After nearly a decade of being forced to take Trump seriously, Democrats increasingly call BS on the whole charade
Sure, Donald Trump is a threat to democracy — a would-be dictator on day one who has called for terminating the U.S. Constitution so he can hold onto power even after losing a free and fair election. But while draped in the rhetoric of populism, Trump and his MAGA movement are not actually popular; the man himself has never won more votes than the person he ran against, a majority of Americans twice rejecting him and his off-putting cult of personality. That he was ever president is more or less because a few thousand swing voters in Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania thought it would be fun.
President Joe Biden won in 2020 largely by promising to a return to normalcy and baseline competency. In 2024, Democrats are making a similar argument but more forcibly: They’re pointing, laughing and dismissing Trump and his circus as a total freak show to which we can’t return.
I find it quite strange that “old and weird” seems to work better than “corrupt and criminal”.
Probably for 2 reasons:
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quote “all politicians are corrupt and criminal” so this tactic doesn’t land (look at the dem senator from NJ)
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few people know convicted felons but they do know “old and weird” people, so they can better draw personal parallels
I think the “weird” attribution has a way of infecting his supporters as well.
If you support a criminal, that doesn’t necessarily make you a criminal. If you support a corrupt politician, that doesn’t make you a corrupt politician.
But if you support somebody weird? Well that makes you weird. Trump’s weirdness infects you. It’s the cheese touch of politics.
For a decade now there has been a certain crowd who considers Trump’s criminality and general disregard for truth to be cool in a “gangster” way. Gangsters are leaders.
Weirdos, not so much.
(look at the dem sensor from NJ)
The one that we’re forcing out, yes. Not as fast as we got rid of Anthony Weiner, but they’re out.
The worst Dems have at the federal level might be Pelosi making stock trades. You know, like half of congress, but for some reason only she (rightly) gets attention for it. Maybe we should include more people than just Pelosi in that conversation.
I think it’s because for so long they’ve relied on Democrats/people on the left (I say that because it’s not just in the US, it’s become the right-wing tactic all over the place) being serious and arguing in good faith, IE: they’ll just say the wildest shit that’s blatantly untrue, and people on the left tend to bust out the facts and links to long explanations of why that’s false, and they just counter it with more nonsense until their opponents get tired and quit, then they proclaim victory. But if you just go “you’re weird, fuck you” and then refuse to follow up on it they kind of don’t know what to do with it.
Also, the amount it’s pissing them off means it’s working, everyone keep doing it!
arguing in good faith [edit:
faithwas originally missing. That’s what I get for Lemmy on the toilet-ing]
I specifically remember Trevor Noah having an opening monologue to the Daily Show some time just prior to or after Trump having taken office about this exact topic. Essentially he was saying it allowed Trump to control the narrative. Every time he lied, the left leaning media would be off digging up facts and statistics to come back and says “ah ha ya! Look at this!” But by the time they get back to respond, he’s gone off and changed the topic and made another blatantly false condemnation of some group of people. And so the cycle repeats itself.
Noah’s proposed solution was the same as a child having a tantrum: ignore them. When things go wrong, make it clear why it’s a result of his policies or rhetoric. Stop playing politics like you’re playing them with a competent adult. You’re not.
Hmm, I wonder if commenting that in that strange Lemmy place c/conservative would have the same effect lmao
But if you just go “you’re weird, fuck you” and then refuse to follow up on it they kind of don’t know what to do with it.
Well, if it were that easy, the right would’ve been beaten a long time ago. If Kamala ever gets a chance to debate Trump (spoiler: he will never debate her) she isn’t going to just respond to everything he says with some variation of “you’re weird; fuck you”.
It’s because it’s a fascist movement.
Fascism is organized around a strong leader who supposedly embodies the values of the movement. A fascist leader isn’t a leader who’s thoughtful and fair, they’re strong, determined, filled with righteous anger, etc.
Corrupt and criminal can be twisted into those characteristics. It’s not “corruption”, it’s taking advantage of suckers. Something you have to be clever and ruthless to do. It’s not “criminal”, it’s ignoring laws meant for lesser people.
On the other hand, a fascist leader’s image isn’t compatible with weakness and strangeness. Fascism is all about claiming the national identity is under threat by “others”, immigrants, intellectuals, homosexuals, etc. The fascist leader needs to be seen to embody all that’s good and right about the true national spirit. But, if they’re seen as weak and weird, that’s not something anybody wants to associate with.
To add to that I’d like to quote Ian Danskin (aka Inuendo Studios) from his guest lecture about Gamergate at UC Merced:
Bob Altemeyer has this survey he uses to study authoritarianism. He divides respondents into people with low, average, and high authoritarian sentiments, and then tells them what the survey has measured and asks, “what score do you think is best to have: low, average, or high?”
People with low authoritarian sentiments say it’s best to be low. People with average authoritarian sentiments also say it’s best to be low. But people with high authoritarian sentiments? They say it’s best to be average. Altemeyer finds, across all his research, that reactionaries want to aggress, but only if it is socially acceptable. They want to know they are the in-group and be told who the out-group is. They don’t particularly care who the out-group is, Altemeyer finds they’ll aggress against any group an authority figure points to, even, if they don’t notice it, a group that contains them. They just have to believe the in-group is the norm.
Great quote. It explains why they’re especially sensitive to the idea that their position is not normal.
Its really fascinating. Their image is to embody what is “normal”, “natural”, “right”. They’re bullies, claiming they’re better than everyone else, and using those differences to push that superiority.
It turns out the most effective method to combat bullies is to… bully them. Point out how abormal, unnatural, and inferior they are. Its such a core element of their existence that they fall apart without it.
I’m not proud of it. But also, I’m not crying about it.
It’s not even necessarily bullying them back, it’s more refusing to be bullied.
Beating up a bully can be an effective strategy, but it’s risky, you might lose the fight. And, since it’s a fight they want it’s one they probably think they can win.
Laughing at a bully is attacking them where they’re weak. It’s defusing the fight by making people not want to back them, and by doing that making them want to retreat.
I think at least some of it is because republicans already call democrats corrupt and criminal. When the dems come back and make the same accusations it just looks like bickering. Ideally the substance of such claims would matter but current political discourse in the US prioritizes sound bites and quips
And they’re not even being real about it.
“You know there’s something wrong with people when they talk about freedom — freedom to be in your bedroom, freedom to be in your exam room, freedom to tell your kids what they can read,” Walz said. “That stuff is weird. They come across as weird. They seem obsessed with this.”
And buttigieg: “Republicans, including Fox News anchors, “will take a look at Donald Trump and say he’s perfectly fine, even though he seemed unable to tell the difference between Nikki Haley and Nancy Pelosi; even though he’s rambling about electrocuting sharks and Hannibal Lecter; even though he’s clearly older and stranger than he was when America got to know him,” Buttigieg said. “They say he’s strong as an ox, leaps tall buildings in a single bound. We don’t have that kind of warped reality on our side.”
I actually felt a strange sort of relief when I opened this article and saw the headline. But after reading it…that’s it? Why can’t they come out and talk like real-ass people? We get it, you’re professional politicians that are soooo smart. But level with people, for fucks sake.
Just in the middle of a typical dem speech, even if it’s scripted, go “off script” like:
[…]and…I mean. Maybe this isn’t ‘proper,’ but forget proper for a minute…what the hell is wrong with trump? And Vance, for that matter. Why are we all pretending this is normal? That what they say and do is normal? These aren’t normal people. They’re…weird. Really weird. And frankly—they’re just hateful assholes. We can’t let these freaks have any real power again. We remember last time, right? It was horrifying for a lot of people. Good people were being threatened for who they are. Forget that. We can’t let these weird, sad wannabe fascists take power. Give a wannabe fascist any power, and they’re not “wannabe” anymore. They can just be fascists. And with this corrupt Supreme Court? We would be in deep shit. I get it, we outside of the freak show that is the far right, have our differences. Those to the left of us don’t think we do enough. Those to the right of us think we do too much. But, no matter what, we aren’t those freaks. And right now, that is the most important thing. Keeping wannabe dictators and bonafide weirdos away from the adult’s table. We want to do more for everyone. And keeping trump and Vance and all of the equally strange and hateful Republican grifters and con artists will allow us to do more. So…let’s try to keep this asylum from falling to the inmates.
Democrats have just decided that “decorum” and appearances are still somehow the way to go. Be fuckin real with people. Don’t give us the form letter politician shit. That is obviously where we’re at as a country. The sooner they learn that the better chance they’ll have.
The whole schtick the right wing is selling is trying to claim that they are the normal Americans.
When you point out that it is weird as hell to worship a reality TV star while wearing diapers and fake ear bandages, they are forced to look in a mirror and realize that actually, no, they are not the normal ones.
The reason it works is because there is no refuting it other than, “Nah uh!” It’s almost the equivalent to repeating someone’s argument back to them in a tone to sound stupid. HOWEVER, this tactic works when arguing with a kindergartner, so it works here too.
It’s also a primal fear for narcissistic men to be called ‘weird’ or ‘creepy’ by attractive women.
Actually narcissistic people don’t care about that, because narcissistic people aren’t sexually attracted to anyone. Narcissus rejected everyone who made moves on him. That’s why, at 16, he was put to death by the gods for not loving anyone.
Narcissism is not a sexual orientation. You can be a narcissistic asexual. But being a narcissist does not mean you dont experience sexual attraction in the colloquial form of the word.
Not that I’m an expert but sexuality is independent. Also, narcissists understand power dynamics and need to be on the top in every regard.
Like others here, I gotta say it’s super weird that this comment is focused on Narcissus the character’s specific death rather than the actual disorder. It’s like getting caught up on Oedipus’s platonic relationships. The disorder references the character but does not demand that every detail of the story is relevant.
NPD is diagnostically defined in the DSM-5 (APA 2013; pages 669-672) as a pervasive pattern of grandiosity, need for admiration, and lack of empathy, with interpersonal entitlement, exploitiveness, arrogance, and envy. Five out of nine of these criteria need to be present to meet the diagnosis of NPD.
(The nine can be found online from many sources. None mentions sexuality.)
There’s good reading on sexual selfishness or sexually addictive behavior from narcissists. One from the American Journal of Psychiatry, emphasis mine:
In addition to the grandiose and vulnerable subtypes, there is a healthier group of individuals with narcissistic personality disorder, described as “high-functioning,” “exhibitionistic,” or “autonomous.” These individuals, illustrated by Mr. A, are grandiose, competitive, attention seeking, and sexually provocative, while demonstrating adaptive functioning and using their narcissistic traits to succeed.
For a more contemporary comparison, it’s like seeing the trope of the Starscream and insisting that for the archetype to fit, they must be disintegrated by the guy they backstabbed reborn and renamed. The disorder is named after the self obsessive behavior, not the less important particulars.
amazingly confident in incorrectness.
Narcissus wasn’t put to death. His own self-absorption killed him.
Get out of my brain.
I was literally just wondering why it’s so effective and I think it’s this.
Most liberal “insults” are draped in facts and figures, to the point that Republicans just close their ears and say AlTeRnAtIvE fAcTs.
I think the simplicity, and it’s fact-less insult cuts through their reasoning brains (which there wasn’t much of) and hits them in the emotional centers.
I mean…it took Democrats 6 years to figure this out?
Better late than never but happy we’re finally hitting below the belt.
Democrats need to meet people where they are. Most people want to be manipulated and told what to think and do.
That might be part of it, but the Republicans tried a similar attack against Biden and it mostly didn’t land. It only works when it’s true in the sense that the average person genuinely finds the position or behavior in question disturbing.
queue up the Faith No More song Kindergarten
Eggs. They’re not weird.
Laughter is a great weapon, as even the Irish Bards of old knew. And the plus point is that it is true, they are old and weird. They want to go round inspecting children’s genitals…definitely weird. They rather mothers die than get medical treatment in an event of a dangerous pregnancy. Likewise, they think child marriages are OK. They think forcing women to have babies is OK but passing laws to help those babies live is not. They want to go back in time and roll back all the progress society has made in being kinder, fairer and more inclusive. They love conspiracies and think they have special secret knowledge . There is so much more,I hope someone turns it all into a catchy song that goes viral.
There’s two sides to that.
Some of them are like tucker Carlson or Boris Johnson. They look ridiculous on purpose so that’s what people talk about instead of the horrendous shit they’re advocating for.
So by all means laugh at them, it hurts their follower count. But don’t outright dismiss them.
They might be stupid and weird that doesn’t make them less dangerous
I think the point is that they are all old, weird, and dangerous. Vance isn’t old, but he is weird and dangerous.
And let’s be clear, this is a different kind of weird. I’m weird, but I’m weird because I like kids shows, make bad jokes, and pick at my fingernails.
They’re weird because they like to fuck kids and underage teens (a surprisingly large portion, anyway), make decisions that hurt the people they want giving them money and support, and want to pick which immigrants are the “bad” ones.
Oh, they are dangerous alright because they consider themselves righteous and having God and “Tradition” on their side. People who consider themselves righteous have no doubts that everything the do ,regardless how vicious, is meant to be by God. So all logic goes out the window. I think not all are like that, but they are a huge useful pool of people who can be used and manipulated with ease. Just like a cult, none of the decisions their leaders make are questioned.
All of the creepy weirdos in the donnie cinematic universe are just so vile and disgusting and so ripe for mockery. Let’s see: Bannon, Stone, Gorka, Miller… (and many more I’m forgetting right now) all of them are freaks that no normal person would want to associate with. All of them have designs on America and Americans that are just creepy.
They’re lucky that the worst thing they’ve been pinned with so far is “this dude looks like he’d fuck a sofa” when most of these people look like they’d happily make a lamp out of you if they liked your pores.
I hope they go far beyond the couch fuckin’. All of those creepy weirdos around donnie, and that boost donnie, and many that vote for donnie, have very, very creepy and weird ideas about what they want to do to other Americans. They have a very creepy and weird idea of what America stands for - they want an Xtian Caliphate here in America. The couch fuckin’ isn’t even close to the worst of it - what JD did or does in the privacy of his own home with his furniture is no business of mine (even if it it’s hilarious).
The thing is, the Republicans have wanted all of those things for the last four decades and have passed numerous laws and while it is good to see people catching on, what the hell took so long?
Finding just the right language, I guess. Hillary’s “basket of deplorables” was too mean. Republicans can be as mean as they want, but Democrats can’t, and a woman definitely can’t. “Weird” gets the point across without being too mean.
It’s a bullshit game, but there it is.
Yep. Watching the Republican cult of personality be exposed this way has given me genuine hope for the future.
It’s been ten years since that freak started remaking the Republican party in his own image. Ten years since his face and voice started dominating the news cycle for no good reason (and lots of bad ones). Ten years of his clown show.
But now, at long last, I have hope that it will finally end. That the name “Donald Trump” will fade from our political vocabulary, and be spoken in shame and disgust when spoken at all.
That the name “Donald Trump” will fade from our political vocabulary, and be spoken in shame and disgust when spoken at all.
Don’t forget the part where all the Republicans pretend they never really supported him in the first place.
This.
Never let anyone who identifies as or admits to voting republican get away with this. Always remind them they had a convicted criminal rapist pussy grabber who stole from from a kids cancer charity running the show. Not just a candidate, he ran the whole clown show.
Doesn’t matter if it’s an uncle, dad, mom, grandpa or grandma; always be relentless with this message and have no room for sympathy or forgiveness. Be the bigger person? Time to ‘heal’? No, no, no. These people wanted to destroy America and you have to throw that into their face relentlessly.
Sure, have a family dinner or some party with family and friends but the moment politics comes up, you hammer this message home and tell them the discussion on politics is over because they have been proven not to be trusted at all when politics is involved. Uncle Bob want to talk fishing lures? Sure, no problem. Uncle Bob wants to talk politics in any way, shape or form? Be very, very fucking brutal in cutting the traitors of and shut them down. They have lost any and all admission to discuss (or, in my opinion, be part of) politics.
Doesn’t matter if it’s an uncle, dad, mom, grandpa or grandma; always be relentless with this message and have no room for sympathy or forgiveness.
Uh, no. It’s not popular to admit this, but being nice is much more persuasive with people who already like you. If you go nuts on them, they will just think you are crazy.
If you say “I think trump is too old and crazy / weird” they will listen. If they ask “Do you like trump?” just say “no” and laugh at the very idea of voting for him. That’s why “He’s weird” is working.
Yep. I look forward to that day, but we need to remind them of the truth when they try to pull that.
Just like the origins of the “tea party”, just like how they called themselves “teabaggers” (no matter how much they insist now that it never happened), just like they swooned over both W and Romney, but pretended they “didn’t know her” when W’s war on Iraq was obvious to even the lowest of low-info that it was a clusterfuck, and when Romney lost to the Blah guy.
The seeds of his “movement” were planted by 4chan and other terminally online far right trolls long before he ever took the reins. It’s been brewing since the mid-to-late-2000s but was mostly contained to their own corners of the net. Until one day it wasn’t. Some people recognized it as just controversial bigoted/racist humor (such as the “Hitler did nothing wrong”-flavored Mountain Dew), others took it seriously and turned it into a lifestyle, and gave birth to the alt right.
It’s the political manifestation of every troll board you’ve ever heard of, 4chan, 8chan, somethingawful, etc. I’m a 'chan veteran myself, I saw it all start.
My impression is that Something Awful was largely filled by people who saw the problems with 4chan “humor” and wanted nothing to do with it. But I could be misremembering.
When reactionaries tell you to stop something it’s because it is effective.
If they cry and foam at the mouth you should go even harder.
They’re a minority of weirdos and should be reminded of such at every opportunity.
