Do many of Trump's supporters believe he has good intentions?

[Ol Janx Spirit]

18. I live in the Stupid Belt: a very red area of a very red state...

Last edited Thu Feb 27, 2025, 02:47 PM - Edit history (1)

...and I find that members of the TQP (there is no GOP anymore) fall into four groups:

The first--and probably largest--group is comprised of people that actually do not pay much attention to politics, but have been convinced over time that they are conservative and should only vote for "conservatives." This is a relatively new thing. Before Obama was elected, Democrats did well in these rural counties and brought services like high-speed Internet and jobs to the area. After Obama was elected and the ACA passed they decided all government was evil and have fallen into a slow decline. This group will tell you that they don't like a lot of what is happening, but they feel that whatever happens is way better than what destruction any democrat would have wrought on America. The constant moving of goal posts and deflecting any constructive conversation away from that and towards, "what about trans kids in sports," is endlessly frustrating. Still, they feel the most reachable.

The second--somewhat smaller--group only care about tax cuts. That's it. So long as their family is wealthy enough not to need government services the hell with everyone else, and a large part of that is not taking any of their money to pay for anything else--including the things they demand like a strong military. Make no mistake: they don't even care about deficits. They are only in it for the greed and are completely unreachable.

The third group are the full-blown racist rednecks that only feel what passes for happiness in their miserable lives when their chosen politicians are making other people miserable. It seems like this group is fairly small--possibly the smallest--but have completely reshaped the Republican party in their image. They do not seem to care about anything but unfettered access to whatever type of guns they want to own and shoot at effigies of their most hated politicians or celebrities, making life for anyone not like them a living hell, stomping--in many cases literally--on anything other people find pleasure in, restoring the nation to a state of white-supremacy, and--oddly--wrecking the environment in any way they see fit. They don't even care about money or taxes--they are in it for the hate and aggrievement, and they are completely insane and unreachable.

The forth are the most confusing: Christians--specifically evangelical Christians. They truly do believe that there is divine intervention at work here, and the word of god somehow flows from the unfit clown. This is largely because of the Supreme Court and the overturning of Roe v. Wade. Everything that follows must be divine. Every bit of the pain he causes anyone is part of a grand plan. They mostly blindly support it all. This is in part because religion has primed them from a very early age to fall in line behind a belief system--even when that belief system is perverted into something completely different. Cults work this way, and this truly appears to be a cult. This group is the only one that seems to actually believe that he is "an honest, principled man trying to save our country." The other three groups know better and do not really care--although the first group seems to be the most uneasy with it.

What each group does have in common is that just before they hit the pavement after having been shoved out of a window Russian-style they will likely say, "I really did not see that coming." Sadly, some will be fine with it....