| > I'm sure some people were motivated by animosity, racism, misogyny. > Others were likely motivated by things Trump is willing to say out loud ... his policies actively make all those problems worse These two things are not mutually exclusive, but rather they are directly related. Republicans reflexively categorizing people into "good people" and "other" is exactly what made them not listen to any of the substantive criticism of Trump's "policies" in the context of what he claimed they would achieve [0] Racism, misogyny, etc form the main structure of this dynamic, because they are straightforward categories that can be quickly judged. Even without any societal history of racism, it's too easy to adopt a 90% rule that white -> ingroup, and nonwhite -> outgroup. Since this categorization system now has "predictive power" [1], it becomes worth augmenting it with more rules and exceptions. A non-white person can become "one of the good ones" by "acting white". A white woman can remain ingroup-accepted by "knowing her place", or can become part of the outgroup by actively rejecting the heteronormative role(s) (eg declaring herself a lesbian). After this stews for a while, gaining more and more "predictive power" (aka confirmation bias), there becomes a tacit rule that anybody not nodding in full agreement with the Party mantras is also in the outgroup. Essentially everyone "good" must be supporting this particular leader and repeating the litanies of a narrow Overton window - if you're not onboard, then the simple answer is you're not "good" and therefore not worth listening to at all - even if you're merely trying to point out how they are not going to get what they themselves claim to want. The end result is basically a self-reinforcing cult that goes off the rails of all reason, and here we are. [0] it's understandable that people reject criticisms of policies that come from a place of judging them with different values. For example, someone arguing that tariffs are bad because free trade is inherently good and brings benefits somewhere else, handwaving about the manufacturing economy being disrupted - not going to be very convincing to anyone that sees the lack of manufacturing jobs as a problem. But here I am talking about criticism within the policies' own stated goals. For example, even accepting the goal of wanting to bring manufacturing back, the current tariff policies are abjectly terrible. [1] also given an effectiveness boost by most people not seeing a significant number of people from the "obvious outgroup" in their day to day lives, and instead mostly only sees them through mass media which highlights the worst examples |