STARTLING admission of undying Trump support from Mom earlier. "I'm sick and tired of this Trump/Russia/North Korea stuff. Why don't they all just push the button and get it over with already?"

If 40% of the country shares this type of view, WAAVMF no matter whether Trump stays or goes.

^ I think that's a lot of people, not just Trump voters (but probably much more so). They want easy solutions to complex problems and tend to fatigue quickly when they don't get instant gratification. The processes that promote stability tend to be slow and boring, diplomacy for example tends to require a lot of patience and restraint over time. Some people just aren't wired for that, and in that respect I can at least understand why some identify with Trump's style.

But even those people, if you asked them if they'd be ok with Trump's temperament in their doctor, lawyer or accountant, would say **** no. They know they don't want the smartest, most sober reasoning person they can find for those roles.

Yet for some reason it's ok for the most powerful position in the world. A person could literally single-handedly try to end humanity, and someone would have to commit treason to stop him. Sure **** it YOLO. Need to shake things up.

I think the simulation we all live in has gone haywire - Westworld style.

What bothers me most is that she still supports a party that would take away healthcare from at least one of my two sisters and me assuming that I go back to America as we both have preexisting conditions. I think my other sister gets healthcare through her employer but I'm not sure.

You would think that seeing your children lose their healthcare or an opportunity to obtain it would be enough to get you to change your mind about someone or something. Sure, it's nice that she doesn't really back Trump anymore. I speculate that she's not outspoken about it because every friend she has supports Trump.

But the real question is if I point out how destructive this party is to her children and lay out everything in extreme detail, would it convince her to change or would it push her away from us? I really don't know. My sisters don't bother with it. I guess their logic is that she lives in New York and that will be a perennial Democratic state. So, her vote really won't count. I guess they can live with that and not bring up politics. Perhaps they also figure that my vote cancels out hers. I really don't know.

I've tried talking to a few Trump supporters about the healthcare bill. Two things:

--They "have faith" that the GOP will write and pass a good bill.
--They don't care at all about the House bill, even the CBO score, because "the CBO score for ObamaCare was off by millions!"

It's frustrating. You'd think they would see the logic games they are playing when it's their own health care on the line. But once you've been trained to think this way anything else is totally unintuitive.

And as usual, this game has a fairly simple answer, one that even Trumpkins could see if they wanted to. There were significant changes made to ObamaCare based on Republicans suing to block various aspects of the law. In particular, the Medicaid expansion was supposed to have been mandatory which would have allowed millions more to get health insurance. Instead, the SC said the federal government can't do that, so 20+ states with Republican control blocked the Medicaid expansion, and note that these states are actually the states that needed the expansion the most. States like Alabama, Tennessee, Georgia, Texas.

I hate playing these games though. It's a way to keep from talking about real issues and information. It's a misinformation tactic that mostly hurts the people that are using it.

With Trumpcare, I'm hearing a lot of "Yeah it's bad but it didn't pass the House yet. Worry about it when it actually happens." Then it passes the house and they change it to "It didn't pass the Senate yet. Worry about it when it actually happens."

My guess is once big Daddy signs it, it'll morph into the best bill ever written. Because he said out loud on Fox he wouldn't sign anything that wasn't good for the people.

I don't have a clue what these same people will say when it actually happens and hurts them badly.

Something something Obamacare

More accurate than I had expected.

NYC gets hit with a possible terror attack, Syria gets bombed and in comes the fake news from my mother.

My hopes have been dashed.

The amygdala trumps all.

This guy is still 100% aboard the Trump train. The day Trump said that the government could probably use a good ol' shutdown he was so, so, pleased that somebody was finally saying what everyone was thinking.

I'm stunned that an 80-year old white conservative's opinion didn't change.

Good thread. Hadn't seen it before. I'll profile my brother in law.

Gender: Male

Age: I'd say about 60.

Occupation: Don't know exactly. Worked as a contractor for the CIA for past 40 years. Retired like 3 years ago.

Marital Status: Married to my sister and has 4 kids. All 4 kids now either in college or graduated college already.

Education: Has a 4 year degree in History.

Why Trump: He HATES government. Loves how Trump is draining the swamp and focused on getting rid of government waste. Completely unaware it contradicts him working for the government for 40 years. Says things like "We are a REPUBLIC not a democracy." Likes to bring up the Hegelian Principle as a reason as to why our country is in the ****ter. Apparently schools need to teach it. Wants to go back to the laws of when the Framers of the Constitution were wise beyond their years. I assume he'd be OK w/ slavery based on that. My niece is dating a black guy. I know he hates him because he calls my BIL by his first name, wears his hat backwards, and does the handshake/hug/bro routine when he sees him. Finds it very disrespectful. Is convinced Obamacare was killing millions of Americans and is glad the AHCA is in the works. Oh, and he's Type 2 Diabetic so he'll probably lose his health insurance for having a pre-existing condition. Probably lacks a sense of irony.

sounds like a real *******

The Hegelian principle of inventing a problem, whining about it, and coming up with a simplistic answer is a good description of Trump and why we are in the crapper, but he probably does lack a sense of irony.

Toronto's crackhead mayor Rob Ford (RIP) may have been an idiot, but he was also probably the cleanest politician ever, fighting any sort of corruption. He and his brother were often the only 2 to vote against certain legislations like raising the coffee break budget for city Councillors by $1.

Have some friends where the husband is a Trumper (though I've never heard him be vocal about it publicly) and the wife, I believe, is not. The dad has rubbed off on the kids, though.

Last night, their youngest - she's maybe 4-year old or so - asked my wife who she's voting for. When my wife told her nobody's running for anything, the little girl said, "I'm voting for Donald Trump!"

My wife told her she's a brave girl.

A few weeks ago, my wife and kids went to dinner with that family. The 8-year old, who is my son's friend, mentioned that he saw our Jon Ossoff sign and that he didn't like Ossoff because Ossoff is a Democrat.

"Democrats want to kill people."

Uh, ok. Nice parenting job by daddy there.

My 8-year old, though, ended the argument quickly, dropping knowledge. "How can you like Trump?" he asked. "He wears a button that says, 'I LOVE TRUCKS.'"

Being from Toronto I am a curling member at one of the highest end golf clubs in the city, located in a wealthy suburb where the demographics are probably 85-90% caucasian, 5% asian, 5% other. After curling you talk with everyone in the game over a beer or two for roughly 30 minutes to an hour (with a bunch of old wealthy caucasians- >2/3rds of the curlers are >60). Basically, the demographics are such that if the club were in the US it would probably be >75% republican, I could be wrong as I guess it could be compared to a wealthy caucasian suburb of New York.

There is not a single black member (there have been quite a few guests), nor has there been in the 100+ years of the club (could be in part due to the location and it being a golf/curling club), yet when the issue of Trump comes up (it does frequently, he's in the news up here all the time too) there has not been a single individual that has ever thought to defend any decision he has made at any point in his campaigning. I also have not noticed anyone sit in silence uncomfortably while everyone else makes fun of him, pretty much everyone takes part in the Trump bashing. Sometimes someone had asked if they have ever met anyone that thinks highly of Trump and only one person said they did and it was when they went on a foreign cruise and met some Americans (early on in the campaign).

Why are old white people in Canada so much more Liberal in their views than old white people in the US?

Not as pronounced a right wing griftosphere.

What is Canada's history of considering people as property to be bought and sold due to genetic characteristics that they had no control over?

No doubt we have white Americans alive today who wouldn't complain if enslavement of non-white minorities was legalized again. A bunch would probably be happy.

Speaking as somebody currently on the other side of the Atlantic, the only Trump supporters I ran into here were Finnish people who were members of the Finland First movement (wonder where that name came from) which started when refugees from the ME began being accepted by the government.

Neither is England and yet the old white people voted to leave Europe for many dumb reasons including racism.

One of my work friend's is dating an abusive *******. Her mother was just in the hospital, dying. He never visited her once. He even complained she was spending too much time at the hospital with her mom.
Just jaw-dropping stuff.

So we had been trying to get together for lunch one day because everyone from work got her a card and collected money. We finally get to meet and she tells me when she told her bf she was leaving to have lunch with me he said "It better be Gizmo!" implying she was going to cheat on him. We talked about him a lot, most of the time I was trying to convince her to leave him.

Anyway, she gets to the point where she tells me she knows he'd be hitting her if he wasn't on parole. But he's currently on parole because he had been collecting disability while also working for cash under the table and got caught (while he was on parole for something else). Yeah, he's a gem.

He is an ardent Trump supporter.

The founder of the startup I work for is Australian and about as right-wing as you can get on most issues. Still he hates Trump and thinks Americans are bat**** crazy with their love of guns.

When the propaganda spigot is turned off, it's easier to see things as they are.

RE: Canadian country club not full of Trumpkins despite being mostly old whites, a few explanations come to mind

1. country club set in US not exactly Trump's core supporters either
2. better social safety net, less wealth disparity, better social and civic services, better labor protections, cleaner environment, less fealty to hyper competitive economic schemes leave population not in constant state of anxiety
3. circumstances of political geography unique to US (high levels of forced migration of Africans in the 17th-18th centuries as slaved, followed later by migration of blacks off of Southern plantations into cities coupled with white American flight out of them and American leadership kowtowing to white flight sympathies later in the 20th century with racist zoning and huge infrastructure projects that promoted segregation and hindered integration).

Trump's supporters in the primaries:



Increases in support for Trump relative to Romney:



I've belabored this point in the past but you can't understand Trump without understand the unique facets of America's political geography. Knowing where Trump had 1) significant levels of support in the GOP primaries (e.g., the south) and consequently where all of his dependable voters were (the south) and where all of the Obama --> Trump vote flippers were (suburban and exurban and rural midwest) points to the ultimate answer to this question about what is unique and different about the US. Fox News and Breitbart are everywhere but some places responded very favorably to Trump and others less so.

The places that responded very and uniquely favorably to Trump and/or proved very dependable:

1. the south
2. all the places where white flight types fled to during and after the Great Migration (e.g., when blacks fled the south en masse during the Jim Crow era), a migration phenomenon very specific to the north and industrial midwest in the US and less a phenomenon in the prairie states, southwest and west

Think you have to look at those factors and appreciate how if race and migration was a huge part of the explanation of Trump and uniquely American.

The rank Murdochian style propaganda machine of contemporary America is likely an effect of #2 and #3 rather than causative since aggressively racist idiots predate Fox News by centuries.

That's a good map. Very illuminating.