As a simple person, I am bound to a simple theory

[LuckyCharms]

on why Trump got elected.

The reason? He made it acceptable, and maybe even righteous, to be a fucking asshole.

That's it...nothing more complicated than that.

He unleashed something that has been inside many Americans for years, just dying to be let loose.

Trump isn't our problem. Our problem is a certain population of sick fuckers who we never knew were sick. Well, maybe we thought they had a cold when in fact they had a new strain of incurable, fatal airborne gonorrhea.

This is why I have no qualms in cutting Trumpsters out of my life completely. Family included.

[Doc_Technical]

1. Well said LuckyCharms

The people who voted for Trump are lost causes and
there is nothing to be done about the insane 20%.
We have to reach the vast number of people who either
didn't bother to vote and the ones who have not
registered to vote.

[LuckyCharms]

2. Agree, Doc. thanks n/t

[dchill]

3. The truly stupid are self-congratulatory by nature.

They identify with Trump and his ego feeds off their adulation. Congratulations abound.

[raccoon]

4. Off the greatest with you! Nt

[Orrex]

5. My wife gave a very wise summary of his appeal during the campaign:

People claimed to like him because "he isn't afraid to say what he thinks."

"No," my wife observed. "He's not afraid to say what they think."

That is, every hateful, sexist, racist, mocking, pussy-grabbing utterance out of his vile face-anus resonated strongly with people who were thinking the same thing but were reluctant to say out loud.

Now that the pussy-grabbing predator-in-chief is at the pulpit, they feel that they're free to give voice to their own hateful views.

[Hoyt]

7. "He's not afraid to say what they think." -- Insightful.

[leftstreet]

13. "He's not afraid to say what they think."

Brilliant!

[mountain grammy]

20. "He's not afraid to say what they think"

She nailed it.

[smirkymonkey]

25. +1000

That's it exactly! He says what THEY think and he gets away with it. Therefore, he is a hero to them.

Very depressing, when you think about it.

[certainot]

28. i think you got it right, and he actually STUDIED to be a lying asshole

by studying talk radio.

sam nunberg told gabriel sherman for a 'new york magazine' piece on the trump campaign 4/3/16 that in 2014 he and other "studied 1000's of hours of talk radio and reported to" trump.

trump was a new york city boy and someone told him that's how he could beat the top GOP candidates, who limbaugh trashed as being 'establishment', and piggyback 25 years of anti hillary/dem/liberal/anti-immigrant/anti-brown people/anti-woman swiftboating.

who told him to do that? republicans swim in talk radio and take it for granted. media and dems ignore it and study fish without water.

putin's bunch would recognize a highly successful invisible propaganda operation that could be fed and primed through a few gods like limbaugh and a few websites like breitbart and drudge. so if they've been using talk radio for years - to deny global warming, default on the debt, etc., all they needed to do is coordinate better with trumps bunch. and they knew they couldn't just feed trump stuff, so they needed to tune talk radio gods and trump and the soc media ops together. but if the trolls were foreign how did they know what memes to use? what if trumps guys were doing some of that, using talk radio memes that didn't need massive buzz generation to trigger because they had already been pounded into 50 mil earholes a week for years. like benghazi and emails and clinton foundation/wall st and george soros, etc.

limbaugh criticized bush and rubio while making excuses for trump. he still does. what if limbaugh has cyprus bank accounts.

trump has always been a rich protected asshole with royal certitude authoritarians worship but he needed to learn to speak the teabag language and tie his natural racism and sexism to their alternate reality.

he didn't need money to run because he was piggybacking this simple math that dems ignore: at a cheap $1000/hr x 15hrs/day x 5 = $75,000/wk x 1200 stations rw talk radio is worth $18MIL/day or 390MIL$ /month or 4.68 BIL$/ year FREE for coordinated global warming denial, pro republican free market deregulation and wall st think tank propaganda, swiftboating, and the hate and fear used to get people to vote republican.

[blaze]

6. Yes. He has unleashed the very worst... lynching ffs!!!

and the thinking is infectious

http://www.theroot.com/new-hampshire-police-refuse-to-release-information-on-c-1803054596?utm_source=theroot_facebook&utm_medium=socialflow

[iluvtennis]

19. Agree, lynching being unleashed again. The self righteous who think that POC, Muslims, LGBTQ,

etc shouldn't be in the country think they have the right to exterminate ppl. What a-holes. Law enforcement needs to come quick and harsh on this lynching stuff before it festers out of control and that race war that Trump/Bannon/Miller/Gorka/etc wants is launched.

[Madam45for2923]

8. Together with 1 billion worth of free media.

[certainot]

29. by studying talk radio in 2014 he was piggybacking and still does - $5bil/yr talk radio

at a cheap $1000/hr x 15hrs/day x 5 = $75,000/wk x 1200 stations rw talk radio is worth $18MIL/day or 390MIL$ /month or 4.68 BIL$/ year FREE for coordinated global warming denial, pro republican free market deregulation and wall st think tank propaganda, swiftboating, and the hate and fear used to get people to vote republican.

his guys studied 1000's of hours of talk radio in 2014 according to sam nunberg - gabriel sherman new york magazine 2016 4/3/16

he piggybacked 30 years of that, 25 of it swiftboating hillary, 15 years of anti immigrant hate used to pass voter suppression, all the benghazi/email bs

putin's guys have been using it/limbaugh maybe since climategate in 2009 and debt ceiling default push in 2011, so why not coordinate their trolling for trump to that

[dalton99a]

9. There are racist assholes who want to hurt minorities and make them disappear

[MarianJack]

10. As Jon Stewart put it when Trump announced,...

...he would be the first "openly asshole" resident of the White House. I will NEVER use the "P" title if reference to Donald Trump. EVER!

PEACE!

[Orrex]

15. I humbly offer "Resident Chump" as a phrase to use instead.

I've gotten a lot of mileage out of it, so I'm happy to share.

[Bernardo de La Paz]

11. Theories that fit in a nutshell should be kept there.

There is a human yearning for simplistic explanations, but they are rarely useful or applicable. This theory is neither useful nor applicable. Yes, tRumpanzees are asshole chumps but that does not explain the vote. They have been assholes and chumps for a long time. It does not explain the voters beyond the tRumpanzee core.

[Enoki33]

21. Agreement here. Way too many unanswered questions. One

example centers around the hacking of voting machines and the concentrated voter suppression.

[Raven]

12. IMHO, yours is absolutely the best observation ever made

about why Trump got elected.

[FLPanhandle]

14. I disagree

People vote for jobs and security. Everything else is just noise.

I live in a deep red area of the state. I've known and talked with friends, family, neighbors who voted for Trump. Some of these voted for Obama.

The primary reason is they were duped into believing he was the only one fighting for American Jobs.

That used to be the message Democrats owned. Somehow, Trump got people to believe.

[maxsolomon]

30. Sorry, WHITE PEOPLE voted for him

the appeal to White Nationalism cannot be overstated.

read the Ta-nehisi Coates essay in the Atlantic and tell me it was about Jobs (of which there are plenty - we're at what, 4.3% unemployment?) and Security (from Brown People).

[LuckyCharms]

34. If you vote for someone that wants to hurt others

and you are aware that they want to hurt others, and you are not mentally incapacitated, then you are just as bad as the candidate.

[WinkyDink]

42. "Lock her up!" got the cheers and chants, not "Jobs! Jobs!"

[flygal]

16. He made it acceptable - with the cooperation of fellow republicans who wanted a win over all else

[TygrBright]

17. Yup. I've always said the overarching delusion of Americans is...

...that somewhere in the Bill of Rights is a Constitutional Amendment explicitly protecting "The Right to Be an Asshole."

People get so upset and disappointed when you point out to them that there's no such Amendment.

That frustration boiled over and we ended up with [Redacted].

sadly,
Bright

[Rural_Progressive]

23. You always need to to add the two words that many people forget about

"The right to be an asshole WITHOUT CONSEQUENCES"

This is true with all our "Rights", people don't understand that acts, speech, thoughts, everything HAVE CONSEQUENCES. You can say stupid stuff but then there are consequences, you can be an asshat, but then there are consequences.

These people are like toddlers, they want to do what they want to do but if they get disciplined they throw a temper tantrum. Poor little babies.

[Wounded Bear]

18. Trump is truly the first internet president...

He's a troll, plain and simple. Trolls elected him; you know, people that log into a chat room and start throwing word-bombs because they have a bet with another troll about who can get banned first.

Trump is the kind of guy that will lock his asshole shut just so he can step into an elevator and let his boiled egg and cheap beer fart loose in an enclosed space and judge his success by how many people throw up. Probably gave himself a plus grade if he shit his pants to add to the effect.

I"m not an avid "banner" but I've blocked any number of Trump trolls in my on-line life. Life's too short and the only thing they understand is total rejection. I can't think of any I know IRL. Wouldn't really mind it if they just leave me the fuck alone.

[mountain grammy]

22. +1

[mreilly]

31. LOL

"Trump is the kind of guy that will lock his asshole shut just so he can step into an elevator and let his boiled egg and cheap beer fart loose in an enclosed space and judge his success by how many people throw up."

The Trump Presidency is a nightmare I keep hoping to wake up from, but your quote above was priceless. I'll be reusing that one.

[paulkienitz]

24. I have an equally simple theory.

Trump promised change, Hillary promised status quo. That's why some of the same people voted for Bernie and then for Trump. They didn't care about ideology, they just knew the system wasn't working for them.

Of course this doesn't imply there's anything false about the asshole theory, which is probably just as valid.

The fact that Hillary won the popular vote in spite of a disappointing message does imply that the majority are not assholes.

[lame54]

26. The same strategy Kid Rock is using...

Don't be surprised if we get a Senator Kid Rock

[MGKrebs]

27. Don't let this become a way to dehumanize your politcal opponents.

Let's face it, these behaviors have been part of human existence for a long time, maybe even forever. Perhaps we thought we had become more "evolved" than we really were. We try to suppress our baser instincts, but not everybody is on board with that yet.

We all fear something, we hope our politicians don't leverage our fears into votes, but sometimes they do.
These people are still humans and must be treated as such or you (or we) are no better. (Doesn't mean we have to like them.)

[WinkyDink]

43. Hate-filled, ignorant, bigoted, thuggish humans. Okay.

[hfojvt]

32. When has that ever NOT been acceptable?

A lot of these coaches you see on TV will be a$$holes. Most of the team's fans - do not care. As long as you produce the W's it is just peachy to be an a$$hole.

Many of our movies will show a "hero" like this. The dude with the tude, who accepts no limits or no rules, who will "let it go" and do what it takes to get the job done.

Your average Trump supporter does not care if Trump is an a$$hole - as long as they believe he is fighting FOR them and FOR America. In fact, an a$$hole will often be seen as a more effective advocate for a side than somebody who is more concerned about following a moral code or maintaining an appearance of decency than they are about winning. Life is a cage match and you cannot win if you follow some old fashioned rules.

[Bernardo de La Paz]

33. Even simple people can hold & comprehend & work with complex theories.

It's best not to be a simple person and you don't have to be one. Truth be told it is unlikely you actually are a simple person.

Further, even simple people can hold and comprehend and work with complex theories.

[LuckyCharms]

35. Well, I view "simple people" as being far more intelligent and empathetic

than so called "knowledgeable" people because they can boil complex situations down to their simplest terms and convey them as such.

I view simple as a compliment.

Not everyone has the capability to be "simple".

[Bernardo de La Paz]

36. There is a point when things are made more simple than is wise

[LuckyCharms]

38. And this is not that point. n/t

[Bernardo de La Paz]

40. We disagree. Calling people assholes is simply emotionally satisfying but is not politically useful.

[LuckyCharms]

41. What name do you call assholes? n/t

[Bernardo de La Paz]

44. I call assholes assholes. . . nt

[Bernardo de La Paz]

37. We can say "Gravity sucks" as the simplest term, but it won't leave a person any wiser about it

... or able to calculate orbits or the degree to which mass does not fully explain light bending around distant galaxies.

[WinkyDink]

45. No, simple people cannot. Humble people can. Poor people can. Simple? No.

[Azathoth]

39. Yup. These are the obnoxious screwups who spent their high school years flicking rubber bands

from the back row of class. They absolutely resent having to live in the adult world where that kind of behavior is considered immature. For them, all the nonsensical rage at "political correctness" and "the establishment" and "liberal media" is nothing more than Johnny Screwup raging against the teacher who makes him sit quietly in class under penalty of detention.

You could see it right after the election. They were empowered. I lost track of the number of jacked-up, mufferless pickups with trucknuts and naked pinups and MAGA stickers in the rear window.

I remember walking into a grocery store late last November and seeing a woman strutting down the isles with her little girl. At one point the girl pulled a random item from the shelf and then tried to put it back, accidentally knocking over other items on the shelf. The little girl spent several seconds struggling to stand everything back up until the annoyed mother walked over, grabbed the item from the girl's hand, tossed in on the floor, and then insouciantly dragged the little girl off, leaving a mess on the shelf and a broken item in the middle of the floor. The mom, of course, was wearing a MAGA hat.

The whole episode took only ten seconds, but it summed up perfectly what had just happened. The assholes finally were having their day.

[LAS14]

46. Yup.

[RandomAccess]

47. True enough, and I'm with you

on cutting Trumpsters out of our lives.

But please, there is SO much more about it -- I like to post this excerpt from a really good post -- and I say "please" because we MUST address and FIX these issues or we may never win again.

Hillary didn't lose because she was less POPULAR. She lost because of James Comey's letters and because of some even more important factors -- more important because they're not going away. They will be used against us in every election going forward, unless we can stop them.

The big problems are voter suppression, Russian meddling, and targeted voter propaganda through Twitter, Google, Facebook, and other forms of social media. There is no question that the Trump campaign, through Cambridge Analytica, did this -- and that the Russians did this. The only question is how much they conspired together in the propaganda campaign.

We need to figure out how to defend the democratic process from fake news and micro-targeted AI propaganda -- or lose our democracy. https://www.democraticunderground.com/10029576691

And welcome to DU!