as oppressive but with different power structures in place.

I mainly want the conspiracy theories about hierarchy dismantled. There is no "deep state" - J6 was not "feds," there is no "weather machine," there are no "chemtrails" and the vaccines weren't more dangerous than COVID itself, COVID was not a hoax, and neither is climate change - so on. Trump amplified and validated a lot of that garbage which drove false anger and hostility toward government. And now he's in charge which means if those things ever actually existed (they don't) then he has no excuse for them to continue but instead of there being bizarre stuff believed in by MAGAs they are going after things like the national weather service and going after the EPA and the CDC and other agencies that are actually doing important work and which are actually protecting Americans and making our lives better.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:NP. I despise the man, and think he is extremely harmful to the good of the nation, but correctly predicted his wins in spring of 2016 and again in 2024, so you know where I am coming from.

This is my take: Trump is popular because Trump gives room and structure for many people to reject quasi-religious beliefs that have been presented as fact, but are not fact, by the dominant new faith-based groups in our society (political groups). He allows space for heresy, and he does not apologize for his own heresies. In a world where the wrong words (e.g. heresies to the newly dominant religions) can and have caused people to lose jobs, friends, etc., this is enormously appealing. Trump says wrong words all the time.

The background of this is that with the decline in organized religions, we as a society have replaced organized religions with allegiance to political parties and ideologies. And with that religious fervor comes a religious fundamentalism that freely mixes fact with belief but presents that to the world as fact.

I actually believe that the sharp rise in mental health issues in young people is related to this dissonance. They have been presented with what are essentially faith-based beliefs as though those are fact, but not with the structures to deal with apostasy. The religions of old do the same (present faith as fact), of course, but they accompany those religious tenets with a structure to enable faith and manage heresy. So, a Christian child raised in a Christian household might reach teenhood and declare there is no God, but when that happens, churches have structures for managing that apostasy. A Catholic child might be sent towards the sacrament of Confirmation, a fundamentalist child might be encouraged to talk to a pastor who does a baptism, etc. I’m not saying that it’s not rife with abuse, of course, but just that there are organized structures for dealing with apostasy and a failure to believe what is faith as fact.

The religion of political movements doesn’t have any such structures, however. You’re just a heretic if you disbelieve, and cast out of the tribe. And both parties are asking people to believe a lot that’s effectively religious in nature as fact, without any organized mechanism for addressing doubts and skepticism.

Trump walked into this and what’s remarkable is that he’s such a liar, but he lives his own truths and gives space for others while doing that. That’s an extremely unusual political quality right now: both Democrats and Republicans demand belief allegiance from their leaders. Trump is perceived as rejecting orthodoxies, in contrast. And he never apologizes, never backs down from a perceived heresy, never gives an inch to the party monitors tasked with keeping political heretics strictly inline.

That’s what is appealing: he allows people to reject beliefs that the party priest classes have declared untouchable tenets. And that is a freedom of religious thought that Americans on all sides of the political spectrum crave. Hence, his popularity.

You talk about Trump as if he’s a refreshing antidote to the “religions” of the “party priests”, and yet the MAGA movement is one of the most cult-like, stubborn, impervious to facts, worshipping-of-Dear-Leader groups this country has ever seen. Some of them literally believe he is the second coming of Jesus. A PP in this very thread posted that he’s the “savior of Western Civilization”.

All he’s done is replace one form of orthodoxy with an even stricter authoritarian model. People who question Trump get excommunicated. There is no model within MAGA for dealing with apostasy.

Anyway, it’s hyperbolic and misleading to talk about political beliefs as religions. Religions are systems that relate humanity to spiritual or supernatural elements. Wokeness doesn’t fall under that umbrella, and neither does conservatism. It would be fairer to say “unfalsifiable belief system”, but all morality is unfalsifiable (the inverse of David Hume’s “no IS implies an OUGHT”). The difference is that people today are less accepting of the old justifications for hierarchy. The left wants to dismantle it, and the right wants to return to it.

The left wants no such dismantling of hierarchy. It wants to create a new hierarchy, one as oppressive but with different power structures in place.

I haven’t heard anyone talk about a different and equally oppressive power structure.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:NP. I despise the man, and think he is extremely harmful to the good of the nation, but correctly predicted his wins in spring of 2016 and again in 2024, so you know where I am coming from.

This is my take: Trump is popular because Trump gives room and structure for many people to reject quasi-religious beliefs that have been presented as fact, but are not fact, by the dominant new faith-based groups in our society (political groups). He allows space for heresy, and he does not apologize for his own heresies. In a world where the wrong words (e.g. heresies to the newly dominant religions) can and have caused people to lose jobs, friends, etc., this is enormously appealing. Trump says wrong words all the time.

The background of this is that with the decline in organized religions, we as a society have replaced organized religions with allegiance to political parties and ideologies. And with that religious fervor comes a religious fundamentalism that freely mixes fact with belief but presents that to the world as fact.

I actually believe that the sharp rise in mental health issues in young people is related to this dissonance. They have been presented with what are essentially faith-based beliefs as though those are fact, but not with the structures to deal with apostasy. The religions of old do the same (present faith as fact), of course, but they accompany those religious tenets with a structure to enable faith and manage heresy. So, a Christian child raised in a Christian household might reach teenhood and declare there is no God, but when that happens, churches have structures for managing that apostasy. A Catholic child might be sent towards the sacrament of Confirmation, a fundamentalist child might be encouraged to talk to a pastor who does a baptism, etc. I’m not saying that it’s not rife with abuse, of course, but just that there are organized structures for dealing with apostasy and a failure to believe what is faith as fact.

The religion of political movements doesn’t have any such structures, however. You’re just a heretic if you disbelieve, and cast out of the tribe. And both parties are asking people to believe a lot that’s effectively religious in nature as fact, without any organized mechanism for addressing doubts and skepticism.

Trump walked into this and what’s remarkable is that he’s such a liar, but he lives his own truths and gives space for others while doing that. That’s an extremely unusual political quality right now: both Democrats and Republicans demand belief allegiance from their leaders. Trump is perceived as rejecting orthodoxies, in contrast. And he never apologizes, never backs down from a perceived heresy, never gives an inch to the party monitors tasked with keeping political heretics strictly inline.

That’s what is appealing: he allows people to reject beliefs that the party priest classes have declared untouchable tenets. And that is a freedom of religious thought that Americans on all sides of the political spectrum crave. Hence, his popularity.

You talk about Trump as if he’s a refreshing antidote to the “religions” of the “party priests”, and yet the MAGA movement is one of the most cult-like, stubborn, impervious to facts, worshipping-of-Dear-Leader groups this country has ever seen. Some of them literally believe he is the second coming of Jesus. A PP in this very thread posted that he’s the “savior of Western Civilization”.

All he’s done is replace one form of orthodoxy with an even stricter authoritarian model. People who question Trump get excommunicated. There is no model within MAGA for dealing with apostasy.

Anyway, it’s hyperbolic and misleading to talk about political beliefs as religions. Religions are systems that relate humanity to spiritual or supernatural elements. Wokeness doesn’t fall under that umbrella, and neither does conservatism. It would be fairer to say “unfalsifiable belief system”, but all morality is unfalsifiable (the inverse of David Hume’s “no IS implies an OUGHT”). The difference is that people today are less accepting of the old justifications for hierarchy. The left wants to dismantle it, and the right wants to return to it.

The left wants no such dismantling of hierarchy. It wants to create a new hierarchy, one as oppressive but with different power structures in place.

I haven’t heard anyone talk about a different and equally oppressive power structure.

MAGA loves making up hyperbolic fearmongering accusations.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I wonder how many MAGA eat up this kind of stuff or if they see it as the trolling it surely must be.

Looking at this stupid posting, I realize that yes, Tim Walz had a point last year. These people are weird.