President Donald Trump’s most ardent supporters are motivated by their prejudices, not economic concerns, social scientists contend. Will Democrats stop trying to win their votes?
In January, Smith and his University of Kansas colleague, associate sociology professor Eric A. Hanley, published a 47-page paper deconstructing the Republican president’s appeal. Building on decades of scholarship about the lure of authoritarianism and their own analysis of American voting psychology in 2012 and 2016, the social scientists make an argument that some may find offensive and others unsurprising.
It goes something like this: Trump’s biggest supporters are motivated by bigotry and want him to hurt the people they dislike.
Note: There’s a lot to unpack in this article, and this just seems to be the hook.
Your just now deciding to weigh in on this? After how fucking long?
His base is fueled by a fear that the “wrong” people (people that look, speak,dress, act, believe differently, and that I don’t really know) are trying to take the country from the “good” people (people like me, that I know).
The issue is that the only cure is to make people get outside of their box. I really started to realize this when I began working with more departments/clinicians in the hospital I was working at. What I’ve found is that the more you get out there and interact with people who aren’t like you, the more you realize that broad generalizations aren’t really worth a damn, and that there’s more good people of all types than you’d think. The main thing they have in common is that they aren’t fucking shitwad billionaires.
I used to show up early for work to catch the morning rush of doctors in the physicians lounge and see a Muslim doctor or two praying after being there since 2am because they were on call, and decided to round on all their consults before they left, and here I am rolling in hungover just waiting to pound out another 8 hours so I can go home and get drunk and high for another night.