“Everyone I Know Is Voting for Trump”
“Everyone I know is Voting for Trump”.
This is a quote I have heard over and over from online discussions as well as certain family members. They say this with a certain amount of conviction and a definite amount of passion.
When trying to talk rationally on a national policy level, they invariably decline or ignore actual reality-based policy discussion and are much more interested in general abstracts such as “government overreach” or “too much regulation”. When pressed for specifics, they point to very specific complaints based on more local laws and regulations, or laughably hyperbolic claims about “gun grabbers”.
Just yesterday I made the apparent -mistake of getting into a political discussion with a 71 year old white male family member on my wife’s side. He is an established local architect in his hometown, economically conservative, more or less socially liberal, and 100% for Trump. He was almost spitting with emotion and disgust at local and state ordinances regulating his architecture work, nothing to do with the national election. But his emotion and vitriol was targeted at Hillary and national Democrats in general as well as Obama/Congress “getting nothing done.” . His specifically -targeted emotional response has closed off entire portions of his brain that are willing or able to process national and international concerns and ramifications of a national election. His thought process unable or unwilling to recognize the clearly stated manifesto by this Republican Congress to block Obama and attempt to make his Presidency a “failure” at every single turn. And he only associates with similarly aged people and demographic- Trump’s concrete base. There is simply a built-in audience for Trump, sold on a fictional revisionist history, the false-equivalency defining Republican war against the President responsible for legislative gridlock, and a loss of rational thought beyond their local experiences and anecdotal evidence, and 100% loyalty to their demographic afraid of losing an abstract amount of power. What is weird is that he otherwise would be put off by the behavior and rhetoric on display on a daily basis by Trump, and perhaps violent towards Trump if Trump’s personality-defining vitriol and misogyny were directed at his daughters including my wife.
Another thought-he never went to college. He attained his architecture licensing by interning and hard work at a firm straight out of high school. He frequently lambasts college educated individuals anecdotally as idiots. Clearly he has a built-in jealousy for those that could afford or have access to college in his field when he did not that he has carried all these years. I think this anger he has maintained for 50 years is showing up in this election. How many other elderly white males, who share a similar anger that has really nothing to do with actual policy, are voting for Trump? Who else only associates with similar minded people, and say when asked in a discussion “Everyone I know is Voting for Trump?”